What's the main reason for the dropping WoW subs?

[inkberry]

The only thing blizzard could do for me is actually attempt to make content challenging after the first month of raiding. After you get to a decent item level this game is basically a kids game where "everybody wins". The only thing about wow that has ever been hard is hardcore raiding where they attempt a boss 100+ times until they get the proper RNG to kill a boss before everyone else. Woohoo.

That and the fact that pvp is probably in the worst state it's ever been where they're just throwing out random additions into live and calling it balance.

I don't understand why people care about being competitive in a game that isn't designed for competitive people.

[Zervek]

The only thing blizzard could do for me is actually attempt to make content challenging after the first month of raiding. After you get to a decent item level this game is basically a kids game where "everybody wins". The only thing about wow that has ever been hard is hardcore raiding where they attempt a boss 100+ times until they get the proper RNG to kill a boss before everyone else. Woohoo.

That and the fact that pvp is probably in the worst state it's ever been where they're just throwing out random additions into live and calling it balance.

I don't understand why people care about being competitive in a game that isn't designed for competitive people.

Then why do we have server first level ___ and server first _____defeated achievements?

[inkberry]

Then why do we have server first level ___ and server first _____defeated achievements?

Because if you don't hormonal teenagers throw a hissy fit.

[KungFuFanta]

I'll venture and guess lack of innovation while other MMOs offer better, cheaper alternatives.

[Aaros]

Aside from the natural decline that stems from the game's age, in my honest opinion, the one thing (or, more accurately, two things), that is accelerating the drop in subscriptions is LFD and LFR. These - especially the first one - have been a BIG detriment to the game's social aspects. Why make good friends in-game to run dungeons with when you can just click "Join Queue"? Also, the "in-game-lobby" properties of these features are providing an incentive for players to park themselves in their capital city and spamming heroics to grind gear and badges. Where's the degree of exploration and immersion in that? Just... where?

I'm not saying remove these features. In lieu, I would recommend two different gearing paths: one for the casual demographic and one for the more dedicated players. The casual players can have a wide range of (normal mode) dungeons with the same difficulty as today's heroics that can be queued up for in LFD, along with a range of scenarios and an introductory raid (or two) for LFR. The more dedicated players can have heroic dungeons and scenarios that can be queued up for, but only with a pre-made group - like heroic scenarios today - and a bonus for those players who don't queue and instead run to the instance. Both demographics can then merge into one path with a couple of harder LFR raids before advancing (if willing) to flex/normal/heroic raiding.

A gearing path kinda like this:

Casual Gearing Path:
Daily quests (if needed) -> Level-cap normal dungeons/scenarios -> 1 or 2 introductory LFRs / Flex -> If willing, go to Dedicated path

Dedicated Gearing Path:
Heroic dungeon/scenario premades -> 1 or 2 challenging LFRs / Flex -> Normal raiding -> Heroic raiding

Couple this with some challenging leveling and group quests, then I think we have a golden strategy to get some subs back. Thoughts?

[Glorious Leader]

clueless developers who not only refuse to innovate or move away from the same shit they were doing 10 years ago but also destroy extremely casual friendly systems in favour of making raids and only raids and in favour of players who whined in wotlk about welfare epics. That's why warcraft subs are dropping. They broke what was almost perfect in wrath circa ICC.

[whatthefudge]

The age of the game. Not that necessarily that it is dated, but because its impossible to bring in new blood at the same rate people move on.

[Semihage]

Imagine you are a brand new MMO player (or you and your close buddies want to find a MMO to play).. Most likely you don't have a steady income (college/highschool).. You don't have any guild attachment, no existing characters and no experience on any MMO games. You are presented with a lot of choices. WoW requires 25 bucks to purchase and 15 bucks per month just to play.. Most other MMO (SWTOR) are completely F2P.. What would you do? I would say 80% of the chance you will not pick WoW. That's basically what's happening here, as much as WoW is polished, it cannot compete with F2P MMOs. Every game will eventually lose its current player, but the important thing is, there needs to be new people coming in all the time.. I just don't see that for WoW.

[Balazzar]

I don't see why people claim "old game" is the reason. If that were the case, why are people still playing Everquest 1 despite Everquest 3 being in development?

Clearly some design decision is making players decide to either quit, or not join.

Oh lord. Yes, some people PLAY EQ1... Just like some people will still player WoW in 2020, 2025, forever. EQ1 has definitely seen subscription drops between launch and now, as is WoW... Old Games = Fewer Players.

[Worgoblin]

I feel like WoW can stay above 5 millions subs for another 10 years if they play their cards right.

[KungFuFanta]

I don't see why people claim "old game" is the reason. If that were the case, why are people still playing Everquest 1 despite Everquest 3 being in development?

Clearly some design decision is making players decide to either quit, or not join.

People still play Command and Conquer 1, there's been like 12 C&C since then. If WoW 2 came out some people would still play WoW 1, on private pre-BC servers, claiming it's WAAAAAY BETTER!

[d0e1ow]

I can think of a few things at least for me... I try to come back but I always leave. I have literally -zero- friends who still play the game, that's counting online and RL friends. My boyfriend thinks the game is a total sham so I can't convince him to play it.

I find it nearly impossible to meet new people in the game these days with things like LFR and coming into the expansion late. I don't have the "achievements" to join a guild to prove I'm a good player despite having very good raid experience from back in TBC. So, meeting people in World of Warcraft is out.

I recently leveled a monk on my last attempt to play the game again. Met approximately zero people while leveling. No heirlooms btw. New server btw. None of this rushing dungeons to 90 stuff. Legit leveling + pet battles.

LFR is awful. It's just awful. I admit... I did it a few times, and I felt terrible afterwards. I just felt like "Whelp. Just "saw" the fight. Why keep playing?" I used to really look forward to the experience of killing a boss. Doing LFR really jaded that for me.

I think honestly though... just not having anyone in the game to keep me around is what got me to quit. The gameplay isn't revolutionary. It's hotkey tab target combat... it's old... it's the people I met in the game and playing with friends that made me love WoW, and that's totally gone now. :/

I do agree that they changed the game too much though. They really tried to appeal to "Everyone" and in that sense everything became kind of mediocre. You can't be everything. I dunno... it's sad the way I feel about WoW. I never really feel like I leave the game. My heart wants to be in it, still playing it... all of you saying that a lot of the playerbase is in their 20's and "having kids now" are crazy... I'm not having kids... I'm dicking around, partying, dating, and putting off being an adult because it really doesn't seem too fun. I still have the time for the game... it just doesn't yank me in anymore even though I wish it would.:/

Also, yeah, once Arthas died... meh... the story really did become less interesting. I know Deathwing had a lot of backstory, but it wasn't one the majority of us were overly familiar with or close to... he was a character almost straight out of "Expanded Universe" lore. It was canon, but it wasn't linked to the games. That's another issue I have... but that's for another thread.

[KungFuFanta]

Great post and great signature d0e1ow.

[Seefer]

You are right on all counts. Remember roaming through the world, or even the new expansions (not so much MoP, for some reason, for me) and wondering what was on the other side of that "mountain" or zone? It was magical.. I felt like I was in a Tolkien book. Now, everything is just so different. No magic. No mystery. No community. Not sure what could be done to rectify it..

Stop stream lining everything and do away with World of Queuecraft, that's about it.

- - - Updated - - -

My opinion is that falling subs has little to do with the actual in-game content or how it is presented. Wow has always lost players for lots of different reasons, hell I know people who started in every xpac (incl. vanilla) who swear that it's never the same a few years later, for some people every incarnation of the game is the best incarnation. Some people hated vanilla, some hated cata, some hated MoP, etc etc.

The real problem isn't the losses, it's the lack of new players taking their place. When I first started there was always lots of new players and this continued all the way through to WotLK, once Cata hit it became rarer to come across the newbies. Most raiders I know started Vanilla -> WotLK, and when you do come upon one who started in Cata or even MoP then they are almost an oddity. Sure dailies, cata being shit are problems, but the lack of new players is an even bigger problem and the two factors add up to sub losses.

Why exactly new players are not being attracted to play can be numerous and I'm not sure which is having a stronger effect, but bad marketing from Blizzard is one idea. Maybe the game being old is another. I'm not saying that the graphics are bad or the engine is bad or anything like that (although we can all agree the old models really need that update), but it's simply been around for a long time and this might put off newer players who don't want to deal with a game with this much history to it. Perhaps the MMO market is just stagnant, competition is eating at WoW's subs, maybe potential players are playing Rift or GW2 or FF or whatever.

I think it has more to do with how people treat new people, nobody wants to play a game where when they ask where something is the common answer is "In your mom"

[Deleted]

i started losing interest when they went from the desire to make a good game to lets milk this for it's worth, started really noticing the change halfway through wrath I think it was.

[Toiran]

MoP does NOT look dated in the slightest, it's all WoW's style, it actually has pretty good graphics in certain areas and spells and so forth.

Everything before it, does look dated now, just like MoP will look dated in a year or two.

My thoughts are a lot of the core players have gotten older, got kids, families, other commitments, and the new breed of gamer wants to sit on CoD shouting fag at people whilst looking at Facebook and thus won't try WoW or any MMO, I honestly believe this is 90% of the cause, it has nothing to do with the actual gameplay or so on, of WoW, for that huge percentage, it's just the market has changed fast, very fast.

It will balance out soon enough I think, it will drop and then stop dropping to the point new subs/quitters balance and cancel each other out, it will also jump up I think 2 million next xpac, but that's just my guess.

[Deleted]

the reasons are many, and depend per person.

but the main reason is, they grew bored of it at that point and decided too try something else.
you can add thousands of subreasons too this and they all would be right. but this is the red wire amongst them all.

[Seefer]

MoP does NOT look dated in the slightest, it's all WoW's style, it actually has pretty good graphics in certain areas and spells and so forth.

Everything before it, does look dated now, just like MoP will look dated in a year or two.

My thoughts are a lot of the core players have gotten older, got kids, families, other commitments, and the new breed of gamer wants to sit on CoD shouting fag at people whilst looking at Facebook and thus won't try WoW or any MMO, I honestly believe this is 90% of the cause, it has nothing to do with the actual gameplay or so on, of WoW, for that huge percentage, it's just the market has changed fast, very fast.

It will balance out soon enough I think, it will drop and then stop dropping to the point new subs/quitters balance and cancel each other out, it will also jump up I think 2 million next xpac, but that's just my guess.

You are aware most of the player base for WoW has been the 20-30 age demographic right?

[d0e1ow]

Great post and great signature d0e1ow.

Hey, thanks. I guess it's worth mentioning that I'm really happy to be dabbling a bit in Hearthstone lately. It feels good to be able to stay connected to the Warcraft universe somehow even if it can't be through WoW itself.

[Deleted]

My opinion is that falling subs has little to do with the actual in-game content or how it is presented. Wow has always lost players for lots of different reasons, hell I know people who started in every xpac (incl. vanilla) who swear that it's never the same a few years later, for some people every incarnation of the game is the best incarnation. Some people hated vanilla, some hated cata, some hated MoP, etc etc.

The real problem isn't the losses, it's the lack of new players taking their place. When I first started there was always lots of new players and this continued all the way through to WotLK, once Cata hit it became rarer to come across the newbies. Most raiders I know started Vanilla -> WotLK, and when you do come upon one who started in Cata or even MoP then they are almost an oddity. Sure dailies, cata being shit are problems, but the lack of new players is an even bigger problem and the two factors add up to sub losses.

Why exactly new players are not being attracted to play can be numerous and I'm not sure which is having a stronger effect, but bad marketing from Blizzard is one idea. Maybe the game being old is another. I'm not saying that the graphics are bad or the engine is bad or anything like that (although we can all agree the old models really need that update), but it's simply been around for a long time and this might put off newer players who don't want to deal with a game with this much history to it. Perhaps the MMO market is just stagnant, competition is eating at WoW's subs, maybe potential players are playing Rift or GW2 or FF or whatever.

This.

What's more, the main reason there aren't that many new players anymore is... well... where are these new players supposed to come from? The game is almost ten years old, how many people are out there who are likely to play it BUT somehow haven't ever actually done so in the last decade?

It isn't that the game is old and shitty, it's just that there isn't really anyone left to evangelize to. Pretty much everyone in the world has heard of WoW by now and either decided to play it or not. The market isn't infinite.