Resons why WoW is "dying"

[Layuth]

Probably because they are working on "pet battle spectating", and more scenarios.

People play(ed) for the overall atmospheric content which includes the lore, the setting and how your character(hero) affects and conquerors it.

Dungeon crawling, raids and guilds were what drove the content and subscription base.

With the introduction of the LFR/LFD, you lose the guild/friend/server intimacy and are just a class designation.

Pet battles, seriously holy fuck, who ever thought that should be part of wow should be fired and sued for stupidity.

Scenarios, another shitty example of bad game design.

People at this time see their characters as investments, and when you see a company so stupid as to push pet battles, scenarios, and now pet battle spectating, instead of delivering dungeons, great immersive lore and locations, the investors(players) are no longer investing.

---------- Post added 2013-05-09 at 07:07 AM ----------

If WoW stripped out all of the shit fluff game play and returned to it's roots, providing a story worthy of personal investment, where the player felt immersed into the story, and not distracted with all the lame pop culture references, brawlers guild, pet battles, farmville, and really became a dark and bleak landscape where there was actual danger in the world, people would return.

This guy gets it. The freak side shows currently rule the circus.

[Powell]

Not this shit again.

Wow is aging, everything does.
Do you really expect wow to maintain or have a constant increase in player base over the course of 10 years?

This happens to everything, its not limited to wow.

[Keristrasza]

I agree that they need to bring back Heroics where you actually had to CC to get by certain pulls mentality, because the ones now require very little coordination.

Remember Cataclysm? I sure do, I remember the CC, and "Heroic" feel and I also remember it is what caused the massive loss in subs at the time. Blizzard even admitted it. Hence why it is NOT that way in Mists. I hated Cataclysm and it was the expansion I stopped raiding in, and stopped running dungeons. In fact, I never ran dungeons in BC either. Only Classic, Wrath and now Mists.

[Collected]

Here's another theory. It's 9 years old in November.

It's quite simple really. People get bored of games. Fact of life. And so a lot of the players who were around 9 years ago during the vanilla and BC periods of the game became burnt out long ago and have quit the game. Yes, some flirt with the idea of coming back every so often.. usually just after an expansion drops, but they eventually realise it's the same game.. and quit again. Nothing wrong with that. It's a fact of life. Nothing lasts forever. Everyone has different points at which they conclude "I'm bored" and stop playing.

Blizzard are doing well to still have 8.3 million subs after almost 9 years. That's an incredible achievement for a pay monthly subscription game. They were never going to continue to attract new subs until the end of time. Eventually they were going to peak.

Blizzard also realise nothing lasts forever. That's why they've been developing their new MMO Titan which they hope will dominate for another 10 years. If you feel depressed about WoW, get excited about Titan and cross your fingers and toes that Blizzard produce something special.

[Magpai]

Wow is only "dying" in the sense that all of us here are dying: we are getting closer to our eventual end.

I really hope a Blizzard employee is reading this

A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaa!

[Irisel]

There are plenty of threads with the same topic, couldn't you post in one of those?

Truly, I'm not sure I'll ever understand this type of comment. It's a played out comment, telling someone they have a played out thread topic... It is just ironic

OT: The game was doomed the instant they combined raid lock outs, imo. Servers dying was just the nail in the coffin.

Server fix: Allow all "low" and "high" population servers to have free transfers to medium (only) servers for free. Stablize it a little.

[Mormolyce]

They tried the "hard heroics" thing in cata and lost 1mil subs.

And now they lost about the same with super easy heroics.

Moral of the story? How hard or easy heroics are doesn't have shit to do with sub numbers.

---------- Post added 2013-05-09 at 07:41 AM ----------

Remember Cataclysm? I sure do, I remember the CC, and "Heroic" feel and I also remember it is what caused the massive loss in subs at the time. Blizzard even admitted it.

Bullshit you do. Nobody on this forum knows what causes the subs to go up or down. You see them reported infrequently in information Blizzard prepares for its investors and assume you know what caused it because you have some axe to grind with some aspect of the game.

And no, Blizzard never said they lost subs because of design decision X. They said it alienated some people, which obviously it did. Other people loved it.

[KCguy]

Probably because they are working on "pet battle spectating", and more scenarios.

People play(ed) for the overall atmospheric content which includes the lore, the setting and how your character(hero) affects and conquerors it.

Dungeon crawling, raids and guilds were what drove the content and subscription base.

With the introduction of the LFR/LFD, you lose the guild/friend/server intimacy and are just a class designation.

Pet battles, seriously holy fuck, who ever thought that should be part of wow should be fired and sued for stupidity.

Scenarios, another shitty example of bad game design.

People at this time see their characters as investments, and when you see a company so stupid as to push pet battles, scenarios, and now pet battle spectating, instead of delivering dungeons, great immersive lore and locations, the investors(players) are no longer investing.

---------- Post added 2013-05-09 at 07:07 AM ----------

If WoW stripped out all of the shit fluff game play and returned to it's roots, providing a story worthy of personal investment, where the player felt immersed into the story, and not distracted with all the lame pop culture references, brawlers guild, pet battles, farmville, and really became a dark and bleak landscape where there was actual danger in the world, people would return.

Well, if the next expansion truly is the Burning Legion, we might have a story worthy of personal investment again. As for all of the other stuff you mentioned, it is all side stuff in the game, something to do when you aren't raiding or I suppose PvPing (if you enjoy it more). All that stuff doesn't make or break the game. And if it does, well that is just silly. It is all optional.

[Pull My Finger]

1- The social aspect of the game is gone:

Very good. I enjoy playing the game without the social aspect, which mainly consists of people saying how the game is dying, the usual minor bitching and whining, leetspeak and abbreviations, cheesy guild politics and drama and dps pissing contests. It may be a controversial stance, but I don't really miss any "social" crap in WoW at all.

2- The lack of the seems of adventure:

I just can't agree with any of that and I generally think that this whole "WoW isn't an adventure any more!" notion doesn't hold any water. It might have been so in Cataclysm, but MoP does a very good job in telling a good story and feeling like a world again.

3- Empty servers:

Can't say anything about that, I don't think I'm affected by that problem.

4- Dailies: Valor points + countless dailies and reputations... yeah

Dailies and reputations are cool. Would the game be better if they weren't there? Yaay, less different stuff to do, always a good thing.

5- Alts: MoP is a very alt unfriendly expansion, do I need to say more?

They know it.

6- The lore:

Isn't that completely subjective? I find the MoP lore to be very interesting. The Pandaren are a great addition, some quests and little side stories involving them are even deep in a way. And "deep" is exactly what everything about Cataclysm lore wasn't. Further, I think that the argument that we're fighting monsters we never heard doesn't make sense. Well you also never heard of Arthas before Warcraft II. Stuff has to start somewhere.

7- The gear: Too many tiers of gear, it makes the gamme too complicated and create means to segregate players.

Totally agree with that. Absolutely confusing and unclear, I actually still don't really know how I should spend my valor. The less you accumulate, the more unclear it actually gets.

Well anyways. You can think about all this stuff all day long, the bottom line is that WoW isn't losing subs because of that one thing that pisses you off the most. It's just naive to think that. I see that all the time, and everyone has their own stupid little theory. That's what Blizzard gets for not listening to them, basically. It's dumb. Bullshit talk and sorry attempts to bring across some personal point of butthurt frustration over the game.

Subs are declining because the game is freaking old, that's all. People move on after all those years.

[YouAreAllWrong]

The reasons why WoW is losing subs in Asia is:

1) MoPs take of Chinese culture was cheesy and stereotyped and ended up not being appealing to many Asian players.
2) The F2P wins over P2P.
3) Heavier competition for WoW in that market.

[Chat]

1- The social aspect of the game is gone: No? No its not? I make friends all the time in this game. Actually a good half of the people I know I've met on WoW.

2- The lack of the seems of adventure: Me and my buddies always go around exploring WoW. Finding little easter eggs or doing old dungeons. The "adventure" is still there. I mean if you want a real adventure go travel countries or something.. I dont know..

3- Empty servers: I dont even know how this is an issue.. Transfer servers? its there for you..

4- Dailies: What? Vanilla had a crap ton of grinding to do which in a way is like dailies.. I mean.. if they dont have dailies people will complain there is nothing to do outside of lock out.. They aren't mandatory. Only if you want to make easy gold and get a little extra valor.

5- Alts: Eh.. I got my alts to 90 and got them raid ready in a week? so.. maybe its luck? I dont even need the rep with the other factions in order to pull good numbers in raid or get higher ilvl.

6- The lore: Ok what? No. Dont even go there bukko. The lore in this game is fantastic. Have you not been paying attention or played both Alliance AND Horde? The only lore I think they really messed up on was Chen Stormstout.. besides that I've loved the whole war/revolution going on right now. Cant wait for the Vol'jin book.

7- The gear: In vanilla you had to get dungeon gear in order to get tier which then you had to get that tier to get the next dungeon set to get tier.

[Toc]

I'm about to say a few reasons why i believe WoW is "dying". I really hope a Blizzard employee is reading this, and I ask you all to debate why the subs are constantly going down.

1- The social aspect of the game is gone: There is a serious lack of player interaction in the game. You don't have to form any bonds within the game in order to succed. Easy LFRs and "Heroics" play a big part in here, since you don't have to communicate anymore in order to come up with a good strategy. Guild perks and rewards also contribue to this situation, right now guilds are a bunch of players groupd in order to increase the guild level and to give players rewards. Guild levels / perks / rewards were a terrible addition to the game, because right now a lot of guilds have no real goals, no real player interaction... they are just a bunch of players looking for guild rewards.

2- The lack of the seems of adventure: Yeah, I know, Pandaria can be a fascinating continent... but the PvE experience there, for casuals, is just ridiculous. Players can basically afk in LFR or just pretend to play during a "heroic" dungeon in order to get gear. There is no fun in doing herocis anymore. I remember back in TBC that heroics required tons of coordination, and CC actually meant something, and you know what? I was FUN!!! I mean, of course there were some very hard heroics, such as Shattred Halls and Shadow labs, but there were "easy" heroics that required a good group effort, such as Hellfire Ramparts. Wipes are part of this game. A ridiculously easy game is a boring game, but a challenging game can last forever!

3- Empty servers: Players want a solution to empty servers, and want a solution NOW! We are tired of "we were talking about solutions" excuses. Servers are falling apart and guilds are closng their doors, it's time to give us a solution instead of promises. (No, CRZ is not a solution, it is actually a problem).

4- Dailies: Valor points + countless dailies and reputations... yeah

5- Alts: MoP is a very alt unfriendly expansion, do I need to say more?

6- The lore: The lore is not that interesting. Look at TBC, we face major characters of WoW's lore, such as illidan, kil'jaeden, kael (twice), Vashj, etc. In WotLK we face the Lich King himself alongside his army (anub arak, kel'thuzad, etc)... But not... we fight some creatures we have never heard of (Mogu, Sha, mantid), waiting to finally kill the warchief that basially noone likes. Another problem is how the alliance lore was poorly developed. I play on the horde side, but I feel pity for all the alliance players who have to put up with that storyline... I mean, where are the Draenei? What about the worgen? and the night elves, what is tyrande doing? And WHY do we have to fight the trolls in the middle of a snowstorm?

7- The gear: Too many tiers of gear, it makes the gamme too complicated and create means to segregate players.

That's all folks! Feel free to talk!

1- All the abilities to be social are still there. Don't blame Blizzard because they gave you the option of setting up your own group or going into LFD queue. The choice is yours. Sometimes I want to be social and run instances with my guild or people on my server. Other times I just want to chain run dungeons and kill stuff. I like the choice. Oh and guilds are what you make them. If I see someone in trade saying "LF lvl 25 guild" I don't respond to them. Easy solution to easy problems. The game is what you make it.

2- Remember the start of Cata? Heroics were heroic again. I was greatly enjoying them. Many people were not. They went to the forums. They complained. GC posted his "Wow, Dungeons are hard blog" basically calling them bads. They released 4.1 with the ZA and ZG dungeons that wiped pug after pug. This time instead of flocking to the forums to complain I can only assume they showed GC what they thought with their wallets when they unsubbed. What other reason could exist that they pulled such a 180 in 4.3 with face roll heroics and DS. Apparently you and I enjoying hard heroics were the minority. Blizzard realized this. In MoP they gave us challenge modes. Try them. Haven't had that much fun since BC in 5 mans. Again the game is what you make it.

3- Players asked for the ability to transfer their toons to other realms. Players begged for it. Blizzard put it off for a while but finally implemented it and look what happened. Players flocked to high pop realms and over loaded them and caused faction unbalances. My server was about 50/50 at the start of Wrath. It is now 75% horde. This is due to the players transferring and faction changing. This is the players not Blizzard. The game is what we make it.

4- Dailies and reputation. Ya. Remember TBC? You talked about it so lovingly in point 2. Know what I remember about TBC? A lot of dailies and rep grinds. They weren't always tied so tightly together but there were a lot of dailies and rep grinds then and now. So I agree they suck but it's not like they are a new problem.

5- Alts. Again I refer to everyone's, including yours and mine, love of TBC. How many alts did you have in TBC? I had 2 70s. That was it. Leveling was long and slow as was gearing. Gearing which is something you claim is too easy with simple heroics and LFR in point 2 yet claim to be too complicated in point 7 as too many tiers. Seems confusing to me. Gearing an alt in TBC was a giant pain in my opinion.

6- I agree the lore seems not the same to me as well. But I will ask you what I ask others when they complain. Should we still be fighting Illidan and Arthas? I mean at what point does the story move on? Honestly if we were still just killing scourge and the Legion I'd probably be sick of it by now. Luckily we had Cata and MoP to mix it up some and hopefully we get a nice Burning Legion xpac next that will make us all enjoy the lore again. Fingers crossed.

7- As mentioned in my response to point 5 this point confused me. "Players can basically afk in LFR or just pretend to play during a "heroic" dungeon in order to get gear." in point 5 followed by "Too many tiers of gear, it makes the gamme too complicated and create means to segregate players."

And as for dying I just shake my head. I have been having a blast this tier. ToT is great fun in my opinion. MoP is pushing out content extremely fast too. Yes WoW is dying but hell, so am I. I have been dying since the day I was born. But I nor WoW will be dying any time soon. /fingers crossed again - more for me then WoW :P

[shadowfyre27]

This guy gets it. The freak side shows currently rule the circus.

Apparently you and the gentleman/woman you quoted both missed the blue post where it was stated that both pet battles and scenarios were accepted and played by more players then they ever expected. You may not like the idea of pet battles and scenarios but apparently according to Blizzard the majority of the playerbase seems to disagree with you and enjoys them quite alot. As per the comments people have made about the pet battle spectating read the blue post about it all they are doing is making it so you see the pet the person is fighting, which means changing a couple lines of code so that instead of making it invisible to you it's visible. That kind of change takes 0 time away from something that you may feel is more important. As for the lack of new dungeons being added in, please explain what purpose they would serve? You run them a couple times maybe for some higher ilvl gear (lfr says hi)? There is absolutely no reason I can think of as to why they would add new dungeons in, they serve no purpose other then to take up resources that can be sued on other stuff. The reason the game is dying IMO is because, as has been stated multiple times already, the game is old. It happens things get old and people move on.

[nightfalls]

The empty servers cancer is really starting to hit, that and CRZ are actually making such servers more miserable, not less. For a new player, the zoning lag (alone) with CRZ would make me think this game is a fucking dated piece of shit, honestly, that tech needs to disappear and fast.

---------- Post added 2013-05-09 at 08:07 AM ----------

Blizzard are doing well to still have 8.3 million subs after almost 9 years. That's an incredible achievement for a pay monthly subscription game. They were never going to continue to attract new subs until the end of time. Eventually they were going to peak.

It depends, perhaps if expansions were more treated like new games, it can explain a lot. WoW being out after 9 years with 4 expansions is different than say Diablo II LoD being out for 9 years. Especially since the expansions also change up the old world.

But I do think it's almost time for a WoW 2, I just hope it's done well.

[Hanson71]

For me, I've been on the verge of cancelling my sub (not quitting the game all together though).

Mostly because this game has become too streamlined. I met so many of my current friends through pugs via trade chat doing dungeons, or raids. Now you can clear every single boss in game w/o talking to another person.

I've tried to make new guilds w/ my friends. People will not join because it's not lvl 25.

To me, the game was best when the spotlight wasn't shining on me. I idolized people back in TBC that were clearing Sunwell. They were elite. It was a fabled place where only the best raiders could go. I was happy raiding only a few tiers. There was plenty of content for me to work towards.

Now, you can clear end-game bosses within days of hitting max level. Previous tiers of raids are non-progression anymore (LFR actually helped this ... kind of)

I've always wondered if there is a correlation between instant-gratification, and people getting bored and quitting prematurely. This game was in it's prime where everything wasn't available to everyone.

People say that 8.3 million subscribers is a game that's still going strong. I agree. But it's also alarming if a game bleeds more than 10% of it's subs within one quarter.

[Deleted]

I'm about to say a few reasons why i believe WoW is "dying". I really hope a Blizzard employee is reading this, and I ask you all to debate why the subs are constantly going down.

You're missing the most important point: the game is outdated.

The graphics are outdated, the concept is outdated, the people have seen it long enough to get tired of it.

Blizzard knows this, that's why they're milking the subs while it's still possible. That's why they come up with new ways to play the game, like achievements and pet battles, something the people that stay can sink time in while they continue to pay for their subs. WoW is a cash cow, that's why Blizzard tries to get as much money out of it as it continues to die slowly. Yeah, I know a thing or two about how a business works.

[Rixarius]

WoW isn't dying. I'm pretty tired of the community acting like homeless folks on the side of the road with "The end is coming" written on cardboard.

I've passed by those people for years and I'm still here.

[Deleted]

if they were to bring back the tabard's instead of the rep grind from dailies, it would be a step in the right direction.
it's typical of blizzard to swap & change things. ok, we didnt have tabards for rep in vanilla, but once they opened pandora's box & gave us tabards in tbc, they should have kept it.
on the flipside, i only do enough dailies a week now to get the 3 mogu's & they're with the golden lotus as they're the only one's i can actually face doing. doing the dailies on the isle of thunder, just does my head in.

[ati87]

Here's another theory. It's 9 years old in November.

It's quite simple really. People get bored of games. Fact of life. And so a lot of the players who were around 9 years ago during the vanilla and BC periods of the game became burnt out long ago and have quit the game. Yes, some flirt with the idea of coming back every so often.. usually just after an expansion drops, but they eventually realise it's the same game.. and quit again. Nothing wrong with that. It's a fact of life. Nothing lasts forever. Everyone has different points at which they conclude "I'm bored" and stop playing.

Blizzard are doing well to still have 8.3 million subs after almost 9 years. That's an incredible achievement for a pay monthly subscription game. They were never going to continue to attract new subs until the end of time. Eventually they were going to peak.

Blizzard also realise nothing lasts forever. That's why they've been developing their new MMO Titan which they hope will dominate for another 10 years. If you feel depressed about WoW, get excited about Titan and cross your fingers and toes that Blizzard produce something special.

Just to add some more perspective to this

I've got a few guild members who back in TBC didn't have childeren.....6 years later he has two, allot of people in the same position won't even play WoW anymore
I've got a guild members who back in tbc didn't have a job (or didn't work at nights)......6 years later his work prevents him to work raid in the evening since he has to work


The moral of the story

9 years is a long long time, people change, stuff happen and the fact that people leave the game is only natural. Furthermore it's hard to attract allot of new players since the MMO market is limited (Warcraft is the major exception when it comes to subs).

A few years ago people would badmouth Blizzard when they announced that the number of subs increased, they would say ''Well most of the new subs are from China and that doesn't count because blizzard isn't really making allot of money from them''. Now the same group say ''World of Warcraft is dying because the Chinese which we have totally different servers and never have any form of interaction with Eu or NA players are leaving the game''.

[Venziir]

Reasons - It's getting older and older, and isn't as flashy as the new stuff. The End.