"The MMO market is dying" is an awful excuse/argument

[Relapses]

I have fun in WoW, But.. most people don't since so many left, and MMO-champ is filled with haters and complainers, so something has to be broken and in the need of fixing right? If there are so much salt on the forums?

Actually, I take back my previous quote. You must be new to the internet if you don't realize the number one thing people do on it is complain about shit.

[SkagenRora]

Remember Wildstar, made by a company started by some of the original blizzard guys?

Made for original wow fans?

Current playerbase of 0.

Diden't wildstar go ultra hardcore with mad long attunements and ultra hard raids? That's nothing like WoW from how it is in Classic atm..

[unbound]

Yes, it's probably in a decline and is nowhere near 12 million subscribers like Wrath had, that was quite literally an almost impossible feat and achievement for WoW and should be commended.

But if you continuously tell Blizzard that the MMO market is dying and that's your reasoning for why WoW is in decline, you might as well be telling them to stop investing money in WoW. They are a business after all, and if they think a market is dying off, why would they continue spending money on development of a game for a dying market? If you care about the game at all, stop saying this.

If you think that WoW is in a decline because of some bad game design decisions, then you still believe the game can be turned around with some better game design decisions and not be in a decline anymore.

Which of these opinions do you think is more helpful for the game? Which person do you think cares more about the game, the one who thinks the MMO market is dying and WoW is in decline because of it and there's nothing that can be done to save it, or the person that thinks some better game design decisions can still turn the game around?

Pick your battles wisely.

Yeah, current WoW isn't remotely near 12 million subs. They appear to be around 2 million subs (50% due to Classic).

But it didn't get this way because people were claiming that the MMO market is dying and, in fact, the overall MMO market continues to grow (yes, Blizz is aware of that reality). WoW's share is simply plummeting. And that is because Blizz continues to be cheap in their expenditures while overpriced for a game this old with such a glut in content.

Blizz doesn't care about WoW. It has existed for many years now (since at least WoD) just to suck money out of the player's pockets...whether it be via tokens, subs, or extras. Blizz is much happier with Overwatch and Hearthstone which costs peanuts to maintain and provide updates for...hence a *much* better return per $ invested and a lower risk because of how little they cost. This is also why they are desperately trying to get to the mobile market...cheap to produce and maintain while racking in big bucks due to microtransactions.

WoW will continue devolve for those reasons, not because people are bad-mouthing the property.

[The Butt Witch]

Mobile games still do far better then console or pc at the moment

Well ALL people need to take a dump at least once per day, but not all people play games on PC or console.

[Ghostile]

I have fun in WoW, But.. most people don't since so many left, and MMO-champ is filled with haters and complainers, so something has to be broken and in the need of fixing right? If there are so much salt on the forums?

People have and will complain constantly.
Please one group and another starts complaining.
Dungeons are too easy (end of WOTLK)
Dungeons are too hard (launch of Cata)
Dungeons are too easy (Pandaria)
CM Dungeons are boring (WOD)
Mythic dungeon timers are dumb (Legion/BFA)

[Willias]

Classic was able to more than double (!) WoWs subscriber numbers during its release

Look at EverQuest. Current live server content caters mostly only to players who are at the level cap. It is incredibly difficult to get into that game and get up to where players are for current content. So the playerbase for modern content is mostly stagnant and is only made up of hardcore people who will probably never stop playing the game.

The majority of the playerbase for EQ play on the progression servers which partly mimic how EQ launched back in 1999 (or at least locks you into the content that was playable in the game's original release) with expansion content unlocking every few months. If you've played EQ on its progression servers, it wasn't going to be a surprise to see WoW do well when they released their classic servers.

On a similar note, the further WoW moves away from its EverQuest roots, the worse the game does I think. Not saying EverQuest is the better game, it isn't. But might be a decent indicator for what draws people to the genre in the first place, and keeps them playing, but what the hell do I know.

[Relapses]

Yeah, current WoW isn't remotely near 12 million subs. They appear to be around 2 million subs (50% due to Classic).

But it didn't get this way because people were claiming that the MMO market is dying and, in fact, the overall MMO market continues to grow (yes, Blizz is aware of that reality). WoW's share is simply plummeting. And that is because Blizz continues to be cheap in their expenditures while overpriced for a game this old with such a glut in content.

Blizz doesn't care about WoW. It has existed for many years now (since at least WoD) just to suck money out of the player's pockets...whether it be via tokens, subs, or extras. Blizz is much happier with Overwatch and Hearthstone which costs peanuts to maintain and provide updates for...hence a *much* better return per $ invested and a lower risk because of how little they cost. This is also why they are desperately trying to get to the mobile market...cheap to produce and maintain while racking in big bucks due to microtransactions.

WoW will continue devolve for those reasons, not because people are bad-mouthing the property.

Brilliant deduction that is easily able to be backed up by facts and figures such as Blizzard's quarter-over-quarter reports showing a decline in WoW's monthly active use-- wait, they don't?!? Shit.

[Ghostile]

Diden't wildstar go ultra hardcore with mad long attunements and ultra hard raids? That's nothing like WoW from how it is in Classic atm..

Yup. They tried to please the part of MMO community that loves ultra hard things.

Turns out turning difficulty up doesn't make people perform better, just makes them go away.

[The Butt Witch]

Yup. They tried to please the part of MMO community that loves ultra hard things.

Turns out turning difficulty up doesn't make people perform better, just makes them go away.

I didn't even get to raids. I got bored around level 30. The game was just MEEEEEEEEEEEH for me.

[Willias]

Diden't wildstar go ultra hardcore with mad long attunements and ultra hard raids? That's nothing like WoW from how it is in Classic atm..

WoW's crazy attunement period was during Burning Crusade. I don't think anyone actually liked the attunement process in Burning Crusade, neither did players like it when EverQuest had crazy attunements during Planes of Power.

Why Wildstar devs thought it was a good idea is anyone's guess, but it seems like there have been plenty of signs that the upper management at Carbine Studios wanted a different game than the one they ended up creating.

[Andonais]

I half think mmo and just general live service games overlap a lot.

[McNeil]

MMO's still seem to be thriving. Other than WoW I still see FFXIV, ESO, GW2 and even SWTOR doing fine even if they are nowhere near close to the 12 million that WoW once had. I would guess that most WoW refugees have either gone to play one of these games or they are playing more mainstream games like Fortnite and LoL.

Many people only play WoW so when they see it in decline, they just think that the genre as a whole is in decline. WoW might have carried the MMO scene back in 2004-2010 but this hasn't been the case in a long time anymore. The decline of WoW can be blamed on just these 2 things:

- Players moving on because WoW is old and the game doesn't attract new players to replace them

- Blizzard making the game worse with a lot of poor decisions and lack of communcation with the community

[SkagenRora]

Oh, oh! Is this in line with the idea that Blizzard needs to make the game "fun" again? Because, you know, we all universally agree what defines fun in a MMO and this is a very easy task for Blizzard to accomplish they just need to listen to the right portion of the playerbase.

It's just what i gathered from the forums, and thought that was the problem with blizzard.

[D3athsting]

They need to remove that cancer called esports from wow, wow (and mmorpgs in general) shouldn't be another fortnite, dota or any damned online pvp game filled with toxic jerks

[Feral Druid ist Op]

In what world you have to grind essences one by one and not simultaneously on multiple characters?

in the world were patches happen, a class thats dogshit in 8.2 can be op in 8.3 (arms & beastmaster for example)
if you are raiding serious and the classes are not in your split/main Character pool and are needed in the raid you have to grind, or recruit and hope that the trails are not Dogs.

[Thage]

It's not entirely inaccurate. The MMORPG genre isn't a cultural tour de force the way it was in WoW's heyday. Back then the idea of thousands of players sharing an online space was still somewhat novel; these days it's hard to find an open-world game that doesn't have some manner of persistent online multiplayer, whereas the RPG aspects of the genre were trimmed down and streamlined with games like Minecraft and PUBG, which kickstarted the crafting/survival fad and the battle royale fad, respectively (and much like how WoW kickstarted the MMORPG fad, they weren't the first in their genre but they were the first to gain a pop culture foothold as being for more than basement-dwelling nerdensteins).

That being said, the MMORPG genre isn't exactly dying. WoW, WoW Classic, FFXIV, and a number of Eastern MMORPGs all pulling in strong profits and player numbers is evidence enough. Hell, Lineage II is still going strong with a stable playerbase and it's one of the old dogs on the block.

WoW's current state is a mix of three factors: we're on the wrong end of the bell curve (most products have a bell curve life cycle), gaming's current fad has moved on from MMORPGs, and the developers have a sincere and serious problem with hubris.

[Ghostile]

in the world were patches happen, a class thats dogshit in 8.2 can be op in 8.3 (arms & beastmaster for example)
if you are raiding serious and the classes are not in your split/main Character pool and are needed in the raid you have to grind.

"Raiding serious" includes other than pushing world 10.

Hell, even cutting edge level raiding doesn't take splits.

[froschhure]

For me this is a sinking ship. And I think the combination of utter desperation and leeching forming into one big long dinosaur seems Clear enough. Shadowlands can only be a polished time sink for whale target practice. They Bleed out the subs as long as they can.

[Ghostile]

For me this is a sinking ship. And I think the combination of utter desperation and leeching forming into one big long dinosaur seems Clear enough. Shadowlands can only be a polished time sink for whale target practice. They Bleed out the subs as long as they can.

Yeah, instead of "making wow a good gaem" they are just slowly winding it down because that makes the most sense for the money hungry slaves of activision.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

MMO's still seem to be thriving. Other than WoW I still see FFXIV, ESO, GW2 and even SWTOR doing fine even if they are nowhere near close to the 12 million that WoW once had.

I really don’t think you can call it thriving when between all of those Games there are less paying players then wow at its peak not even counting all the other mmos out at the time. The market might not be dying but it’s clearly fallen to a way smaller status quo.