Steve Danuser and Bobby Kotick killed my server this fall

[Cthulhu 2020]

As an avid RPer, WoW's lore went down the toilet completely with WoD. I played on one of the lesser known RP servers, and its RP community effectively died and moved to moonguard/WRA around WoD. Now Moon Guard is saying everyone is moving to WRA, and WRA is saying everyone is moving to Moon Guard. Makes me wonder if both are just moving on to other games.

Me? I'm loving RP on the crystal data center. There's a massive number of events to choose from every night. Dance and music clubs, taverns, theaters, fight clubs, bath houses, cafes, etc.

And if none of those float your boat, WU/T people are everywhere.

[Nerph-]

As an avid RPer, WoW's lore went down the toilet completely with WoD. I played on one of the lesser known RP servers, and its RP community effectively died and moved to moonguard/WRA around WoD. Now Moon Guard is saying everyone is moving to WRA, and WRA is saying everyone is moving to Moon Guard. Makes me wonder if both are just moving on to other games.

Me? I'm loving RP on the crystal data center. There's a massive number of events to choose from every night. Dance and music clubs, taverns, theaters, fight clubs, bath houses, cafes, etc.

And if none of those float your boat, WU/T people are everywhere.

You had me wondering what "the crystal data center" is and what it has to do with WoW, then I read Relapses sig and chuckled.

[T-34]

I get it, but I've played WoW since 2010, and I never saw this happening before. Also, I haven't said that the game is dying, games don't die, but communities do. The whole Alliance faction is on life support as we speak. The game is not dead and will not die for a very long time, but it's becoming hard to not notice the number of people leaving and the symptoms that follow the lack of players.
[/I]

The Horde is alive and kicking because more and more of the those that play the game in order to play with other people = raiders and M+'ers are going Horde.
Even as Alliance the game is playable - it just requires you to join various communities on discord in order to find people to play with. It is far worse than on Horde, but still playable.

I think that those that find the game empty are "old-fashioned":
1. They are still stuck in the old "server-mindset" = "I can/should only play with people on my server"
2. They don't use all the new "tech" to find people to play with

But that being said, Blizzard should be much more aggressive in merging/connecting servers and remove all restrictions for cross-server and cross-faction play

[Relapses]

But that being said, Blizzard should be much more aggressive in merging/connecting servers and remove all restrictions for cross-server and cross-faction play

Honestly, I'd say a good portion of WoW's current problems could be solved if they'd just emphasize the importance of guilds and add stuff to the game to make it easier to find a guild that does the stuff you like. Oh, and open up cross-faction raiding/M+.

[Caerrona]

Honestly, I'd say a good portion of WoW's current problems could be solved if they'd just emphasize the importance of guilds and add stuff to the game to make it easier to find a guild that does the stuff you like. Oh, and open up cross-faction raiding/M+.

I agree with both points (cross faction and guilds) but I do think a good chunk of "complaints" (outside of story and whatever) could be solved by insentivising guilds/communities. Though I personally don't think social interaction should need to be given incentives because the incentive is your play time isn't trash.

I don't know why you would play the game solo and make 0 attempts to find like minded people, but a lot do for "reasons" then complain about pugging I guess.

Take any multiplayer game, anyone, doesn't matter and it is infinitely more fun and engaging when playing with friends or a group (guild style maybe not necessarily "friends").

[shise]

As an avid RPer, WoW's lore went down the toilet completely with WoD. I played on one of the lesser known RP servers, and its RP community effectively died and moved to moonguard/WRA around WoD. Now Moon Guard is saying everyone is moving to WRA, and WRA is saying everyone is moving to Moon Guard. Makes me wonder if both are just moving on to other games.

Me? I'm loving RP on the crystal data center. There's a massive number of events to choose from every night. Dance and music clubs, taverns, theaters, fight clubs, bath houses, cafes, etc.

And if none of those float your boat, WU/T people are everywhere.

That´s pretty much the thing with FF14, it is infested with that kind of content and that´s why lots of people moved over from wow.

RP gamers are the more likely to sell out to the game with the more shiny on it.

In the large picture, FF14 is a trend now and it keeps rising (and it will keep rising through Walker) but expect it to start declining at some point from that incoming expansion.
I expect, however, RPers to stay there as it really offers them more content.

[Nerph-]

Honestly, I'd say a good portion of WoW's current problems could be solved if they'd just emphasize the importance of guilds and add stuff to the game to make it easier to find a guild that does the stuff you like. Oh, and open up cross-faction raiding/M+.

Some way of integrating being able to find Discord servers/communities for your realm or region is the first thing that pops into my mind when I read that, seeing as Discord is pretty big at the moment (not that it's hard to do normally, but QoL can never hurt).

I think what T-34 said is true, a lot of people are old-fashioned and not keeping up with current day tech.

[Mic_128]

2. They don't use all the new "tech" to find people to play with

You shouldn't have to look outside of the game to find people to play, especially in an MMO.

[Caerrona]

You shouldn't have to look outside of the game to find people to play, especially in an MMO.

A) you don't have too, wow offers plenty of ways to find like minded people.
B) it's 2021, discord servers are huge and offer community access you can't find in any online game.

[Utrrabbit]

Not even 6 months ago. I play on WRA. The server population was perfectly balanced with Horde having a slight edge. It had about roughly a 20% less population than Moonguard counting both factions. 9.1 had dropped in June. Instead of the population rising? It fell. Stormwind had 50+ players on it even off peak hours, same with Orgrimmar, and Oribos. When 9.1 dropped, this dropped down to 40-35ish in Orgrimmar, still 50+ in Oribos, and 25-30 in Stormwind. 9.1.5 dropped a few months later. It continued to dip. Stormwind now has only 17 people during only Saturdays at peak time and around 4-10 people all other times. Orgrimmar sits at 17-20 people all other times and 28ish people at peak times. Oribos goes back and forth between 15-25 people.

While I had a good idea on why people quit I wanted to ask anyways. They blamed the story writing, the greed and grinds, their immersion in the game had gone, and they also left because the server was dying and thus no roleplay.

Right now Wyrmrest Accord is a dead server within less than 6 months. There's been a mass exodus to Moon Guard as the last bastion of RP servers in retail. I hope they can merge all of the RP servers into one huge server. Wyrmrest, Earthen Ring, Emerald Dream, and the rest with Moon Guard.

I have about 43 characters on Wyrmrest Accord about half are max or close to it and 7 on MoonGuard, none are maxed on Moon Guard. I don't plan to server transfer characters over because that would easily be in the thousands. It just amazes me how two ignorant people can cause so much havoc and damage to a community.

Roleplayers and people who play for the story make up most of your casual playerbase and that's most of everyone who pay to play your game. I just don't understand the logic behind them. We tell them their story is terrible and it gets worse. People threaten to quit and then they play victim on Twitter.

How is your server handling things right now?

A quick look up will clearly state you are lying.

As their are currently over 11k players on wrymrest.

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How did Ion dodge this accusation? The guy that actually makes most of the games decisions, not some shitty fanfiction writer or a women assaulting goblin.

Ion does not actually make that many choices. He never has. People especially these forums like to blame him since he spends most of his time in the media. But 99% of the choices are not his. His job is just to nake sure others are doung theirs. Story and everything else is dond by others.

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The story of the game isn't dictated by a writer who cares about the story and the lore. It's dictated by what the suits think will sell. WoD's premise was nonsense and there was no way War Crimes could fix that, and that's not Golden's fault. The current writers rejoice in destroying Warcraft's religious mythology. WoW's story is also now written by people who don't have edge, hence why you get ridiculous stuff like Alexstraza forgiving the Dragonmaw for repeatedly raping her and, enslaving and murdering her babies, or nations that practice capital punishment moralizing over how wrong it would be to execute Garrosh and how we should forgive them, or the latest stuff with Tyrande having to forgive Sylvanas for committing genocide. "Peace and healing!". The current state of WoW's story is unrecognizable to fans of WC3 and early WoW, hence why the RPers aren't invested in the story of modern WoW.

The current WoW story taking place in another dimension isn't a problem. RP was thriving even during WoD which took place in an AU in the past. It's just - again - nobody cares anymore.

No the issue is no one takes people who rp seriously and consider them jokes and not real gamers.

[Thestrawman]

A quick look up will clearly state you are lying.

As their are currently over 11k players on wrymrest.

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Ion does not actually make that many choices. He never has. People especially these forums like to blame him since he spends most of his time in the media. But 99% of the choices are not his. His job is just to nake sure others are doung theirs. Story and everything else is dond by others.

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No the issue is no one takes people who rp seriously and consider them jokes and not real gamers.

This is the first time I've ever seen any defend a director of a game by saying they don't actually do anything and have no control over the game they're directing.

[sunxsera]

Handling what? I haven't played with anyone on my server outside my guild in years.

Your signature + youtube says something else =\

[T-34]

You shouldn't have to look outside of the game to find people to play, especially in an MMO.

Blizzard has always had a complete hands-off approach to how the players organize themselves. That approach has its advantages and disadvantages.
The advantage of "going outside the game" and having freedom to self-organize is that I am free from interference from Blizzard on where and how I pick people to play with.
The disadvantage is that such a search requires you to put in a considerable effort inside/outside of the game.

The reality of today is that a lot of gamers use game-agnostic platforms as Discord to keep in touch with friends and find other players to players to play with.

Blizzard and any other gaming company should offer tools that are at least as good as those outside the game to find like-minded people to play with.
Those tools should be cross-server and cross-faction.
Those tools should supplement and support those out-of-game tools or else the players will just ignore them.

EDIT:
Yes, it should be natural to find like-minded people to play with in-game, but I don't know of any gaming company succeeding in keeping its player-base 100% "in-game" and not going outside the game to some/big extent for information/discussion/finding other people.

[Skylarking]

Why do you have or need 43 characters on one server

[Mic_128]

Why do you have or need 43 characters on one server

Different characters for different stories, plots and so on, I'd wager. I know I had a good number on my RP server for that.

[MrLachyG]

7 years ago, during the 14 month long SoO content drought, you could fly to Orgrimmar and there would be hundreds of players standing around, and walk up RP happening everywhere. There were constant invites to events happening in /trade chat, and massive server wide events being organized on the server forums. We had war crimes trials for Horde players who served Garrosh hosted at the Mogu'Shan vaults and hundreds of Horde and Alliance players turned up. Massive RP-PvP battles over the Thandol Span. Etc. Nowadays, Horde RP on Moon Guard is pretty dead. /Trade chat is dead for hours. Alliance RP is a shell of its former self. PrettyNo huge server wide events anymore.

Hundreds of players used to populate this square 24/7. No longer.

gonna play devil's advocate here... but couldn't that have been the case due to the fact that the current raid was in Orgrimmar? therefore it would've been pretty common for RP events to happen there. Have you tried checking the RP scene in the Shadowlands itself? Because the server still says full, I just tried to make a character on Moonguard to see for myself and couldn't

[Qnubi]

Who's defending Blizzard? I just pointed out that the claim that the game is dying and the next expansion has to save it has been said during every single expansion.

Massive games such as WoW die a slow and silent death, the process takes years and not one single expansion. That's why you keep seeing these posts year after year. It's like the moon slowly but steadily orbiting away from earth, 3,8cm per year (1.5 inches). But you have to be in big denial if you believe that WoW is gaining players each year, it is slowly losing them.

[Ange]

It's really sad to see threads like this.

This is why 10.0 is so important, it needs to be good no matter what, otherwise the game will become a ghost town. Even if 11.0 happens to be good will be too late to recover.

Things every casual content tourist says every time just to quit 1 week post patch either way.

If you dont like the game, dont play it. The "content" is just mixing up the grind, if thats all you like about this MMO, you are wasting your time.

If they dont kill the login-servers, dont mess up the gameplay, it doesnt really matter what 10.0 brings. Those who CARE are usually not those who SUB regularly.

[Merin]

The game is still extremely healthy, probably always will be. It just isn't a cultural phenom anymore, but it's still a giant damned game, especially for having a sub.

They just need to bite the bullet, accept reality and start merging servers and developing tools to deliver QoL to a smaller playerbase. That's really the rub, they made like no preperation for the game to comfortably decline in and only the players will suffer for it.

[Loveliest]

My server has always been kinda dead. What bothers me though is that this is the first time I have seen more casual guilds fall apart. These kind of guilds (mine included) focus mostly on hc raiding, are friends and family and have survived since forever. Dunno if it's because of Sylvanas hc or because of lack of new content or because ppl have generalized wow as "too grindy" because of Korthia and Torghast (whether true or not is not the point). Even some collectors feel overwhelmed with all the stuff to collect spread over 4 covenants and armour types. But still, when you see guilds like that fall apart, it feels they can't take care of the game properly anymore. Or won't.