Alright, so I just read a thread over on the WoW official forums. Some guy was yet again complaining about how blizzard has forced him at gunpoint to do dailies, and how majority of players feel the same way and will soon quit. I'm just completely dumbfounded by the lack of common sense here.
Blizzard just reported their numbers (not exact numbers), saying that in Q3, they are now over 10 million subs again, picking up 1 million subs in China I believe. That means that WoW is sitting on approximately 11 million subs, maybe more. WoW's peak was in Wrath, where it had 12 million subs. There are a number of MMO's out there right now who are sitting at around 1 million subs, or even less, and are doing very well for themselves. Sadly, City of Heroes is closing it's servers in November, but considering it's one of the older MMO's out there, it's done pretty damn well for itself.
WoW is not dying. The only possible way WoW could die is if right now, at this point in time, well over 3/4 of the playerbase unsubbed. Even if they went down to 5 million, it still would not be dead. World of Warcraft is not the be all and end all of MMO's, however they have absolutely paved the way for the good majority of MMO's today in some way. Even now they're constantly adding new features to this damn game.
Dailies, in all honesty, really aren't that bad. Now I know that is entirely subjective, but what else are you really going to do with that time? They hotfixed VP items to be available after reaching honored with a faction within days of release. If you have played through the zones, it's almost impossible not to be honored with almost all of the VP bearing factions, with the exception of the august celestials. I managed to get my item level up to 475 with only 2 pieces of valor gear. The rest of my gear was either crafted or won in dungeons or LFR, the same way it's always been (well, since 4.3 in regards to LFR). There is only one "forced" rep grind, and that is the Golden Lotus, which is arguably the most tedious. However, after 2 1/2 weeks of rep grinding, you hit revered, and you can stop. That's it. I'm a mount collector, and I enjoy the little quests at each level of reputation that you get, so for me, grinding to exalted for 6 different factions to get some beautiful mounts and a fun little epic-ish quest at each level of rep isn't really all that big of a deal, but I can absolutely see how it can be to some.
This is not some way for blizzard to stretch out content, this is giving people exactly what they asked for. People bitched and moaned about how easy it was to gear in Cataclysm. So instead of running heroics 8 times and getting a full set of epic gear, they made you work a bit for it. People bitched and moaned about how empty Cataclysm was. It was empty, but not because of the lack of attention to detail in the new zones, but because we could fly without being max level, or close to it, so noone bothered to check out the scenery or pay attention to quests. People seem to have forgotten very quickly that it wasn't until TBC that you could even fly, and in both TBC and Wrath, you had to be max level to do it anyways, which meant you leveled with a good ol ground mount. So what makes it any different now other than people got spoiled being able to fly before max level? People bitched and moaned about people needing on gear in LFR for OS, for Guildies, to vendor it, to use it to trade for other items, or just to be a dick. Now people are complaining that they get no loot at all. You get gear for the role you queued for, which if you look at the dungeon journal, narrows it down to about 1-4 pieces you could possibly get per boss. Theres nothing wrong with that at all. You want to gear an OS? Go back to doing heroic dungeons to gear up enough to be viable in LFR as your OS. Theres no reason people should be needing in a raid for specs that they rarely play or didn't put in the effort to play. Again, thats what dungeons are for.
So all in all, I just can't seem to wrap my head around the complaining. Because these same people are complaining about everything they wanted previously. I guess because it didn't go exactly as they planned, then it's no good at all.
It's beginning to seem many of these people would prefer it this way: