It's startling how fast game activity is falling

[Leonard McCoy]

You've never been to White Castle, have you?

Not to get to far off topic but yea white castle is bad worse than Mcdicks any day of the week.

[McTurbo]

http://www.twitch.tv/


Diablo 3 is always one of the top games streamed......

slozon your trolling.. the game lost nearly 80% of its initial players in the first two months. it sold based on the annual pass. the beta for mop and the name brand of the previous diablo games. when a game looses 80% of its player base in less than 60 days.. its a flop i don't care how well it sold initially.

Combine this with Cataclysm, and then certain decisions in MOP (its not all bad) and you have people scratching their heads wondering WTF is blizzard doing.. its repeated bad decision on top of bad decision.. somethings changed there and the players can tell.

Infracted: Calling people out for trolling is not allowed - ML

[MoanaLisa]

McDonald's restaurants around the globe must have sold billions of cheeseburgers at this point in time. McDonald's cheeseburgers are also pretty much the lowest quality burger on the market. You can't just point at high sales numbers and conclude that they are the result of a high-quality product.

People who say Diablo was a flop obviously don't mean that it failed as a revenue-generation product. They mean that their expectations of how enjoyable the game would be were not met. Will that stop them from buying the D3 expansion, then D4 and D5 down the line? Only time will tell.

In fact, I said nothing to suggest that a high-quality product equals big sales. Some of what I think are the best games ever haven't sold over 100,000 copies. But the word 'flop' is used all the time to suggest that a game was unsuccessful, which in this case it clearly wasn't. Again, personal disappointment over a product doesn't necessarily mean that the product is unsuccessful generally. For the third time today: personal opinions are not the same as facts. Calling any game that sells into the multi-millions of units a 'flop' is sloppy logic and non-intuitive.

You often see this in other areas as well. A failure to meet some exaggerated expectation is often described the same way. I've seen movies that were expected to do $80 million dollars the first week only do $60 million called flops. That's stupid.

And just to drag all of this back to the topic, WoW suffers from the same phenomenon. People beat up on the game because it's not doing as well as it did four or five years ago, an eon in gaming time. The expectations of the chronic complainers is that WoW will never get old, will always grow, people that played it for 4-8 hours a day five years ago should be doing the same now, and that any failure to meet that expectation is a good enough hook to hang their particular grievance on. Of course there will be a drop-off in activity after a few months after this long of a time. Many people, including myself very likely in 2013, drop in for a few months at a time and then reallocate their $15/month (or whatever) to another game for a few months before returning. I'm quite likely to subscribe to Rift for at least 3 months during 2013, SWTOR for probably a month or two and WoW for the rest of the months that I'm not subscribed elsewhere.

Is that a failure of the game? Some people might say so but after five years, it doesn't take as long to go through and see what's up with it, sample the stuff I want to do, try some of the newer things and then go elsewhere for a bit.

YMMV.

[MasterHamster]

Says who?

Are these forums for people who want to pine on how they lost something, or are they forums for people who want to discuss a game they're playing?

Why the hell should you be able to talk about the downfall of the game you once loved? Because you exist?

These are people who think their opinion matters even after they've quit.
Most aren't here to bring constructive criticism, they want some sort of enforcement for why they quiet playing.

No. One. Cares.
WoW isn't the same as it was in BC. Because in classic and BC, it was fucking broken.
I enjoyed the game back then, but if I were to review it using realistic standards? It was a broken, unbalanced mess. Where barely anyone got to raid. Gap between 10m Kara and 25m Gruul and SSC. Retarded design.

PvP was decided wether you had a Resto druid or not. All through S1 to S4.
F***ing broken.

[Deleted]

Why the hell should you be able to talk about the downfall of the game you once loved? Because you exist?

Yeah. If you don't like that we exist then what are you going to do about it?

These are people who think their opinion matters even after they've quit.
Most aren't here to bring constructive criticism, they want some sort of enforcement for why they quiet playing.

No. One. Cares.
WoW isn't the same as it was in BC. Because in classic and BC, it was fucking broken.
I enjoyed the game back then, but if I were to review it using realistic standards? It was a broken, unbalanced mess. Where barely anyone got to raid. Gap between 10m Kara and 25m Gruul and SSC. Retarded design.

PvP was decided wether you had a Resto druid or not. All through S1 to S4.
F***ing broken.

And yet, the game was a million times more social.

Personally I think that Wrath was the best expansion. It was more casual without any doubt, but the hard content was still there if you wanted to do it. But most importantly of all, guilds were far more popular, especially because there was no LFR.

[Shampro]

80 Fucking pages, fucking wonderfull.

Keep your comments constructive - ML

[Celista]

Personally I think that Wrath was the best expansion. It was more casual without any doubt, but the hard content was still there if you wanted to do it. But most importantly of all, guilds were far more popular, especially because there was no LFR.

I feel like downing raid bosses was more meaningful too during Wrath, for Ulduar and ICC at least, and BC/Vanilla and even through parts of Cata (Firelands). A lot of that is due to lore reasons, but LFR really has had an effect. I'll never forget that moment when our guild downed Illidan and Arthas...LFR really diminished the excitement of putting in dozens or even hundreds of wipes on a boss until finally, gloriously, that boss dies....LFR really cheapens that experience even when you go do it on normal or heroic. It's still exciting, and meaningful...but nowhere near *as* meaningful as it once was.

BC had it right as far as raid content goes, creating accessible T4 content and upping the difficulty level through to Sunwell...and no normal mode vs hardmode, no 10 man and 25 man tiers for the same raid...I understand the desire for raid accessibility but somewhere along the way I feel as though our raid experiences have been cheapened somehow. And Blizz might have thought they were doing something unique by introducing an expansion that introduces new lore instead of expanding upon old lore, as well as focusing on the Alliance vs Horde conflict, but even that seems watered down, tepid.

Maybe I've been playing this game for too long, when I think about the content I really enjoyed I'm thinking about content that is now 4-7 years old rather than content that came out a month or two ago...I really miss what this game once was, I don't care as much about sub numbers per se but when I log in and our server pop is half of what it was during BC and Wrath it makes me sad.

[Lilija]

I also play since vanilla(with breaks) and yes various people quited over time but the reason had everything to do with the state of the game. If this game haven't changed at all all those years then you would be right to say that they just quit because they got bored. But the game have changed dramatically over time and people had every reason to quit over changes/directions they didn't liked. If x amount of people say they quit over y thing of the game is not personal reasons at all but of course doesn't mean that y is bad too.Is bad for them obviously but far from personal... At the end how do you know better than them why they stopped playing?

Many people quit the game for tons of reasons. Those that I know did it for personal reasons even if some at first blamed the game later on amitted that they didn't have the time and the collission of hardcore gaming with real life just made them feel frustrated. Also, noone really quits something they have done for months/years just for one reason.

State of the game is potentially one of many reasons to quit the game but you can't really put it as the most influencing one since you have no proof of that (in the scale of whole community).

If this game haven't changed over years hardly anyone new will come because it would be a very bad game in current standards and the majority of people that quit would do it anyway for whatever reason. Tbh, if this game haven't changed I would quit because I was getting very tired of how exhausting and chore-like WoW started to feel and how often you were being screwed by things you could do nothing about.

---------- Post added 2012-12-15 at 12:14 PM ----------

I dont remember hearing balance qq's in vanilla

You can't even start discussing class balance when vast majority of 27 talent trees were broken. Some people played them due to their personal dedication to that spec but it still was mostly a struggle flavoured with the horrible community that by default "forbid" others to play the spec they liked "just because". So yeah, Vanilla PvP was most balanced because there was hardly anything to balance. Some specs were just left out by Blizzard themselves on some ridiculous reasons. It's WotLK that actually started fixing things. The problem with PvP in WoW is that this game is too complex to balance due to amount of spec combination - it's humanly impossible. For PvP to be balanced most specs should be removed from the game at all but that on the other hand would ruin the rest of the game. WoW was never really PvP oriented. Gues why, regardless of Blizzard trying, WoW isn't treared seriously as an esport?

P.S. That warlock in t1 (and then t2) soloing 5 people in Tyr's Hand show pretty well how "balanced" PvP in Vanilla was :P Balanced PvP is when it's ONLY your skill that determines you winning or not. In WoW this is hardly possible. I even wonder if it's possible in mmos at all where making your toon more powerfull is the key of gameplay which automaticly creates lack of balance in any PvP ancounter (unless you have extremly strict rules of match making). In real PvP games (like Quake) people always start from the same level and someone becoming more powerfull during the gameplay come mostly from their skill and knowledge of the game.

[Osmeric]

BC had it right as far as raid content goes, creating accessible T4 content and upping the difficulty level through to Sunwell...and no normal mode vs hardmode, no 10 man and 25 man tiers for the same raid...I understand the desire for raid accessibility but somewhere along the way I feel as though our raid experiences have been cheapened somehow.

This is pernicious nostalgia. The BC endgame was frustrating or disappointing for a large number of players. The design just didn't work well as a product.

[Vivek]

Says who?

The rules and people that dictate this forum apparently.

Derp.

[Celista]

This is pernicious nostalgia. The BC endgame was frustrating or disappointing for a large number of players. The design just didn't work well as a product.

I have more nostalgia for wrath than bc, I just preferred bc's raid setup. I really, really am not fond of running raid content multiple times in one week per toon so one difficulty level, one raid size worked for me personally.

[Deleted]

This is pernicious nostalgia. The BC endgame was frustrating or disappointing for a large number of players. The design just didn't work well as a product.

And yet, this model had real progression, gear lasted longer than the current teir, it was addictive, kept people playing and the game grew as a result. The give everyone everything additude broke the game and its never recovered.

[Deleted]

It's startling how long this thread has gone on for.

[Osmeric]

And yet, this model had real progression, gear lasted longer than the current teir, it was addictive, kept people playing and the game grew as a result. The give everyone everything additude broke the game and its never recovered.

Again, nostalgia is at work. If the BC model had been repeated in Wrath the results would, I contend, have been disappointing, even disastrous.

BC was success in spite of its end game, not because of it.

[Faroth]

And yet, this model had real progression, gear lasted longer than the current teir, it was addictive, kept people playing and the game grew as a result. The give everyone everything additude broke the game and its never recovered.

WoW saw massive growth in WotLK, which had the 10 and 25 man modes plus hard mode on fights. Personally I think Wrath was the way to go and LFR would have worked for its model with lower quality items.

You notice, however, that in Wrath 10 and 25 man dropped different looking gear. Raiders claimed burn out because Blizzard "forced" them to do both 10 and 25 man each week (because nobody is personally accountable for what they do) so they now share a lockout. With LFR gear low enough that there's no benefit other than valor points, I think it's viable to have it present for accessibility and 10/25 as their own separate progression paths. I think the only problem is that LFR offers the quickest way to cap valor points, so regular raiders still see it as something they want to do regularly.

I personally think the game should have never moved to valor points giving raid gear. If LFR was drop only progression, 10 man was drop only progression, and 25 man was drop only progression you'd extend longevity like you did in BC and Wrath of each raid tier. The only downside is the hurdle if you get into raiding late, then you need a way to quickly catch up if the raid needs you to fill a slot. But that was also done during BC and Wrath (pre-T9).

[Deleted]

Quality has nothing to do with "good taste". Quality is a system that uses alot of factors of the raw material, the processing of the raw material to when it hits your tray.
Quality is about deliviring a consistent product, that tastes pretty much the same, wherever you go and whenever you buy it. I can't see how ANYONE can say that McDonalds can't deliver good quality meals. Sure, they may not taste good, but that's now what quality is about.

Budweiser is a very good example. Beer that doesn't have much taste at all, but that beer will taste the same whereever you buy it in the entire world.

[Huehuecoyotl]

Quality is about deliviring a consistent product, that tastes pretty much the same, wherever you go and whenever you buy it.

wait, what? you are talking about consistency. that is nothing to do with quality. i could produce sandwiches that taste like old feet, every single time. thats consistency. its bugger all to do with quality.

[Osmeric]

WoW saw massive growth in WotLK

That's not actually the case. This may have misled them into thinking they had to reverse Wrath-easiness for Cataclysm.

[Deleted]

wait, what? you are talking about consistency. that is nothing to do with quality. i could produce sandwiches that taste like old feet, every single time. thats consistency. its bugger all to do with quality.

If your intent is to produce sandwiches that tastes like old feet, then sure, that's quality. Quality has nothing to do with personal taste preferences.

[Osmeric]

If your intent is to produce sandwiches that tastes like old feet, then sure, that's quality. Quality has nothing to do with personal taste preferences.

Of course it does. Quality cannot be defined in the absence of some external standard, which in most cases is the desire of those paying for the good or service.