1.3 million sub drop

[khalltusk]

/bow down
/bow down
/bow down



You're probably right on the player being smarter than the game now, but I still felt much more immersed traveling through Wrath than the insta-queue-teleport we have now. Actually traveling to dungeons, gathering with others, seeing people waiting on the rest of their group. Somehow it felt like we were all there. I think too much convenience does contribute to the "world" becoming more of "just a game." However, I think perhaps the genie's out of the bottle and, like I said, we WILL see more insta-porting in the future.

WoW died in Wrath as an MMORPG for me. Once LFD was introduced, sure, it was an improvement for some, but I mark that as the patch that WoW became only an MMO. Or as I call it, and its clones, an MMOArcade.


I didn't like much Wrath gear for transmog either myself, but good luck to ya!

Player housing in UO is still possibly the best feature of any MMORPG I have played to date. I remember the gank fests we had in my tower and customising my tower to look like a den of evil. Even joined an RP guild, I played the role of a madman. I was a pvper mainly so I griefed the fuck out of the RP guild "guards" who were goody two shoe people who pretended to be city gaurds.

Possibly the finest highlight of my RP time was when the biggest RP guild on our server had this whole story of this powerful sorceror who poisoned the water supply for the town. He RP'd it for days/weeks. The whole load of RP guilds turned up at the town square. He was on the roof of one of the buildings, doing some speeches. I gathered some goons of mine (4 of them lovely buggers the lot of them) and we teleported in behind him killed him (or knocked him out) looted his arse and took the poison + antidote. We then legged it to the dock yard and setup a barricade (you could stack boxes in game to block paths) took them 6hours to get us and by then I sold the antidote to another madman RP friend of mine who then sold it to a fancy RP guild for even more money it was fucking genius.

good times

[Faroth]

Possibly the finest highlight of my RP time was when the biggest RP guild on our server had this whole story of this powerful sorceror who poisoned the water supply for the town. He RP'd it for days/weeks. The whole load of RP guilds turned up at the town square. He was on the roof of one of the buildings, doing some speeches. I gathered some goons of mine (4 of them lovely buggers the lot of them) and we teleported in behind him killed him (or knocked him out) looted his arse and took the poison + antidote. We then legged it to the dock yard and setup a barricade (you could stack boxes in game to block paths) took them 6hours to get us and by then I sold the antidote to another madman RP friend of mine who then sold it to a fancy RP guild for even more money it was fucking genius.

good times

This is the sort of stuff that makes me interested to see what SOE does with the new EverQuest since they're collaborating with the Storybricks team. The developer diaries from them makes me interested to see what they do, particularly since they're planning the new EQ to be more of a sandbox MMO and Storybricks has a lot of ideas on how to bring the world to life, giving NPCs more personality (they claim the technology is there) and put the RP and story at the forefront of an MMO.

It could all be bluster with no payout, but I'm hoping for now.

[khalltusk]

This is the sort of stuff that makes me interested to see what SOE does with the new EverQuest since they're collaborating with the Storybricks team. The developer diaries from them makes me interested to see what they do, particularly since they're planning the new EQ to be more of a sandbox MMO and Storybricks has a lot of ideas on how to bring the world to life, giving NPCs more personality (they claim the technology is there) and put the RP and story at the forefront of an MMO.

It could all be bluster with no payout, but I'm hoping for now.

Yeh its one thing I do miss from MMORPGs.

In UO gear while it was good (the godlike shit you could aquire was rare) was not the end game. It never was.

Having a house was brilliant as you could do SO much with it. I saw some truly brilliant houses where people setup some very imaginative decorations. A lot of people built houses that had loads of NPC shop keepers so they sold goods to others.

For me it was all about the RP guilds and communities. I often got flamed on the message boards for daily running into town and doing a monty python style walk around town sprouting utter nonsense. Before running away from the gaurds bennyhill style. I often got captured and put in their "jail" for it which resulted in my use of emotes *rattles bars with metal cup*. One guy got very abusive on the forums and even ICQ. I then stated I am playing the role of a MAD MAN. My guy is insane, one moment he is admiring the flower the next he is foaming at the mouth and uttering demonic words. The same people were angry with my earlier stunt on their big RP event. As it spoilt their event. fuck them I thought, im a madman and if I want to take the antidote for my self and sell it on for a profit (when in reality it did nothing) I will! I then used all the money I got from that deal to buy purple cloaks which I then put on my new influx of recruits who promptly joined my guild after seeing the stupidity I presented them. We were fabulous.

I think wow while great does focus on gear and stuff like that perhaps if we had a creative outlet like housing... even if it was instanced would be quite good.

[Faroth]

Having a house was brilliant as you could do SO much with it. I saw some truly brilliant houses where people setup some very imaginative decorations. A lot of people built houses that had loads of NPC shop keepers so they sold goods to others.

SOE has said their studies have found that casual gamers in EQ2 spend A LOT of time doing stuff with their player housing. I'm hoping their new EQ cannibalizes some ideas from Vanguard, which had a phenomenal player housing concept.

Villages were small in Vanguard. Like the size of Goldshire in WoW. But there was a massive amount of empty space around them. Take Stormwind's perimeter and put Goldshire in the middle of it. The rest of that "Stormwind size" area was made up of plots for player housing. Almost every town was designed like this. Players could buy their plot, build a house. More player houses built a village into a town and then a city. Houses could be made into taverns or shops with NPC vendors selling your stuff. The diplomat aspect of the game could interact with NPCs to buff crafters in the town. The city could eventually see a wall put around it with guard towers and the small town was complete as a fully built city. Diplomats could still effect guards, etc and that would buff crafters in the city, result in discounts at vendors, or give zone area buffs to adventurers.

And you could give other players rights to move things in your house and reorganize it. You could set times when your house was open for players to enter and look around or closed. Essentially your NPC could be open for business on the schedule you set.

Vanguard was full of cool ideas that never came to fruition.

[khalltusk]

SOE has said their studies have found that casual gamers in EQ2 spend A LOT of time doing stuff with their player housing. I'm hoping their new EQ cannibalizes some ideas from Vanguard, which had a phenomenal player housing concept.

Villages were small in Vanguard. Like the size of Goldshire in WoW. But there was a massive amount of empty space around them. Take Stormwind's perimeter and put Goldshire in the middle of it. The rest of that "Stormwind size" area was made up of plots for player housing. Almost every town was designed like this. Players could buy their plot, build a house. More player houses built a village into a town and then a city. Houses could be made into taverns or shops with NPC vendors selling your stuff. The diplomat aspect of the game could interact with NPCs to buff crafters in the town. The city could eventually see a wall put around it with guard towers and the small town was complete as a fully built city. Diplomats could still effect guards, etc and that would buff crafters in the city, result in discounts at vendors, or give zone area buffs to adventurers.

And you could give other players rights to move things in your house and reorganize it. You could set times when your house was open for players to enter and look around or closed. Essentially your NPC could be open for business on the schedule you set.

Vanguard was full of cool ideas that never came to fruition.

That honestly sounds like something I would love in wow, even if it was a guild fortress or something similar I would be all for it. You could see blood elf towers next to goblin slums. i'd be in for it all day long. Transmog + player housing and im throwing money at blizzard

[Faroth]

That honestly sounds like something I would love in wow, even if it was a guild fortress or something similar I would be all for it. You could see blood elf towers next to goblin slums. i'd be in for it all day long. Transmog + player housing and im throwing money at blizzard

The real problem is to do it right, you have to design the world from the ground up to plan for it.

Azeroth is quite tiny for the scope you'd need to implement a Vanguard-inspired housing system. They'd have to go with instanced, which I can understand the concerns for that as well.

I think server mergers may be in the future, but if they did that, I would want to see some form of a last name implemented so nobody has to lose their name (even if it's from a dropdown of hundreds of last name options per race).

Honestly, I'd be happy if they gave last names to RP servers and merged them to one or two and offered free transfers off for non-RPers. :P

[Glorious Leader]

The real problem is to do it right, you have to design the world from the ground up to plan for it.

Azeroth is quite tiny for the scope you'd need to implement a Vanguard-inspired housing system. They'd have to go with instanced, which I can understand the concerns for that as well.

I think server mergers may be in the future, but if they did that, I would want to see some form of a last name implemented so nobody has to lose their name (even if it's from a dropdown of hundreds of last name options per race).

Honestly, I'd be happy if they gave last names to RP servers and merged them to one or two and offered free transfers off for non-RPers. :P

Yea really all the conversations about this all sort of skirt around that issue. 100 pound elephant in the room man. It's academic to talk about more accessible normals or hell even valor gear and rep grinding when servers are dead and nobody is around.

[Orasay1996]

I've played wow since the mid of TBC i'm currently 17 years old so you can understand how young i was by that time....
Started raiding around WOTLK and for me it is still the xpac i enjoyd the most mainly cuase of nostalgia and lore, actually got really intrested in the warcraft 3 lore about arthas so it was a really good xpac for me since i dident really raid that hardcore...
Cata well cata was the time i got most of my palls to play world of warcraft we all enjoyd it to the point were Dragon soul made all of those friends leave and go play league of legends, i'm currently level 30 in league but the community have made me quit that game till blizzard all stars comes out... Raided a bit of firelands in cata and ds alt runs nothing more..
MOP: Mist of pandaria well content wise it was good really loved the lore and everything and loved the raid finder but after 2 month's i really find my self geting tierd of the raid finder. Raid finder/dailies is for me what really really blizzard screwd over with mist...

LFR Is spoon feed content and thats the problem, in wotlk the best thing about icc pugs was that most pepole got really exited if they knew we were going to fight lich king cuase they don't experience that fight often or ever?

That is completly gone in mist there is no more exitment of geting to the next boss in raid finder not at all...

I think LFR burnd out alot of casuals...

Currently 11/12 Throne of thunder normal

[khalltusk]

Yea really all the conversations about this all sort of skirt around that issue. 100 pound elephant in the room man. It's academic to talk about more accessible normals or hell even valor gear and rep grinding when servers are dead and nobody is around.

I touched upon it earlier but ill say it here.

They should xrealm merge. You won't lose a last name as you can have the realm you came from as your last name or tag. Simply allow people to trade among your xrelam merged realms and be done with it. It would include the same pool where your BGs and LFD/LFRs come from so I cant see why it wouldnt work. It would path the way for other mergers down line should they need to be done.

Get that and a creative housing system or some other cool system and you can get some new life into the game.

[Arbs]

I had an interesting idea, could the subscription model be choking WoW?, not killing it as the game is still fun & exciting to me, but could the sub model just being dying out and not even WoW can keep that model going with all the new F2P games coming out. Just like all the new sub based MMOs come out they get strangled & go F2P.

Could this maybe not be the actual death of the game, but the death of the sub it holds & carries??

[Glorious Leader]

I touched upon it earlier but ill say it here.

They should xrealm merge. You won't lose a last name as you can have the realm you came from as your last name or tag. Simply allow people to trade among your xrelam merged realms and be done with it. It would include the same pool where your BGs and LFD/LFRs come from so I cant see why it wouldnt work. It would path the way for other mergers down line should they need to be done.

Get that and a creative housing system or some other cool system and you can get some new life into the game.

I'm not convinced about that whole player created crap. I tried it in rift, their version of it and it was okay. Their Rift dimension. Didn't hold me and to be honest they added alot of stuff like that this expansion. Farms and pet battles and the like.

[Deleted]

I had an interesting idea, could the subscription model be choking WoW?,

This is exactly what Kotick cited as an issue Blilzzard need to address in the conference call statement.

He stated that current gaming culture is moving heavily towards F2P and thats a concern for Wow.

Whether u like it or not current gamers dont like paying subs for a game, new games know this which is why theyre predominantly F2P. Subs based gaming is a very small market indeed with only a few games charging monthly fees these days. I read a report about amonth ago saying that the current subs based gaming market is around 12mill subscribers and 9.5mill of them are Wow players. Eve is around 500k-600k.

Do the math its obvious there are not many people out there who are prepared to pay monthly fees anymore.

[hyphnos]

Prove it.
The number of people that raid has reached records due to LFR.

I am saying that 10% subloss is nothing compared to the losses we'd have if they actually implemented the ideas that some people seem to have to "improve" the game.

Yes, the game has quite some flaws and things that could be better.
Then I open up the first "How to save WoW!"-thread I see and I cannot stop laughing at the bad ideas that some people have.

If they don't appeal that much, then why are so many people raiding nowadays?


They won't ignore it, just like they almost never ignore feedback.
But to yell that "removal of flying and other shitty ideas" will bring players back is just nonsense.

Your post is has very little meaning as WoWs own developers will tell you: players migrate to the content that has the best rewards.

Given that LFR is the designated "catch-up" mechanism and the thing you are "catching-up" to is in fact LFR, is it really such a surprise that a large number of people are doing it.

The only higher rewards and content not connected with LFR are in normal raiding which given guild stats isn't more than a few hundred thousand people doing even one boss of T15 and far far less than that getting very deep.

LFR is done often yes. Is it liked? You can't speak to that because of the rewards attached to it.

[Faroth]

I touched upon it earlier but ill say it here.

They should xrealm merge. You won't lose a last name as you can have the realm you came from as your last name or tag. Simply allow people to trade among your xrelam merged realms and be done with it. It would include the same pool where your BGs and LFD/LFRs come from so I cant see why it wouldnt work. It would path the way for other mergers down line should they need to be done.

Get that and a creative housing system or some other cool system and you can get some new life into the game.

I'd rather see server types consider for merging first. RP realms are wounded enough without putting even more "Lolpwnzu" into them for RP griefing.

I had an interesting idea, could the subscription model be choking WoW?, not killing it as the game is still fun & exciting to me, but could the sub model just being dying out and not even WoW can keep that model going with all the new F2P games coming out. Just like all the new sub based MMOs come out they get strangled & go F2P.

Could this maybe not be the actual death of the game, but the death of the sub it holds & carries??

Possibly. I wasn't a fan of F2P games, but they've evolved well past the constant bombardment of advertising and nickle & diming players to death. It's possible the subscription is indeed hurting WoW at this point. F2P offers the freedom to hop around and try different games and a lot of gamers like that now.

I'm not convinced about that whole player created crap. I tried it in rift, their version of it and it was okay. Their Rift dimension. Didn't hold me and to be honest they added alot of stuff like that this expansion. Farms and pet battles and the like.

The farm isn't really close to the customizable player housing that has indeed proven extremely popular in other MMOs. It's the last feature I've seen praised in other games that Blizzard hasn't remotely touched. The other thing SOE has found their casual gamers doing, from what I understood (haven't fully investigated it) is apparently... well, EQ2 may have taken a page from Neverwinter Nights and given players the ability to create freakin' dungeons for other players to be able to run.

Not 100% sure on that last part, but it was the impression I got. O_o

[Glorious Leader]

The farm isn't really close to the customizable player housing that has indeed proven extremely popular in other MMOs. It's the last feature I've seen praised in other games that Blizzard hasn't remotely touched.

Theirs lots of stuff the could steal. Dynamic world crap from GW2. Instant adventuring from Rift. Hey look maybe it's not my cup of tea. I guess it's a cup of tea for somebody.

[Orasay1996]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_E2EHVxNAE

My reaction to wow loseing 1.3 subs...

[Faroth]

Theirs lots of stuff the could steal. Dynamic world crap from GW2. Instant adventuring from Rift. Hey look maybe it's not my cup of tea. I guess it's a cup of tea for somebody.

True, true, though the dynamic world events in GW2.....were just scripted looping events with mobs instead of NPCs. I didn't find them that impressive. However, it sounds like Square Enix is stealing the idea and injecting it with some steroids. Rather than just NPCs attack and take an area, they can attack and if not successfully repelled, they can kidnap NPCs and result in a full counter attack raid mission for gathered players.

Apparently they intend on taking old dungeons after they're not current and putting them into the world rather than instanced as well.

For the total flop XIV was at launch, their new director has some cool sounding ideas for A Realm Reborn.

I didn't try Rift at all. I got it for free to download, but haven't played. Is it worth a poke for a look around?

[Yig]

You people. This is how every expansion works, the older the game get's the more extreme the troughs and valleys will be. When an expansion is new everybody comes back and they get record high numbers, after a few months things settle down and those people who just came back for the new content go away.

As has always happened in the last 3 expansions when every mouth breather with a chip on their shoulder blames their personal problem with WOW for the inevitable decline, you can start making noise when a new expansion actually sees a decline worth noting at the start. This is basically business as usual. This is not evidence that your hatred for CRZ or dailies or whatever the fuck else you hate is killing the game. This is what happens when a game ages but still remains unusually popular.

[threads]

Normals too annoying to pug, LFR never getting gear, LFR dealing with afkers and idiots, dailies to get coins = required for anyone that takes raiding seriously, not easy to maintain alts unless you're in a guild that does multiple 25 clears. This is mostly why I stopped playing this xpac. I got bored of only playing my main because they royally screwed alts.

[Pann]

I didn't try Rift at all. I got it for free to download, but haven't played. Is it worth a poke for a look around?

It is a good game, I tried on and off a couple of times but never got too far into it, my biggest complaint would be it is like WOW but not WOW if you know what I mean.

You people. This is how every expansion works, the older the game get's the more extreme the troughs and valleys will be. When an expansion is new everybody comes back and they get record high numbers, after a few months things settle down and those people who just came back for the new content go away.

As has always happened in the last 3 expansions when every mouth breather with a chip on their shoulder blames their personal problem with WOW for the inevitable decline, you can start making noise when a new expansion actually sees a decline worth noting at the start. This is basically business as usual. This is not evidence that your hatred for CRZ or dailies or whatever the fuck else you hate is killing the game. This is what happens when a game ages but still remains unusually popular.

There were no record numbers when MOP was released an there will be no record numbers when the next expansion is released.

MOP saw a decline of around 400k in its first quarter and now a further 1.3 million when does a decline become worth noting?