What's the main reason for the dropping WoW subs?

[Felarion]

I think "grow up" syndrom got a lot to do with that. People who started as teenagers are now in 21-25 and got rather busy life (first jobs etc) and new players just didn't find warcraft attractive, maybe because of it's graphics i don't know.

[Synstir]

I think the focus on raiding as end-game is also a cause of drops....
However you look at it, it will take time and quite a lot of time.

What to do when someone has, lets say, 1 hour or 2 hours to log on and do something?
LFR will take some time in queue, if people leace in the middle, it will take time to get new tanks/healers.....

So, I think, that there must be more accessible content, short queues i mean... people have a short period, log on.. and then there needs to be something they can do.

[The Penguin]

It sure as hell isn't competition. I just played FFXIV, and I was badly disappointed. Even the system for Account and Payment absolutely blows compared to Blizzard's. I'd say it's just that people get older and leave for RL.

[Orcindauh]

Cataclysm destroyed wow because is realy bad to fly everywhere. They destroyed the big world and the feeling of exlporing.

You don't have to fly you know, if you want to explore on a ground mount, nothing is stopping you.

[Deleted]

WoW is not aging it is ghettoing. Why WoW wasnt old after 4 years in TBC? or 6 years in WotLK?

Real reason why WoW is having such a rough time with subs is because its changing course all over the place and cant stick to its guns anymore. It tries to catter to everyone without making sure that there is one special group in playerbase that is trully valued over all others. WoW is changing its core systems each time they prove to work less then ideal. Just take a look at history of badges to valor/justive points to essentially valor points only.

Any player that stays long enough and see this notices that blizzard acts like this desperate exotic dancer that tries to satisfy all of its customers and get all the load out for itself instead of accepting one mantra that proves true every single damn time:

YOU CANT HAVE EVERYTHING

Not to mention that they single handedly make this akward MMO where progress and spending time is not rewarding and satisfying for adleast a semi-long term but with each patch or re-iteration of system philosophy they basicaly give middle finger to all those who put time and effort into the game to get something only to see it on a bargain sale. AND YES YOU HEARD ME RIGHT, MMOs are all about time sinking into getting this one special shiny sword that forerver requires adleast the same course of action to get in order to retain its value as this one shiny sword that is worth spending XXX hours for. That is what legendary or epic means. Hard to take something as a legend when its changing its dificulty just because little timmy's parents will cancel his sub if he is not happy enough is it?

What Im trying to say is that WoW at its very current stage has no long progression lines or long term goal to strive for. This directly compromises its very back bone subscription fee model. If you want subscription base model to work best when people subscribe for very long then why you introduce short term goals or change long term goals into short ones? (i.e the whole legendary cloak fiasco).

/exhale

Well... my vent is done.

[Belisaurio]

I don't know, but I un-subed for some reasons:

1-No RPG direction (MMORPG without RPG feels like a world with some minigames with a standard direction, so you burn the content and feel bored really fast).

2-Other free games with better experience for players in the same wow's endgame content: PvPs (moba games, fp shooters, fighting games, RTT games, etc..), PvE (MmoRPGs, PvE battles online, multiplayer games, rpgs with multiplayer options, etc...).

3-Less options to feel different from other players: stats, skills, armor/transmogs, 0 jerarchy, etc...from my point of view, we are "numbers" and not something done with our effort.

4-It feels that the endgame is the only thing important in this game. All other things that you do or try to accomplish are just minigames that nobody care but we are doing them because we can't raid at that moment...

5-From a lore point, the constant "smash the villain" thing that wow has become. Maybe we can't play like a villain, but we are killing every villain that becomes a threat (ergo, appear ingame),and that's a bit boring. With the improvement of quest explaining the story, we should have nice plots and not a focus-story that always ends with the same thing: us looting the corpse/body of the big baddie. Maybe we need something a bit different like Moira vanilla plot.

I'm a Blizzard funboy since Lost Vikings, but this is not a good reason to maintain my subscription.

P.D: Sorry for my english or grammar errors.

[Djuntas]

For me personally its fealing like I have nothing left to do inn the game. Nothing to strive for, or atleast hope to do. No long term goals.

I can't say it any other way really. I have grinded my ass off, raided alot over the years (Both pugging and 4-5 days a week semi-HC), did arena and pvp on my main and alts, and raided abit on my main alt over the years...Basicly there is nothing inn wow I haven't done but maybe top world raiding, and above 2k rated pvp.

When you have done all that for 7-8 years, content needs to be good afterwards to keep you interested, and for me Cataclysme and MOP have both been very...meh.

I just need the content to be good, and I'll play again - That simple. Recently I did sub pre-5.4, and sub lasted well into 5.4...Honestly, hole patch sucked...it had nothing that made me want to play...No a new raiding tier/gear reset is not something I care for much after so many years - I would if I still raided, but I dont so...

[Deleted]

The fact is I personally don't know if I can class world of warcraft as a game/mmo/rpg anymore.

My reasoning: Say I made a mage (or any class for that matter) I could with the current state remove all abilities off my bars except say frostbolt (or any other standard damaging ability from another class) level to level 90, complete and see all content (talking LFR not felx,nm,hc), obtain full epic pve gear and obtain full pvp epics.

I can do all of this without ever needing to talk to anyone, ever make or form a group outside of the dungeon finder and lfr never need to make any effort to work together with a team, never need to pick up one quest, never need to leave the capital city after level 15, never need to glyph, gem, enchant or upgrade in anyway any of my gear, don't need to worry about what stats I use all I need to do is stand still and spam one button. I will be showered in xp during LFD and at endgame I will be showered with epics.

Surely something is fundamentally WRONG with the current state of this game? Am I the only one that thinks this borders on not being classed as a video game? This is like final fantasy 13 where the game practically plays itself with auto attack.

This is why I think subs are dropping and with final fantasy 14 boasting some impressive intial sub figures I think we are about to see another massive drop.

[Alltat]

WoW is old. That's all there is to it. Millions of people have already played it and gotten bored (there are only so many times you can reinvent the wheel), and won't come back no matter what Blizzard do. Lots of potential new players are put off by the fact that the game is old, regardless of how good it is. It's a miracle that any significant number of people still play at all.

My reasoning: Say I made a mage (or any class for that matter) I could with the current state remove all abilities off my bars except say frostbolt (or any other standard damaging ability from another class) level to level 90, complete and see all content (talking LFR not felx,nm,hc), obtain full epic pve gear and obtain full pvp epics.

What you're basically saying is that if you ignore anything that's even remotely difficult, ignore every aspect of the game that takes any degree of skill, take advantage of other players to carry you through content, and settle for the far inferior gear that you get by opting out of all these things, the game is too easy? You might as well say that as long as you never level beyond level 10, you can get the best level 10 gear really easily in just a few weeks.

You'd never get anywhere in LFR if everyone just did what you did, so the whole "project" relies on other people being willing to help you instead of just kicking you (or you deceiving your way past bosses by not informing anyone of the fact that you plan to only use Frost Bolt and ignore mechanics).

[Ravenyx]

Don't bash WoW's graphics. High end graphics in MMO's doesn't always work. Two titles spring to mind for me personally that prove this.

1. Age of Conan, I played the beta and was there for launch the graphics for the time were very nice and it was supposed to launch with directx 10. Well the game was rife with graphical issues (amongst other things) and dx 10 was a disaster (had to wait for it I think). The game was virtually unplayable.

2. SWTOR. Had its graphics scaled back because it turned out content with large groups was impossible to run on your average modern machines at least in a stable nature.

You want to know why WoW drops subs? The same reason adults stop playing computer games, stop going out drinking, stop their quirky hobbies. Real life takes over when you get older, you might get the time to do one of your old hobbies but not all. WoW is susceptible to this because its been around so long - its players have all aged. There is in many cases a different generation playing now (on average) than played at release. A lot of those classic players now have serious jobs, children etc.

The good news is that as jobs get boring, kids grow older etc, older players have the potential to return. This happens a lot in non-computer gaming such as MTG or Warhammer. People play through their teenage years and through uni, then get jobs and get engaged and quit the game usually due to a partner who won't put up with it or time constraints. This age group is then just missing. You find they sometimes return as and when their personal lives allow - I am a living breathing example of this.

[Synstir]

WoW is old. That's all there is to it. Millions of people have already played it and gotten bored (there are only so many times you can reinvent the wheel), and won't come back no matter what Blizzard do. Lots of potential new players are put off by the fact that the game is old, regardless of how good it is. It's a miracle that any significant number of people still play at all.


What you're basically saying is that if you ignore anything that's even remotely difficult, ignore every aspect of the game that takes any degree of skill, take advantage of other players to carry you through content, and settle for the far inferior gear that you get by opting out of all these things, the game is too easy? You might as well say that as long as you never level beyond level 10, you can get the best level 10 gear really easily in just a few weeks.

You'd never get anywhere in LFR if everyone just did what you did, so the whole "project" relies on other people being willing to help you instead of just kicking you (or you deceiving your way past bosses by not informing anyone of the fact that you plan to only use Frost Bolt and ignore mechanics).

But he is right basically. You can reach max-lvl just by queueing and never leaving the main-city. You can reach cap-lvl by just spamming buttons and when you reach max-lvl you still don't know the class you're playing.

People wanna ruch to max-lvl because there is nothing engaging below that; just rush through.
Talents are not something to worry about anymore... cause if you decide not to use them at all, it won't be very punishing.
Glyphs: same story.

Just rush to 90 now and queue up, no problems there. Gear up... and wait for nexr xpac.... same thing again.

People don't feel that they are getting stronger when they level up.. now with heirlooms, we don't even need to get upgrades untill last xpac.
So yeah, it tend to get boring.... cata brought a revamp of the old world but in the end, it is still the same thing just in a different coat.

There is nothing to explore, cause the only thing you do get in some place and kill.... what do we explore? It is the same... it doesn't matter in what cae you go, what area you go... just kill untill you have your goal for the quest and leave.

How much fun is raiding actually?
I see groups going and the only thing they want is not waste time, get it over with, because they want some item.
Flex groups want overgeared people.. there is no exploring.. it is just killing stuff and looting; then leave.

[Osmeric]

Ghostcrawler

completely serious.

An argument could be made that making the classes more "interesting" to play, which is in Ghostcrawler's domain of responsibility, has upped the performance spread and driven many players away from the game.

[Aristocat]

A
Current end game progression looks like this -
Level to 90 > Get carried in HC Dungeon / Get Carried in BGs until enough iLvl > LFR > LFR > LFR > LFR > LFR > LFR > LFR until you've got about 530 iLvl > Flex > Normal > Heroics

Unless you've been in a guild with steady progression through normal and heroic content from the beginning of the expansion, you're doomed to running LFR until you've got enough iLvl to join a pug flex group. At this point you've already defeated the end game content about 50 times. Where's the incentive to do it over and over again in a harder difficulty where you wipe and wipe until everyone learns the fight?
With some experience of current content and some decent gear you can now start looking for a guild that runs normals. Keep in mind that most guilds won't need you as there's next to 0 class uniqueness any more.

For someone like me who's invested years and years of work into my character to log in to find my friend list empty and my options very very linear and repetitive, there's just no incentive to keep playing wow in the state it's in. THAT's why people quit wow and new subs aren't happening.

I feel you I always tried to avoid the LFR cancer but since i dont have a guild and my friends already quit as the most disappointing raid ever came out (dragon soul), i just cant find any progression with avoiding the lfr. People force me to do it and be like "gear up in LFR first before you apply to our guild" and blah. This LFR is total bullshit! Raids where the only unique thing lately which couldnt be done by a dungeon/raid browser since heroics dungeons already got casual but now you just press one button and then raid some brainless encounters with 24 randoms. I dont even need to heal anything and can chat or eat besides, its so boring and also the feeling of exploring the new raid stages is completely gone when you are finally able to get in normal mode, since you have already seen everything in the lfr.

[Osmeric]

Unless you've been in a guild with steady progression through normal and heroic content from the beginning of the expansion, you're doomed to running LFR until you've got enough iLvl to join a pug flex group.

My main is now doing Flex. I had geared him in ToT LFR + VP gear + world boss gear as much as possible, with ilvl around 523 when 5.4 hit. He did just a little SoO LFR (just the first wing a couple of times), got a few other pieces of gear, and transitioned to Flex.

In future expansions, where Flex is available from early on, LFR is going to be dead unless they fundamentally rework it.

[Sqeen]

From my personal experience a players choice of genre changes over time. I played Counterstrike for some years before I tried out WoW (first MMO) and got stuck on it.

After the years I am playing this game I also made some small breaks (Cata until firelands) and currently think of switching to BF4 when it comes out. The main reason I always came back to WoW so far is that even in endgame PvE it's way more relaxing to play then lets say SC2 or a FPS.

[pateuvasiliu]

The game is too old. 10 years by now.

People have simply gotten bored of it.

Whom has played a game for 10 years? I think the best I did was with Diablo 2 and it was nowhere near how much I played WoW. I simply got bored, at one point.

For me ( and I think many others ) to come back they'd have to make a lot of graphic changes. New race models is a start.

[Deleted]

Subscribed for over 2 years? How about free character/faction transfers?
Subscribed for over 3 years? How about having some significant stat boosts?
Subscribed for over 4 years? How about getting any but 1 item of your dream in the game?
Subscribed for over 5 years? 10 bonus character slots.

And so on. Examples are just examples, but there should be loyalty program, which would yield significant rewards, so that even newcomer would feel compelled to play the game for longer.

Ive said this dozens of times before... its sickening that Blizzard hasnt given any 'gifts' to reward its longterm players.

But then again, if u check Koticks record on all his games u will see that his customers get nothing for free on his watch...

[Akraen]

I don't expect a bunch of free stuff and I've had an uninterrupted subscription since May 2005.

What I do think is a disgrace is character transfers. We move ourselves and entire guilds repeatedly in the name of raiding. Then servers die and we move again. We make alts to play with a friend, try something new, years pass and that friend quit then our alt sits idle. Characters are lost, unplayed, ignored. We deal with the tedium of realm populations determining raider recruitment while social culture health is ignored for item level.

The game is great but their problems stem from lack of reasonable account support. I've spent over a thousand dollars since I started, my guild has spent over $50k, just on realm changes. It is now at a point where most people I know are just ready to quit instead.

[Deleted]

In vanilla everything was new, HWL grind, the 40man raids, the server communities, game had alot of promises to go big and it did. TBC was awesome and kept its playerbase due to awesome design and new features. Same goes for WoTLK. From cata on it just became repatitive and the time spend in to the game started to bore me out, I keep giving the game tries now and then and go back to raiding but it's just not entertaining.

I enjoy PvPing competatively but it just has so many flaws and the fact you face the same people every single time due to a huge activity drop is just to dull. MoP kept me playing for a bit as I didn't do much RBGing but now that I did I feel that there is nothing in the game again to do. Yeah raiding seems to be alot of fun and the encounters are certainly well made by Blizzard (opinion from others I haven't done any after ToT) but playing the game for raiding alone occupying full evenings on slow-pace progression just doesn't interest me. The game needs an overhaul, they need to make something else interesting other than raiding.

Yeah you have achievements, I used to go all-out on those, but all the new ones feel so forced and just to keep players spend X amount of hours for X points is not for me. I generally quit and come back, but if the next expansion is to biased towards raiding I couldn't give a fk. They should make the game more social like it was in Vanilla/TBC/WoTLK no matter how you look at the game this aspect was always the drive for people to play this game. Nowdays you only have that in really big guilds, and even then the majority doesn't really care outside of raiding either.

Find something else than silly daily quest hubs/islands and maybe I'll play.

[Deleted]

WoW is old. That's all there is to it. Millions of people have already played it and gotten bored (there are only so many times you can reinvent the wheel), and won't come back no matter what Blizzard do. Lots of potential new players are put off by the fact that the game is old, regardless of how good it is. It's a miracle that any significant number of people still play at all.


What you're basically saying is that if you ignore anything that's even remotely difficult, ignore every aspect of the game that takes any degree of skill, take advantage of other players to carry you through content, and settle for the far inferior gear that you get by opting out of all these things, the game is too easy? You might as well say that as long as you never level beyond level 10, you can get the best level 10 gear really easily in just a few weeks.

You'd never get anywhere in LFR if everyone just did what you did, so the whole "project" relies on other people being willing to help you instead of just kicking you (or you deceiving your way past bosses by not informing anyone of the fact that you plan to only use Frost Bolt and ignore mechanics).

What other games can you complete (not talking hardest difficulty) by pressing one button? And yes you can easily complete LFR with one button and not moving. There is a chance you will die with rng and ofc you wont be contributing much but you will get epics and you will be able to complete it and kill the games (current) final boss. Death is irrelevant anyway. The fact is you will still complete it and collect loot/achievement, maybe not every time but it is extremely possible.