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

[worsthitmanNa]

I quit for plenty of reasons... but the biggest one that comes to mind is the removal of rating requirement on PvP gear. It was stupid as hell and the only opposing argument had little to no logic in it. People pretty much bitched and complained about why they suck at the game and can't PvP, so they removed the rating requirement. The most pathetic part about all of this was that the people who made the argument were bad players stuck at 1300 rating. "Even gear makes an even playing field" well maybe that would make sense if there wasn't MMR... but MMR purposely puts you in queue w/ people equal to your rating... so the whole "even playing field" is void when one realizes that they'll never play full gear 2200 players while they themselves is stuck at 1300 rating. That leads me to believe that rating requirement was removed based on BG perspectives and bad players being envious of better players.

Since blizzard didn't logically think it through and realize that this entire complaint is based off of bad players wanted the same gear as good players, everyone is now running around in the same gear. Those bad players are STILL dying to the good players because they finally ran out of excuses to pull out of their bag and now they claim PvP sucks in general. This whole thing went down and blizzard didn't care... which lead me to realize that blizzard is 100% pro PvE... the only way I'd know blizzard wasn't bigots is if they would make it so all PvE content drops the same gear, meaning heroic drops the same as LFR etc... but people would complain about how it's harder, thus you deserve a better award... well that's how I felt when I was at 2500 rating... I thought I worked hard for my gear... not like my character had extra health, more abilities or some unique ability that made me win... I had to work for it... but nooooo, it was all stripped away because some bad players think it's easier to make an illogical opinion rather than getting better at the game.

Like I said, there's more, but that was the main thing that made me quit... slowly lost interest in the game after that point.

Season 12 is a prime example of why gear shouldn't matter in pvp. People could fully upgrade conquest gear 2 times which gave them a huge advantage. I rolled a fresh resto shaman that season and got wrecked by every cleave till I got full conquest gear. I wasn't even playing badly I just got caught in a charge stun and died. I had to literally never run into line of sight of the other teams but the moment I got full geared I could actually live through a cleave for more then 2 seconds. Gear shouldn't matter at all it just puts a huge barrier in front of players for no reason. T2 weapons and enchants are fine but not a full set worth of upgrades because season 12 was bullshit.

People claim pvp sucks because it fucking sucks like it always has blizzard never listens to feedback. Rng in bc, damage in wotlk, legendary gear in pvp in cata, they just literally go out of their way to make a good change then do a complete 180 and fuck all of that up.

[ravenmoon]

Other than the game is now 9 years old, and has been played by everyone and their mothers (literally)?

why does everyone expect that to be a legitimate reason for thelower subs? i don't believe that's case. you can be old and still be quite popular or still be growing in popularity, not declining

[Deleted]

-Pandas, really. They are bad. It doesn't fit WoW.
-Game is way too easy
-Graphics - for me it's not an big issue, but most players are guys or G.I.R.L.'s, and let's face it - most of them are visualizers, if a new player hears about WoW, types "World of Warcraft" in google and sees goo.gl/Gw5E8p or goo.gl/dBTQxz then he/she compares it to TERA or FFXIV goo.gl/qvURPu or goo.gl/gXDiIr and all of them cost nearly the same,THEN GUESS WHICH ONE A NEWBIE WILL PICK.
-Unbalanced like hell
-PvE is the same, AVOID EVERYTHING THAT FIRES AT/IS NEAR YOU. That's the tactic for most bosses. I mean, really?
-Many other issues depending on player's real life.
-League of Legends

(Sorry for the lack of 'links', forum doesn't let me post them fully.)

[Zaqwert]

Looking for a "main" reason is the problem.

I don't think there is a singular main reason.

There are a myriad of factors.

To some, the game is just old and they are tired of it after so long.
To some, the game has gotten too easy and too watered down and simplified.
To some, they thought Pandas and Pokemon were stupid.
To some, maybe the econonmic downturn made them quit.

Each one of these, plus some I didn't even list, probably contributes.

[ravenmoon]

that may be so, but, for entertainment value, $15.99 per month is not much to spend on a product that really takes up the majority of your free time and did for most people, you owuld continue to subscribe if your experience improved not unsubscribe. Whiles yes there are several facotrs, most have to lie at the companies feet.

people talk about how bad these other MMOs are, if tha'ts the case why isn't everyone just flocking back to wow? You mean to tell me that no one in the whole world cannot build a better project than world of warcraft, especially one that's been so profitable? it's got to be more than that.

[Treeba]

It's old. Very very old. It's hard to convince new people to pick up a game nearing 10 years of age and invest a lot of time or money into it. The sub numbers will continue to drop no matter what they do. It won't bottom out for years, but it's going to be a steady decline. It might jump up a little here or there (expansions, big patches) but the trend downwards will continue.

If you don't have anything invested in WoW, or any friends pulling you into playing it, why pick a 10 year old MMO over any of the newer ones? The graphics don't matter a lot to most of us that have been playing for years, but they are a big turn off to new players who look at the new flashy MMOs. Go look at some of the trees in Winterspring, Grizzly Hills, or around Karazhan. They look like a 6-year-old drew them.

[The Ogdru Jahad]

A lot of players have been at this for going on a decade, and very few things can keep your interest that long. Not even the best formulas (WoW admittedly has a great one) can keep you invested forever. Things like static graphics and models from 2004 just highlight and remind people of that; they're not necessarily the cause. Decay would happen anyway.

That said, the biggest problem is the relative lack of newcomers IMO. The game seems to rely more on ex-players coming back to WoW than acquiring brand new ones, and I'm not sure how reliable that is anymore.

The first paragraph sums up how I feel exactly, and more eloquent that I could ever hope to achieve. The second though raises another great question, there target demographic doesn't seem to be saving them, why not try bringing in new players.

[Getsomeofthis]

The game has become that month old gallon of milk in your fridge. Its curdled and tastes like shit.

[Yhvh]

Can't voice everyone, but...

The thing that really made me quit WoW in middle of MoP was the classes itself. Classes/combat mechanics, with very few exceptions, feels very boring. Everything comes down to a proc or dot uptime system. I'd figure wow combat would evolve into something more engaging, but it took and is always taking tiny steps in this direction. I know some people love this, but the reason that Wildstar, for example, has drawn my attention, is the incredibly dynamic/interactive combat environment it's proposing.

So, unless WoW take a big spin regarding this, I probably won`t come back anytime soon.


Unless they give really nice attention to RP community, wich is another aspect of the game I adore.

[madethisfor1post]

Game is old as sin and those that started with the game have moved on with life and those that join later don't have the 7-9+ year history with the game so don't feel as attached and leave too.

Also new fire mage blew balls.

[Molestron]

Lots of stuff

Destiny is console only, so I don't see why Blizzard would care, the blizzardian fanbase are PC players.

[Thorim]

You'd be surprised how many people just...grow out of it, start new jobs, new relationships, move etc etc...a huge amount of people leave for personal reasons.

[ElfinHilon10]

2 Things.

1. The difficultly to get raid ready and do even flex takes FAR too long at the moment.

2. The having LFR MANDATORY for gearing purposes to get up to raid level. People get burned out on content with LFR FAST.

Anyone who says anything else is either wrong, or it's as simple as the game just becoming old for them, in which case, see point 2 again.

[The Iron Fist]

One word: Ghostcrawler.

[goblingirl]

There isn't a main reason... there are probably many.

Quitting gaming entirely:

- real life busyness, no leisure time to play games in general

- choosing to spend available leisure time on some other non-gaming activity

- financial reasons (game sub fees, internet costs, PC costs)


Quitting WoW for other games:

- tired of fantasy mmo genre, moved on to fps or whatever

- financial reasons, moved to free-to-play mmo games (think this is happening a lot in China, where they have to pay by the minute for WoW, but likely some in the West as well, due to the malingering recession, which has hit the age groups most likely to play games pretty hard)

- financial reasons related to extra transaction fees (i.e. realm pop died, cannot or will not pay for char transfer fees)

- short attention span (some people hop from game to game often - these restless spirits still haven't found what they're looking for, but will know it when they see it - and it is a waste of time trying to please this type of drifter cause drifters are gonna drift)

- lack of interest and/or emotional investment in recent/current storylines and themes ("I don't recognize this lore anymore, wtfpandaslol")

- feeling like the never ending treadmill is too time consuming, boring or frustrating to continue (particularly early in MoP, the daily quest grind was un-freaking-believably tedious)

- frustration with particular technical/balance aspect(s) of the game (such as PvP's current situation of near constant interrupts and cc's)

- frustration with inaccessible content caused by lack of companions esp. on medium/low pop realms (can't find a raiding guild, low pop servers don't kill world bosses, etc. - not everyone finds or is willing to use oqueue, but hopefully the ongoing realm merges will help with this)

- general loss of community, also known as "all my friends have quit" (guilds disbanding and/or leadership quitting the game, or transferring the guild to other servers, abandoning players - personally I have lost three guilds in the last 9 months for these 3 reasons)

- ilvl (everything about it - as another poster pointed out, people don't even examine stats half the time anymore; it's just a mess that was originally inflicted on the population by gearscore and then mashed into the game by Blizzard. I honestly can't think of anything it truly adds to make great gameplay and in some ways it makes things much worse. In fact ilvl as a numerical measure should be removed from PvP gear entirely, so people can't use it to qualify for queued PvE content.)

- easy to play, hard to master - this has long been true of WoW, and what we see happening in LFR right now shines a bright light on it - a lot of players are pissed and bitter that they are expected to theorycraft or at least AskMrRobot and spend a bunch of gold to optimize poorly itemized gear into something useful, so they refuse to do it; on top of which they are expected to spend time OUTside the game to learn LFR encounters, most particularly tanks in order to not suck at their tasks; in their minds, they should just be able to log in and play the game because it's a game. (Not saying they are right or wrong, just pointing out this is all happening.) I mean, back in the day, sure you had to find an enchanter to do a bit of work on your gear and that gave you a small percentage dps advantage or whatever. But then came gems, shoulder enhancements, leg threads/armors, reforging, on and on and on until it's a several thousand gold sink to kit up a set of gear (or more if you're on a low pop server where prices are jacked up). And every time you get a new piece you have to at minimum reforge several pieces and sometimes regem/enchant the whole crapload over again. And for many players, particularly tanks and heals, they're doing this to 2+ sets of gear because everyone now expects "a healer that can dps too" or "hey we can one tank this fight go dps", or the person wants to also maintain a PvP set etc. The stats on items in the current patch are so close that in some cases, slapping on all the gems and enchants is the only thing that actually makes the replacement item an upgrade. This is hugely tedious and annoying to a significant portion of the playerbase.

As for those of us who have stayed:

1. When I get too frustrated with one thing, I switch to something else; meaning, when PvP got shot to hell with resilience requirements and so much crowd control I could barely get off a heal before being dogpiled and stunlocked to death (I was a Field Marshal back in the day, I used to PvP a lot!), I simply quit doing it. I moved on to doing achievements (all kinds, the questing ones, BG ones, old raid tier ones, etc.). Then I moved on to transmog. Then I moved on to pet battles. Then I moved on to work on hitting the gold cap. Leveled an alt. And so on. There is so much to do in WoW at this point that if you're open minded and want to stay with the game, you can usually find something to do, somewhere.

2. We keep thinking/hoping that Blizzard is going to get it together with their lore/storylines. Cata and Pandaland have been a bit of a disappointment (though I have enjoyed Wrathion). Trepidaciously optimistic about next week's announcement though - Pardo is back on WoW, along with some of the other people that worked on it in LK and earlier.

3. If Blizzard has proved nothing else, it's that they will NEVER stop tinkering with stuff. Just because you like how something works today doesn't mean they're going to leave it alone, and just because you hate it today doesn't mean they won't change it so you love it tomorrow. I actually still have hope that PvP might be good again in WoW, even though I haven't been able to tolerate it in 3 years. Raiding progression is jacked right now but I have hope that can be fixed next tier also. Realm populations have been A HUGE problem that has in turn created many tangential problems, but they're clearly trying to fix it finally - they seem determined to keep the pace up so that all the realm merges will be done, and the server groups at healthy population levels, before the next xpac hits. It all comes down to whether you have the patience to wait for them to figure out what needs to be done, and then spend the time to code it and release it.

TL;DR - if I had to pick ONE main reason for the lost subs, it would be the treadmilling.

[Deleted]

You'd be surprised how many people just...grow out of it, start new jobs, new relationships, move etc etc...a huge amount of people leave for personal reasons.

Yeah, and those people are supposed to be constantly replaced by newer generations of players (which is what was happening all the way up till Cataclysm). At some point the game just stopped becoming interesting enough to attract (and keep the interest of) new players.

Let's be frank, the game just isn't attracting nearly enough players to compensate for the constant exodus of the existing player base. Nothing else can be blamed for this, except for the game itself.

[Repefe]

Problem is that WoW (and any other raiding MMO for that matter) does not mix well with rl. If someone wants to spend his free time gaming ... there are better alternatives than WoW. One of the biggest demographics for WoW were bachelors 25-30 years old who live alone. The most ideal group of players who can raid ... they live alone, have good income, free nights. But even for them modern online FPS or MOBA games offer more than old school MMORPG ala WoW.

The community side of MMOs has big potential, but the content format is 10-15 years old and does not measure up to other options we have available.

[anaxie]

The game didn't get worse or better. The game has continue to churn players. You think this game had up to 12 million players? this game has prolly had 50 million player pass through. Some stayed some didn't but inevitably even the loyal ones have quit for RL issues. My time commitments are growing and even I find it hard to make all raid times, If i can't heroic raid I'd prolly just quit.

Now mix the game being a decade old and the churn running out while everyone players whats cool HURP DURP CoD/GTA and accept the fact that MMO's hell COMPUTERS in general are pretty niche compared to consoles and that is your answer.


That and a significant portion that are stuck in LFR quit from how dull it is / PvP is just completely fucked and you have other issues. But age CERTAINLY has alot to do with it.

By age I'm not refering to graphics btw. WoW has alot more going for it then 99% of new releases.

[Joeygiggles]

2 Things.

1. The difficultly to get raid ready and do even flex takes FAR too long at the moment.

2. The having LFR MANDATORY for gearing purposes to get up to raid level. People get burned out on content with LFR FAST.

Anyone who says anything else is either wrong, or it's as simple as the game just becoming old for them, in which case, see point 2 again.

Lol
1. Getting raid ready doesn't take much time at all especially if you know what you're doing and also its nice to have friends to help bring you to older content.
2. LFR is not even close to being Mandatory. I've done it once this tier and that was for offspec gear I don't even use. Have yet to do it since and won't do it because I don't need to.

[Osmeric]

The game has become that month old gallon of milk in your fridge. Its curdled and tastes like shit.

Personally, I wouldn't say that. But it's like a dish that you've maybe eaten too often, or a song you've listened to too many times. The pleasure you get from it is dulled by repetition.