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

[ravenmoon]

Of course as I reiterate, this in no way absolves Blizz of sub loss responsibility.

I don't like point fingers, but I have to agree, the responsibility really lies with blizzard, I know that may note be the most popular answer especially to anyone who idolizes a company, but they're responsible.. new expansion announced soon, and the the focus is not going to change.

WoWis going to continue to provide exactly what it has done, in fact, even mores so, this expac is going to be more classic wow than any of the others.. io, wrong direction, they should be getting more radical not less. but then look at their reaction to new players modesl it has takken 5 years for them to see the need for this, and countless requests, they ekeep insisting it's not that big a deal, everyone that plays keeps telling them it matters to them.

Thos that don't want it, almost 100% say that because they fear the new models might not be what they like.. blizzard latches onto the naysayers.

This is what happens when you make decisions bsed on statistics rather than your gut, polls analysis have their place, and are a good source of information and can help formalize or shape perspective, but they are not gospel truth, and shoudln't be treated as such. Core developing team, shoudl go with their gut which woudl ahve been telling them since TBC, players wanted vastly improved models. And so you get the idea of what's part of the problem.

There jus tseems to be a high level of denial sometimes, maybe like some fans, they get so immeresed, invovled in it, it comes at the cost of true perspective, they fail to see some obvious flaws becasue they can't step out and take a bird's eye, 3rd party, neutral view.

[papajohn4]

So true, & by 'bad decisions' this poster is referring I presume to things like LFR, RDF, or even cross-realm BGs or flying mounts/arenas(!) before that, all of which have contributed to some measure of playerbase social desensitization, reduced sense of belonging & actually caring about their gameplay. Even if Blizz wanted to remove those features, it's too late now. There'd be tons of players coming back, but waaay more actually quitting suddenly, this being the proverbial nail in the coffin on their late disenchantment with the state of the game. Indeed, for every sensible detractor to these accommodating, casual play convenience tools that make the gameworld 'smaller', there's a dozen people to be found who live & die by these features, that were born & raised spoiled w/ the game working this way, and taking that away from them would be catastrophic to their continued stay.

There are significant differences between a full sandbox or 'sandpark' game, & a sandboxy themepark - WoW would benefit enormously from becoming a lot more of the latter than the near-full themepark it is now, but ironically enough, would not benefit as much from trying to be an actual sandbox or nearly such. In fact the latter wouldn't even be feasible, from a technical, financial, even legal (shareholders etc) point of view - this is exactly what happened with Star Wars Galaxies several years ago, what they call the 'Pre-CU disaster' (in reverse, of course - they had basically a sandbox design, & because WoW's themepark got SO explosively successful in 2004-2005, recklessly turned their game around to be a cheapened themepark). If they did that with WoW, turn a full themepark and its millions of subscribers relatively content with the current state of affairs, into a complete sandbox, that'd be just as irresponsible and backstabby as the SW:G Pre-CU failed moneygrubbing gambit, no matter how gloriously more dynamic & engaging the non-static gameplay naturally emergent from sandbox content is.

See that's what I mean when I emphasize there are always ways to make emergent dynamic gameplay adjustments to a themepark design while not damaging/removing what is already existing, so fewer people complain, you didn't throw the baby w/ the bathwater to implement the sandboxy features. This touches upon what Ravenmoon said about 'raising an empire' etc, that type of play is absolutely engaging riotous fun and yet, just has a really hard time being realistically, holistically integrated into the aged systems of an old classic themepark like WoW. This may understandably seem terse of me to say or contradictory to what I'd always been advocating, but it's important because throughout the last decade in the reign of the themepark design in MMO space, time & again some very well-intentioned people have suggested that devs implement such radical sandbox features out & out, and it is unfortunately those outlandish suggestions that have emboldened dev teams to lump all dynamic, undirected, emergent content design into the same "unrealistic, out of touch with the 95% rest of themeparks' Halo/CoD-type playerbase" basket, thus leaving no room for more moderate steps in emergent sandbox gameplay to have any chance at the development table.

Actual empire-building & permanent or even mid-term temporary political power shifts/NPC disappearances just doesn't mesh with what the devs & executives have had in mind for the core design of this game, for a long time. So you have to find ways to implement some fun stuff to do, or different ways to do existing stuff, that won't clash, but to the contrary, that will harmoniously meshwith the existing core vision for how the game's themepark systems have always functioned.

For example, one of the ways I envisage dealing with the "..So I'm finally max-level.. what now? I mean, I was having so much stimulation, so much fun every level I was gaining, always a new spell/talent/glyph here, new items/power/feature there, and now, I'm just resigned to a much slower, repetitive gear treadmill till I gouge these eyes out to static boredom..?? =/" is the following :

~> XP costs when dying, but only under certain circumstances/in certain areas.
~> XP costs to do really engaging, designed-to-be-long-cooldowns things in the game, but mostly things that are cosmetic or affect world zones, not raid readiness or pvp advantage in any fashion or else it starts becoming a 'requirement', and thus giving an unfair, unreasonable incentive to play 24/7 in order to have as much recurring XP as possible to spend on say, more powerful flasks for a raid or a temporary speed boost in a BG.
~> An even more radical, sandboxy way to handle them would be the capacity to spend XP points, or HP, on the fly, in addition to the regular mana/class resource pool costs, when casting a spell in a world zone (so it leaves endgame PvP/PvE unaffected), to have a more spectacular (mechanical & cosmetic), on-cooldown (to prevent abuse) effect.

This would allow people a balanced, non-endgame-disrupting reason to do stuff that gives them XP even though they're already max-level (losing XP would never de-level you, that's cool-sounding but against Blizz core design..I know), perhaps even by having to use an item to give the buff that enables the acquisition of such post-max XP points, an item that only works in world zones, thus sending more players out there instead of staying in capitals to wait for their queue & troll tradechat 24/7.

Totally agree! and in my opinion vanilla/TBC wow had found the perfect spot between sandbox and themepark..it was the perfect "sandpark" in my opinion. Add to this the awesome lore and Blizzard reputation from epic games like diablo and warcraft strategies and you have the MMO bomb called World of Warcraft! Don't rush to blame me about nostalgia. I can clearly categorize a game and I know what I want. Imagine all MMOs as a row where in the most left part there is the virtual world and the most right the actual game.

Virtual World -----------------------------Game

Vanilla and TBC wow was in the middle, current wow is on the most right side. I am not saying this is bad or good obviously. But when people are talking about vanilla wow, they talk about the game in the middle of the row and not because of nostalgia. I will not talk about the huge contributors that push wow to the right, like LFG, cross-realm, etc but even the details are enough to kill the immersion and promote the pure gaming...For example, Hunter with no quiver/arrows, no feed on pets, pets automatically learn new abilities, e.t.c. I know these are labeled as "quality of life" changes but they push the game to the right and away from virtual world/immersion..

[Jainzar]

main reason? game is old, people have seen it all by now.

[ravenmoon]

really the future of these games, the main power of the mmo is in the mm, it's the key, whiles there was a need for them, things lik xrealms, xbgs, xraids, xarena, of far more importannce was really building communities in realms and finding ways to get players bonding better.

these games are really huge, they can get some huge followings when they're wow's size, you want to be able to harness that massive populace to contribute to content and create some of their adventures themsevles, that's the future, without an investment that's much bigger than they're likely willing to provide, therefore they have to incorporate it into the design. I was looking at EQ Next, and they have some good ideas..

I think there is a way wow can actually open itself up to dynamic content without losing this basic themepark aspect they're so scared of losing, for them the only solution would be to do both, continue providing your bread and butter stuff, then add extra stuff and see how it takes off.

however community requires no game development to build, or at least relatively very little, they can buck the trend by having a far better social experience.

[Pyromelter]

2 main things IMO:

1. Too Grindy. As much as MMO elitists scream about how "casual" stuff is, this game is just grind grind grind grind, so that you can get to the actual good/fun stuff, whether it be rated BG's, some kind of decent raiding, profession/ah/gold capping, pet battling, rare hunting, etc - it's all one grind after another, without any time to just sit back and take your time and just enjoy the game world.

2. Continually disappointing lore/story. I've maintained for 4 years now that there needs to be a Warcraft 4, to give us a chance to be - to play as - some new heroes. Why do we love thrall so much? Well, it's because we get to BE Thrall. Same with Jaina, Cairne, Tyrande, Malfurion, Arthas - we get to connect to these people because we get to walk in their shoes.

A game world like warcraft works best when told in an RTS. Blizzard made a mistake by not continuing their RTS series. The lore has suffered immensely, from never getting to actually fight deathwing, to the stupid, pointless, and frankly illogical development of Garrosh, to the sad changes to Tyrande and Jaina. All horrible developments that have driven more and more people away.

A tertiary problem is the complexity of the combat system, where there are frankly too many buttons, with so much ability bloat. I believe this is a relatively minor issue though, since there are some classes where the combat rotations remain fairly simple (rogues, mages, paladins). Combat bloat may have affected hunters, traditionally one of the most popular classes, but again I think this is proportionally small.

Edit: For the people who claim the game is too casual, that flying is bad, that there should be harsher penalties for death - you're wrong. You're dead dead dead wrong. Wow became popular because it didn't penalize you in these ways. Every single day, someone on mmo champ makes this claim, that always boils down to "casual play is bad for wow." This has absolutely nothing to do with sub loss. No one ever quit because of flying mounts, or because you didn't lose XP on death. Anyone saying they did is being disingenuous, and likely just flexing their elitist muscles on a messageboard.

[breaker983]

playing other games

[Stonecloak]

World is changing a lot right now. Those of us that can still enjoy wow should feel lucky.

[ravenmoon]

World is changing a lot right now. Those of us that can still enjoy wow should feel lucky.

you don't know how right you are!

[ringpriest]

I think its fair to say that alot of ex-Wow players keep an eye on what gets announced at Blizzcon... this gives them an excellent platform to advertise what their future plans are.... so it better be good!

I know I am - Blizzcon is basically going to be make or break Blizzard games for me. Their last couple offerings (not just WoW) have left me pretty cold. (Not making any absolute judgements, just in deciding whether they'll be worth my time to even pay attention to in the future.)