WoW is soooo "developer" driven and not player driven. Reason cause its losing subs!

[Zka]

Speak for yourself, buddy. I revel in those environments and no game is more fun than the game that punishes idiots and rewards smart people.

I'm completely okay with punishing idiots. I'm not scared of EVE, I just can't do anything meaningful and fun with it and I'm not okay with timesinks, that's all.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I knew how things work in EVE before I even downloaded the client, therefore I never lost anything valuable, never got scammed, whenever I got killed I knew how I fucked up or it was just a fair outcome of a fight. Whenever I wanted to stay safe I did.

[Tomana]

Speak for yourself, buddy. I revel in those environments and no game is more fun than the game that punishes idiots and rewards smart people.

Which is why it painfully breaks the 500K subs mark (and that figure takes into account a metric crapton of multiple accounts).
EVE is a very nice game, but from a business standpoint, it's a small fish.

Also, spaceships and stuff are much cheaper to develop than humanoid bodies/art and landscapes.

[DeadmanWalking]

I am really tired of the 'X thing that I hate is the reason for sub losses." threads/posts. There are millions of reasons why subs are lost and I can gaurantee you people have left the game over things in game that you love just as much as things that you don't like. People who think they have the golden snitch of 'reasons why people unsub' only prove that they are narrow minded and incapable of looking beyond themselves to explain anything that happens around them. Its almost as stupid as the every single person who thinks their religion is the one true religion. Of course your religion is best, You're in it.

[Halicia]

Its truly mind boggling how Blizzard neglects old content and does not improve the overall experience. If they did, people would probably role more alts and stick around rather than unsub for 3-4 months after they complete LFR.

Yeah, cuz cataclysm totally supports your claims there.

[Deleted]

I agree with the notion that it's sad that so many people need and want to be told what to do and how to do it, or their ego will tell them that they are "bored", when in fact they are lost and scared. Thus Sandbox games while being way better and productive and educating entertainment, will stay as niche.

And Blizzard doesn't have the drive to do anything with WoW anymore. In Vanilla Tigole had a system that woke him up in the middle of night if some raid anywhere in the world was about to kill a boss that hadn't been killed yet. Do you think they are still as passionate about this game after over 10 years?

- - - Updated - - -

And the new kids that come in and do have drive, maybe never have even touched a pen and paper games.

[Giscoicus]

Yeah, cuz cataclysm totally supports your claims there.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Massive overhaul in Cata for 1 to 60.

What hurt leveling is not being able to fly to random flight points so you are stuck following a certain chain of zones, and not having multiple intro quests. I really don't want to do the stupid westfall stuff for the 18th time I already have done the detective stuff before. I know they want a storyline, but just a couple different introductions to the storyline would be nice.

[SodiumChloride]

Well, graphical definition is not quite on the same level in minecraft and EQN, either. And making a fully modifiable world is a graphical challenge in a full 3D game.

Well, they are also running some kind of "landmark" program lets players submit content they create (before the game is out) so it could be include in the game at launch. I suppose that and their own internal work will form the basis for the starting areas with everything else being procedural.

[Deleted]

The reason Vanilla WoW actually is fondly remember is cause it still had a few "sandbox" elements. There was never a clear path. Not everyone was into raids. Raids were intended for the hardcore crowd. PVP was a grind. Folks got less burnt out. Sure those that raided got burnt out as well but that is the nature of raiding.

Please stop referring to Vanilla as some kind of golden-age of WoW - it wasn't. In terms of sub numbers, WOTLK was by far the most popular period of the game.

And whatever - hardcore raiding still exists, and Vanilla was never a sand-box game!? You either raided hardcore, or bashed your head in with the terrible PvP ranking system (not to mention this was made even harder with massive imbalances). There was nothing to do outside of this.

And again, whatever about the sub loss explanation - because the primary reason WoW is loosing subs is because it's an old game in an ever-changing environment, not because it has become some snooze fest where everything is too easy, a fringe theory pushed by "hang around" players who need to move on.

I'm sorry, but these threads are really not original in anyway. Please stop making them.

[Obtuse]

Sometimes I like to read a story. Sometimes I like to write a story. WoW fills in one of these requirements. If I wish for the other, I can always go play Minecraft.

Winner winner, chicken dinner. The above says it all; you have my vote.

[Kaprin]

A small group of friends and I have generated a lot of our own WoW content through RP. Only we will ever know what that content is, but would I like to play in a World of Warcraft where I could see everything that everyone else had made? Hell no. I think a lot of other RPs are dumb, and I'm sure others would think mine is dumb. I can choose who to RP with. The half-faerie half-dragon half-vampire RPers can make stories with their own friends all they want and I won't ever see it. DnD works because you play it with a small group of friends. Minecraft works because you can pick and choose who is on your server. If you give people total creative freedom, someone is inevitably going to go around drawing dicks. I enjoy WoW for what it is and get a creative kick out of it too through RP and fanart. If someone thinks RP and fanart is stupid they don't have to ever see it and can enjoy the game for their own reasons.

[mvaliz]

While I like Sandbox MMOs myself, you will never see one as popular as WoW.

WoW has always been what it was intended to be, a Themepark MMO, this thread is pretty pointless. You've told most of us what we already know, bravo.

Southshore vs Tarren Mill was boring and only happened because there was nothing else to do. If Southshore vs Tarren Mill is also your idea of fantastic sandbox, then I'm speechless.

Ultima Online would be awful for the 'casual' gamer.

This is a reason sandbox mmo's are never that popular outside the hardcore crowd.

Oh holy ignorance batman!

Dude, I WAS a casual player of UO, and still laud that as the pinnacle MMORPG template

I'd argue that UO was 10x more casual friendly than wow ever was. I can literally play that game and NEVER kill a single thing. And I did just that - grand master carpenter/lumberjack

[Mormolyce]

I hang out on the forums a lot and I've seen what the playerbase would implement if it had the reins. No freaking thank you.

[Thimagryn]

What you're referring to seems more like 'Wild West' territory of old games, where there wasn't any clear goal of what end game was so people made it up and went with it. With references to UO, I can relate a story where someone decided to enforce a 'toll' on a bridge, and if anyone wanted to cross they would have to pay the price or be killed. The game was open enough to allow things like that to exist, where players could get together in mobs and do whatever they liked; but it's also janky game design when it comes to providing a tailored experience.

Would Blizzard want people standing outside Stormwind forcing others to 'pay a toll to enter'? Southshore/Tarren Mill was a result of this type of 'sandbox' gameplay, but it's also because there was literally nothing else to do in terms of PVP. All that stopped once Battlegrounds came in.

WoW is not a playground or a sandbox, it's more of an interactive board game, or collection of board games. You have different modes of gameplay with separate rules and goals. It's not as open as some other games may be, but the gameplay it does offer is compelling and rewarding regardless.

As many others have said, interest in Sandbox MMO's are an opinion, not a reason for sub loss.

[ACES]

Being dev driven instead of player driven is a GOOD THING. In this way the game keeps it's identity without turning into a Valve game.

[docterfreeze]

Being dev driven instead of player driven is a GOOD THING. In this way the game keeps it's identity without turning into a Valve game.

Cause valve is so poor and unsuccessful.

Unless this is sarcasm...

[nekobaka]

Being dev driven instead of player driven is a GOOD THING. In this way the game keeps it's identity without turning into a Valve game.

You mean Valve game in general or the community generated content? At least from my view point the content that Valve has directly pushed out is highly developer driven. The player driven stuff has its own niche communities with some being a headache for more of the newbish due to trolling and cheating.

[Mormolyce]

What you're referring to seems more like 'Wild West' territory of old games, where there wasn't any clear goal of what end game was so people made it up and went with it. With references to UO, I can relate a story where someone decided to enforce a 'toll' on a bridge, and if anyone wanted to cross they would have to pay the price or be killed. The game was open enough to allow things like that to exist, where players could get together in mobs and do whatever they liked; but it's also janky game design when it comes to providing a tailored experience.

In a way this is evidence of the changing nature of the game audience. I remember in D2 people would invent goals for themselves like "get a character to max level without killing any monsters except Act bosses" and so on because there wasn't that much content in the game and it was pretty easy. Nowadays, D3 launches with not a lot of "endgame" (actually more endgame than D2 had, aside from the lack of PVP) and the response was a QQ storm of tsunami proportions.

In the old days gamers creating their own fun was an unintentional side effect of there being not a lot of games in the market and not a lot of constant extendable content in games. Modern audiences aren't interested in that kind of thing. Except in games that are explicitly sandbox, which have taken that role now.

[Wildberry]

Typical "Wow is the wrong game for you, play something else"-thread. You can have your opinion on something, but that's YOUR OPINION. So saying Wow should be different, is plain and simply wrong. Maybe for you it's true, but for many others it's not

I was going to give a lengthy response, but I'm just going to tweak what you've written and throw it back at you:

"You can have your opinion on something, but that's YOUR OPINION. So saying Wow shouldn't be different, is plain and simply wrong. Maybe for you it's true, but for many others it's not"

See how easy that was?

[deadman1]

I was going to give a lengthy response, but I'm just going to tweak what you've written and throw it back at you:

"You can have your opinion on something, but that's YOUR OPINION. So saying Wow shouldn't be different, is plain and simply wrong. Maybe for you it's true, but for many others it's not"

See how easy that was?

It may have been easy, but it is 100% invalid.

His point of view coincides with the creators vision and the facts of the situation, your opinion doesn't therefore you can't win there.

We can't change the color of the sky because you don't like the color blue, that's just how it is.

Like someone said earlier in this thread, playing wow is like reading a book, if you don't like it write your own.

[Wildberry]

It may have been easy, but it is 100% invalid.

His point of view coincides with the creators vision and the facts of the situation, your opinion doesn't therefore you can't win there.

We can't change the color of the sky because you don't like the color blue, that's just how it is.

Like someone said earlier in this thread, playing wow is like reading a book, if you don't like it write your own.

What if I liked the earlier version of WoW? Were the creators not following their vision then? Back when it could be argued that WoW had some Sandbox elements. What you've written is incredibly stupid and I suggest you retract your statements, you wouldn't want to look bad, would you?