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  1. #1
    Scarab Lord Kickbuttmario's Avatar
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    Blizzard's Direction With WoW

    LONG POST INCOMING!!

    First I want to make it clear that I am not a subscriber. So my opinion may be bullshit to some of you guys but I have been however, an avid follower of MMO-Champion and am quite interested in Warlords of Draenor. Second, I used to be a hardcore raider back in Cataclysm and quit back at July 2011 (Patch 4.2) for personal reasons. I tried resubscribing back at June 2013 (During Tier 15 of MoP) to try to get back into the game but failed as Guild Wars 2 had its hooks on me at the time.

    I am making this thread because I have been reading a lot of posts about how its a big deal that wow is losing subscribers. How many of the posters are giving reasons of how the direction the game developers are taking with wow is what's causing the decline of the game. I just wanted to give my thoughts on how I think the direction Blizzard is taking with WoD and the expansions of past is probably the best for not only wow but in general great for us gamers.

    So before I get into anything about the game's direction, I wanted to first talk about how wow is losing subscribers. I refuse to believe that the current condition the game is in, is a pure reflection of how the game is doing with its subscribers. It certainly is a part of it, but I like to also think the other MMO's competing with wow such as Guild Wars 2, RIFT, SWTOR (believe it or not, these games are actually doing quite well, research it yourself and you will see) and the new ones that are coming out such as WildStar. I also like to believe in the good old Product Life Cycle. The game is over 10 years old, its time to come to the realization that the game was bound to lose subscribers at some point, which happened somewhere in Cataclysm. Also, the game still has plenty of subscribers, higher than any other mmo. The game is still monumental compared to any other "little shit" it comes across. Even if they lose subscribers, they make most of those losses back with their microtransactions, and they should as the player (consumer) is willing to spend $20 on their favourite little goodies (not that I will understand that anyway). Now, the last thing I like to mention is how I think Blizzard has been implementing new features into every expansion and throughout each expansion, trying their best to perfect each and every one of them is great for us gamers. Now for my little rant.

    Personally, I will never stop believing in this but I believe Wrath was the worst expansion out there. Maybe it was because I was in a horrible server (Dalvengyr US) at the time and why I thought Cataclysm was my best time raiding in wow as I made a new character in a new server (Magtheridon US), but I refuse to believe an expansion that changed how heroics worked, how insanely bad ToC was, how toxic ICC was, despite all of the complaints and praises there have been. Honestly, ICC was the biggest fucking dumbfuck raid I have ever experienced, I still think people are overblowing their nostalgia to an all time high with the Lich King fight. Yeah, lets make a fight 100x harder than the other bosses, and make everything else abysmal. Let's make all players get a stupid buff to pretty much make skill and order in raids mean nothing. The only good thing in that expansion was Howling Fyjord and Ulduar, that was it.

    So what was the point of that little bitching about Wrath up there? Well, ironically it was where WoW had the highest subscriber count at the time. However, Wrath was a very different expansion compared to its predecessors TBC and Vanilla. How come? Seriously, they were gaining subscribers faster than any other mmo out there. The player got easily trapped in the carrot chasing treadmill, which was very difficult to get out of back then. So how come they changed it? Why did they change it in Wrath? Why did try to revert it to Cataclysm? Why on earth did they release ToC, a raid with no trash, 5 worthless bosses, and overall make Ulduar feel sick next to it? Why did Firelands and Dragon Soul have such few bosses? How come they are fixing something that isn't broken? Well the answer to all of these questions is simply "game design". That's it.

    No really, that's it. There was something wrong with players being stuck more addicted then ever back in TBC and Vanilla and getting out of the addiction. WoW had a pretty bad stigma at the time for its addiction and now we don't hear much of it. I think they knew there was something wrong with certain players not being chosen because of specific classes. What game developer would want its player to choose a class and feel like they made the wrong choice in picking it because it is useless in certain situations. Why on earth would they want 1% of its players to see the final endgame content like Naxxramas? Why would they want leveling to be nothing but a long and horrible grind. I think you get the picture. Now I am not a game designer. I have very little chance on becoming one since it requires some science courses and computer programming, all of which I was horrible in. But I am just thinking, if I were those guys in Blizzard, how could we keep our games like this. Times were changing. Trying their change and make sure their games are good but are still open to its audience while following the themes the designers wanted them to experience isn't easy. If we look at From Software with Dark Souls 2, many of its followers know that they have been trying to make the game more open to the general gamer while still retaining to its core beliefs of a hard but fun game. I think Blizzard is the same with WoW, trying to make an awesome game with more open features while still retaining to its overall core design, a solid RPG game.

    Think about it. Questing is far better than ever. The carrot chase with gear has been diminished significantly, to the point where its mostly cosmetic. The design of their zones and music and what they can do with their game is truly breathtaking. I am sure MoP had some of the finest zones out there. Storytelling will always be getting better (No Wrath Storytelling Sucked Ass). They are trying their best to make gear choices more simpler yet more efficient at the same time. They knew talent trees were stupid so they made that even more simpler and with more choice. No one can truly win at this argument as MoP talent trees is arguably the best expansion that gave the players the most choice in its talent trees. They are constantly changing difficulties, trying different options, trying to find the right fit. They knew that social engineering the player base in Wrath wasn't great and immediately getting them into Cata heroic 5 mans difficulty was the wrong choice.

    If anything, I will argue that they have been trying to find the right difficulty for its player base since Vanilla 5 mans. Vanilla dungeons were long, boring with almost no mechanics in most of their bosses and just requiring specific classes. TBC changed it with more boss mechanics being put in, shorter dungeons but it didn't solve the problem of specific classes with CC being needed for certain situations or the fact that it still took hours to clear them. Then Wrath came and it solved the length problem, but then the players didn't like its difficulty. I mean we can all agree that the difficulty in Wrath heroics were far too low. The only boss that was actually difficult was the HoL final boss but mostly for holy paladins. Then came Cataclysm but it reverted back to TBC style dungeon which pretty much brought back the problems of TBC again. Unfortunately, at the same time, WoW started losing subscribers. So everyone thought with mop's wrath style dungeons (which brought back its problems again) it would go back, but they kept losing subscribers. I am now sure they have some idea of what the players want when it comes to specific difficulty in their dungeons, which is short but difficult, while still being accessible to all classes because I think they know that subscriber numbers are going to keep going lower.

    I know that little shindig is mostly for 5 mans, as raids I will not touch upon as I did not experience them, but I can only assume that the raids were getting better as well as the raid tiers were getting compliments for the number of quality bosses and raid environments. I won't get into PVP but I can only assume PVP is like in every other expansion and other mmo.

    Essentially all I am trying to say is that despite what many of us may think of the game right now, the direction that Blizzard is taking with wow may be the best for the game and the players. I don't entirely believe in every little thing they have done but I think they have been experimenting with every feature at different points of the game to see what works and what doesn't. Adding in more features, some their own, some from other games such as timeless isle from gw2, pet battles from pokemon, and garrisons from farmville (I believe that was the game, correct me if I am wrong). But then again, I could be wrong and everything I say may be BS when WoD comes out as their promises and statements are always changing but we shall see.

    If you read this far, you earn my love which is worth nothing.
    Last edited by Kickbuttmario; 2014-02-27 at 04:46 AM.

  2. #2
    The Unstoppable Force
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    You clearly missed the fact that MoP recently gained 200k subscribers. That aside, they try out new things with each expansion. Some things work, some things doesn't, and finally it's their product, they can do whatever they want with it honestly.

    Oh and the Farm was more Harvest Moon, and the Garrisons are more of a Warcraft 3 tribute than Farmville clearly.

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  3. #3
    Scarab Lord Kickbuttmario's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Venziir View Post
    You clearly missed the fact that MoP recently gained 200k subscribers. That aside, they try out new things with each expansion. Some things work, some things doesn't, and finally it's their product, they can do whatever they want with it honestly.

    Oh and the Farm was more Harvest Moon, and the Garrisons are more of a Warcraft 3 tribute than Farmville clearly.
    I am trying to say that WoW losing subscribers don't matter. It is inevitable that they keep losing them. As long as they are refining each feature they have, the game in general will be better than ever.

  4. #4
    The Unstoppable Force
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kickbuttmario View Post
    I am trying to say that WoW losing subscribers don't matter. It is inevitable that they keep losing them. As long as they are refining each feature they have, the game in general will be better than ever.
    Ah right, well yes, I concur.

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  5. #5
    Essentially all I am trying to say is that despite what many of us may think of the game right now, the direction that Blizzard is taking with wow may be the best for the game and the players. I don't entirely believe in every little thing they have done but I think they have been experimenting with every feature at different points of the game to see what works and what doesn't.
    I think if you judge expansions on an overall level (not specific features), you will find each of them was very good relative to the time when it came out (except Cataclysm, which could have been much better). Even if one person may not like certain decisions made by Blizzard during development, you have to at least take into account that they're trying to adapt a decade old game to a constantly changing market. Not sure if it's the best for the players, but it's sort of the logical thing to do.

  6. #6
    Meh it won't stop the complaints from the players about something that is different. It is best to not give a fuck and let Blizzard design the game however they want to.

  7. #7
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    I do believe it's an absolute miracle that wow still has this many subscribers. In fact i have a realy hard time believing that this many people still play this game at all, but i gather that you can't realy lie to the company stock-holders, so official numbers should be real in the end.

    With this said, i do believe that blizzard has been amazing in preventing the steep unstopable decline in the interest of a 10 year old game, making it just a very moderate decline.

    In this forums (and most internet) it's much more cool to be a naysayer and complain about everything than to look at the good things, but truth be told i believe blizzard has done a monumentaly good job keeping the game alive with new features, changing things, new content, comunity interaction, tweeter posts, sites like MMO pushing the comunity interest, etc.

    I've played this game since launch and have been on-and-off since cataclysm playing a couple months casualy, unsubbing, coming back some months later, etc. I haven't done this with ANY other game that when i stop, i stop for good. It's my daily routine to check wow news on various sites even tough i'm not subbed for over 3 months now, further meaning how much i care about wow and how good blizzard done and keeps making me motivated. I'm sure i'll buy the expansion, check all the new race models, level my garrison, do some dungeons and 2-3 months afterwards i'll unsub again.

    BUT (and this is the keyword here, BUT) it's not exatly blizzard fault i'll unsub, it's just i've done this for 10 years now, and quite honestly i don't even keep GFs that long (i jest, i jest) much less a video-game and i get bored hyper-super-fast with anything i've done for a long long time.

    I believe blizzard is doing a fine job and bravely fighting a sure-loss war, you can't beat the time and even if they did a complete 180 turnaround on the game, it would still be wow and people naturaly look for new things, it's an human "thing".
    Last edited by mmoc40e5aa3799; 2014-02-27 at 12:04 AM.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by FattGuy View Post
    Meh it won't stop the complaints from the players about something that is different. It is best to not give a fuck and let Blizzard design the game however they want to.
    I'm watching Noggaholic at the moment and remembering the good times in vanilla WoW when WoW was a good game.

  9. #9
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    They missed a real big trick in this game by neglecting PvP. Wrath had the most subs, in my opinion, because it had fun PvP. The tendency for them to sink time and effort into raids and dungeons when they should have focused on PvP is beyond me. When I first heard Blizzard were making World of Warcraft. I had an idea in my mind of what this might involve, Wintergrasp is the closest they have come to hitting that ideal.

    Full on warfare is what I want, but we get these watered down battlegrounds and arenas. I have never really enjoyed arenas I only ever did them for gear as I suspect most people do.

  10. #10
    I agree with your assessment for the most part.

  11. #11
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kickbuttmario View Post
    I am trying to say that WoW losing subscribers don't matter. It is inevitable that they keep losing them. As long as they are refining each feature they have, the game in general will be better than ever.
    No argument with that. A 10-year-old MMO with an paying audience in the multi-millions this day and age is something like a miracle. Part of that is the difficulty that people have with leaving behind the investment in their character(s) but I personally think that Blizzard is okay with the idea that not everyone is going to subscribe 12-months-a-year-without-fail. Some people are in for just a few, others for more, some all the time. The game is doing fine all things considered.
    "...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Kickbuttmario View Post
    I am trying to say that WoW losing subscribers don't matter. It is inevitable that they keep losing them. As long as they are refining each feature they have, the game in general will be better than ever.
    I'm sure, if you went back in time to 2004 and showed Blizzard a graph of their subscriber numbers go up, then down over the course of a decade, they would be more than enthused and not at all surprised by the trend. It's nature, subscribers go up, subscribers go down, you can't explain that.
    You just lost The Game

  13. #13
    I agree mostly, and I made a post a while back saying some wow players exhaust the game to the point where it's not fun anymore, and then think of every reason besides that why it's the games fault, but yea if you put the games side by side in comparison. Mop would definitely come out on top. Aside from subjective biased opinions.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Kickbuttmario View Post
    I refuse to believe that the current condition the game is in, is a pure reflection of how the game is doing with its subscribers.
    Don't agree with much of the rest but this is definitely not wrong.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Stonecloak View Post
    I agree mostly, and I made a post a while back saying some wow players exhaust the game to the point where it's not fun anymore, and then think of every reason besides that why it's the games fault, but yea if you put the games side by side in comparison. Mop would definitely come out on top. Aside from subjective biased opinions.
    In my opinion, MoP was the best expansion by far in terms of the quality of the end game content. The raids were exceptional, ToT and SoO were the 2 best raids since Ulduar and ICC. PvP is probably as balanced as it is ever going to get, unfortunately at the cost of class flavour over the last few years. Hopefully WoD will continue the positive trend set by MoP, and so far based on what I've seen I have very high hopes.

    I feel a lot of people think that if WoW doesn't capture their attention 100% of the time, then the game has failed them in terms of enjoyability. You can't reasonably expect Blizzard to develop a game that completely replaces all of your entertainment and social needs, though I'm sure they are going to continue to try.
    You just lost The Game

  16. #16
    I am Murloc! crakerjack's Avatar
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    You know what got me interested in WoW? I picked up that box, gazed upon the pictures/text. It wasn't some stupid feature on the back of the box that interested me... it wasn't a spinoff of pokemon that intrigued me... I saw people working together to take down massive dragons... I saw players killing other players. In other words PvP and PvE caught my attention more than anything.

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    Quote Originally Posted by shoc View Post
    In my opinion, MoP was the best expansion by far in terms of the quality of the end game content. The raids were exceptional, ToT and SoO were the 2 best raids since Ulduar and ICC. PvP is probably as balanced as it is ever going to get, unfortunately at the cost of class flavour over the last few years. Hopefully WoD will continue the positive trend set by MoP, and so far based on what I've seen I have very high hopes.

    I feel a lot of people think that if WoW doesn't capture their attention 100% of the time, then the game has failed them in terms of enjoyability. You can't reasonably expect Blizzard to develop a game that completely replaces all of your entertainment and social needs, though I'm sure they are going to continue to try.
    It only seems more balanced because blizzard succeeded at homogenizing every class. Prior to cata, not every class had an interrupt or a silence... there was actual class diversity. Each comp is played exactly the same way now compared to TBC or Wotlk when there were various comps w/ different strategies. It's safe to say that each comp only has to force CD's and go for a CC then burst for a kill... if a comp claims to work differently, it's a lie. There's no more drain cleaves as it's useless to drain someone who has 300k mana and is constantly LoSing.
    Most likely the wisest Enhancement Shaman.

  17. #17
    Immortal FuxieDK's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by profanity79 View Post
    They missed a real big trick in this game by neglecting PvP. Wrath had the most subs, in my opinion, because it had fun PvP. The tendency for them to sink time and effort into raids and dungeons when they should have focused on PvP is beyond me. When I first heard Blizzard were making World of Warcraft. I had an idea in my mind of what this might involve, Wintergrasp is the closest they have come to hitting that ideal.

    Full on warfare is what I want, but we get these watered down battlegrounds and arenas. I have never really enjoyed arenas I only ever did them for gear as I suspect most people do.
    Neglecting PvP? Are you serious?

    PvP is the source of (virtually) ALL problems in the game:
    - FotM whiners
    - Short interrupt for all Melee makes hard casting impossible. In response casters get too much CC, which again is neglegted in PvE, because melee (in general) can't CC.
    - PvP complains ruin class mechanics (e.g. druid fear immunity/break and root-breaking, just to name two) in PvE
    - PvP became mandatory for Pve progression of legendary PvE weapon (which then appeared to be a boring cloak)
    - PvP gear (still) have an iLevel that makes it possible to cheat your way into PvE and then underperform.
    - PvP have ruined the need for "support" style classes..

    There are probably many more reasons, these are just what I could think of, in a few seconds..
    Fact (because I say so): TBC > Cata > Legion > ShaLa > MoP > DF > BfA > WoD = WotLK

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  18. #18
    I'm sure a big majority of subscriber loss in WoW is due to it being a decade old game and people just getting burned out which is fine, it happens with every game, i myself have been playing since late BC with no breaks and still enjoying the game

  19. #19
    Pandaren Monk Constraint's Avatar
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    I think it's less mystery, less to aspire to, less variety between classes.

    If I had just a few wishes granted in regards to WoW, it'd be simple.

    2 raid difficulties, not 4. AT LEAST 1 boss per tier being Mythic-exclusive, yet unlocked for all at the end of the tier. Not for "special snowflake syndrome", just to give people something unexpected and dangerous to really look forward to as a reward for great play.
    3 Dungeon difficulties, 1 being fairly simple, 1 being challenging for those who prefer 5-mans as their end-game, and 1 being challenge modes with gear scaling for vanity gear.
    Enormously increased class differentiation - less focus on perfect DPS balance, and more focus on utility/synergy, so you're still WANT 1-2 of every single class in your 20man raid. Ever played an MMO where it's actually USEFUL to play a support class? If you haven't, you're really missing out. They're fucking awesome. At the moment, every archetype feels far too similar.
    More "flavour" racial and fewer "be this class if you want to perform well" racials. I would LOVE to play a Tauren Hunter for example, but I can't, because they have awful racials, and I don't want to deliberately gimp my performance.
    More focus on "realm". Enough with the complete randomness of players you meet. No idea how this could be accomplished, maybe greater rewards when you use realm groups or something along those lines.
    Greater segregation between PvE and PvP abilities. I know, that's an unpopular choice, but I'm sick to death of one being compromised for the sake of the other.
    Banning bots. I know, it's fun to pretend to be against them and ban a few of them once every 7 years or so, but really, it's beyond a joke. Seeing the same bots in BGs, in professions etc, week after week, month after month, with many, many people reporting them, and nothing being done? Sounds about right. Oh, inb4 "They're saving them up for their "ban waves"! I swear!" Yeah, cool. They still won't get banned. Trust me, I check.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by TmrAsakura View Post
    I'm sure a big majority of subscriber loss in WoW is due to it being a decade old game and people just getting burned out which is fine, it happens with every game, i myself have been playing since late BC with no breaks and still enjoying the game
    A majority of retention losses actually come from players who don't even reach max level. That's one of the biggest reasonings towards the free 90 with WoD.
    You just lost The Game

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