for some people its hard to understand that they are not the center of universe and that people actualy can have different opinion than theirs...
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true, and most of them (roughly some 88milion) before pandaria... thats right from numbers we ACTUALY KNOW and not from your feelings and gueswork, we know that at some point in pandaria (or late cata?) 100m people tried wow but it never had more than 12.5m active players, so in vanila-pandaria period 88(+/-) milion people left... but the game was still relativel new at the time and market was not yet saturated so people were coming in faster than leaving, and as its normal for every game or product in general, after peak that changed, bcs the amount of possible new players just droped
When people talk about how players have quit WoW, they always rush to the assumption it's a confirmation the game has gotten objectively worse. Another explanation might be that people who played this game 10-15 years ago didn't plan on signing up for over a decade of playing the same game.
The decline in WoW started pretty close to the same time they destroyed the in-game communities. That is indisputable. Therefore, it makes sense Blizzard should have worked to bring back the in-game community. They did not. Instead, Blizzard has LITERALLY tried everything else. They added minigames. They added solo features like mission tables and garrisons. They added esports. They added timed dungeons. They tried EVERYTHING. And still subs fell.
At THIS point, its pretty damn obvious that the SOLUTION is the ONE thing they have NOT tried, which is bringing back social.
Sheesh.
How many more times must they try solo content, minigames, timed features before YOU think they should give social a SHOT??????????
TO FIX WOW:1. smaller server sizes & server-only LFG awarding satchels, so elite players help others. 2. "helper builds" with loom powers - talent trees so elite players cast buffs on low level players XP gain, HP/mana, regen, damage, etc. 3. "helper ilvl" scoring how much you help others. 4. observer games like in SC to watch/chat (like twitch but with MORE DETAILS & inside the wow UI) 5. guild leagues to compete with rival guilds for progression (with observer mode).6. jackpot world mobs.
Wrong. It actually started well before that. WotLK had the peak of concurrent player numbers, but that means it started slowing down well before that, since the peak is simply the point where losses overtake gains. It most likely started somewhere in BC.
It's unlikely communities had anything to do with it, and most definitely not indisputable.
For that matter, most of the supposed community-destroying features were reactions to declines in communities, which would necessarily have to come first then.
It's far more likely you got to invested in your own PoV and failed to properly consider the possibility that you're the one that's wrong.
You have no basis for your assumption other than your own feelings. I found choosing one for most of my alts was a rather tough decision since in testing I only paied attention to the Paladin stuffs, I went into other classes blind and found myself really wanting 2-3 of them. So for me I find the choice meaningful.
As a raider, I would constantly swap talents in trash and bosses to meet needs so I certainly would have swapped out conduits. But again, that really removes any meaningful decisiinnsince you are just checking the encounter and swapping to counter it. That, by definition, is not a choice, it's an obligation.
Having all option enabled is not the same as using them all the same time. Dont go through slippery slope.
You can have 100 abilities unlocked and 5 slots only for those abilities. You can swap them anytime you are in rest area. Same as talents. You still need to pick.
Also, dont be silly, there is not even an ounce of meaningfull choice. You either pick right or wrong. You cant win against math.
OP being focused on the subjectivity of meaningful forgets that the choice has been made meaningful by their creators.
He might not like it, he might think it's stupid, but it's a choice you have to make in order to play the game, and one you have to think about if you want to optimize your way of playing the game. That's where meaningful comes.
You may not like the restriction, but it's there. It's like complaining that you can't pull the padge in a public park, and to defend your point you go "but WHAT IS PUBLIC DECENCY, really?"
That is an issue in the gaming community - most people claim that X game is shit because it doesn't cater to every single one of their whims. And when the developers explain the reasoning behind a decision the armchair dev goes "that's trash, you're trash devs"... So, in the end, it's just the entitlement and the misdirected anger that makes OP think he can just barge in and question subjectivity when, in reality, that shouldn't even be questioned, as those are the set of rules of the game came with.
An essential part of game design is deciding what will and won't be meaningful for players. Complaining about this doesn't change that and is pointless. It is, always has been, and always will be their call, no matter the game or publisher.
"...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."
This is why WoW will NEVER be successful.Blizzard trying to dictate what is "meaningful".