View Poll Results: How Healthy is WoW's Future?

Voters
597. This poll is closed
  • WoW's Future Has Never Looked Better.

    14 2.35%
  • WoW Will Be Fine. Past it's peak, but good things are coming.

    110 18.43%
  • WoW's in trouble. Things need to change.

    315 52.76%
  • Maintenance Mode Isn't Far Off.

    158 26.47%
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  1. #281
    Quote Originally Posted by Airlick View Post
    WoW will never go F2P, since Blizzard would need to start a ton of new servers to accomodate the initial surge of F2Ps. And then those F2Ps would quit, and probably sooner than later, without dropping enough money for the investment to pay off. Tokens are as far as they will ever go. I sincerely doubt Blizzard even cares about getting new players, they are fine milking the existing playerbase while cutting costs. And at the moment the game stops being profitable, they will shut it down rather than go F2P.
    That is absolutely right, there is a large number of people who are so invested in the game (in time and money) that walking away is a really difficult option. I think though that this is the first time that i have seen so many gone for a long time. New World is pretty damn good and i think that will be around for quite a while as Amazon games will want it to be successful.

    Other new games in the pipeline but until the core "never going to leave till i die" group eventually leave the game WoW will make enough money to keep going. Expect more content droughts though.

  2. #282
    classic and tbc servers are alright

  3. #283
    Quote Originally Posted by Sialina View Post
    This 100% I wouldn't go as far as calling people braindead, but some people think the outrage is about emotes very few use, it's not, it's about removing things in the past showing where the future is headed. With things like innuendo, female sexuality, adult and childish humor and historical terms like consorts being taken out, it narrows the path the story can take.
    It's such a strange thing to watch as well, most people would agree with the following

    No violence possible makes for a boring story, too much violence makes for a boring story

    No blood makes for boring visuals, buckets of blood spraying everywhere makes for excessive visuals.

    No humor makes a story very bleak, and tension is never relieved, a joke every 5 seconds makes the story hard to take seriously

    Why is it so hard to accept that no sexy outfits, occasional adult jokes/paintings and a plot where it's possible for a female to be interested in a male (and possibly use attractiveness to try to get his attention) makes for a more bland story? Noone is asking for NPCs doing the horizontal tango all over the place, and noone wants that, but we also don't want to be sent to kindergarten when we go to the virtual world of Azeroth.

    As with everything, the golden ratio is somewhere closer to the middle, not at either extreme.
    You certainly don't need a bit of everything to have a good story. There are plenty of great stories out there with absolutely no violence. Plenty of great games with no innuendo or emphasis on sexuality. These things aren't necessary, but they're useful when they serve a purpose.

    The real issue here is just that people don't like having things taken away from them. If these emotes, paintings, jokes, etc had never existed in the game to begin with there would have been no real impact to the past 17 years of WoW. The gameplay would have been the same, the story would have been the same. Nothing of relevance would have changed.

  4. #284
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Yeah, let's just disregard the fact that some of those games had serious flaws themselves or launched during what can be considered the prime of WoW, at least subscriber wise.

    Time's have changed, i'm not saying New World will surpass WoW or anything, but if you think WoW will now just brush aside any competition like it did during its prime, it's just damn ignorant.
    NW got serious flaws and if anything, its a very different game than wow. Meaning, you can easily play both and get two different experiences. Nevertheless, the judgement of how NW will be should be somewhat put on hold.

    I vividly remember the days of GW2, SWTOR, Rift & Wildstar. Back then people were even more confident that wow now was dead and buried. The hype was real, especially for SWTOR & GW2. Lots of people played it alot the first months. Then it died off and wow returned to the front. Theres a decent chance this will happen again, cause even though theres good things with NW - its not enough, atleast not yet. Future content for NW will be critical. If Amazon does future content right, they have something. if not, its over.

  5. #285
    Quote Originally Posted by Adamas102 View Post
    You certainly don't need a bit of everything to have a good story. There are plenty of great stories out there with absolutely no violence. Plenty of great games with no innuendo or emphasis on sexuality. These things aren't necessary, but they're useful when they serve a purpose.

    The real issue here is just that people don't like having things taken away from them. If these emotes, paintings, jokes, etc had never existed in the game to begin with there would have been no real impact to the past 17 years of WoW. The gameplay would have been the same, the story would have been the same. Nothing of relevance would have changed.
    I disagree, with every option you take away, writing an interesting story or making a great game gets progressively harder, for blizzard the challenge is even greater because of the tone they've kept in the game previously, with loads of "rule of cool" some crude humor, a little dash of sexy, a big heap of violence and most mature topics being open to exploration with a lighter tone.

    It is certainly possible to write a great story that is also very clean, look at lord of the rings for example, but that was the life work of Tolkien, a great author. Now compare that to the fart breathers blizzard employs for their story.

  6. #286
    Quote Originally Posted by Bennett View Post
    I have yet to see anyone give a single good argument for still supporting Blizzard other than "I enjoy X game" - that is not an argument.
    Sure, I'll give it a shot.

    If you can selectively scorn and ignore certain arguments that don't necessarily have to try and climb or shake your pedestal in order to be personally justified, like "I support X because I enjoy X", then can I selectively scorn and ignore certain abusers and scummy people within Blizzard, and say that my support is not going toward those certain scummy people, but to everyone/everything else at Blizzard that goes into making the game I enjoy instead?

  7. #287
    Hire clowns and soon you'll find yourself managing a circus.

  8. #288
    Quote Originally Posted by crusadernero View Post
    NW got serious flaws and if anything, its a very different game than wow. Meaning, you can easily play both and get two different experiences.
    Not sure if that is the deciding factor, time is after all also a massive factor and playing two MMO's at the same time is difficult, especially when new content in both sometimes *happens* release within a small timeframe.
    Quote Originally Posted by crusadernero View Post
    I vividly remember the days of GW2, SWTOR, Rift & Wildstar. Back then people were even more confident that wow now was dead and buried. The hype was real, especially for SWTOR & GW2.
    And i also recall that during this time, WoW had over 10M subs, Blizzard was considered a titan of the industry with next to no controversy surrounding them.

    I'm going to take a wild guess and say that current subs, especially when we only talk about the "Retail audience", is far, far away from that.
    That is the crucial difference, back then WoW was in its prime and those new games had to win over the masses from WoW, WoW is certainly no longer its prime and the hype surrounding FF14 has certainly shown that people are willing to try out new games.

    Which by the way, will also launch another expansion this year and Blizzard only has jack and shit to answer - they could throw out T6 in TBCC in december but that's really pushing it.
    Last edited by Kralljin; 2021-10-06 at 11:21 AM.

  9. #289
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Not sure if that is the deciding factor, time is after all also a massive factor and playing two MMO's at the same time is difficult, especially when new content in both sometimes *happens* release within a small timeframe.

    And i also recall that during this time, WoW had over 10M subs, Blizzard was considered a titan of the industry with next to no controversy surrounding them.

    I'm going to take a wild guess and say that current subs, especially when we only talk about the "Retail audience", is far, far away from that.
    That is the crucial difference, back then WoW was in its prime and those new games had to win over the masses from WoW, WoW is certainly no longer its prime and the hype surrounding FF14 has certainly shown that people are willing to try out new games.

    Which by the way, will also launch another expansion this year and Blizzard only has jack and shit to answer - they could throw out T6 in TBCC in december but that's really pushing it.
    True, wow & Blizzard is not what it was back then. Thats probably a factor to consider. I see no issues playing several MMORPGs over time. wow retail is a 1-3 month commitment at most, unless you really want to push high content. The sub fee also makes you think twice if you are going to play or not. Im not playing wow now, so no sub. Wont sub until 10.0. Meanwhile I have other MMORPGs to play, but I wont abandon wow totally.

    That said - MMORPGs used to heavily rely on high sub numbers for revenue. The more subs = more money. These days thats not really required. wow is triple dipping with box price, sub + store. Most mmos dont have subs, but atleast a store.

    This will be the case for any new MMORPG. Theres no need for really high sub numbers or insane box sales, the store will bring in the constant revenue. As such, we the player suffers. Blizzard probably realised they dont have to deliver kickass content every year, but not dogshit either.

    I do wonder how vanilla wow would have been launched if they did so in 2021. Would it be as big? Would it have store features from launch? Would boosts/xp gain be a thing to sell not long after release?

  10. #290
    Quote Originally Posted by Airlick View Post
    WoW will never go F2P, since Blizzard would need to start a ton of new servers to accomodate the initial surge of F2Ps. And then those F2Ps would quit, and probably sooner than later, without dropping enough money for the investment to pay off. Tokens are as far as they will ever go. I sincerely doubt Blizzard even cares about getting new players, they are fine milking the existing playerbase while cutting costs. And at the moment the game stops being profitable, they will shut it down rather than go F2P.
    I disagree there would be a surge of new players to wow if it was free. Maybe a couple of years during legion or bfa launch that would be the case but nowdays the people that loved the game now tottaly hate it (I AM INCLUDING MYSELF IN THIS GROUP) and pretty much give the game and the company bad PR in every avenue.

    I tottaly despise Activision Blizzard to the point I had all collectors of the blizzard games and just deleted all games/apps from my outlets. I strongly encourage all my friends not to play any recent blizzard games to fuck their MAU's (maybe that will change anything I dunno... talking with those idiots in the forums clearly didnt work for years) making the only sole exception being Starcraft 2 wich has a place in my heart and I think its the absolute last masterpiece that came out from that hellhole of a studio (and probably the last since that team resigned activision blizzard when the starcraft FPS was canceled and they were pushed into the Overwatch 2 garbage fire).

    Anyway I am a salty ex-costumer and I am tottaly honest about it.

    I think the recent changes, altough most people don't care, clearly show what the target audience will be in the future. The problem here is ... thats not the target audience of the game's playerbase. Most of us are way into their mid 20's late 30's (some even older) and they are painting the game to be PEGI-12. Have you guys played a recent RPG? I just finished Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous and that game is a pearl in terms of fantasy and adult themes. It has no sex scenes but the characthers backgrounds are great and well built you love characters or despise them, they have their own agendas and motives and they are multi layered. In wow most characters are just purely one dimensional bricks with no charisma and no personality. With this purge it clearly indicates they will be even more awfull and simplistic, a character must have flaws so one can relate to them if they are the epitome of perfection no one can possibly relate (as in Captain Marvel). It pretty much ruins any imersion one might have and removes all empathy in understanding the underlying reasons of said character. I think this is the game's downfall tbh. The lore is god awfull (one might even say it was always awfull) and the direction in my honest opinion is to the bottom.

    Enough rant. Like I said in another post. I just lurk these forums for a laugh.

  11. #291
    The Undying Lochton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bennett View Post
    Of course the idea of only supporting companies that never do wrong is laughably naive - and I wouldn't pretend I do. Ultimately we have to consume - everyone knows oil companies are bad but at the end of the day we need to heat our house. Blizzard is different - you don't *need* to play wow

    I wouldn't expect someone to give up essentials in the name of principles - but wow is not essential

    - - - Updated - - -

    I have yet to see anyone give a single good argument for still supporting Blizzard other than "I enjoy X game" - that is not an argument.
    Just like a ton of other things from horrible companies are, among them, oil. But now we are on a forum about games and making arguments about the future of a game. Alas, that is a luxury of humankind, and a lot of the luxury companies have skeletons in their closets, and a lot of essential ones too.
    FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..

  12. #292
    Merely a Setback Teriz's Avatar
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    WoW will be fine. Once the new expansion is announced and the hype train starts rolling, the majority of this will be brushed aside and forgotten (until the next lull comes around).

  13. #293
    Quote Originally Posted by Menog View Post
    I think the recent changes, altough most people don't care, clearly show what the target audience will be in the future. The problem here is ... thats not the target audience of the game's playerbase. Most of us are way into their mid 20's late 30's (some even older) and they are painting the game to be PEGI-12.
    This is just blatantly untrue though. They're not removing all the adult content, just the really shitty hamfisted crap. Like look at some of the flirts they removed, one of them was basically "Nice hands, oh and btw MY VAGINA IS LUBRICATED, I REPEAT, MY VAGINA IS LUBRICATED"


    I think removing garbage like this is a good step, because it was never part of what was good about WoW in the first place.
    Quote Originally Posted by Addiena
    Whats the saying .. You have two brain cells and they are both fighting for third place !

  14. #294
    Quote Originally Posted by Dacia Ultan View Post
    The big issue is the ethics scandal.
    The game was in big trouble long before the scandal broke.
    "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
    "The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
    "Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"

  15. #295
    Quote Originally Posted by Stickiler View Post
    This is just blatantly untrue though. They're not removing all the adult content, just the really shitty hamfisted crap. Like look at some of the flirts they removed, one of them was basically "Nice hands, oh and btw MY VAGINA IS LUBRICATED, I REPEAT, MY VAGINA IS LUBRICATED"


    I think removing garbage like this is a good step, because it was never part of what was good about WoW in the first place.
    If it wasn't controversial why remove? Just so they could virtue signaling the rest of the weirdos on fucking twitter? Please name one multi layered charachter introduced in the game since bfa. Name a love story introduced in the game aside the Stag and Unicorn Gay Ardenweld love story introduced once again to virtue signaling.

    Its pathetic that the developers take this amount of effort to push their own agenda (wich I don't even care tbh) but refrain to give sexuality to a woman because it might offend some idiot. The idea here is that if someone criticized the stag and unicorn they would be called haters or biggots or whatever and if they call out for more sexuality on female characters or (god forbids) if a male character would court a female character that would be unacceptable! Twitter would go in a spiral of hatred calling out for patriarchy or misogynist/rape culture or some far fetch insane shit. To me as an adult european man I just can't understand how insane everything went from a moment to the other. I'm all for inclusivity but not when it is not detrimental. It must be both ways. You can't go all in LGBTQ and tottaly ignore the fact that the vast majority of your target audience are not inserted in that category and would also enjoy to read about a love story they could relate with.

    I'm sure I will be criticized for this topic but I don't really care. It's my point of view.

    This is why I think Blizzard will never be able to do a decent story again. They are cornered and will never recover. Their stories are doomed because there will always be that someone that at first sight of something of a sexual nature from a female character ( UNLESS ITS GAY ) will come out and recall the cube crawler age and stuff like that. It's like the saying goes “If you try to please everyone, you'll end up pleasing no one.”

  16. #296
    Quote Originally Posted by Echocho View Post
    Yeah when I think back I realize that the game was a lot more relaxed and enjoyable before they added mythic raids and dungeons.

    I think that's one of the reasons refugees are sticking with FFXIV. They kinda have their version of mythic raiding but it's only for weapon transmog so it really doesn't affect anyone. It's completely optional since there's no player power.
    And of course you have the badge system where every single player have access to the best gear in the game (allbeit slower than raiders) simply from running daily heroics and LFR equivalent content. Just put in the time and you'll get your reward.
    Well put!!! Nailed it!

    Unfortunately i'm sure i don't express myself so well as peeps come down on my posts about how i LOATH M+, well not entirely, i've said keep it, what i loath is it's such a focal point of wow to where they have even now threw a time limit on Torg, which again 100% BS and SCREAMS we have no idea what to do, the creative talent has left the building.

    It's really about that i'm forced to do M+ to Raid, HUH??? WTF??? I love wow raiding which i've only recently discovered in SL, and yeah M+ is fun for a bit but to be forced to do it so i can do what i love in the game is 100% BS to the n'th degree.

    I solo'd wow up until SL and yep it used to be about the journey, relax, enjoy the content, and you never felt like it was what wow was all about as they cared for the mmorpg players, where now they cater/focus all their efforts on M+, and Raids, zones are becoming embarrassingly tiny, barely any quests, cause it's all about the e sport.

    It's to me also why FFXIV is a home run for all the wow players tired of this esport (nonsense) direction.

    Me personally New World is a massive hit to me, and that's straight out of the box, solid, stable, and getting good with your weps is a thing, combat is fun af, i mean when that hits you you be like omg this game is so home.

    Harvesting, Crafting, Exploring, Dungeons, the ever changing map, it's a laundry list, you want the top 10 ten best things or the whole list of best things situation, your server is your home not cross realm whatever bs, no level scaling thank the developer who knows how to make a proper mmorpg, and it's on par graphic wise with single player games ffs.

    The beauty of it all is if you want to just solo 100% you can it's so f'ing chill, some nights long day and i 100% solo and quest, you play how you want, you want to jump in and help with battles, go for it, you don't, don't, you can totally be in your own bubble as it is 100% optional, however it's quite fun so peeps should try it at the min, you can play how you want bottom line, not for example how Greedy af Blizz wants you to play. I know i'm missing so many plus's, like real travel, no dive bomb objective fly to next target, dive bomb that, such bs, you need to work your way in, be strategic, careful, smart, situation can change on a dime, it's an mmorpg through and through.
    looking out of my lonely room day after day

  17. #297
    Quote Originally Posted by Menog View Post
    I disagree there would be a surge of new players to wow if it was free. Maybe a couple of years during legion or bfa launch that would be the case but nowdays the people that loved the game now tottaly hate it (I AM INCLUDING MYSELF IN THIS GROUP) and pretty much give the game and the company bad PR in every avenue.
    Not everyone knows or is even concerned about the bad PR Blizzard gets. I think you're underestimating how many people never tried WoW because it's too expensive. It's not expensive if you're living in the West, but take most countries that don't use dollar or euro and you basically have to multiply the sub/xpac costs by 5-10. That's where most of F2P players would come from, it's what happened with every game gone-F2P and the surge could potentially be much bigger in WoW's case. I imagine most Westerners who'd come to check out WoW if it went F2P would be former players. But then most people of both groups would quit the game soon afterwards because it's not what they hoped for/remembered.
    Quote Originally Posted by Maxos View Post
    When you play the game of MMOs, you win or you go f2p.

  18. #298
    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    The game was in big trouble long before the scandal broke.
    True but the scandal seems to of peeled away the layer of continuous defending the game got from people who primarily seem to use it as a chat room.

    Public perception is potent for games that require a constant playerbase.

  19. #299
    Quote Originally Posted by Airlick View Post
    Not everyone knows or is even concerned about the bad PR Blizzard gets. I think you're underestimating how many people never tried WoW because it's too expensive. It's not expensive if you're living in the West, but take most countries that don't use dollar or euro and you basically have to multiply the sub/xpac costs by 5-10. That's where most of F2P players would come from, it's what happened with every game gone-F2P and the surge could potentially be much bigger in WoW's case. I imagine most Westerners who'd come to check out WoW if it went F2P would be former players. But then most people of both groups would quit the game soon afterwards because it's not what they hoped for/remembered.
    humm, okay you are right. I agree with your explanation. I wasn't taking into account (I wasn't even thinking about that) the vast majority of the 3rd world countries where 12 euros is almost the monthly budget. And wow would actually be a pretty decent free to play game if that would ever happen.

  20. #300
    If the same people who made BFA are making the next expansion, WOW is in trouble.

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