WoW Loses 600k Subscribers, Diablo 3 Beta Q3 2011, Arena Passe, Blue Posts

[Sumatriptan]

If they stopped fucking around with buffing classes and giving them fotm for few months and actually fixing the game they would have some subscribers left

This.

It's not hard to balance the game.

[Deleted]

I still lurk the forms like many WOW gamers who no longer play. However, the difference is blizzard just sent me a free 7 day pass to come back and I still have no interest given the content that was just released.

To me that's just not a good sign for WOW. A game I had so much time invested in over 6+ years, was recently given a free 7 day pass and I see no reason to come back. Even for free.

Guess I really am done with WOW.

Exactly the same for me. Reading about the latest retarded changes they made to the game made me not even wanting to use the free 7 days.

[Jerakal]

Well what do they expect, everyone's beaten the current content, they'll get like half those players back after the next patch. At least until they clear those hurdles.

[Noblia]

Wrong, it is a big deal.

Shareholders only want to see profits go up. Doesn't matter if they still have blah blah subs. A loss is a loss and it's noted.

Sorry, but if I was a major shareholder and you came at me with that speech as to why I shouldn't
consider moving my money elsewhere, I would consider you in panic mode.

I agree with your statement in terms of shareholders. When I hear that blizz has lost 400k subs 5 months after a BRAND new expansion... That makes me want to do a JIm Kramer and SELL SELL SELL... LoL... If I was a developer I would be taking this pretty hard.

[nnelson54]

Keep in mind ZA and ZG are RECYCLED !!!! TOTAL MONEY RIPOFF

How much did you pay for 4.1? Mine was free.

[daburton]

How much did you pay for 4.1? Mine was free.

Wow. Mine cost me $15.00 month. I want your payment plan.

[Neganova]

People are complaining that WoW is dying, but 11.4 million people is still a lot of people.

[Deleted]

Wow. Mine cost me $15.00 month. I want your payment plan.

Woah! You are paying for patches? Because mine money going to let me raiding BWD and BoT

[daburton]

Woah! You are paying for patches? Because mine money going to let me raiding BWD and BoT

Wow and I thought I had it bad. I got that content when I shelled out the $40 bucks for the xpac.

[Duster505]

People are complaining that WoW is dying, but 11.4 million people is still a lot of people.

I dont think ppl are saying WOW is dying. They are pointing out there are real issues and when you read whats BLizz is actually saying right now.. they really have a reason to be very conserned.

600.000 subs is alot. Its a Huuuge amount considering that it is not lowering the maintainance cost of the game at all. It is gonna hit the design of the game directly.

I want to remind everyone that thinks 600.000 subs is just a small amount... that one of the greatest UNIQE design gaming project of all times - Eve online has been designed - maintained and is releasing free expansions for years with just 300.000 subs. See .... Blizzard just lost twice that amount of innovative design money to REALLY keep WOW going forward. They ignored it ... and they are paying the full price.

There is no wonder that we are seeing huge amount of previews of 4.2 and stuff coming from blues atm. And neither is it strange we are seeing another store mount ... They are trying their best to create a hype.... But its to late now. More and more ppl will unsub over the summer - Firelands will probably launch August - and Then we are in for the big game releases later this year. PPL will think twice before paying sub for playing 4-5 days a week for 3-4 hours per night considering that other time consuming games are launching as well.

Firelands will not save WOW.... It is cheap in terms of raid content. It has 7 bosses that need to be stretched out for probably 6-7 months for big % of the playerbase and thats simply not enough. Blizzard has lost alot of ppl for diffrent reasons during Cata - and the fact is that many of them will be gone for good in this expansion. Game has grown to stagnant over the past 2 years and thats not acceptable considering the huge playerbase. And 600.000 is a huge number... Even in a game played by millions.

[warlocked]

First there were forum posts about people who were quitting.

Now, there will be forum posts about statistics showing people who were quitting.

And you know there will be forum posts about those forum posts showing statistics about people who were quitting, proving/disproving them and such.

Oh, the humanity.

anyone else praying that the staff wont stay as is as a legendary. it would be flat out disappointing to find that it has no special ability outside of vanity

[Deleted]

maybe they should stop rehashing old content because it obviously didnt appeal to a lot of people

[Deleted]

Patch 3.0.2 - 10/2008
Patch 3.1 - 04/2009 (6 months; 1 raid with 13 bosses)
Patch 3.2 - 08/2009 (4 months; 1 raid with 5 bosses, 1 dungeon with 3 bosses)
Patch 3.3 - 12/2009 (4 months; 1 raid with 12 bosses, 3 dungeons with 8 bosses)
Patch 3.3.5 - 06/2010 (6 months; 1 raid with 1 boss, 3 mini-bosses)
Patch 4.0.1 - 10/2010 (4 months, 10 months if you don't count Ruby Sanctum fake content-patch)
Patch 4.1 - 05/2011 /7 months, 2 dungeons)

Faster content? I call shenanigans! Oh, and for those not aware WoW-3.0.2 had more content available (raids/dungeons) than WoW-4.0.1. In fact, this revamp'd dungeons we got in 4.1 are just to bring the content up to WoTLK launch levels... 7 months after. You understand why people are leaving now?

Edit: Typo on a date.

[Duster505]

I think that's stretching it, a tad. It's not unheard of (read: it's common) for businesses to "rebrand" or "re-image" themselves. I see WoW as having gone through several of these periods.

Anyway.

Two things that came up in this thread resonated with me. The first was a comment about hardmodes. I think (and this is just my thought, I have no factual basis to back up my suspicion) that the majority of players are disappointed in hardmodes or have little drive to complete them. In Ulduar (when they were introduced) the heroic modes were inventive and often required special activation. The response was good. You didn't have to kill Yogg Saron to take on XT's heroic mode. In Icecrown they got substantially lazier and made heroic modes toggle-able by a player who had killed the Lich King. Kinda lame, considering that plenty of guilds that were stuck on the Lich King for a while could easily have taken on heroic Marrowgar/etc for farming better gear. But something of value was lost--variety.

Yes, variety. Now, instead of new items from heroic modes, we get the same loot tables, just with slightly better stats. Boring. On that note, where are the interesting proc-based weapons like Nibelung that devs said they wanted to include more of, going forward? Sure, we got Meteor Shard (heroic 346 dagger) but it's inferior to the other daggers at that level and breaks CC.


The other point that was briefly brought up and I have harped upon time and time again in various threads is the status of PvP and PvE in WoW. The developers try to please both PvPers and PvEers while still maintaining that they are the "same game" (Spoiler alert: THEY'RE NOT AND NEVER HAVE BEEN) when really all the PvPers and PvEers want, at the core of their requests, is for the two game styles to be balanced separately from one-another. Sure, they've finally started caving (with cc, warrior change, etc) but I feel like it's going to come too late when they finally bite the bullet (if ever) and just balance them separately. PvP and PvE are not the same game in WoW. They never have been. Even in PvP, arenas vs bgs vs "world pvp" are all three distinct types of play that require different things. To say otherwise is either naive or convenient (for lack of development resources).


Those are the two issues I believe are core in current game discontent. Raid difficulty (and creativity), and game balance. I don't think it has to do with "recycled" or "revamped" content--because let's face it, none of us liked leveling alts through 1-60 pre cata. At least now it's fast and, sometimes, fun.

Where I do agree with Nogard is in the observation that WoW lacks consistency in its development.

I think most ppl that follow the buisness model of WOW know why they are intrested in adding a proc based fluffy stuff ingame. It doesn't add stats and it can be bought in Store... Sound like perfect fluff to sell....

I do agree with you on hard modes. ATM BLizzard is forcing ppl to do heroic raiding. Big % of players dont like hard modes at all. Even if they add extra itemlvl for it. Its just not intresting. So what can Blizzard learn from it ? Alot - but are they ? I doubt it .. they seem to think they have stumbled upon the greatest idea to make raiding content (acording to themselfs) when all the numbers point to exactly the oposite. I doubt they will be changing this model at all... They might even take it further and add 3rd lvl to it rather than go back. That is scary tho...

Your points about PVP and PVE are correct. The game has always been affected by the two sides. It will always be like that. But right now BLizzard is creating another very simulare fight.... Fight between the Heroic raiders ... and the normal raiders. Just like with PVP and PVE - this fight can not be won with current design phylosophy. 1% of loudmouths will continue to shout that the content is to easy... and most normal players will just quit quetly...

Blizzard would like us to think that those 1-2% of the player base that have finished heroic raiding are those that have unsubed for now. But we know its not those ppl that have left... the are very much content with the game as it is... they are unique and are probably raiding with their alts.

Those that actually have left were not happy with the game in its current state. Nothing coming in the next 3-8 months is really gonna change to make those ppl more content. 7 bosses tuned for those done with heroic raiding ? Nah.. normal players will not come back for that. Weeks of daily quests worth 1 -2 purples (specially for tanks it seems)? Nope they will not be back for that.

Blizzard just got it horribly wrong. But it didn't happen in last 2-4 months.... It happened 2-3 years ago when BLizzard desided to starve WOW of any real innovation in terms of design - and moved it over to TITAN.

PPL know now what is in store for WOW. There really is no point spending next 2-3 years in this game doing the same things in a stagnant game. And players are realising it now - and thankfully - have desided to let the wallet do the talking.

Question is.. who will be buying the orginal game + the 3 expansions and paying a sub ... knowing the game is not really in full development any more ? Noone really... We are talking about a Hello Kitty project right now and the game could go downhill really really fast. Going from the best!! - to the most lame thing ever in matter of few months.

Firelands will not change that...

[Destruktion]

On the contrary, people who play the game every day for 6 years know a hell of a lot more about playing the game than the developers. The developers are good at designing a game and have a reasonable grasp of playing but compared with the sheer amount of the combined experience in playing the game by the massive player base, they know very little.

The designers know their game much better than you do. They also play it much more often than you do.

[Duster505]

The designers know their game much better than you do. They also play it much more often than you do.

I think most can see that the designers are not really in touch with their playerbase atm. Even if they know their game and play it more often does not mean they know anything what the playerbase is asking for. Thats the problem atm.

But maybe .. they are just totally IGNORING the playerbase ?

For example - its very intresting to see HUGE amount of time and effort beeing spent on one item that less than 0.5% of the playerbase will ever get (legendery staff). Yes.. these are the same devs that said to us few weeks ago that adding more custimisation like dye system and more barbershop features were not really worth the design time and money.... And these are also the same devs that removed class specific quests from the game on the bases it was not effective design for the whole playerbase. Yes.. really ...

Now those same devs are catering to smallest possible playerbase with specific quests and multiple item looks. This is ofc very intresting considering that 5% of the playerbase left Cata in first 4 months - and they are catering to 0.5 % with this item - ignoring those 99.5% that are asking for real custimasation beeing added to the game.

[dulci5]

404.
Item level not found.

..ba dum chee!

[scandore8472]

Well when you cater your content to the top 10% of the player base, what would you expect. Like has been said before, you could pug most of the content in LK, and get alteast halfway before the pug fell apart.

The elitists bitched, and bitched, and bitched about how easy LK content was, and blizzard was catering too much to the casuals. A lot of the cata raids require 99% perfection. You stand in the fire, you get 1 shotted, there is no fudge factor anymore. When your entire raid is suffering because of 1 bad player, that's a design problem. Add in the healing nerf, and it just amplifies this problem because you just can't afford to throw a flash heal on that person to give them an extra second to move.

The 'reason' for the healing changes, is because you constantly had to flah heal the tank, or the tank would die and they felt that was a bad design. Also they felt healers needed to use more spells. But honestly, I used all my spells during LK, so my healing style didn't change much. Well, the healing design really didn't change that much, the damage just got shifted to the raid instead of the tank. Atleast the tanks were taking predictable damage, but now, it's random raid members are taking unpredictable damage.

I'm not for handing out easy epics, or carrying baddies, but having that fudge factor, did allow for more fun overall.

[Yondame]

I'm proud to of been 1 of the subscribers who recently has left WoW. That being said, I'm also someone who had been playing since closed beta. The game has changed over the years, but unfortunately the game development team members have as well. Will WoW die? Doubtful. WoW could fall down to 400k subscribers.. and thats the number the estimated for "success" back when it released. So no, WoW will never die.

But WoW did die in my heart. Yeah I still like it, but its not the awesome thing to write home to mom about, much less to anyone else. The game has begun to lack over the years for me personally. Its roller coaster of easy vs hard content and debates. WOLK honestly was the turning point for me. Everyone talks about ho LK was easy... if thats your only complaint then you have serious problems.

LK lacked in the epicness that I wanted from killing one of the most famous and well known characters. But LK was a step up from the rest of the xpac. Going into Naxx in WOLK in crap gear and being able to full clear in the first week... thats just one of the many things that well... sucked.

The game also now quickly caters to people. Like take for instance the guild exp right now.... it's only been screwed with more then anything else lately. Up and down.. up and down. Now its just down for guild exp. What happened to hard work gets rewards? Sure for me.. cause my guild sucked (ONE on firetree) at cooperation. It was like a daily job. 120 million guild exp for me.. while the closest person had 60 million. Really was discouraging. But again.. rewarded for the work you put in.. IE: insane title. Though eventually with guild exp you would get the rewards.

Now its becoming to easy for that. People complain "tired of repeated" dailies. I miss the days when no dailies existed. But call me old fashioned. I just don't like giving free rides to people who put in little to no effort. I guess thats why WoW currency i so easy to get anymore..

Anyways... rambling. Waiting for D3, titan MMO, SWTOR, or even the next SC Expac. Many other half way decent, time consuming games out there. But when it comes to wow.. I just don't feel it anymore. The fire for it is gone. That and the customer service when you have an issue... well its pretty bad. That and when they do listen to forums or the consumer base.. its the less then 80 IQ they listen to.. not the actual player for has/had a passion for this game.

[timmyotoole]

RIFT launches in March. Everyone agrees it will bleed some subscribers from WoW.

March subscriber numbers are released. They show a small decrease in subscriptions. People blame this on everything from “Not like enough like Vanilla” to “Too much like Vanilla” to “The ‘it’ is gone”.

The stupid, it burns.