Provided suggestions by OP would not only not help but would have a great impact on how much Blizzard earns on WoW and would make communities more spread than they are now (free realm transfers etc).
i hope that would teach blizz not to make another xpac such as MOP in terms of the original reasons to design such an xpac.
this entire xpac had major commercial goals :
-to be a huge sellout for the eastern market to boost subs
-to capitalize on an allready successful franchise of animated movies which feature a marial arts fighting panda similar to an allready exsisted concept made by blizz years ago in order to use that similarity of concepts and ride that popularity wave to bring new gen of players and they can never be sued for it ,
that capitalization goal was to bring them a new gen of players raised on pokemon ,kong fu panda and facebook games rather than the old gen who grew up on early 90s games (original warcraft RTS games) and watched the transformers , thundercats , fire and ice , flight of dragons animated movies and series and even playd old DND paper and pencil RP games.
anyone who doesnt see those reasons and see this xpac as just another normal continuation of wow story is deluding himself.
a class that was introduced by a race with such short legs and a beer gut that is supposed to be a martial art expert that gains its powers from the effects of brews...is a pure joke no matter how you look at it.
the very cinematic where you see those two ship wrecked orc and human put to shame by a monk with a wooden stick was supposed to be allready a red light in regards
of this entire xpac goal: a comercial eye candy for kids to come and play a god mode new class and race rather than an xpac for the loyal fans.
never blizz made such a cinematic where they shown their new class or race put to shame another exsisted race or class, not in TBC and not in WOTLK where we got the mighty DKs.
try to recall the last blizzcon cheers after they showed the 1st promo of the xpac...its was almost silence and the dev team almost begged us to try it out..
right there and then they knew what they got themself into...
That would only have sense (company PoV) if you start counting subscription time from today and go on.
The other thing to consider is if Blizzard even really wants to halt the decline. Their new MMO is possibly going to be announced next year and on sale not long after. All they need to do is keep numbers profitable until then. They'll get a bump in subs when 5.4 is released and again when the next expansion is released. As others have already said elsewhere, they've still got more subscribers now thn they did during vanilla and tbc.
If they time it right, WoW could be naturally ending just as the new MMO is released and that will inherit 5m subs at launch.
its an old game making it older wouldnt help. Tbc and wrath was cool when it was new and mysterious. What blizzard needs to do is make more new expansions inspired by western fantasy or stick to the main lore which is burning legion, titans, core races, ally vs horde.etc Everyone is looking for the magic gameplay change to get players back, but it doesnt exist. Its not about gameplay its about the lore and atmosphere of the game that draws new players in and captivates there imaginations.
Funny how many people claim so and so are "deluding themselves". I expect to see many of these rise to the top as successful business leaders since it seems they have a particularly keen eye for business.
OT: I definately think some sort of system to show appreciation to people who remain subscribed for a long while is in order, but as far as the magnitude goes and exact implementation, I'm sure Blizzard can come up with something that doesn't kill their income quite as bad as OP's suggestion. As for the rest of the suggestions, meh, too narrowminded and focused on a very particular and small group of players.
So caus my old vanilla acount is gone i cannot acces the servers?
You get stuff like this,. never going to happen.
The amount of sheer idiocy on display in this thread is hilarious and sad at the same time.
It would be nice to get something every 6 months like, say a free realm transfer if needed or class/race change?
Yet none of your reasons are really why the subs were lost. It's not delusion of the people, because if what you're really talking about is true then there should be a lot higher losses and the total number of players would consist of non-raiders who only care about pokemon and like kung fu panda. That's an overly gross generalization of the current player base, and not indicative of a realistic view on the situation at all. It's in your opinion that this is all happening, and you're simply stringing likely scenarios together to create some convoluted conspiracy theory.
There are people who have changed their opinions after actually playing the game, enjoyed the new continent and are enjoying the content provided in each new patch. If there is anything to complain about, it's the actual content itself (constant daily grind, lack of dungeons, CRZ, LFR Woes). But even then, these are not the reasons subs are being lost.
The reason subs are being lost is because WoW is becoming an old game. The market is shifting towards more and more F2P MMO's. It no longer enjoys the vast amount of growth and competition from other (unsustainable) pay-to-play MMO's, it's fighting against cheaper games with better graphics.
That's great. Vanilla WoW is probably the type of game that suits your just perfectly.
But what I'm sitting here thinking is, are the majority of WoW's consumers (even 7-8 year veterans, and yes I am one of these) prepared to go from a game where you can accomplish something in an hour, to having to invest countless hours of time to accomplish even the smallest of things in the game? We were okay with it back then because that's what it was, there were no real option. And our nostalgia remembers things as they were - it usually doesn't compare with how things are.
I was never a fan of having to spend so much freaking time on WoW all day every day back in '04 and '05. The do-more-in-less-time approach to WoW today suits me perfectly. If I were to go back to that standard, I'd just about quit after 2 hours.
I'm not dumb enough to not realize and respect that there are plenty of people who DO like that kinda game, where time commitment is key. But I just don't think that there are that many left that'd be prepared to play a game like Vanilla WoW today. Not enough to sustain a vanilla server anyway.