Lots of f2p games now around.
Lots of f2p games now around.
For me what WoW is missing is what MOBA games offer. Quick join as challenging as you can handle content.
My part in this story has been decided. And I will play it well.
This is one of my problems with the current dev teams attitude. Doing the same content on progressively more difficult levels is a very niche ´progression´ model. While some players like it, for most players it is just the same content. When Garrosh dies on Flex, that was enough for me... and there are a ton of players who say the same thing about LFR.
While Naxx 1.0 was probably one extreme where content was made for very few players.. now we are at the other extreme where every piece of content that gets made has to have 15 different ways to do it.
The WoW original story line finish at Wotlk expation. This days they only create stories for add new expations and dungeons.
1) Subscription. There are a ton of MMOs that can be played without a monthly subscription. In order to justify a monthly a game has to be very special and wonderful. Fewer people see WoW as special and wonderful, hence fewer are willing to pay a $180 a year subscription.
2) More of the same. . For 8 years or so each expansion has brought a few new levels, a new race or class or both, a new big boss, a few new zones, more dungeons and raids not much different than the last. I just unsubscribed and won't be back unless the next expansion really brings something new and exciting to the game.
Mainly 2 things:
1) The game won't attract many new players, they may get immediatly turned off by the outdated graphics. Most of the new players are friends from people who already play WoW for a time, and managed to get them interested
2) Most of the old playerbase who played during Vanilla and TBC grew up and lost interest after playing for so long. Most of the people still playing are probably people who have invested way too much time into their characters, and don't feel like leaving all that progress behind
The story lines are not engaging, the lore is getting weaker and weaker, dungeons and raids are a shadow of what they used to be (been happening for a while now though so not too surprised). Also with MoP and the massive grind fest that the entire game has. I would of expected it in a free to play game where you can buy boosts. That's acceptable to me, but to have such a stupid grind and gating for pretty much anything you really need, with no way to fast track it (least at the start, changed slightly with comendations) turned off many people, enough for them to just not come back.
Also the blatently obvious attempt to grab and keep the asian fanbase kinda failed as, from memory, that is where the majority of the subs have decreased from as a region.
The dated graphics, raid design and dungeon design, lack of real direction and poorly designed pet battles (as in reason to progress with it) has also made people turn off and unsub.
For me personally MoP is the only xpac that I have unsubbed with. Every 3-4 months I'll resub for a month to see whats changed, see nothing new or interesting has happened, and unsub again. I had high hopes for flex raiding but SoO is just boring to me personally, however I never liked Garrosh or that story lineso realistically I was jnever going to like the raid anyways, even if it was att he same level of Uld.
The only thing that keeps me playing is the system, the game has a rock solid game play system, how everything works.
Some mmorpgs with super nice graphics is about all they have, take aion and tera nothing but gutted grind-fest asian games that just feel broken and have no plot or reason to play past lvl 5 "both were P2P and are now F2P" I got both C.E. when they started as P2P.
Sure WoW's graphics are dated but that's okay, the game play and story keep you there, I started my warcrafting at the good old age of 12 with WC2 tides of darkness and I was like this is so cool, screw being a human because I am so the horde was and still is my thing, I am 30 now. I also played diablo 1 and starcraft 1 as well, the pc/console game market sucked in 1996 as some of us can remember. Not everything has to be PS3/4 and xbox ##### level to be enjoyable but some of you are used to that being younger and only knowing what you know and what you are used to.
I do believe in character models getting a upgrade only because they started it with Illidan's custom model then faction leaders, you can't help but get jealous looking at them. WoW 2 or w/e would basically be nothing more than WoW with starcraft 2 graphics that's all.
The game is old plus there are a lot more alternatives nowadays that don't cost money to play.
I think it got really trendy for a few years and now it's not so trendy. So WoW players that are actually true fans remain while the "my friend wanted me to join to play with him" types have bled away.
No, you cannot.
MMO champion is only for those who like MOP.
Moderators are ever so vigilant to infract, ban, or otherwise harass anyone who dares to voice dislike for pandas or china.
So is the way of MMO champion.
Now they will infract this too and ban me.
Lol
Infracted. Please post constructively.
Last edited by Lochton; 2013-10-28 at 12:36 AM.
Only one reason. The amount of new players is very low comparing to the amount of players leaving. The reason for that are various, main ones being:
- WoW doesnt have it's niche anymore. It used to be the casual game among lots of hardcore grindy subscription based MMOs. Now it's the casual game with a subscription among casual f2p games. Doesnt look like an advantage.
- WoW has betrayed it's original playerbase. Some call it nostalgia, some welcome the change but it's a fact: game is not what it used to be at core anymore, and it's not just QoL changes.
- The last two expansions are not getting well with the previous lore. First three iterations of the game was based on lore players have been familar with since WC3. Cataclysm and MoP are based on completely new lore, that some of the players dislike.
- Continious decline in effort put in by the developers. Encounter design, graphical design, quest design, class balance, talents rebalance, cancelation of announced features (Abyssal Depths raid and Path of Titans anyone?), decline in total activity difficulty that lead to player skill decline en masse.
That's some of most obvious ones to me.
Rapid wow subscription gain and then loss was caused by chinese players. They prefer more lineage-like farming games and got bored from wow pretty quick. At least 5-6 million wow subscribers were from china, no wonder that when wow lost popularity in china we saw so great subscription loss.
Wow itself is perfectly fine. Graphics won't change anything.
Gamers changed. 15-years old children just can't play the same game for 5 years like we used to do. They have hundreds of games available and they just jump from one game to another without even finishing any of them. It has nothing to do with game quality, it's modern children psychology - "this toy is 1 week old, buy me another one", "This iphone5 is outdated, no one uses them, buy me 5s!".
Blizzard can keep decreasing game difficulty and increasing the density of the rain of epics that drops to any player who bothered to log in and press few buttons to get somewhere where he can get carried, but it won't help, spoiled kids will dump this game anyway and run to GW2, ES3 or whatever new MMORPG will be released.
The problem is that the game is getting worse for us, hardcore oldschool players.
So let's just leave it as is, every change to the game for the last 5+ years just made it worse.
I don't care it subscription will drop below 1M players, if it will be decent players who actually like this game, not some spoiled children who decided to play the game for few days because they got bored from their playstation.
It's not an immersive game and lacks so much depth it's almost two dimensional.
I am the lucid dream
Uulwi ifis halahs gag erh'ongg w'ssh
WoW's subs are declining because we're not getting as many new players in as old ones are leaving.
Now, my opinion is that one of the reasons for this might be that WoW has become rather inaccessible what with all those expansions. You have the main game and then oodles of expansions. And you need to get them all. I think that in a way, Blizzard has realized this too by now as they've just recently added Cataclysm to the battle chest.
Possibly, it might be better to include old expansions already into the battle chest when a new expansion is launched, not as late as it happened with Cata just now.
It's not the only reason. People in this thread have stated many more logical conclusions. However, it might be a part of the complete picture.
metanoia ~*~ Wir rekrutieren für Mythic Hellfire Citadel!
Main: Seriss - Restoration Shaman ~ Favourite Alt: Syope
I think its the LFR, atleast that is the reason why i canceled my sub like a year ago. WoW was always about raiding and for me the LFR totally kills the feeling that raids gave me back in the days.