What made WoW successful to me was that it was truly the ONLY game that both me and my wife (who is not a gamer by any means) could play together and have loads of fun. When you're past college and work full-time, you can't afford to stay up raiding until 3AM every night to get the shiniest loot from the latest tier. We used to run a 5-man heroic every day back in Wrath just to have fun and we were really good at it (I would tank and she would DPS). The emblem system was pure genius, because we were still able to gear up over time even on a "casual" life schedule.Once Cata launched, all of this charm and accessibility that made Wrath so fun for my wife had practically disappeared overnight. Fun turned to frustration and tedium. Leveling freedom that used to involve 8 cohesive zones in Wrath was cramped down to 5 claustrophobic isolated zones. 5-mans that used to be easy to master turned into frustrating luck and stressful grinding in familiar environments (Blackrock Caverns..., really?) Once most of my RL friends also grew tired of Cata and cancelled their subscriptions, raiding became practically impossible without pugging with either teenagers or hardcore (stay up till 3am every night) groups.At this point, the damage is already done and there seems to be a bitter taste in everyone's mouth to a certain degree. Unless they find a way to re-ignite interest in my wife and friends, this game has no chance for me. I'm sure many, MANY people are going through this same experience.
Reading the last few post...I think sums up the adult views. As I have posted numerous times...It seems that when Activision purchased Blizzard..they did so with the intent of expanding the fan base by integrating it with their targeted genre of players. It didn't work. It's like trying to mix oil and water. By and large...the WoW community was not the PS3/Xbox community. The mindset was just not the same. Sometimes it takes a little bit of hurt to open one's eyes. Perhaps the subscription drop will do just that. One other thing...when Blizz has the courage to implement and enforce a code of conduct...you will see drastic changes..you can count on it. Employ server monitors to admonish what they would consider outside the lines and you will see adult players returning to this game. Yes ..I'm talking about tradechat...because the pattern usually follows a linear line, an ass in trade is an ass in the game.Seriously..there is only so much a normal person can take. The typical adult is bombarded with enough nonsense working their ass off to pay the bills....to ask them to pay a $15 bill to log on and become bombarded by nonsense is asking too much of any sane person. It's a blight on the game and why Blizz continues to act deaf and blind to it, is beyond me. There seems to be so much withering away at what made this game fun and you get to a point where the scale tips and thus the sub. loses.
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
I have no major issues with WoW. And I think the devs and people are looking at 'the problem' in a whole different light than they should be. I haven't quit WoW, but I'm in one of those phases where I've taken a break. I'm pretty much 100% casual and if I never raid again, it'll be too soon. I used to raid and I recognize that it's fun and challenging for many people but I am passed that stage where I feel sitting down and playing a game for 3hrs+ is fun. Now I treasure way more, doing instances with my close friends and chatting it up, fun and light on TS. Now, I am NOT putting anyone's preference of raiding down by any means at all, I'm just establishing that at one point I loved it and now, not s'much.That being said, one of the down points for me is I can never complete my VP/JP set. The last few pieces are from raids. No matter how many 5-mans I can do I'll never have those bonuses and thus, never really feel 'finished' in terms of developing my character in-game since that does involve completing these tier sets and has involved that since MC. Raid then, you say....but I don't want to. One of the biggest issues I think is the WoW devs trying to separate casual from raiders by splitting these sets. Why not give the casuals the lower tier set and let the raiders enjoy their heroic tier? Maybe change the look up a bit so it's 'unique'? or make the bonuses dynamic. Instead they put less effort into it and hide under the guise that they feel raiders should get something extra for raiding - meanwhile on the other hand saying, the casuals get this too just for doing heroic dungeons. Believe me, I have nothing but respect for raiders, and I do believe they should get the more potent stuff but meh, for a casual player it's a slap in the face that we will never be able to complete our tier set if we choose not to raid.Another point is, and I see it discussed nowhere officially yet always see it coming up in game - subscription fees. They are simply too high. I could support it when WoW was in it's infancy and Blizzard had to add all these servers and talent but lets face it, we're what 7 years in? Bliz. really needs to drop that 13-15 a month to something like 7 or 8 or heck, less!.I can't even say how many times I've seen people stop their subs because they didn't think playing a few days a week warranted paying 15 a month. I feel the same way too, don't get me wrong I'm comfortable, but not comfortable to the point where I feel good about chalking up 15 a month when I play the game for maybe 4 hrs if that much a week, max. Casual players are a big part of WoW, no matter who wishes to admit it...and you have your many varying levels of player. You have your addict or that person you pretty much always see online in raids, in dungeons, doing every daily, every achievement - Blizzard's bread and butter. You have your newness raider/casual or that raider/casual player that attends every raid/goes to every new instance and does all the new dailies until he/she is geared/finished then is nowhere to be seen until the next batch of new content. You have your casual raider who sticks to raiding non-heroics mostly and for the most part is around most of the time. You have your casual player who prefers not to raid but for the most part does instances and dailies, etc.. You have many more degrees, but of all of these players there are only a few types willing to pay their subscription day in, day out and those are the people who play all the time. If Bliz. were to reduce the fee, I'm sure many folks would either come back to the game or think of WoW like their Netflix subscription whereas right now it's more of a premium and people who don't play daily just don't feel they should be paying it so they put their subs on hold or cancel altogether.I think any game out for a number of years is going to eventually go stale. The graphics are old, the content is stale for the most part but the charm of WoW I think is still there. I still enjoy the game when I play. Many of my friends have left, but I'm still around and that says something. I quit EQ after 2 years and never looked back, I don't think this will happen with WoW.
I have been asking for / suggesting moderated servers for several years, both here, and through Official channels (WoW forums, especially back when they had an actual suggestions forum), and the response is always the same, canned response. "Thanks for your interest in the game....blah, blah, blah. Use the ignore feature or just leave the channel. You can always report inappropriate activity to Blizzard, of course we can't disclose any action taken"...Im sure you all know the drill. A while back, (don't recall if I ever posted this here, if I did...sorry for the repost), but we had a player on our server that for several days, just flat out rampaged in trade. Racial slurs, vulgar...and I mean Chris Rock combined with Eddie Murphy in the old days vulgar. He even posted video's on youtube of him doing it....along with a video of him assulting his girlfriend, using WoW references during the assault (i.e. slapping her around calling her a little Night Elf sl^t....ect). He also posted, both in trade and in the videos, that he was "untouchable" by Blizz, and go ahead and report him. Which I, and I think nearly everyone else on the server did. (I actually even reported him to the police for the assault video...dumass was stupid enough to say what town he was from in the video, along with his real name). Anyhow...as far as I could tell, Blizz never banned him, at least not for any period of time. This went on for a good week or more, every night. I don't know if there really was something else behind this, or if this is just Blizz policy on policing trade chat. (BTW, this was on Nesingwary, so I would guess that since the Wowhead "Randomness" guild is on Nessy, others may remember the "Ryan F*********) days a few months ago)Anyway....moderated servers....I just don't think we will ever see them, which is sad. I would gladly pay a couple extra bucks a month even to be on a server that had instant public chat moderation.
But it wouldn't be necessary to have a 24 hr monitor. It would like when the police set up a speed trap when they want to control a speed problem along a certain stretch of road. At first you see them there constantly. Then randomly. Eventually it gets into everyone's mind that you never know when there may be a police trap up ahead and traffic slows down on it's own. If the chat violators think there may be someone looking over their shoulder...they will think twice.Also...they could have the report button work in real time. Someone gets out of line..gets reported...Blizz chimes in and looks at the chat logs...bingo...see ya.As for the job..heck pay me...I'll sit there and watch a few screens...I use to do it playing WoW :)
I do agree that the game's age is the real issue that caused some player to quit the game blaming cataclysm, in my opinion cataclysm is an amazing expansion, still prefer it then WOTLK, and in my opinion if you want to revive wow and make it as it started, change the game engine, yah it gona require a new pc for some people, but you can't deny that pc parts became much cheaper than it used to be. So don't think it gona be an obstacle.
WoW DOES get old, but then, so does doing the same thing for so long. I'm not lucky enough to get into good guilds, my personal schedule doesn't allow hard-core, dedicated raiding. What I don't like is the random dungeon queues. Yes, it's sweet to just click a tab, get something to drink, smoke a few cigs, watch some TV, maybe catch a nap, then BAM! In like Flynt. But then come the tanks (or, groups in general) on speed mode: Kill the required bosses (i.e., they're in the way, and you need them dead to get to past a certain point), skip the rest, and down the final boss. "Oh, did you need something from one of the bosses we skipped? Tank it yourself so you can get all the bosses you want. Deuces!" Why not get rid of the dungeon finder, and make people interact again? Transport our sorry arses to a specific location, and group up at the summoning stone or something. One can grind every instance without ever leaving, well, where ever they happen to be at, the inn over in GS, or SW, Ogr, whatever. Let dungeons go back to the old way. PvP can have a random queue, because, on a PvE serv, not too many relish PvP. My two cents on that.Tiered items seem to cause a lot of discontent. I (not raiding) can save enough points / grind enough rep / pay enough gold and get an item of 10m(N) value. Usually, I pay or rep-grind. Or have one of my crafters make me something, lol! Those that put forth the effort to get into raids, deal with wipes, bad grps, etc., still get an item that is marginally better than what I paid for. It cheapens the whole..."I worked for this, dammit!" I think Blizz did good by NOT having epics drop from 5-mans, but epics should be something that you bust your backside for (WotLK, iLvl 200 epics with marginal side-grades in Naxx 10 ring bells?), and if I don't raid, then, I don't get one. I can still PvE / grind dailies / farm / just fine in my 5m roic level items, and earn my PvP epics. All in all, I guess (to simplify and summarize) what is really killing WoW are several things: Age, COST, ease of epic-ness, and lack of socializing like we had to do before dungeon finder, like spamming trade "dps LFG ". It forced us to interact, forced us to sometimes make acquaintances that we would group with repeatedly, and forced us to enjoy the overall experience of the content, at least, more so than it does now. And by interacting more, we somehow looked past the "leetness" of me, you, him or her; it was more enjoyable interacting and seeing the content rather than simply racing through. That, and you could learn to laugh if your group wiped, and not putting up with leet jerkwads that we (hopefully) never have to deal with again. Cuz trade worked both ways, baby: "Don't group with so-and-so, he / she is a real ", be you tank, heals, or deeps. Oh well, enough of my misguided, tangent-seeking ranting. Deuces!
Going to make this short and sweet, else I'll just end up typing out an article as well.What I personally think is that, essentially, it's going to end when Blizzard deems it to be financially unworthy of the time spent developing it, and that's basically the only thing that will end WoW. It's not like they're going to abandon ship because it's going through some rough times, this is their baby project. I'm going to guess that almost all successful companies have a baby that they will keep running almost until the end of the company.So as long as they're financially able I think they'll keep the game up and running. I just feel bad for the people that may have to be let go once it starts declining in that to that magnitude, or perhaps Titan is meant to be a sort of life boat to these people.
Like it was already said, yeah, people get bored easier nowadays. It's part of our culture, the legacy of the 20th century, with new technologies emerging, and people's lives moving in a faster pace. Anything that's not surprisingly new bores the hell out of people. What I see most WoW newcomers complaining about is the graphics, comparing them to some random Korean MMO that has pretty graphics (but awful gameplay, usually).I do think people just love to complain and they're never satisfied; like Vanilla-fans saying TBC sucked and TBC-fans saying WotLK sucked. The sentence "WoW is dying" have been here since the first expansion. However, I do agree that Cataclysm removed some of the class uniqueness, like Mages having a Hero-like spell, DKs being able to BRess and most important of all, Resto Druids having a Healing Form (which's now a stupid Metamorphosis).But recently, I think Blizzard's trying to do what most companies are doing: trying to go back to the roots. I see this whole Transmogrification as a start. First it's the gear, next it'll be the instances. I personally loved what they did with 10 and 25 man giving pretty much the same loot. It saves a LOT of stress. Anyone saying that AQ40 was fun is pretty much out of their minds. It was pure hell. And ICC25, even worse, due to the most disputed item back then: DBW, the King of Guild Drama. I think Blizzard just need to add some spice, something that will give us that nostalgic feeling from WotLK, TBC and Vanilla, but while keeping the new concept Cata suggests. Revamping instances seems like a start to me, like they did with ZG.It's all about waiting and see. According to the nerd-ragers, WoW has been dying since TBC, but despite that it's definitely the most famous MMO ever, and it's still there. It's up to us to let it die. Blizzard will let WoW die if they realize the players no longer care.
I think one off the main problems with WoW declining is it's price. It's the main reason why so little new players come to the game. U have to buy main game, all expansions and pay monthly gametime. All that comes to a price range not apealing to new players so they rather go to diferent game or private servers. Blizzard should lower costs drasticaly or make it free if they want this game to last.