Whether you like wow or not, here is a plain and simple statistic based upon true numbers.
I had a whole buddy list of PVP players, active players, daily players. I had atleast a pool of 15 healers alone to play with.
BFA still had alot of buddy list pvper’s for arena, lots of resto druid healers to play with. Last part of BFA people started to not log in as much, days weeks, oh hey where ya been. Took a break game was broken…Do a match or two they dissaper from weeks to now months
From 50+ friends i pvp’d with 4 are left from Bfa start to present time. I met three healers past couple days who came back to wow, trying to Arena, dying to random one shots out of now where. I added them to buddy list. They have logged off. I see them with btag on…ask are they gonna play more, all 3 said no its just to many systems to catch up, you cant hop in PVP and play.
So the statistic is, wow is losing loyal players, players are losing in game friends, returning players do not have the gear to enjoy games to get caught up. Players that could have been retained, once again quit.
Not only that, but many aren’t able to get invited to do mythic, so the system itself locks them out, so what’s the point? There’s another thread here someone made about a bow that only drops in mythic and not in LFR, which many casuals I feel would love to have it too, but whatever.
It’s my opinion that Blizzard isn’t paying enough attention to the largest playerbase, their casuals and solo-players who get fed-up with this, and eventually unsub.
If this is how Blizzard wants their game to continue to be while other MMOs are starting to give it a run for their money, so let it be.
Okay, this isn’t how statistics works. You can’t look at your own friends list and then say “They’re all playing other games now, WoW must suck.” and equate that as some sort of large scale movement with players quitting left and right across the board.
I for example, have a friends list of 22, and out of all of them only 1 of them hasn’t been active for a while, and I know why she’s not playing, it’s because she’s raising her kids.
So do my statistics counter yours if I do the exact same thing you do? Of course not.
There are no exact numbers that gives us an understanding of the health of WoW. That’s the reality. At best we have MMO-Population’s numbers, but since those are based off of ‘online sentiment’ that doesn’t really guarantee anything.
I stopped using the BNET friends list after I figured out it was tracking me and telling everyone when I was online, so I don’t know how many stopped playing ;/
My guild friends are all still playing, but they spend most of their time twinking, old raid farming, and cackling with everybody, so they are generally satisfied no matter what the end game is like.
Once again, Carhagen and I have a history of disagreeing on things so this is not me “white knighting” on his behalf. Carhagen’s analogy is spot on here. To argue against it is showing you have no clue as to how statistical data works.
ya man people can tell you over and over the games not declining
but we all have seen for ourselves our friends list go dormant
im on the FF bandwagon now, that game is fresh, and the company really cares about its players imo
2008-2011: 3 IRL friends, and a full 25man raid team.
2012-2014: 2 IRL friends, new guild filled with people we never raided with.
WOD- I skipped this xpac. 1 IRL friend no-lifed this xpac and raided with two diff guilds on two diff toons.
2016: I played without any IRL friends in Legion, was in a new raiding guild on a diff server and faction, the whole guild quit after we got AOTC Guldan.
BFA- I skipped this xpac. 1 IRL friend played this xpac.
2021- I joined my friend’s BFA guild, looking to raid as soon as Sanctum of Domination comes out and our schedules align.
Whether you like WoW or not, here is a plain and simple statistic based upon true numbers. 80% of my friends list stopped logging in during TBC. 99% of my friends list stopped logging in during WotLK.
