But they are not there… the customer base has grown-up. The college-age players have moved on… they have jobs and families now. The twenty-year olds are now in their thirties, they have houses take care and lawns to mow. etc… etc… the common theme is that people have less time to play as more things compete for time.
The younger players that have should have replaced the players that leave are not as interested in MMOs as the previous generations. Younger players, those with the most time, like playing lots of different games. Their phones are full of games, they spend lots of time on social media, etc. So, while they may spend more time on games than previous generations, they are not as likely to invest the time in a single game like WoW.
For example: people used to gather around and play music in parlor for fun. People generally don’t do this anymore and nothing the player-piano companies can do will change things. Times change, tastes change. So it is for MMOs, the decline is inevitable.
Given the fact that MoP never had 12 million subs I think that an argument for going back to it would not add 12 million.
That being said I like some of your ideas and don’t care for some. Take flight, it’s is in the dna of wow but they keep jerking our collective chains with it. Give me the hoop, gold or achievements, and let me unlock it from the get go.
I don’t know if they will ever beat the wrath peak. Wow, particularly BC and Wrath, was the right game at the right time. That time was 10 years ago. It is hard to do that once, and it gets harder every time. One thing though is evedint, after Blizz con I am not sure blizzard understand their audience anymore. They need to get back in touch with that pulse and forge forward.
Gear needs to look cool. Run an analysis on the most xmogged gear and go from there. Hire a fashion designer. Design stuff for women. Get more girls to play, get more subs.
3b/c doesn’t matter.
3d. Agree, and while we are at it, lower the punishment for losing an unrated match. There is only so much time people are willing to spend on upgrading gear.
Don’t take flying away from people who already have it.
For the love of all that is holy, add blue eyes to the barber shop, and more hair/skin options for the blood/void elves. Would be amazing if new appearance options could be unlocked though quest lines (like a high elf quest line).
Maybe. But what really brings in subs is pretty races. Stop adding goblins and trolls!
Remove rep requirements and make it based on completion of quest lines or zones. More fun to discover a new race by questing, than to rep grind, that’s awful.
I don’t disagree that mmorpgs aren’t as popular as they were. However in numerous surveys over the years it has been known for quite sometime that rhe largest demographic for wow has never been young kids. Even during vanilla days its always been very young 20 something’s and older that made up the largest age groups.
I love topics like these… where we assume that everything we want is the reason why WoW has had a consistent decline in subs for over 10 years.
So let me correct the TC and tell Blizzard the REAL way to get 12 million subs back:
1- drop galleon on my next kill
2- let me go back and buy collector’s editions of all the games and expansions that had collector’s edition but I was too cheap at the time to get it (BC, WotLK, SC 2)
3- let me buy Blizzcon mini pets from the mini store
4- let my hunter equip both a range weapon and a melee weapon again
5 - equippable quivers on our backs
6- bring back stance dancing on my warrior
The game was structured in a way which was conducive to social interactions.
It’s not magic.
Latter-day WoW is largely anonymous. Anonymous interactions breed disinterest and outright hostility. Vanilla was structured in a completely opposite way. Almost nothing was anonymous. Posting on level 1 alts on the forums was about the only way to have instant access to anonymous social interaction, and no surprise it was extremely toxic even then. So were lobbies in FPS pubs, again for the same reason.
It doesn’t matter that a few years have passed. People are still largely the same. If you give someone a button that instantly groups them with people they will never see again, you have given them zero reasons to care about those people.
When Classic comes out, I suggest you give it a try. You won’t even be level 25 before you’ve come to realize what I’m saying is true. Organic social interactions abound.
Agree, but at least Blizzard could recapture the veteran players that it has lost trying to cater to kids. Blizzard should have been happy with the 5 million it had at the end of MoP instead of chasing after an audience it will never have.
I never got this and I strongly suspect it to be a myth. I’m 42, I played EQ in 1999 when it released and played WoW after that, from 2007 to present day.
However anecdotal it seems all the guys who had wife and kids I know routinely checked out the new WoW expansion. Some just took a week off to level and then raided in the PM hours. Whether or not they stayed had more to do with how fun the game was (or wasn’t) vs having too much responsibility. They still play games. They just don’t play WoW and when asked will tell you it has more to do with the game not being fun anymore.
And we know this by the release gate numbers. When WoD released it was picked up by some 10 million buyers. The same was true for BFA. Both expansions promised big lore changes and assumed a position from MoP and Legion that the gameplay would be fun. They just weren’t fun.
The audience is still there but they are checked out until they get some good news in the game they’d love to come back to. They just don’t have a good reason to come back.