It’s not dead but it is declining and hemorrhaging. Many players left for other mmos, ffxiv being the new #1 mmorpg.
Personally I’m having more fun in guild wars 2 so I’ll be playing that for a while.
If that doesn’t work my fallback is ffxiv which I’ve invested time in as well.
For the first time I have real good backups if 10.0 fails. Usually I’d just stick through it cause “all other mmorpgs are bad” I thought. But I was wrong other games are fun, more casual and fit better with being an adult. It’s nice to not have a second job.
Don’t get me wrong some people like the grind and the treadmill. They like never fully gearing and having to keep trying every single raid tier. Some like the chase more the relaxation and enjoyment of the gear dps boost itself.
The grinds for some of these legendaries in guild wars tho are INSANE. But I KNOW that when I get it it’ll always be useful. (And tradeable to Alts)
I wish the best for WoW and I hope they can turn it around in 10.0 but I’m not worried I won’t have a mmorpg to play.
Subs/ active players up and down with each patch, Tons of New / Remastered games are out, players trying other MMOs (for various reasons)
and lets be honest most of us who have played for 10-15 YEARS arnt Kids / Teenagers / College students anymore. we simply have other things to do. Kids / Wife/Husband/ work.
No, WoW isn’t dead. It won’t really be dead until they pull the plug on the servers.
Is it in a bad place? Yes. WoW is hemmoraging players. Its narrative is all over the place, being rushed out in some instances to cover one player outrage after another about every two years. The game systems aren’t good, don’t synergize well, and are worst of all disposable AND reused. There is no real player progression. It’s all a treadmill.
Activision is just one part of the problem, expecting a return on their investment that Blizzard just couldn’t and isn’t delivering on. First in terms of an Esport that never materialized. Finally in the form of an endless procession of microtransactions that players keep balking at.
Blizzard isn’t helping its case by pandering to the Twitter crowd rather than focusing on input from its active customers and players. We all feel neglected and betrayed because Blizzard would rather do performative things to show that they’re overcompensating for their own bad behavior, rather than offering a sincere apology and just moving on.
Worst of all, rather than letting their players just get things off their chest, they choose to become combative and controlling. They amend their community guidelines in order to censor and ban players on their forums and argue and call people on other platforms “toxic” and “entitled”.
At the end of the day you can hand out as many bans as you want, but it’s not going to pay your bills.
IMO, WoW (and a lot of other tech companies) started the decline when they started hiring “woke” representatives to hit some virtue signal benchmark. All it has done is increase the number of misfits in various organizations that only seek to bring down companies from within because they’re miserable people. It’s never going to get better as long as companies think they’re being hip by stocking their H.R. departments with blue/pink haired freakazoids.
Two dud expansions in a row and falling pops on pretty much all servers says yes we currently in a WoW is dying phase. It is still very recoverable if 9.2 shows improvement and 10.0 pulls off another WoD to Legion turn around.
However if 10.0 is a 3rd dud in a row, 6+ years of failure may kill the game.
In many ways WoW is a victim of its own success. It didn’t have major competition for so long they thought they had the mmo down to a spread sheet science. Let alone the entire gaming industry currently having a business suits problem where people got $ eyes at the quick profits for minimal effort, mobile, moba and multiplayer shooters/sports gave.
Mmm, this is for sure alarming (I havent really seen MG this dead during primetime in awhile) but I wouldn’t say this is it for WoW. It’s in a lull, but recoverable, I’d say. People would definitely come back if they just nailed a few solid things. A good example is Legion. People thought WoD was the end, and then bam Legion was a huge hit. Don’t worry about it, I say. People may be able to play FF14 right now, but as cool as that game is, it isn’t perfect or limitless. And definitely not WoW. A lot of them will be back and cycle. Just like me. I play both, obsessively!
I don’t think it’s dying and I think it has many more years to go, but its many years of complete domination over the MMORPG genre seem to be over when you look at the popularity of New World and Final Fantasy. Even if WoW still has more players, the competition no longer looks like ants next to a giant.
New expansions sell well because players have hope. But the developers are so out of touch with the players that everyone leaves within a month of it’s release.
Players leaving seem to be due to the developer’s design philosophy. So until the developers change they’re going to keep driving players away and WoW will just keep slipping in numbers.
In regards to activison, I’m not sure if we’ll ever know if activison is the cause of Blizzard’s current ineptness or if it’s Blizzard’s own doing. It would take a current/former Blizzard employee that knows the whole story to coming forth.
I’m not sure if they can deliver. They have to update the complete game system, all older graphics, make so many requests available and bring in more playable races while also pushing the Alliance as a desirable player choice.
There is no real data on this. Blizard doesn’t release sub numbers and neither does Square Enix.
Many of the sites still cite WoW as #1.
In your opinion, because you can’t actually back your claim up with any sort of fact.
Blizzard stopped releasing sub numbers somewhere in the neighborhood of almost 8 years ago. Sub numbers were never a bragging point, they were a gauging tool for investors.
Blizz was the king of MMOs back in Wrath. Since then, they have been cruising and believing that they are still the king of MMOs and that there are no other games that compete.
Recently, they seem to finally be reading the memos that went out 10 years ago saying that other MMOs are pulling players away from WoW. Instead of figuring out why (focus on eSport type activities & toxicity) and fixing it, they are focused on fruits, flirts and farts.
Is WoW dying - yep. Is it on life support - not quite yet, but it is moving to the ICU.
