There are a number of people within my own guild and communities who have begun taking extended breaks, or quitting the game altogether.
I have no doubt that this will be an incomplete list of reasons, but I feel it is important to address the issues that have caused this. So please by all means if you know of other reasons send them to me, or add them in the comments!
So, in no particular order, here are some of the reasons I have heard for people quitting that relate to the game or Blizzard in general.
- Issues at Blizzard have caused a loss of faith in both the company and the game
- My class doesnāt feel rewarding to play anymore, and I donāt enjoy alts
There is a disconnect between the player and their characters; borrowed power itself is not a bad system, but the way itās implemented is not well done.
- Feeling like your main is no longer āviableā but alt catchup time is too long, and feeling like main class is āwasted effortā
- Thereās nothing I want to do
- Some of the 9.2 stuff sounds good, but itās too little too late
- My class isnāt āmetaā so I canāt get into any groups
Class balancing is not frequent enough. Specs stay near the top or near the bottom for entire tiers, if not longer, making it mandatory in some settings to have a certain class/spec, or not want to bring the spec at all, whether it be Raiding, M+, PvP, or anything else.
- The never ending cycle of Blizzard not listening, saying theyāre going to listen, making 1-2 small changes, and not listening againā¦
- Shadowlands loot scarcity & Great Vault issues
As I said, this is by no means a complete list. These are just examples that have come from my social circles.
There are players waiting in the wings for something to change for them to come back, looking for a single reason, a single change that makes them want to come back, instead of systems on systems that de-incentivize them from playing the game.
83 Likes
I would add the lack of frequent communication or the lack of making it visible can also be added. I know we from EU are nagging about it constantly that we practically never get news and have to rely on either third party websites or go to the US forums (which not many do by default).
34 Likes
2nd this as its the over branching reason most people ive seen quit over the years.
The main thing I think most people have quit from my perspective is the lack of content inbetween each major patch. I see people from my Btag, PvE guild and PvP friends generally all quit instantly if they know next patch is just going to be a āzoneā and minor tweaks to their classes when the next major patch will be literal months and months away.
12 Likes
I think the number 1 reason people I know have quit have largely been because they have ābetter things to doā, which is really to say their enjoyment of the game is gone. And that is usually a combination of a lot of the reasons listed above. And the number 2 reason people quit, is that other people also quit, and there are less people to play with. Community is important, after all.
31 Likes
One thing that is also important to keep in mind is that at some point, people just simply run out of content. Itās totally fine to take a break and come back later when a new patch dropsā¦ but thatās the issue. Updates have became so scarce, and they provide very little content. If it is true that 9.2 is the final patch, weāll end up with 3 raids, out of which people will only do one. M+ probably wonāt see a new dungeon added to it, and PvP will be another nightmare to balance with 2 legendaries, set bonuses and new PvP trinkets. Overall, not too appealing.
10 Likes
People will quit for a multitude of reasons, especially based on your post it shows that clearly, a lot of them are naturally occurring and Blizzard canāt even address some of them.
That being said, in my experience one of the big reasons people will quit is simply a lack of content and what got us to this point. Blizzard has turned WoW into a ācompetitiveā seasonal MMO, where in the span of 1 single patch less than ~5% of what youāve done prior last 3-4 weeks into the next patch. In doing this, I feel the demand for content is higher, so in an expansion like Legion where resources were very obviously significantly higher due to the whole WoD fiasco, it was more manageable simply because there was so much. If Blizzard keeps making WoW seasonal they should look towards either creating more enjoyable repeatable content/content in general, or try to find a way to make previous efforts last longer into patches. I do believe doing a āresetā every major patch is good, but more of what we do needs to transfer, and the game simply needs more content based systems.
An example of said content would be the Legion timewalking system, With the introduction of legion timewalking for the first time in a long time timewalking has added quite a few potential upgrades even for people raiding at the highest level. A potential other idea is increasing the power level of other timewalking trinkets just to get people more engaged with rotational content. I can say from my own guild experience at a high level many players in our guild are doing timewalking every day just to get some of these sought after items. I would assume loads of other players are as well based on how populated it is in group finder currently. Imagine if every timewalking cycle the dungeons were introduced as M+ or fun features from that expansion were updated just so there is always a way to play the game and feel like there are fun gear upgrade to be shooting for. Having even small events like this motivate people to log in and and actually play the game even when the raid is on farm.
Lots of people have different reasons for why they donāt like the state of the game, but this is one that resonates with me.
Edit: Iāve seen that there is a bluepost talking about nerfing trinkets from timewalking which goes against most of what I just said about praising legion timewalking. Once again for the first time in a long time all levels of players have an excuse to engage with rotational events to actually get upgrades and it seems thatās being looked at to be taken away. While some of them are very obviously egregious, I do hope Blizzard is very cautious with the nerfs to legion trinkets, as itāll remove any reason for the content to be repeated by a portion of the playerbase. While I donāt believe the trinkets should be the ābestā they should be viable options and I do hope Blizzard aims to keep them competitive.
19 Likes