I don’t need to speak for anybody, I just need to speak to the facts (anecdotal or otherwise) about the health of the game and the number of people playing.
It’s not disputed by anybody anywhere, there are far fewer people playing now than there were TBC, WotLK or Cataclysm or MoP.
Just because you think it’s great is wonderful. That’s actually great for you. But that doesn’t change the cumulative reaction of others.
You are correct in the numbers. But my first point was also that, getting back to those 10+ million players is literally impossible, it is an unobtainable feat that I wish the rest of the WoW community would hop off already.
So many people subscribe to this notion that “Well if Blizzard would just do this xy thing that I really like, they would suddenly have 11 mill subs again! Man it’s just that easy, I can’t believe this fortune 500 company just doesn’t listen to me, a random schmuck on the internet! What a buncha fools!”
MoP never sniffed 10 million subscribers.
WoD gate release actually had 10 million.
So yes it’s been demonstrated already that it can be done. The Warcraft fans don’t stop being fans because the latest MMO developments have been inferior. They’re still around just waiting for that quality Blizzard used to put out.
It is easy. A child could do it.
Luckily, adults are smarter than children. They know that this simplistic view is not correct. Player sub counts in MMOs are not “based on game design and nothing else”, as you believe.
We will all learn the truth when Classic comes out. If you are right, Classic will have 12 million subscribers. Since Classic is available to all WoW players, the number of WoW subs will soar back to 12 million or higher…
…if you are right. And maybe you are. Maybe by creating Classic, Blizzard is doing exactly what you suggest.
For me the biggest issue is not that Blizzard doesn’t try anything new. If anything, I give them props for trying new things. But when something they implement, something that maybe looked good on paper but is garbage in practice, goes downhill…they need to bite the bullet. They need to come out and say, “Hey guys we tried this thing, and I’ll level with yall, it sucked. So we canned it.” Then they need to dump resources into finding a new solution.
Currently they just release stuff they think will work, then when the backlash happens they meet behind closed doors and are like “Guys this thing sucks what are we gonna do?” Someone has a few ideas of how they can maybe tweak the thing to make it less hideous, and they say, “Hey guys I know this thing has some small issues but we have some fixes coming and we promise you’re gonna be on board in the end.” They save face, or they think they do, but more importantly they don’t have to invest resources into a new solution. They don’t have to ask headquarters for more time or money cuz their idea sucked.
I disagree. You can’t go backward.
I would rather Blizzard bring in some fresh developers and make a next gen MMO that functions more like an actual world. Have activities and rewards for several different ways of playing and don’t allow one character to do more than one track. And make them interdependent.
So a person who does exploring and gathering ore type materials would not also be a professional blacksmith, and the raider who needs the weapon would not be able to gather or make the sword. All players would do some fighting in order to defend their city/ village, but organized group raids would be its own thing, as would PvP.
You want community? This design would make players need other players of all kinds. There would be content for lots of kinds of people. And you could do all the kinds of activities but not on the same server.
I have been trying to think of ways to include and reward role-playing in this, and it would be so cool if RPers added to the flavor of the city, but it would obviously have to be regulated in some way…hmmm.
Heyyyyyyyyyyy yooouuuuuuuu guuuuuuyyyyysssss, I’ve had an apostrophe!!! Let’s go back to a time when there were a minute number of AAA MMO’s and only the barest beginnings of the other currently popular genres and make the game we did then.
It’s not like the gaming player base, while having expanded hugely, has also sub segemented into smaller pools at the same time. The only possible reason we don’t have that number of players is the way our game has changed, not the way gaming in total has.
Why? Didn’t 10 million people buy WoD?
I mean, it’s highly unlikely if we’ll ever see a sustained number like WotLK, but even in MoP we had 7 million people stay subscribed during a 14 month content drought.
The churn for sure is resulting in a net loss over the past few expansions, I am not sure how easy that will be to make positive, if even possible. Certainly highly improbable as you stated.
So, this statement you made is two fold.
One, we don’t know sub numbers anymore. So anything any of us say is just speculation. Are numbers lower than 10 million right now? Most likely, but no definitive numbers exist right now, that me or you or anyone outside Blizzard has access to.
Second, I’m already going to assume you are going to throw out that number that was “leaked” a bit ago. That number is already proven to not only be wrong, but even if it WAS true, there’s a problem with it. Lets assume that number IS correct. That numbered was leaked for ONLY NA. That 10 million number you keep saying? That’s a worldwide, including China where WoW is also very popular. So can you see how misleading this random data points you are spewing out are, since you are not thinking about the context in any way?
Well, we do know data points though.
We know that the last time they reported subs they were at a little over 5 million.
We also know that for 3 or 4 consecutive quarterly releases people at Blizzard said that subscriber numbers were slightly better than the same point at WoD.
Then you just need to use common sense to figure out that there are fewer people playing now than in Legion to confidently say there are fewer people. You can go to wowcensus and look at the number of 120 characters compared to the number of 110s, you can see your friends list, look at the group finder, or do a /who in game to see how many people are playing.
There is also anecdotal things like their marketing hype that will tell you things. For example, WotLK was able to sell close to 3 million units in the first week it was out. They presold BfA for 7+ months in order to give their marketing slogan ‘highest selling day one expansion ever’.
It’s pretty risky to just move full steam ahead with large scale changes without ever reverting back even briefly to compare data.
Also, are we sure that this quick play style of game where you just spam the same, shallow content over and over with short games (a la Fortnite, PUBG, Path of Exile) isn’t just an isolated fad and Blizz isn’t hamstringing themselves by not thinking ahead?
I totally get the argument that many of the users who made WOW so big were some of that first wave of teenagers and young adults who have something of a disposable income, and now those users have grown up and don’t have as much time or energy to dedicate to that complex of a game (myself included). But last time I checked human beings were still having babies, so if aging works the way I think it does there should be a whole new wave of teenagers and young adults for Blizz to impress. How do we know they won’t latch on to a true MMORPG the same way we did?
You just assume they won’t, move on, and hope you’re right and not screwing yourself out of millions? I work in website user experience consulting, and we use data to make tests. We don’t use data to make permanent decisions. If we see Amazon do something cool and the data shows it’s really working, we don’t just slap it on another site and say, “The data shows that this is the right thing to do.” We test it compared to the original site, saying “Better A, or Better B?” to the users. THEN we use that data to inform our longterm decision, and you can rest assured that in a couple years we will revisit and test again to make sure that’s still the best route.
Just because shallow, straightforward games are doing well in other genres, does not mean you should assume that that same style is what your audience wants. Assumptions are revenue killers.
The biggest point people are missing is this: MMOs are a dying breed.
Think back to WotLK, and how many advertised/hyped “WoW-killers” were coming out… name how many of them even have the same business model (ie: subscription-only)? Right now, I can name one, and that is FFXIV, and it’s a little more odd, cause it has a huge playerbase in Japan (cause Final Fantasy and Japanese developer). Every other MMO on the market either died entirely (ie: Wildstar), or shifted to the Free-to-Play w/ Premium Options model (ie: Star Wars: The Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, etc.) within 2 years or less, or in Guild Wars 2’s case, always was that model.
The market is different. Many people just don’t have the free time/extra money to dedicate to an MMORPG anymore. Think back, a DECADE ago, when it was WotLK: What were you doing? I was 24 years old, sharing an apartment with 3 friends, so we all had tons of disposable income, and minimal responsibilities. We all played WotLK to death and back. As the years and expansions went on… it was just the time commitment that didn’t work for us all. We all stopped any serious raiding in Cataclysm (LFR actually helped us get to see raid content while current, in some format, thankfully), cause we all had wildly different work schedules (and had moved across multiple timezones too). Each expansion saw more of the friends I played with during WotLK move on to less time-demanding games. Most game companies are no longer willing to invest in new MMO development, cause the market is not showing growth, across any of the existing entrants. It’s stagnating, if not seeping off.
Now, I can confidently say, in the age of BfA, there is all of 1 WotLK friend still playing. It’s not that my other friends don’t still play games, they just don’t play WoW. And most of them expressed just not having the time, or the desire to dedicate the money to it. That is why so many “QoL” features people think drove people away, and removing the changes, to go back to the old days will magically bring them back… they won’t. Those things were done to help people have to spend LESS time in the game, doing tedious things. If those improvements are not bringing people back, removing them will do even less to help it.
I myself am at a point I come on, do my solo business, and play for the story of the game, for good or ill. Is it the best gaming expense? Not likely, compared to some other games in terms of gameplay vs cost (Terraria makes any other game I own look like a waste, when I spent $10 on it, and have almost 1600 hours in it, with more to come for sure). But it is a game I am still enjoying in a capacity that works for me. It won’t work for everyone, and many of those that moved on, did so because it did not work for them at all anymore.
This was my point, not that examining the past was bad. But that just moving back to it would fix all the issues people see. The assumption that because there were more players that the way the game was made then would bring them back.
At this point they seem more determined in killing the game then making it great again. It’s an old game and they been stuck on it. Killing it would free them to work on other titles. I honestly feel this is why there driving players from the game. No one could be this stupid and make these changes and expect to keep players.
Admitting previous design (most likely the one when you’re not part of the team) is superior is the last thing you want to do as a devs with an ego.
Its better to just act busy and develope a crappy system and add insane reward to it so your content participation metric is off the roof and you can pat each other’s back and say “Every system we make is so popular it receives a tremendous amount of participation”
lmao. prob only a few dozen people in this game that ever played pong on a pong console. Not Atari
I get the spirit of what you’re saying, but some things in the list…
One of the common themes there is that the community either asked for or created the problems you have with the game’s current status. Just because you found it fun to carry around bags of arrows and reagents doesn’t mean other members of the audience did, and if I recall most of those things were gone by the time Wrath (the highest point of the game in terms of popularity) had come about.
Rose-tinted glasses about the past don’t help make the future better.
Edited for formatting.
ammunition : ) both of you have good points btw about the state of the game
I had a Pong console, also had Tennis and Jai Alai on it until I got my Atari
i didnt know some had extra games. but my cousins getting into fights over who played next… I prob never found out. I was young then. was nice when Nintendo came out and i only a brother to play with. he wast born when i played pong btw. Commodore intellivision ibm clones when he got old enough to play.