Why does it feel like Blizzard is killing WoW

Community General Discussion
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Just look at a timeline of subscribers. Anyone who cares about this game at all should be bothered by how small the community has gotten. Mostly, I play within a small group of people I know IRL. But I remember back in MoP or WoD even, I could get in a populated guild to do stuff in game with by simply saying “LF guild” in trade chat. This is no longer the case on the realm with my mains.

For me, there is no other game similar to WoW, so I’d rather see it brought back to life instead of switching to an inferior game.

How can they ignore the systems they’ve implemented in the game that have been destroying it, unless they are doing it purposefully?

Cross Realm Zone - Killed the sense of community, no more character reputations, no more guild rivalry in world. I truly don’t even acknowledge player names anymore because I know I’ll never run into them again due to them being put in a different “layer”

Toggling PVP on/off - This change is almost funny due to the complete lack of reason behind it. You got to pick whether you wanted to play on a PVP server or not. That was it. No changing afterwards unless you paid for a server change. What’s left now in the world with Warmode on are tumbleweeds. Because in every CRZ, one faction dominates just a little. This means that slowly overtime, the members of the weaker faction start to turn warmode off until eventually you just get total imbalance.

Pathfinder to unlock flying - Why? Going off # of subscribers during each expansion, this wasn’t successful at bringing anyone back. It may have actually driven people away. I know a lot of the 1.7 million currently subbed don’t mind this, but something tells me the 6 million lost since MoP (Most recent expansion without pathfinder) share my opinion that it’s a horrible idea.

Azerite pieces - with the RNG looting system, it’s not fun hoping you get the right Azerite piece with the powers you want on them.

Artifact Essences - I’m not a huge fan of leveling an artifact, but going off of legion’s system, it honestly wasn’t that bad. The essences however, it is not fun having to level something that goes into another item you have to level.

Corruptions - It’s not fun having to level an item (cape) when we are already leveling the necklace. It’s also not fun having to hope RNG will favor you with the best corruptions for your spec.

Alts - These no longer exist for most players. I remember when I worked 30h/week and studied full time, and I still had 3 different fully geared toons I played on. Now I only have 1 that I can enjoy the game on because every other character is 30 or more item levels behind, 100 corruption resistance behind, and has a low level artifact neck.

PVP gearing - If this is the only aspect of the game someone wants to play, why can’t they play like that? Bring back the vendors for honor and conquest gear and make them inferior in PVE but superior in PVP. I wouldn’t even mind if mythic gear was on par with conquest gear in PVP, so long as those game breaking trinkets stay disabled in PVP.

Another few things I just can’t wrap my brain around - Why doesn’t Blizzard address the socket/war trophy bug preventing you from corrupting the items you use those on? Why does it cost a lot of gold everytime you want to switch your spec and change azerite powers?

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I honestly think blizzavision got what they wanted. They kept catering to the people who like hamsterwheels and customization and who buy mounts off the store. So instead of actually focusing on class balance and nuance or fun or PvP or anything they now just literally drop a whole expansion where the biggest newest thing we get are customizations. Pretty silly if you ask me.

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Yes, I’m sure the entire WoW staff is looking to tank their own product and get fired.

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It seems they have a history of tackling issues received from the player’s feedback the wrong way.

Of course I too would be leaving wow before other players begin to notice the fallout but I am more than happy to do one final challenge before leaving the game.

If the challenge complete, it’s going to be the biggest and most epic Dab sincerely for the purpose of showing the game’s heavily flawed system.

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it does feel like this “after-life” thing is pushing weird limits ; like they ran out of imagination juice.

we’ll see soon enough… like in ~2 years

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Everyone has been talking about the end of WoW since Cataclysm this isn’t new. Every expansion is a new ‘Wow is dying’ thread. Honestly I don’t see it, I still enjoy this game, have since I first started playing 11 years ago.

I think the ones who are getting pissy are the ones who put TOO much thought into all this, who look further than just what the game can be, it’s beautiful, immersive and interesting and full of story. If you’re wanting something competitive WoW may not be like that anymore.

You’re all missing so much by worrying about every tiny thing in the game, it’s sad to see so many not really enjoying it all and what it can be.

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Not at all accurate. There are over 30 servers FULL to capacity,
and everytime I log in there’s a short waiting queue.
This “sky is falling / wow is dying” BS gets SO old. Your kind has been whining this for 15 years yet WOW is going strong, biggest MMORPG
still (ffxiv is a close 2nd) and SL is going to be AWESOME

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OP - everything you’re complaining about is going away in SL, and WoW is going strong. I’m not defending BFA at all, but this entire thread is months too late to be relevant.

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The stockholders are the priority when it comes to the creation of WOW. It’s all about the metrics unfortunately. When it should be about the player experience. That explains the slow, controlled bleeding of subscribers over the years. Because players aren’t stupid and realize when a game isn’t about the player experience and more about earning another dollar.

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^this

If these players honestly believe the game is so dead and bad I wish they’d find a new game that is better and more alive. This community needs less negativity.

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This has actually disturbed me. I renewed my subscription about three months ago, and I come back to empty streets. Even the Inns are empty. (I play on an RP server. Empty inns are a very big deal).

This is what shocks and baffles me. Community feedback has almost unanimously expressed their disdain for certain systems since WoD. It doesn’t make sense to me – it’s like they’re ignoring us.

Crossrealm is likely due to the drop in players. People from other realms supplementing the population drop. It could also be so friends from other realms can play together. We currently have a horde player from another realm that comes onto WRA and crashes the server. We can’t retaliate or put a “hit” on his character because he’s not on our realm.

I think that world pvp should be encouraged on normal realms too, tbh. Open world faction-based PVP is, has, and always will be, part of WoW. However, I don’t like the Warmode. I don’t like that I need to activate a certain mode to use skills that could prove useful in PVE. It’s convoluted to me.

The pathfinder achievements are such a grind, i don’t even bother anymore. There’s so few hours in the day to cram all these tasks into 24 hours on top of dailies, rep grinds, gearing, etc. You remember the great Flight Fiasco of WoD? they learned nothing from it. Goodbye to buying flight licenses.

This was an extremely big turnoff for me. If a piece of gear can buff a skill like set bonuses use to, I understand, but the azerite system feels extremely uncomfortable.

I don’t like being stuck with one weapon throughout an entire expansion. The artifacts were a good idea, but it doesn’t feel suitable in wow. We collect weapons, appearances, etc, and the artifact weapons seemed like a lazy attempt to cut the need to create weapon models.

This is why I don’t like PVE that relies on certain gear pieces. I feel stuck with them. If I took a dagger out of my right hand right now in-game, I can replace it and still play the game. With the Azerite and cape, you are bound to a part of the game. And the azerite skills are cool, for sure, but it doesn’t feel like WoW.

WoW has become very unfriendly to alts. Not only do I have to do juggling acts to balance time between my main and my alts, but when I play on my alt, I am very turned off by the thought of having to get geared again, having to do quasi-mandatory quests again, grind again, etc. I don’t play on alts anymore, vav gets the attention.

I have to agree with making pvpers inferior in PVE. if anything, just barely passable, I can understand. Since I don’t touch PVE content, but want to experience the story (For what it is, unfortunately), LFR is the only way I can fight the final boss without having to fill out guild applications, wait a week to be approved, wait for an opening, arrange my schedule around the raid, etc.

I don’t know. WoW has been Blizzard’s money printer for years. I think they might actively be trying to slowly wind this game down for a future MMO. Either way, ever since the Activision partnership, quality has dropped dramatically.

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The timeline of subscribers matches up with the declining popularity of MMOs and the rise of competitive gaming and small scaled action RPG multiplayer games.

Even if WoW was made into the perfect MMO that everyone loved, it wouldn’t be bring those people back.

MMOs are not the trend in the market right now.

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some, not all, some of that is repaired in a classic tbc. for example, no dungeon finder, no raid finder, no crz. humans still dont have emfh and night elf shadowmeld still cant be used in combat. however, fear ward is now castable by draenei, alliance has shamans and horde has paladins. seal of blood is too op, but paladins of both factions are now great tanks and good tank healers. shadow priests are in demand and fun to play. locks are fun. rogues are amazing in pvp. and you dont need pathfinder in order to buy flying - it just costs ALOT.

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Azerite, essences, corruption are going bye bye in SL. CRZ and lfd arent bad… Better than sitting going /2 group lf tank and healer for x.

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Two things.

One, it’s a 16 year old game and not the most popular gaming genre in present day. Two, many games would kill for half the sub numbers WoW has right now

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Blizzard’s made a number of decisions I don’t particularly agree with but it’s never felt to me like they’re intentionally trying to tank WoW.

So I don’t know what to tell you.

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What worries me most is that they seem to be burning through their lore as fast as possible, as if they’re trying to tie up loose ends.

Queen Azshara? Could have been an expansion, instead she was 1/2 of a patch
The Old Gods? Could have been an expansion, wrapped up in a patch that seemed thinly pasted on to the rest of the expac
The Burning Legion, possibly the most looming threat in WoW? done and dusted

But I don’t know that that’s a matter of “the end is nigh” so much as “screw those old devs, we’re going to remake the game in our image.”

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Why did the old devs leave? They created a part of gaming history, references all over the world and even in other games.

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I don’t understand why they often dig their heels into so many different systems and limiting how people want to have fun by waiting so much. They will be adamant on some points and refuse to go back on it yet in legion it was all “play how you want and what you want” now reversing that, more or less. I just wonder why they like making it annoying for people who play different specs. They keep wanting to inconvenience people and time-gate stuff. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth with how they handle things.

While I’m not a huge fan of XIV over all, I do like how it handles alts and it shows people enjoy having that openness and freedom and one of the major reasons a lot of people are flooding to that game, massively growing in population quite quickly because of blizzards mess-ups and refusing to listen thinking they know what the majority wants and piss off people a lot. We used to be able to have such freedom if we just grinded up the gear and we could swap around without much of a restriction.

Maybe in the terms of XIV they started with barely much and focused on a few big things to cover it’s flaws. With moderate improvements but still lags behind in a lot of key parts to me like end game content and pvp. Only reason I bring up XIV is because it’s taking in a lot of former WoW players who pretty much quit WoW entirely. With WoW’s numbers continuing to drop every xpac after launch windows.

I get people think when someone says “WoW is dying” think it means it’s gonna go out like wildstar, but I always took “WoW is dying” or any game for that matter, as when it steadily loses players outside of xpac launches, during the patches or loses favor/respect.

hopefully, shadowlands is amazing. I love most things about the xpac we’ve seen so far besides the maw being barren and boring , conduit issues where you can’t upgrade them, and soulbinds locking to your class instead of per spec. Then the whole covenant 1 week CD but that one isn’t a huge deal to me. Don’t like it,especially because of some abilities being almost useless to hit for tons of specs, but I’m not gonna be super annoyed.

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You are right. Look at the subrscribers. MoP/ WoD lost 8ish million players.

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