Why I Stopped Playing Wow

Community General Discussion
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I know nobody here cares, that’s kinda expected with the WoW community but I just wanted to post why I might finally be done with the game.

For starters, I’m a long time player. Didn’t start when vanilla went live but started before BC and have been a regular for the most part since.

For the most part I loved the game and played regularly.

I may not have loved all the expansions, I loved BC and WotLK but was turned off by the changes Cataclysm made to the old world I grew to love. I for the most part forgave it but honestly I started much less alts because I didn’t like the new world as much. But hey, I had my mains who were max level.

Everything was for the most part fine until Shadowlands which I absolutely hated. I won’t go into too long a detail but I just hated what the idea of it did to the idea of death in WoW. suddenly death wasn’t death and the so called afterlife was a joke. I still played and leveled to max but couldn’t find the interest to raid or play much after hitting max level.

So I did what most others in my shoes did. I rolled a Wow Classic toon. and loved it. I was home again.

Everything was great for a while. In fact it was great throughout the initial WoW classic year or so. and then you released BC Classic. Hey , nothing wrong with that, I loved BC. However not everyone felt the same and a lot of people either decided to stay on their Wow Classic servers or just stopped playing. Kind of a bummer but it is what it is. Then WotLK came out. Again I loved WotLK but I’ve soon found that the population was declining more and more.

And then I found out why.

Unknowingly I apparently rolled my toons on the wrong server and my server had little by little become 90% horde. I didn’t mind at first but as more and more people bailed for other more balanced servers it because difficult to find full guilds of people who played regularly and wanted to do dungeons.

Eventually I bit the bullet and paid to transfer a few of my mains to another server. Of course that likely what Blizzard wanted. Oh well, as log as I was able to find a server with a decent player base again.

Well then the population started to drop off again. What was causing this decline? Turns out WoW Hardcore.

So I bit the bullet and rolled yet another toon on another new server and while its fun again for now… WoW isn’t meant to be a hardcore thing and as soon as my toon eventually gets killed I can’t say I have the interest in doing it all over again yet again.

So the main problem? You fragmented your customer base way too much and then just ignored the ones who unfortunately and by no fault of their own became stranded on dead or drastically unbalanced servers.

and its only going to happen again and get worse soon as we getg closer to a Cataclysm Classic. Ironic as it was the first expansion that killed WoW for me. It may also be the last.

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Wouldn’t it be expected in any community? I don’t even know you why would I suddenly care?

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Yeah. They really do need to take more steps to implement a “one server” solution for all versions of the game so no one feels like they are left on a dead server…But I know it’s a double-edged sword because some people really like server communities and server identity.

At least they seem to be actively working on it in retail, just not fast enough to keep up with the perceived(?) player decline.

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Could just be that you outgrew the game. Alot of people do and move on to something else.

I quit and come back as the expansions go on and the only thing keeping me playing and coming back are the friends who play on and off in the same manner.

I tried WoW Classic and Classic TBC but couldn’t last throughout them. TBC was the most fun I had playing the game to date when it was current content but you just can’t re-creat the fun from the past.

WoW is a dieing game but a slow one. It will still last for years. If you can find fun in what it has to offer great, if not then don’t waste your time and money and find something else you enjoy playing or doing.

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While I agree with everything you said, although I would have used harsher words… because I truly believe blizzard is an absolutely awful company, and I honestly feel bad about giving them ANY of my money; despite only playing classic wow now…

You need to realize the reason this all occurs, is because they quite literally do not care

They fragmented it on purpose. They knew everyone will pay to play whatever version they enjoy. some like every version, some like 1 version. The thing is, they made the 1 sub work for every version, and the only one they need to put any amount of money into is retail and cater to those players.

They couldn’t care less about the other versions. They’re making their money and nothing is going to change their practices short of them making less money, which isn’t happening with the business model they created.
It’s not a group of developers trying to make a great video game they’d love anymore. It’s about shareholders and profits. You do not matter. You are insignificant as an individual to them.

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Obligated can I have your stuff post.

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There was no cross-realm play in Classic, and players asked for “Vanilla.” Ion even said at a Blizzcon before Classic was released “Vanilla means Vanilla” [no changes]. We know that changed eventually with some QoL stuff and the WoW Token on Classic, but cross-realm was never a thing.

Blaming the devs (“You fragmented your customer base…”) makes it seem like you misunderstood what you were signing up for when you rolled on a Classic server.

I agree that multiple variants appears to split the playerbase, but look at it this way. If those variants next to Retail were not available, the paying playerbase would not be split; it would simply be smaller. Those that play some variant of Classic most of the time have little interest in paying a sub for Retail and if Retail was all that was available, they would simply un-sub and play another game.

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Yea i dont know i play on Wrath classic and theres tons of people there mianly ally and like 0 horde, not sure how you keep picking servers that keep dying, i mean thats all you and not blizz

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So TLDR you transferred multiple times and did zero research into what the populated servers were, and now are complaining about it.

You’re given tools to avoid situations like this and you chose not to use them

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What is a one server solution?

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In WoW’s case, it would likely be connecting all AHs for all trades, enabling cross-server trading/mail, and implementing CRZ in every portion of the game so all servers will feel equally full.

In other games, like ESO, everyone is literally on one sharded server, so the game constantly feels active and full. WoW could go this route, but Blizz would likely face a lot of pushback from those who want to preserve server communities and reputations.

Either way, Blizzard needs to take steps to either get rid of dead servers or implement systems to make them feel active.

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Seriously? In what world is that a good idea?!

I doubt it would have anything to do with ‘server communities and reputations’ and everything to do with the enormous plummit in the experience of gaming. The only reason ESO does it is because its cheaper than having separate servers. And games like Final Fantasy have actually activated an Oceanic server to improve the gaming experience for its Oceanic players. So you effectively want to go backwards, quality-wise.

We on Oceanic would lose the benefit of having our own separate Oceanic server which gives us quality play , in order to be lumped onto (presumably) US based server centres.

You can take that idea and…no, I’m thinking norty words. I’ll just leave you with an emote. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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One PvE, PvP, Hardcore server for each expansion. So six servers across classic, tbc, and wotlk. If one is to full and its causing issues, then make just 1 additional server and repeat till it settles.

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In a world where we are playing a game with a gradually shrinking player base and a lot of players trapped on dead servers which likely contributes to people leaving

WoW doesn’t need 240 retail servers, 24 Classic servers, and 24 Wraith servers…especially since a majority of them are medium or low pop.

An adaptive single server solution using sharding or full CRZ (with connected systems) will make the game seem full and active with millions of player or thousands

I’m sure WoW could do that too. They would just sperate oceanic players into a seperate regional single server. Although its important to note that FF14 has waaaaay less servers than WoW so they don’t have this issue yet.

ESO implemented “one world” because their game was literally dying. Its a fun game, but if it wasn’t buy to play with an optional sub it would probably already be dead. At least with the steps they have taken, you barely notice the low pop when you play.

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At this point Im facepalming myself so much I need to put up a shield.

So, you think it would be a good idea to - on the one hand - join all those low pop servers together and on the other hand separate out the Oceanic realms so they would end up in this little enclave where they woudl be waiting an hour for a queue to pop because of our relative low population? I mean, do you hear yourself?

Yeah, Retail players aren’t that concerned about whatever servers there are in those games.

ESO was always a single server. You are confusing that with “One Tamriel” which was a change to o the leveling scheme and zone structure.

If you look at the list of servers, you will see that many of them are connected already. My main server of Caelestrasz is connected to Nagrand and Saurfang. There are some connected groups containing 6 servers. If you are so anxious to help out the low pop servers, then submit suggestions as to which ones you feel would benefit from connection.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter how many servers there are - you can join a group with players from any server in your region. Consumable sales are region wide on the AH and the restrictions on trading between characters on different servers have been loosened. And anyone can earn ingame gold, buy a token and transfer a character using that if they really wish to.

Come up with alternatives that are beneficial to all and don’t damage anyone’s play.

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You realize this is them doing exactly what I am suggesting just on a smaller scale right? I am submitting a suggestion…6 isnt enough, they need to add a bunch more.

That is a step in the right direction to connecting every server…but it needs to be expanded to inlude every BoE and crafted item so the the game has one economy.

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Use the Suggestion option in the Support area. That goes directly to them and is going to be read, unlike most of the posts here.

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Classic is a cool concept but it really does not only fragment the playerbase, but also the developers. The devs years ago were right it wasn’t worth doing because it’d be like developing two different games at the same time. And now here we are full circle.

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:dracthyr_tea:

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Based on what their recent design decisions, they are already working on it in retail. They may not call it “one server,” but they are slowly removing the barriers between servers so that they are all connected.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t help people playing classic.