Yes. That is the normal way things happen. People are not happy. They complain. They dont quit. They complain and hope to get the cimplaint resolved. Not only did they not get listened to, the game was dumbed down even further. It started in wotlk, when they hung on to see the changes of cata. As soon as they played cata, they realized that the gsme was going to continue to get worse
Everyone had a breaking point. I kept goimg at that point. I didnt believe it was possible for a company to ignore its playerbase like they were and would figure it out. The game kept getting easier. Or they were listening to the wrong feedback. It wanst until they started making pvp templates that i finally had enough. But it started in wotlk. They took an almost perfect game in tbc, and drive it into the ground. Actually that is what i thought. Now that i have been able to play again, i can see it actually started with the easy mode tanking from palidans in tbc. Dumgeon finder was a great tool. It was an improvement and one of the best changes they ever made. But the content became so easy and the tanking became so dumbed down that it became run in tank grab all adds, aoe them down and heal the tank with unlimited mana. There was no need to talk or rquest a sap or sheep or any cc. That is what ruined player interaction. Not lfd.
I facepalmed when that was mentioned in the interview. “people stopped running ulduar to run ToC because it had better gear”. well no sh*t? you removed the drake achievements and put out a new raid tier with better gear and faster clear time.
If people want to run ToC 4 times a week that’s entirely up to them. They are also free to choose to go back and run Ulduar/Naxx.
And that’s bad? I mean, they started with 10 million, ended with 12 million and… according to you that’s bad? Oh please tell me how the period with the most subs ever was a bad time.
No, its not bad. The myth of ‘wrath being the most popular’ forgets the fact that the tragectory was an absolute increase UNTIL Wrath, when the subs lost, began to match the subs going in.
Making us run ToC 4 times a week, and other ‘engagement metric’ driven designs, was why a lot of us left.
There is literally no reason to restrict access to dungeons. They are not end game. Leave the gatekeeping for raids and let the casuals have their fun in dungeons.
Wrath wasnt its own thing in a vacuum. It owes some of its success to its predecessors. Wrath gained the least amount of subs of the three and plateaued. It was all downhill from there.
not to be the Ackually guy but Wrath was the expansion were the sub numbers leveled off and declined
Vanilla ended at 5mil
TBC ended at 9
Wrath ended at 12
Smallest growth and the expansion (of the trilogy) that lost subs, partially because of its South Park fame and commercials that brought more players who were only there for the “hype” and cultural event and also due to the original story having a conclusion with Arthas death.
basically if you really liked WoW you either got hooked in classic/vanilla for the most part.
I wouldn’t call it revisionist history. The game certainly didn’t suffer because of it. I know I liked it. I know everyone in my guild liked it. I don’t remember anyone in the old forums complaining about it.
I don’t agree, Wrath didn’t see growth. BUT it was INSANELY popular. Growth != popularity. It held a higher peak over it’s duration.
Yes the sub count started to stagnate. But even plateauing at 10-12 million… that is more than any MMO ever. It is also ridiculous to assume that you can have INFINITE growth. And since NO other MMO has even gotten close to that many concurrent players you have to wonder if it growth was stifled by in game systems/decisions, or we were just approaching the maximum number of players that are interested in playing MMOs at that time…