Riding the coattails of Warcraft superior lore, advertisements, genre being more popular, much less option to play, particularly mobile and free to play games, players playing then are now older with responsibilities.
The game is undeniably worst now. But it’s not the only cause of sub loss. Far from it imo.
I don’t know that it’s realistic to have someone wake up and go, “I’d really like to play basketball,” go to the store, buy shoes and a ball, walk up to the stadium, somehow get slotted in as a player, and not get absolutely obliterated. It would be really weird for someone to do that and then complain that it’s impossible to play basketball as a beginner, when they took a flying jump over all of the other steps that people take when they engage in the game casually.
Rated PVP isn’t casual PVP. You can absolutely do casual unranked battleground PVP with a boosted character and learn the ropes. You can’t jump in to the deep end of the pool in any game that I can think of when you’ve never had a single swimming lesson and expect to come out of it with a gold medal.
The game has places to learn what PVP is all about, rated arenas isn’t that place.
Things grow and adapt. Otherwise it stagnates and dies out much sooner. Adaptation.
And that’s what matters. For now. What you do now predicts what happens in the future.
I’m not justifying anything. I’m explaining to you the ebb and flow of games and genres and how things come and go.
Again, this happens to every game. Unless a game changes what it is entirely, it’ll plateau and stop growing and then eventually start dying out. Happens to every game, especially MMOs. I don’t know why you’re treating this like it’s new news. WoW was not the first, it will not be the last.
True. But again, happens to every game, especially MMOs. You understand how things peak right? Things incline to the peak, and then things drop off.
WoW hit it’s peak, and now it’s on the backside. This isn’t new news either.
And this is the context that everyone is skipping over.
Is that an excuse for all the terrible decisions the devs have stuck with over the past few years? Wow will never have the wrath sub numbers again no matter what they do but it’s still no reason we can’t have wow be a good game again.
It’s no excuse. Just explaining numbers is all. And that’s simply your opinion. Do I think all the decisions they have made have been good? No? All terrible? Nah. I enjoy the game enough for what it is to keep paying and playing. It’s that simple.
If it’s not good enough for you, you’re free to do what you want. Whether its hang around and complain, or take your money elsewhere. /shrug
If you don’t have a cookie then I don’t need to see it.
You’re right, and so long as Blizzard continues this trend, WoW will continue to lose even more subscribers.
Again, I don’t know why you think I don’t know this. This has nothing to do with WoW’s age. WoW is not losing subscribers because of its age. It’s losing them because of shoddy game design and terrible systems.
A lot people have been very outspoken on this matter, from the forums themselves, to the WoW subreddit, to even massive WoW content creators. I think the amount of people should make it clear to you, no matter how much you like the game, that WoW is not in a good state and needs to change. You don’t have to agree with it, but you have to at least understand it.
I don’t expect WoW to regain its peak subscription count. WoW doesn’t need 12.5 million subscribers to be successful, but it does need to grow beyond what it currently is.
I really think you clutch onto this age excuse because you don’t really have any argument to be made. Using its age as a deflection because you refuse to face that, maybe WoW isn’t a very good game right now.
People outgrow things. This happens to every game. As games age, they die out.
People were complaining and doing the same thing back in Vanilla. Vocal majority is still the minority.
It’s still successful as is is the thing though.
I’m not holding onto anything. I enjoy the game for what it is. Does me saying it’s a good game and that it has millions of players still make it a good game, just as you saying it’s not a good game makes it not a good game?
People outgrow things, they get bored of it, they move on. This is why games die out. They could change the entirety of the game, but then it would no longer be WoW. You can only change it so much. And it needs to change or it stagnates. But it can only change so much before it becomes a new game entirely.
Way ahead of you.
Still clinging to the age excuse, huh?
And back then, WoW was gaining subscribers instead of losing them. Not the same thing.
And that’s why it’s important for games like WoW to bring in new players, but you seem to just want to ignore this factor in favor of burying your head in the sand.
Blizzard is actively dedicating resources to WoW to make it a more modern game. Updated graphics, updated character models, new starting zones, level boosts included with expansion purchases etc. Judging from these design choices, it’s pretty clear to me that they need, or at the very least want, new players joining the game.
It’s hilarious to see these blizz shills telling people to leave.
Wait, does that affect what you get from blizz? Negative PR value? New toon, old troll?
They just fall apart at the idea that someone doesn’t suckle at the teat of SL game design.
It’s still dumb to make content easier by giving rewards to use in unrated bg’s.
Smacks of being…
S O F T
Because it’s a thing. It’s a valid reason for why things die off…
Because it was new and shiny. Like most games when the release. There’s a rise when thins are new and shiny and then the fall after they’ve been out awhile. All has to do with age of the game.
I’m all for them bringing in new players. But they need to stick to their roots to remain “WoW”. The game has been out for 20 years. The game has attracted the majority of the people it’s going to. MMOs are a strong genre, but the up and coming generation isn’t so much interested in MMOs, so it’s hard to bring in those new players.
They’ve been doing those things for years now. Also not a new/recent choice they’ve made. I think boosts were available clear back in MoP/WoD.
Yes, every business wants new/returning customers. Also not a new concept.
This guy is just filling up the thread with FUD.
Probably best to forum ignore him. At least he will have to change toons to see his post.
Hah! I new it. I already had one of his toons on ignore for this garbage.
Ignored this latest one.
They shouldn’t leave
They should join us in TBC 
I mean, people quit for a variety of reasons. I feel like the game is considered old and repetitive to some. Others just cannot stand the changes. Or the story. Or the dailies. Or whatever the reason is this week. Or the game is to hard, yet nothing is easier than LFR.
It is all just white noise these days. Always something to complain about. I honestly feel like the old overworld being deleted from the game annoyed me. The revamp was cool, but dangit i missed the classic wow 1-60 overworld. So much so that i played classic and realized that was the only reason i played it.
I also feel like i was alienated when blizzard really started pushing the pay to win microtransactions with the level boosts in the game. Leveling up was the last actual rpg progression based thing left in the game in cataclysm and pandaria. Wow just has not been much of an Mmorpg since wrath of the lich king to be honest.
Then you just had the overall process of the game. World of warcraft used to have this dark souls like stuff going on the whole time you were playing. From like level 6 onwards. Knowing what you were doing after the first couple times helped, but there truly is no difference between someone leveling for the first time in retail now and a veteran leveler, because you just spam buttons and things die. No strategies. No grouping. Everything you need is placed right in front of you. The skill floor, skill cap and ceiling are undeniably low. Even as a veteran player leveling in wrath of the lich king, i still had to think about things now and then. And i still got owned. Now, i never get owned. The game in general just had more social engineering and difficulty, no CRZ, etc.
Wrath of the lich king had some mistakes here and there, but what it did right outweighed it’s wrong doings. I feel one of the big ones was the dungeon finder was added here. It made it to easy to just allow players in direct control of those atmospheres. Just annoys me how many people get kicked for stupid reasons. Just easier to find someone in 2 mins than to take ten mins to help a fellow player out. I feel like for the most part the dungeon finder was fine, but adding them to heroics 5 mans, was the mistake that was truly made. 5 man heroics were your first real introduction to where the game actually started to get serious. Leveling up in general was still serious and somewhat difficult, but the heroics were pretty hard in wrath before dungeon finder. Gear inflation and ease of access made them easy. This indirectly caused the nerf sweepings we saw in the heroics in cataclysm. But my take on it, i mean, i am casual player at the core. But even i was able to get through the cataclysm heroics in the beginning. I mean i was probably one of the slowest people ever, so if i can do it, i kind of expect that to be the mean average intelligence it should require to play wow.
Even now, people are complaining that wow is to hard. Like get real. What is easier than bloody LFR. There is no excuse. We have mythics now, which just seem to be a replacement for heroics, but i do not even know anymore. I was used to the 5 man normal and heroic, and 10 and 25 man normal and heroic dychotomy. After you were done with all that you were done. And then you had pvp or whatever. I seriously just feel like the game used to attract a larger intellectual threshold. Wrath of the lich king did not please everyone, but it had the most satisfied.
These days, it truly seems like wow doesn’t even know what it wants to be anymore. I mean, you have the advent of the internet, which if you ask me, the digital age and the internet was a mistake. But it just makes everything hyper easy. Especially when everyone in their mother has access to a 1 k dollar phone at like 14 years of age. And no one has any self awareness or self control. Like was classic more fun trying to replay the game for the first time without looking everything up or using questing addons. I would argue that it was for me. I mean, there really is no way to win.
I can respect games like dark souls or eve online for knowing exactly what they want to be. I mean, it is definitely not going to attract the same following world of warcraft has had over the years, but it is not for everyone. The themes, the atmosphere. Alot of people probably would not be smart enough to play them. But i feel that was the bread and butter with wow back then. Blizzard has tried so hard over the years to be more inclusive, but they have overdone it in my opinion. I mean, we have gotten to that point where i could probably tame a gorrilla to play wow. Not even exaggerating.
I get that blizzard has tried hard to get it so that more and more folks can play and compete in world of warcraft. But they have to draw that line somewhere. In vanilla and burning crusade, you had that whole thing where the game was way to hardcore. Leveling in classic i remember not being able to reach end game in time myself. But now we are playing a game that is way to softcore in my opinion, to the point where the intellectuals no longer feel included. Blizzard just needs to go with the middle ground model that wrath of the lich king had. It was popular for a ton of reasons, and that wasn’t just because it had a amazing and popular story. The story could be about a donkey blowing bubbles, but as long as the game play is good and it has a middle ground of inclusivity, then the game is just going to be better off. They have given way to much into entitlement and junk. And overall, the game has changed to much for some people. And for others it is just to repetitive or whatever, which is the nature of every mmo ever made.
MMOS are an emulation of real life. With a ton of different people playing with different personas and skill sets. Every time i read the forums, feels like just gorillas typing up words. This post in general is just clickbait and copypasta, and the internet just enables clickbait and the lack of quality. Half the popular stuff in music is legit just stuff that happened to go viral, usually with just negative shares and clicks of people saying how bad it is. I mean shoot. All i do in life anymore and in video games is click buttons and type in passcodes. I click those buttons for max damage in warcraft. Oh click that button for that dungeon que to start. Click that enter dungeon button. Legit in wow now click buttons and move 2 feet in between quests every so often. Click some more buttons, move a few more feet. That is all.
It’s more hilarious to see these people who claim they are quitting because the game is so bad posting non stop about how bad it is like an obsessive ex trying to convince everyone that the person who dumped them is a terrible person and can’t stop talking about them. And even though they say they are quitting, they are still posting days, weeks, months later. We all know they aren’t going anywhere. They are addicted and bitter about it.
I honestly would agree. The video just seems like a dude desperate for likes and negative likes and shares lol. But that is the nature of the world we live in. And the more clicks and shares, that somehow determines the success rate. But where is the quality. No where.
The video just sounds like the dude is an attention seeker to. My previous post outlined why the game has declined in subs and declined in quality, and why many people are leaving, and why the world and entertainment in general has declined in quality. The internet was an absolute mistake if you ask me. It gives everyone in there mother a voice. And all you really need to do is make videos and get them shared as quickly as possible, and boom, suddenly everyone talks to you. And the more shares and clicks and negative press, the more money and the more attention and the lack of quality we as the viewers receive indirectly as a result.
I feel like everything i mentioned previously is exactly why wow has declined and does not have the subscriber base it used to have. The middle ground that wow has had in wrath is gone. Classic wow and classic bc were to hard. Cataclysm and forward have made to many wierd changes and overall has been to softcore. Other than age and story and whatever else people want to blame it on which aren’t real reasons to be honest, the quality has also gone down in world of warcraft retail.
WoW is so addictive that it lost half of its playerbase since Shadowlands’s release, if not more.
It’s so addictive that its popularity is a shell of what it used to be.
What they’re doing right now is not “WoW”. The fact that you even think it is tells me that you joined this game well after its prime and have a very skewed idea of what WoW is and should be.
It seems to me this is just dead wrong when you look at how successful FFXIV is.
If a game is good, people will play it no matter the genre. MOBAs aren’t really in fashion anymore, either, but that hasn’t stopped League of Legends and Dota 2 from seeing continuous growth.
Huh, almost like when the game began taking a turn for the worse and Blizzard started finding ways to secure more players. Weird how that lines up.