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The three punches that killed WoW.
Roe
Always to the EastRegistered User regular
Always to the EastRegistered User regular
First of all, I loved playing WoW up to Cataclysm. The environment with all of my friends, the raids that were challenging and fun, the heroic dungeons that were rewarding to complete.
When Cataclysm hit, most of my friends have left the game for brighter games that are fun to play. WoW turned a wrong direction when they started to fold to pressure from other games which were an actual danger to the game.
Warhammer online brought one of the punches by changing how people queue up for Battlegrounds. Allowing people to queue up from anywhere made people who used to gather in one area, queue from any part of the game. This lead to dungeons and heroics queuing from anywhere in the game. Soon enough the game started to fall apart from there on.
Heirlooms brought imbalance to the game where people would no longer roll on any gear and dominate any battleground except for above 80. Owning these pieces of gear made leveling ridiculously easy, and made it so people don't have much to look forward to, because the heart of the game was upgrading your gear.
The final blow to world of warcraft, was allowing people to fly in azeroth. Now you can fly anywhere in the game, which in this sad state of the game, is used to fly on top of buildings while you wait for arena to queue. With all of this in mind, what is there to do in World of Warcraft now that people do not do anything with other players besides arena and raid now?
When Cataclysm hit, most of my friends have left the game for brighter games that are fun to play. WoW turned a wrong direction when they started to fold to pressure from other games which were an actual danger to the game.
Warhammer online brought one of the punches by changing how people queue up for Battlegrounds. Allowing people to queue up from anywhere made people who used to gather in one area, queue from any part of the game. This lead to dungeons and heroics queuing from anywhere in the game. Soon enough the game started to fall apart from there on.
Heirlooms brought imbalance to the game where people would no longer roll on any gear and dominate any battleground except for above 80. Owning these pieces of gear made leveling ridiculously easy, and made it so people don't have much to look forward to, because the heart of the game was upgrading your gear.
The final blow to world of warcraft, was allowing people to fly in azeroth. Now you can fly anywhere in the game, which in this sad state of the game, is used to fly on top of buildings while you wait for arena to queue. With all of this in mind, what is there to do in World of Warcraft now that people do not do anything with other players besides arena and raid now?
Roe on
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Well let's see. You can do quests, you can do instances, you can go for achievements, you can explore, you can craft, you can resource gather, you can play the AH. You can hunt rare mobs, and do dailies, and grind faction. You can solo old content, and farm for rare drops. With the addition of flying you can easily travel from place to place, and examine the odd and interesting easter eggs hidden off the beaten path. You can run into enemy cities and make players chase you. You can go fishing. You can try Archeology. You can do PvP battlegrounds. You can kill a devilsaur with a fishing pole. You can attack the Crossroads, or cleanse Goldshire with fire.
I'm sorry, the majority of your post sounds like you are just complaing that the game is ruined for YOU because people don't gather in one place anymore? Have you never been to an AH? Groups of people everywhere! Firelands portal? Lookit them groups! Capitol cities: full of people.
But not full of easy prey flagged and sitting on the ground to be ganked. Is that the problem? Nothing for you to gank? Abloo abloo, poor you.
I've only played the game a few times and never really got into it. But it is, and will likely remain for a number of years, the most succesful MMO in the history of the genre.
Rigorous Scholarship
Cata was rushed and they keep sweeping up the shit they caused by half assing it with every patch I do hope with the Next one they have learned not everyone likes to raid or pvp
Why do you think they're offering a Looking For Raid queue soon? Because as populations decline, raiding has been drying up. They're trying to hide the after-effects of losing a lot of subscribers.
They had the longest dominant run of any MMO, so I can't say they made the "wrong choices" per se in how they managed WoW over the last several years. But certainly they helped pioneer the "race to the bottom" mentality of catering to the lowest common denominator in the name of maximum revenues. I worry for what Titan will be when it hits... "most accessible game to date" is what a Blizz rep stated -- I read that as "extremely casual, most likely cross-platform with consoles, and lots of social media and mobile device integration".
Cwn, I love you. Love, Gork.
Yeah, because making your product accessible rather than a jumbled mess of stats that require a maths degree to comprehend is the single worst thing an entertainment company could make.
I don't think the subscriber decline has much to do with bad decisions by Blizzard. It's most likely just a result of an aging game combined with new competition in the MMO market.
Seriously. A game that involves "cross-platform with consoles, and lots of social media and mobile device integration" sounds awesome. The market for hardcore games is probably no bigger than what EvE draws in terms of subscribers.
Rigorous Scholarship
I want something challenging. If you want an MMO that doesn't deal with "maths" then go play browser games on Facebook.
There will always be people that try to deconstruct the data behind the game btw. Even if everything was hidden from you, people would still log the raw damage numbers to figure out what's most effective. And WoW HAS significantly reduced the "maths" in Cata, and what do we have? A bunch of equipment with different names that all has the same stats and is boring.
Or I could go play Ninja Gaiden, which is a genuinely challenging game and not "challenging" like WoW and its half-witted inbred kin.
They've seen a pretty rapid decline in subscribers, honestly. Losing 25% of your subscribers in 9 months after being steadily dominant for over 5 years is not a steady decline. And what new competition are we speaking of? For as much that Rift did right, their subscriber numbers are disappointing. Under 500k afaik. The Old Republic isn't out yet, but I expect that will definitely cause a sudden dip in subscribers for WoW. Whether it's permanent or temporary will depend on how good TOR is of course. With how rapidly WoW turns over equipment these days, they can't really hold onto people because they are attached to their characters anymore. The more homogenized you make things, and the more rapidly you obsolete their equipment, their becomes little incentive to stick with a character then. ( Even EQ1 couldn't hold onto people, and attachment to equipment and leveled skills was much greater in that game )
And I'm not asking for a hardcore game. I would like a game that offers a genuine challenge and proper rewards for it. WoW HMs offer somewhat of a challenge, but terrible rewards for it because casual players feel threatened by other people receiving better rewards than they receive. (Part of the issue is the whole PvP/PvE divide that WoW chose not to separate) EQ1 would have players spread out across multiple expansions worth of raid content, yet there was much much less complaint from players. People were happy to be progressing at whatever stage they were at, even if they were a bit envious of the guilds in the newest dungeon. Whereas in WoW, their equipment system trivializes encounters quickly and people only care about being in the newest dungeon.
Rigorous Scholarship
It's not just Old Republic comming out next year but several others.
It's a lot of things they did to Cata I think drove people off with the guild BS, the simplified talent trees, forcing people to raid which in turn made pvp far more popular again because pvp is all the time raids are certain time of the day it seems.
I really have no idea why they made the LFR if it's to get people into raiding a weekly would have worked again but then some of the raids in Wrath were quick and fun I don't know about the ones in Cata
I can't see how anyone can talk about the LFR system yet, considering it has yet to hit the live realms.
Heirlooms made pre-cap bg's unplayable? I must have been imagining all those twinks back in Vanilla. Those billions of rogues with 2xagility swords going around and killing people with 1-2 Sinister Strikes.
Heirlooms stop people from levelling up because they don't change their gear? Anything that stops me from having to look like a clown can only be a good thing, but its not as if these people who use and then complain about heirlooms, couldn't look closer to home (i.e. don't use them then!).
I honestly can't see why anyone cares about guild perks so late in this expansion.
WoW ain't perfect (and it certainly wouldn't be hard to point out things that need improvement, but it gets alot more right than it does wrong.
Personally, I'm looking forward to 4.3. Getting 3 new 5 mans, being able to have a play with how I look, the LFR tool looks to be something I very much like (my lifestyle if very different to how it was in Vanilla with regards to the amount of free time I find myself with) and am more than willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Getting a whole lot of new pve and pvp gear. There's probably going to be a new hub for dailies that will be entertaining for a time.
I'm still logging in, playing pug BG's with others, playing arena games for points (I met a lovely chap Tuesday night for the point cap), crawling through dungeons, doing old content with 2 others.
4.3 has more than enough for me.