I do think that’s a problem. Once you hit 100, it’s gear up for raiding (or LFR) or nothing of significance. Blizzard has essentially given up on 5-man content as an endgame feature, aside from forcing people to run them once for the legendary ring quests. Crafting has turned into a tedious grind of use-it-or-lose-it daily cooldowns (which I hate), with gear sales gimped by a 3-piece limit for ALL professions’ stuff, and for an extra kick, they gutted consumable producing profs like jewelcrafting and enchanting (alchemy has been useless for several expansions except for transmute mastery, which they also killed).
Some form of alternate progression system would be a huge benefit to them being able to maintain player engagement. I suspect that the abandoned Path of the Titans content was exactly that sort of thing, maybe they shouldn’t have tossed that aside.
Nope. It’s just that you state things in such hyperbolic terms that it’s hard to take any criticisms you have seriously. It’s better than any other MMO and a total disaster? Come on.
WoW is old and boring. The market has more gaming options than any other time, and games like LoL/DOTA cannabalize some of the core fun like pvp aspects of Wow. People can find better, one time fee, or free pve. I don’t believe monetizing or making WoW easier will drive away players. At this point they should push forward with making as much money as possible. The game is pretty much in decline. They’re stuck in the middle of having a challenge and making it too easy and boring. I still have my orginal tank with a bank full of resist gear. Raiding was a massive time sink and now it is fairly boring and predictable. I tried to bring my mage into this expac and I couldn’t stand how boring every thing was. It was just run through everything. I used to run Dire Maul, the king’s chest thing, and we had so much fun and interaction on pulls.
Well, it’s just that what you define boring because it’s old, in my opinion instead it’s the missed opportunity for WoW to grow out of its comfort zone and improve, instead of getting worse at the things it was doing well. The package crumpled inward.
The shallowness you point out is due to formula, and a formula that they got wrong past a certain point.
Those videos I linked aren’t videos from people like me who didn’t play for years. But from players who want to play, and are playing the game, but that explain how the new content is really bad in quality.
And your point: “At this point they should push forward with making as much money as possible” Is exactly why game design is so bad.
WoW is losing subs because it’s a really old game, and no matter how good something is, people get burnt out on it. Dopamine and serotonin are far more responsible for wows decline than anything else.
WoW is an ancient game. It still has some fun stuff to do. I can still get a month of entertainment out of it once or sometimes twice a year before I cap out on all the gear you can get without being in an elite, 5-night a week raiding guild. The mythic 5 mans sound fun, I’ll probably get a month out of the next patch.
Expecting a game this old to not be in subscriber decline in the world of f2p +one time purchases is… insane.
I’m not really sure what content you can skip is bothering you. Level 90 boost saves you a decent number of hours, though frankly not many if you signed up a friend and have heirloom gear. I’ve had friends hit 100 in 2 days of RL playing that way.
The item level requirements to run the LFR are so low that you can quite easily attain that gear casually in less than a week. I’m talking 1-2 hours a day of play. You aren’t meaningfully gated in any way here. Yes, you could spend RL money and convert it to WoW gold to save yourself the 8 hours of grinding to get to the appropriate item level, but so what? You are literally saving in the single digits of hours. When was WoW ever not a grind? So yea, you can buy yourself essentially to the same ilvl you would have if you finished all the raids on normal difficulty. But… so what? What then? To play heroic/mythic you actually have to be good at the game and know the encounters. No guild that clears heroic/mythic raids is going to let you in based on your ilvl if you aren’t a pro player. All the item levels you can buy will still get you a weak arena rating without skill.
You’ve spent 300 bucks to skip a few weeks of casual raiding. I dunno. The business model really doesn’t seem problematic to me. The actual good gear is still gated by skill far more than it is gated by ilvl, as any idiot can get the same item level you could buy with RL money with a months light effort (5-6 hours a week).
(I tried to edit the previous post but I got YOURE BLOCKED Cloudfare message)
Both Elder Scrolls Online and Wildstar have been released a year ago and they couldn’t sustain a subscription model for this long. Yet they aren’t “old”, and yet they are performing more poorly than WoW. Why? Because they are bad games.
FFXIV has been out for almost two years, if you only consider the relaunch, yet it’s doing splendidly despite it’s based on subscriptions (and it’s even the most restrictive one). How? Because it’s a good game.
It’s all a matter of game design and game direction. Age or business model is the easy conclusion for those who cannot see below the surface.
And, to complete, there’s a decline in quality that is not WoW’s own, but of the genre.
What are the good MMORPGs that came out after WoW?
It’s: WoW -> (nothing) -> Guild Wars 2 -> Final Fantasy XIV
That’s it.
There have been a few vaguely competent games, like Rift. Then one step below stuff like: TERA, Stark Trek Online, Acheage and all that.
We had a pretty BIG number of new releases. ALL NEW. Yet they all fail horribly. So what’s this myth about WoW being old if no new game can’t even get close to it?
Or maybe it’s not “age”, but actually the quality of what you put in those games?
The thing is that F2P is the only model that can squeeze some more money out of mediocre games that are already dying.
I don’t think it has as much to do with the relative quality of the new game as much as sheer inertia: the gamers who still enjoy the traditional MMO model are happy with WoW and unwilling to put in the time for a new game, even if a lot of the newcomer’s mechanics are superior. They know the WoW mechanics, they have a bunch of leveled-up characters in WoW, and switching to a new game and leaving that /played legacy behind is not easy.
And I think a lot of it is that the MMO model of gameplay is just tired and threadbare. Despite some worthy attempts, it really hasn’t changed since the first Everquest, though WoW refined it and polished it to a high sheen. New games might bring flashy graphics and one or more good gimmicks to the table, but they don’t really bring anything NEW; the Diku-style of loot-based progression in a massively-multiplayer environment is just plain played-out. As others have pointed out, you can get your multiplayer fix, your open-world fix, your RPG fix or your grindy fix in lots of other genres now.
Not really. All new mmorpgs coming out have a really considerable surge of players in the initial days. But the retention is very bad.
Same as WoW’s latest expansion: everyone is back, sees the quality is not there, and after a couple of months the game has already lost all appeal.
And I think a lot of it is that the MMO model of gameplay is just tired and threadbare. Despite some worthy attempts, it really hasn’t changed since the first Everquest, though WoW refined it and polished it to a high sheen. New games might bring flashy graphics and one or more good gimmicks to the table, but they don’t really bring anything NEW; the Diku-style of loot-based progression in a massively-multiplayer environment is just plain played-out. As others have pointed out, you can get your multiplayer fix, your open-world fix, your RPG fix or your grindy fix in lots of other genres now.
And yet FFXIV is squarely in that mold, without any innovation at all, and is doing surprisingly well. And, the interesting aspect, it’s doing well after having FAILED. The first release was a disaster, but with just a careful redesign players came back in flocks.
It’s a good example because despite its limits it shows exactly that good game design can turn a complete failure into a decent success.
Yeah, 7 million subs means “the game has already lost all appeal.”
WoW is still the most successful MMO, by a long, long, long shot.
Your suggestion that everyone who buys the items that Blizzard has put on sale for money are somehow victims and unable to control themselves is also really condescending. It may not be to your liking, but lots of people enjoy buying pets and mounts and other stuff. Maybe that bothers you, but these people are making choices - nobody is forcing them to buy that stuff. They get some enjoyment out of it, so why shouldn’t Blizzard offer it?
The reality is that an MMO subscription is about the best value you can get in the world today. What other hobbies can you engage in at the level that some do with MMOs for $15/month? There are a lot of people who play 5-7 hours every night. 200 hours a month of gameplay for $15 is a crazy bargain, so the idea of offering other things for additional money isn’t crazy. Would you suggest that all the food in the bar should be free when you golf 18 holes at a local course? Should all the merchandise be free inside Disney World?
That game developers are finally realizing that they can follow the same path as other hobbies is just something you’re going to have to get used to.
The appeal for returning players. They all left. The news was the drop in subscriptions to the low just before the expansion, so everyone who joined for it already left.
Your suggestion that everyone who buys the items that Blizzard has put on sale for money are somehow victims and unable to control themselves is also really condescending.
I’ve never suggested anything of the kind.
It may not be to your liking, but lots of people enjoy buying pets and mounts and other stuff.
I never said anything about non-gameplay stuff (beside that I assume people would enjoy having pets and mounts more if they didn’t have to buy them on top of a subscription).
“Exploiting” is a very powerful word. What about selling pets and mounts for money, or anything else, is “exploiting” the player? These people press that “add to cart” button by choice.
Blizzard has not added a single gameplay feature behind some sort of paywall. They haven’t added a for-pay service, other than the WoW Token, in years. What gameplay-oriented feature are you complaining about, specifically?
Everyone would love everything more if they didn’t have to buy it. Except then they wouldn’t get it because the people who make that thing would go out of business. Let’s dispense with the notion that everything should be free, and then we can have a real discussion.
Oh yes. Blizzard would totally lose money if they offered for free the mounts that currently are behind a paywall. Sure.
You still seem to forget that this game is based on subscriptions. We aren’t talking about “free”, we’re talking about stuff that shouldn’t require an extra when you’re already paying $15 every month. It should be enough. It’s not exactly a low price.
And it’s also completely unacceptable that Blizzard decided to erase the live team for this last expansion, and move everyone on the expansion team. So not only they took subscriptions without using that money on live updates as usual, but they took subscriptions money to make content that you then pay for AGAIN when you buy an expansion.
See Eve-Online: expansions are free. It’s what you get for paying the monthly sub. Blizzard not only takes the subscription, not only sells expansions and even at a rather high cost, but on top of that they even start to monetize the little things.
It’s fairly absurd, especially because up to Cataclysm they could make MORE content, BETTER and more polished. Truth is: WoW money is going to pay development for other games. You can be sure that very little of the money WoW makes is being reinvested into WoW itself. And that’s why it’s coming down (beside having replaced a talented lead game designer with another who has an history of failures).
I’ll say again: exploting happens when stuff that should be free, in a subscription game, is now pushed behind a paywall.
Blizzard has not added a single gameplay feature behind some sort of paywall. They haven’t added a for-pay service, other than the WoW Token, in years. What gameplay-oriented feature are you complaining about, specifically?
These tokens are directly tied to in-game money. In-game money is directly tied to pretty much all facets of the game.
There’s nothing “cosmetic” about being able to buy game money with real money.
I get it. You believe that your $15/month is an investment in Blizzard and entitles you to some sort of ongoing voice in their development process.
Except you’re wrong. Your monthly subscription pays for access to WoW under the terms that Blizzard sets.
You don’t get to dictate to them how they spend the money you give them and more than you get to dictate how Exxon spends the money you pay for your gas.
Does WoW money pay for the development of other games? Of course it does! Are you so naive that you don’t believe that this has been the case for the entire history of WoW and is in fact the case for every single successful game that has ever been released?
Every single other one of your arguments is similarly ridiculous. You have this insane notion that $15/month entitles you to everything that the WoW team creates under any circumstance. Thankfully you are in the minority and there are plenty of rational gamers who understand this isn’t how the world works. I imagine you’re on the phone with Comcast every month demanding HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax for free also, since you pay a monthly fee to them. I’m sure you’re starting online petitions to get your gym to give you free access to the snack bar and vending machines since you pay a monthly fee to them. And we all know that international data should be free on your mobile carrier because you pay a monthly fee to them, right?
Grow up. Nobody is forcing you or anyone else to buy pets, mounts, or WoW tokens. WoW is just as fun without them as with them, but for some reason you think people who buy those things are being exploited. How condescending to them - they clearly have no idea what they’re doing when they hit the buy button - they’re just pawns to Blizzards mind games, right? They are not responsible because they’re not as smart as you are, obviously.
