Ive heard from a few people now that they have stopped playing WoW. Is World of Warcraft dropping off? Are people getting sick of the time commitment or simply sick of paying the monthly subscription to Blizzard?
Either way I would love to see the official figures.
Insiders at Blizzard are bored with the current direction of the game and have reported they aren't free to implement their own ideas which is frustrating and hampering developers on the Blizzard World of Warcraft team.
Maybe Blizzard is focusing too hard on the new Starcraft franchise?
Either way if they don't spark new life into World of Warcraft and let their programmers get some creativity back into the game - its dead in the water and their cash cow will start drying up.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Is World of Warcraft Dying?
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4 comments:
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: Blizzard's own official numbers reveal a game that's still actively growing. People argue over what, exactly, a "subscriber" is, but there's no denying that WoW now has over 9 million subscribers as of July compared to 8 million in January. That's growth, no matter how you slice it.
Furthermore, a bit of perspective is in order. WoW has millions more players than any other American MMO I'm aware of. Games like CoH/CoV, EVE and EQ2 have existed for years (and continue to grow) with only a tiny fraction of WoW's subscriber base.
As for "some" people being unhappy with the game's direction, that's a given. Someone is *always* unhappy with a game's direction, even on a well-balanced design team. From my perspective, Blizzard's direction is excellent.
Pre-TBC, most gear upgrades could only be earned in 20/40 man raids or via an exhaustive honor grind. Now, solid gear (Season 1 Arena) can be earned via honor, through Arena points, or through Heroic runs via badges. Daily Heroic quests increase the number of badges per run significantly. A guild only capable of running Karazhan can still earn 22 Heroic badges a week—the new badge gear added in 2.3 is equal to, or even better than, end-Kara loot drops.
Furthermore, it's reasonable to expect that further Seasons of Arena gear will stairstep down as more seasons pass. By the time the next expansion hits, even non-raiders will likely have access to S2 (if not S3) gear for pushing to lvl 80.
Blizzard took huge steps toward making the game more casual-friendly in TBC, and has further refined game features to keep the game "fun" in the 11 months since TBC's release. WoW today is incredibly superior to WoW three years ago, and I see no concrete evidence to suggest that fewer people are playing.
Remember: The plural of anecdote is not data.
hey interesting read joel
i agree since tbc has become easier to run and raid, it has made it a different game and more adaptable.
i have loved world of warcraft for ages, but a lot of my mates are bored and have moved on which is a shame
your right, its always hard to keep every1 happy.
blizzard is doing ok
Agreed, I used to farm gold/level etc but now my users (and even me) are pushing for PVP honors. Gold is still important (mount), level is already max, but without the PVP rewards, you can't enjoy with friends in higher level dungeons, and that is very important.
I dont know what blizzard says about 9 or 15 million players, all i know is that i have 4 lvl 70 chars at 3 different servers, and :
1. Very few players at LFG channel willing to go to a heroic instance
2. Nearly noone for a normal instance
3. PreTBC zones nearly empty, recently i went scholo and at plaguelands were 2 players
4. End game raids are for 1 or 2 guilds, that is 0.001 of the players in a server.
5. Auction House is nearly dead.
6. All my friends i played with, prefer to watch tv instead
7. Places at major cities that where full off people are empty know....
8. All are waiting the release of other games to play...
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