Retail, has what, 1 million players now, compared to the top of 11-12 million in early Cataclysm. The world feels dead. Queues are long, and noone talks.
Where did it all go so wrong, and why?
Personally I think it was when Blizzard switched strategy from attracting new players by creating great gameplay to milking the ever dwindling playerbase for as much money as possible. I blame Activision for this. It’s no longer about the players, but about the shareholders.
Source ?
/10characters
1 million players?No way,and i started playing retail 10 days ago i play on outland and queue times as a tank is nothing more than 1 min,most of the times it’s instant.And the social problem yea most people just don’t wanna talk,i did met a few people who wanted to talk and that is something we discussed,i think LFR and LFG is what made people not wanting to talk and i personally am against them.
Yeah, I think 1 million might be a bit of an overstatement. Probably about 300k for retail.
One of the green VIP’s on the forums estimated about 2.5 - 3 million on retail utilising what data is publicly available. Will be less at the moment due to migration to classic.
What people need to realise is MMORPG’s are not the pinnacle of online gaming any more. In any sense of the word (LOL has reportedly 100m+ weekly users worldwide). They were great ‘back in the day’ as they were the in thing. Now few join the genre and the vast majority who are still here have been with the genre for years and years.
Wow will never get back to the height it was at with 13m players because it is a very successful game in a dwindling genre of gaming.
Maybe constant topics of wow dying is what’s killing wow
Why is the genre dwindling? You think it’s because of trends in gaming and the market? Nope. It’s because of sucky developers, only reason.
The genre has been dwindling because attitudes towards gaming have changed along with, i agree here, dwindling in development standards (due to the shift in gaming attitudes away from ‘grindy’ games). Whether this be a cultural or generational thing i don’t know.
Gamers nowadays want ‘jump in and play’ games (fortnight/LOL etc). Something you cannot offer in any sense of the word with an MMORPG which conventionally is a game that needs thousands of hours sunk into it.
Realistically you cant put it down to one reason. Its a mixture of everything. The world is a vastly different place to what it was a decade ago.
Bad class design.
Bad class balance.
Destruction of server communities.
Rng on top of rng soulless gear.
Professions gutted because small number of random nobodies whine about it.
Utter and complete ignorance of PvP and taking away vendors.
A certain portion of the market wants that, there are huge portions who don’t. Problem is, developers always want the largest portion of players and fail to satisfy everyone, instead of catering to a smaller portion, doing it right and having a loyal playerbase they can call their own.
They been merged since SwP in TBC so 12/13 years this acti hate is getting old and very boring bit like your posts you have made recently which you have not posted any facts or figures for.
Players like you should have your ips and accounts perm banned from the forums as all you post is rubbish and flame bait.
True, but it still doesn’t excuse some of their bad decisions, especially regarding the extra grind on top of grind (AP/essences on top of gearing up with extra RNG) and the class design (Spec fantasy instead of class fantasy for many classes, DKs included.).
I don’t have much to say about this but you should consider the population in cata an outlier because it was the expansion that made a large portion quit.
a VAST portion of the market want that.
Why wouldn’t the dev want the greater portion of the gaming community? More people playing = more money.
@ Uruk
Oh i agree. I love a grind (i have 13k+ hours 541+ days of ingame time played) on another MMO. Cannot disagree that design decisions have turned some people away. But i personally think alot of it is just general gaming attitudes changing or burnout.
Also no game is dead until it goes the way of Wildstar. i.e. servers are permanently shut down
Blizzard probably have some of the most talented developers in the gaming industry. Why do you think they’re so successful? Stop playing their games and using their forum if you want to crap on them like that.
I think the right term should have been “because of the sucky decisions from the developers”.
Closer, but the devs only do what the guys in suits tell them to 
I could write a full length dissertation as to where it went wrong.
In the shortest way possible:
The only reason the game survives is brand recognition and people spending too much time on their characters to bring themselves to quit. The fact is that if WoW was released today, it wouldn’t last 6 months before getting shut down.
Vast is subjective and irrelevant.
There is no greater portion, there are only individuals with preferences. The more people you try to satisfy, the more are going to be left unsatisfied. Is it better to have a loyal playerbase of 1 million players for 10 years, or 10 million players for 1 month and then die?
Maybe they do, not on retail though. Either that or they just have them leashed so tight they might as well hire trainees to do the job.
You don’t tell me what to do.
Well, except for the story developers. Those really do suck. If they’re some of the best in the industry, then crap…
I doubt that the guys in the suit tell them to write low fanfic tier story.