[DONE] Blizzard Not Expecting Major World Of Warcraft Growth

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I would love to play wow but I won't play a game that I have to pay monthly for. So ill stick with my single player games like Skyrim. But that's my opinion.
 


Then you'll never know the kind of content and support a P2P can offer vs a F2P. Also there's so much more content they offer during patches as well as exp. packs that you won't get with F2P. However there are some P2P games that just sucked from the start but that was due to the fact that when people saw that Blizzard making tons of money on WoW then they all decided to get on the MMO waggon. Only problem was a lot of it was crap but there were a few that still did good.

I wouldn't suggest trying wow out now since it's showing it's age and people are slowly moving away from it. The engine is old and they've been playing it for a long time. There are some gamers that won't quit playing WoW until they actually close it down which they will since they said they won't go to F2P. You can however experience WOW with the Trial version but you may find it lonely at certain points as the original areas might not be as populated as they use to be. I know after burning crusade this was a problem with new people as you couldn't find anybody to do things with. Thank god for dungeon finder. To really invest in wow at this stage would be hard unless you had the invite a buddy thing. If you I think invite a friend to play and buys the game you both get like dbl xp or something if you're both on. Don't recall the full details.

Anyway WoW would have been a great game to experience but like I said it's showing it's age and there's not really too many that are still around to experience such a great game. This game had over 12 million subs. I don't think any other company will top. Well except another creation from Blizzard. WOS maybe. lol
 
Then you'll never know the kind of content and support a P2P can offer vs a F2P.
Click to expand...

Skyrim has more content and support from the community alone than WoW has in years. Mods galore when it comes to Skyrim. WoW has been declining for a while now and a large portion of the mods aren't compatible with new patches. Mod devs just got tired...
 
I started playing when it first came, on my 56K connection, and quit playing after Cataclysm. Mists of Pandaria just slaughtered the skill trees and simplified things too much and that's when I knew I was never going back.

Also, WoW just feels tired now. Id much rather have a true Warcraft 4 RTS than a bunch of convoluted content no one will ever see after the next expansion is released. Once Wrath came out, all the original Azeroth locations were completely void of players.
 


LoL, Skyrim is a Single Player RPG that has only 1 person playing and that's you. You have no clue on what it's like to do a Raid Dungeon. Skyrim doesn't have near as much content as WoW. Perhaps maybe not in story but WoW isn't a plain RPG, it's a MMORPG. Large portion of mods aren't compatible cause they haven't updated them. WoW has a very very large selection of mods all the way from the start to now. Mod devs only got tired if they stopped playing the game. But if Blizzard came out with a new MMO they would be back on that waggon.
 


So you're comparing a RTS vs a MMO? Yea that works out well. Of course WoW feels old now, hell it's been out for a good amount of time and it's time for something new but there still better then everybody else. As far as making it easier it was to gain new people and get them to the current areas where everybody else was. Sure you had your rerollers but they made it simple so people wouldn't feel like they were left out because nobody was around. For old school player of WoW it kinda sucked cause it made it too easy but Blizzard wasn't worried about the old time player but rather getting new blood.

Actually in Cata. everybody was brought back to Azeroth as they had kinda left Azeroth in the dust and they told people to move on and forget about it. However that was a mistake for new people cause you couldn't find other people out there and that's why in Cata they brought it back to Azeroth. If you were the type of person that needed to be in a group just to lvl it would suck but if you were a lone wolf then it wasn't a big deal. For me I didn't want to be bothered with another person and trying to stay at the same lvl so we could grp together.
 
Well, I've played this game since release (aka Vanilla). Lately, when I happen to think about what is left in my memory about this game, I always remember about the moments I happen to had value.
I remember;
- Trying to get Drakkisath's blood.
- The first time I get ancient leaf and that epic legendary hunter quest (no, there has never been any quest like this ever again)
- Healer switching and usage of lesser ranks
- PoM-Pyro -> Dead.
- Hunter's showing what raid will attack next (importance of hunter's mark)
- FR resistance... RAGNAROS!
- A Shaman waiting out of combat during raid in order to ress one person if he/she dies.
- Raid harmony (this is COMPLETELY missing nowadays).
- "All melee classes get no heal, bandage up!". Anybody still learning first aid?
- Huhuran enraged! Go go! OMG 10 ppl left (out of 40) 9..8..7..6.. Huhuran died! Yeeaaaah! (speaker blows because whole raid is burst into tears)
- LEROY - KeK
- Crossroads is under attack.
- Come warlock, we need to summon that.
- Horde: Paladin! Wow! I'm not sure if I can survive him?
- Alliance: Shaman! Crap! What he can do to me?
- High Warlord X
- Hunter dead spot (Most of you didn't even see this)
- Hunter's can't put trap in-combat (feign-death - trap)
- That rogue cannot vanish because... a powder is missing? 😉
- Warlock! Omg, immolate-confla... dead.
- Warlock mount quest...
- 2nd piece of Thunderfury dropped for Warrior!!! Whoa! Graaatz!
- lvl 60 and fast Mount 600g.
- Eastern plaguelands and those farms... ^.^
- Thorim's Hand was it? Only the best solo those elites easily for dropping clothes ^^
- PvP power? What? (Resillience? What?). Stamina ftw.
- I will mind control that thing and break the eggs! Raid positioning...
Much much Moooore that I faintly remember.

But, After Vanilla, what is left? When people start to mount early and then fly, content got smaller, finished faster and details were not important at all. Nobody cared about the lore, just a small trigger-happy enjoyment for the kids. Wow is not as same as before for me when there is a paladin in horde and a shaman class in alliance (just for point) I can't recall anything clearly after vanilla that created an impact like it did in vanilla. At least for me. Oh maybe some end-game raids in wotlk, but nothing more...
And those achievements... Omg... Achievement is when you hold goddam'n ancient bow in your hands...
 
Started playing this a few weeks ago. I'm now up to level 35 whatever (like it matters) and I doubt I'll go much further.

Why? It's dull. There is just no interaction with the landscape. Nothing to find on your own. If you go off exploring you wander into areas that are levels above you so you are stuck to where they funnel you. Just repetitive quest after quest.

Even Morrowind had more fun and excitement. You could click on a table and find a book or some treasure. Find a tomb hidden in the rocks to loot. It's the little things that matter. WoW just feels like a conveyor belt.

Oh and no way to allocate stat points each level so I can't tune my character how I want to. Maybe I'm missing something, that's not hard as the UI is a mess.

I guess when You've been an Eve Online player most games seem a bit too simple.
 
i refuse to play pc games based on 1 2 3 4 numbers anymore. they ruined the R in role playing games. it's just a button mashing mmo. it's story of grind and boredom right after TBC
 


Like many F2P MMOs, you can also pay subscription. Rift, Tera etc.
But you still have to buy last expansion for EQ2 if you want the toplevel content. I'm having fun multiboxing 6 characters running older content. All F2P accounts. Occasionally I sub on my main.

And I think they pulled the plug on Vanguard. Maybe a year ago. I liked that game, got a monk to lv50.
But it was buggy, so buggy.
 


Once again you're talking about a RPG which is more like a book. MMO's can't really have that type of detail or even storyline as you have to cater for the masses which RPG's don't as it's only single player. I have no clue why people compare a MMO to a RPG when it's all about the one player and that's it.

I bet if you had tried WoW back at the start you would be thinking different as only a handful of MMO's were out there. Also don't forget that when Blizzard was making WoW they made it so even people with the crap computers could still enjoy the game. Also they had over 12 Million active Subs. And as far as allocating stat points you can with jewelcrafting and enchanting. Besides your base stats you gain each lvl go to what anybody would take for stat points.

There's lots of people that hated wow. Lots of people hated it because of it's cartoon graphics and yet it allow lots of people to play it. Take for instance Lineage 2. Great looking game but the grind sucked crafting took way too long to gather mats and there was next to no questing as most of there were just repeats you do over and over, but hey it's still better then cartoons, yeah right. I played L2 and I have no idea why except for the fact that I was in the closed beta and we were allowed to keep are Beta toons and there lvl's and items.

Then there's Conan which was so hyped up as the WoW killer that it killed itself with it's own hype. 1st they started off by trying to say that they had real combat because you had to click different keys to get a realistic combat experience. It wasn't the standard auto attack with a push of 1 button to cast a certain skill. A handful of MMO's used this action combat system as I call it and never really saw much success.

There's lots of different styles of MMO's and there not all everybodies cup of tea. Heck there's people that haven't even tried it and really experienced it and they hate it. You only went as far as lvl 35 and you didn't experience what it's like to do a Raid Dungeon so you really didn't experience anything at all except the lowbie area's.

Rift was a very good game when it came out that I enjoyed playing during beta, however sadly they screwed up their own game by making changes that people didn't accept and therefore killed and became F2P.

Bioware's Star Wars MMO was going to be great as 1st it was made by Bioware and they make great RPG's like Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, and Baldur's Gate. And 2nd it was another Star Wars MMO. Sony killed there Star Wars by performing Seppuku on such stupid things as making Jedi a pickable class instead of keeping it the way it was by long and hard trials as a lot of people had to go thru. There were other changes that just pissed people off and so it slowly died. Bioware's Star Wars for me had way too many cut scenes in it for my taste, the 1st few times of going thru there dungeons or action missions as I think were called were cool watching it but then it got old. Sure you can hit escape and the video stops but you still have to wait for the others to do anything, even jump around as there's a roll on what to do next. Also the PVP Battlegrounds were a joke as it wasn't matched per your lvl of 1-10 but just everybody and they would adjust your stats if there were lvl 50's and yet the lvl 50's had there full skills unlocked and there skill tree tweeked much better then somebody that was say 12. Now the arena themselfs was cool though. Hutt Ball was cool if you're grp worked together. But it failed to meet what the public wanted. There were features that didn't exist in the game that people missed from WoW that could have helped it along but sadly it was too late too little.

Ultimate was the father while EQ was the match to light the fire but WoW was the fire and the king. You'll never see anybody ever beat them. Well except for Blizzard if they come out with a new MMO. Those 12 million people with get back on the waggon and pay for their game and there monthly fee if they stay true to their roots as they did with Vanilla, BC, and Wrath. Those I think were there best Exp. packs. BC would have to be the best I think.
 
Also there's no other game that has the area chat like wow did and Barrens chat. Barrens chat was the best. When I was beta testing EQ 2 or Vanguard, can't remember I started doing my Barrens chat and you be surprised how many people knew what I was doing. Some would join in while others and tell me to go back to wow. lol

But I felt that since I was subjected to so can they. :)
 
Homogenization killed it. Multi-class characters able to switch roles and exceed/match the abilities of single role classes was a mistake. Taking the unique flavors (Paladin, Shaman) and distributing them. It boils down to lazy design and no backbone. Paladins, Shamans and Druids should have been designed to bring something unique and very helpful to instances without being a Rogue in Plate or a Mage with healing. PvP was so much more fun when the classes had true differences. A Rogue jumped you from stealth = dead. Mages sniping from a distance and dying if you breathed hard on them. Warriors holding positions with healers keeping them chugging along. They started with the D&D template for basic abilities and balance and then scrapped it to appease people who were upset that they actually had to play a certain character to do certain things. Again a lot the blame lies at their feet for not making multi-role classes interesting and useful.

At least they have addressed Raid sizing. The 40 mans in vanilla were fun, but what a frustrating experience. AFK.. Doorbell... Dog barfed gotta clean it up... GF/BF just showed up gotta go. Now 39 people are trying to find someone geared to come into the group to finish this thing. Honestly the 5 mans were more dynamic and challenging at times. Everyone had to bring their A game to the more challenging ones.

Crafting time sinks needed work (fishing? really?). Those of us who have jobs/families and couldn't dedicate time to finding the Mystical Dandelion of Glurbenfarf to make a crucial potion that would make or break things in a Raid just had to throw in the towel as far as end game content went (and yes I know a lot of materials were in the AH, just an example).

I really enjoyed playing the game and played through Cataclysm (though I was pretty much a casual at that point). I remember the elation at getting through Serpent Shire Cavern pre-nerf. The game had a lot of good in it. But it just got to be a homogenized time sink. Even if you had skills to contribute a couple nights a week the massive amount of time needed to see any real end game content ensured you never would.
 



Sorry I didn't read all that, looked like a "You have to kill 10 squat beasts" kinda ordeal. So you agree its a boring game to play now?

Several hours into a game it should really hit you with more than running back and forth all day.

Even Anarchy Online was more intriguing and who plays that these days?

 
I just started playing WoW again after 5 years and the game i still just as addictive as it were back then.

WoW outshines every other MMORPG out there. I've played them all, Rift, Tera, GW2, GW, Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online etc. all of them were no where near WoW in terms of content and quality.

I'm not trying to sell WoW here, but I think it's better to pay a monthly subscription for a great game that never gets dry, due to new content that gets released pretty frequently. Also, many different aspects of PVP and PVE to keep you entertained in a long time. As mentioned before, I would rather pay a monthly subscription for a great game, instead of buying new games all the time, because you finish them too fast or you've done it all (looking at you GW2). Actually, since I started playing WoW, I've saved money, because I haven't randoml bought new games all the time.

Honestly, I think WoW is just as good as when it launched. There have been made changes and some of them work better than others. But change needs to happen or else WoW would hit the F2P model as the other contenders, which isn't quite as succesful as one might think, due to low quality, lack of content and pay to win models. (there are of course exceptions in some F2P games mostly MOBAs though like LoL, Dota 2, SMITE etc.) WoW is still unbalanced, some classes rule PVE and some classes rule PVP. Some classes rule one a specific class and gets ruled by another. I don't think Blizzard will ever solve that issue, but have any MMORPG ever solved that? I haven't seen it yet. But again, if one class wouldn't rule the other and every class were equally good at almost everything - Then what seperates them, what is the meaning of classes, if they don't have certain strong advantages, as well as disadvantages?

My point is; it's still a great game, I believe the price is high but it is justified through the amount of content and the quality it has, which I haven't found in any other game yet, counting both single-player titles as well as multi-player titles.
 
@daglesj
Shame that you think what I said just sounded like "You have to kill 10 squat beasts". I can only assume you never played it to the end game raiding which is where the rest of the experience is at. This also goes for all other MMO's cause it's getting to max lvl and doing raids unless you're a pure pvp'er and don't care for raiding in which case you can either be a low lvl twink or a high lvl pvp'er. Problem with twinks is your very limited on your Battlegrounds and you can't do arenas.

I can say that I lost interest during Warth and that's where I stopped at. I just didn't want to do it all over again which if you made a DK you did with the exception of the start out area which was very cool. However this is how I felt. Can I say it's boring to still play the game now? No, as I haven't touched it since Wrath. I did however try out the hacked servers but I would rather pay for quality service then free and lots of bugs. I've watched other streamers raiding in wow and I do enjoy it and I have wanted to go back before but at the stage I left my toons it would take a while for me to get to max lvl and then wait for the new exp. pack as most guilds except new ones have almost all stopped raiding as it's almost pointless with the new exp. pack coming out. Plus there's no way I'm paying $50 for a exp. pack. Now if somebody wanted to pay my monthly fee and tell me that I need to grp with them and lvl together I would gladly and I would love it.
 


Sorry to tell you but WoW as stated by Blizzard will never go F2P and I don't blame them. When it's time to go it's time to go. I wouldn't want to see WoW being put out to pasture with the rest of the F2P games. Not saying that some of them aren't bad. A good amount of these did better as a F2P then they did as a P2P but they were still a failure as they were meant to be P2P. Not speaking of games that started out as F2P but the ones that started as P2P. It's like that episode on South Park where all the mascots that nobody wanted anymore went to, you know when sexual harassment panda was no longer wanted and he went to that like retired home for mascots. I would rather see WoW go out with a final bang as a P2P then switch to F2P. Some of you might think there a failure but they made way more money then all the P2P mmo's that went to F2P. EQ excluded because it had a very good and long life and was by no means a failure. Any MMO that can't last longer then say 3 years is just a failure. MMO's are meant to go on for a while as both EQ, Ultima, and WoW just to name a few of the big ones. Sure there's others like Eve Online as well as a few others. But those are the ones that did it right for people to want to buy the game and pay a monthly fee.

This isn't totally aimed at your comment Lostgamer_03, just the part really about going F2P with WoW. :)
 
Issues: I hate grinding for gear that is going to be useless when next patch comes out. Progression is king and having to skip content to please the noobs is frustrating. Having to get decked out in heroic gear and tons of hard work only for the next tier LFR to be better is frustrating. I hate LFR!!! I hate CC fest with arena. The game has taken away from social aspects of looking for people to accomplish goals and making friends. I miss burning crusade.
 


You would have hated Linage II. I think by far Linage II was the worst game when it came to grinding and lvl'ing. There weren't really quests except for your Tier class changes and just repeatables. Yea BC was fun, I remember everybody rerolling pally's on the horde side as well as I'm sure people rerolling shammy's on the ally side. The Blood Elf area was bright and colorful.
 
Too much catering to casuals who otherwise would not raid, caused the problem we have now. Each tier makes the other worthless via catch-up mechanics.

And long raid tiers where there is only 1 thing left to do.
 


You can't cater to all and I for a company I think catering to casuals opens up to more people then core raiders. It's all about the money and making a good product for the general pubicl.
 


It can be hard if you can't make the end game content, but then again there are people that aren't interested in end game content as there are with PVP or role playing. And it's also hard when you're paying a monthly fee.
 
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