This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Heh, I'll believe in Diablo III when I see it, not a moment before.
I believe the decline in subscriptions ARE the expansions...also, the people that ran multiple accounts no longer have the money due to recessionPersonally my play time has gone from 40+ hours a week to 5-8 hours a week because I'm just bored with the game...
Overall there is no newness to Cata other than breaking the world. The new race thing was done in BC along with new zones. For Wrath you had a new class and vehicles plus new zones. What is there new for Cata? In reality nothing. The low level content can be breezed though in no time at all so all the work they did revamping the old world is pointless after a week. Then you have to move on to stale old content.Replayability (rolling alts) has lost all charm considering that you are stuck on the same linear path now. The only thing that keeps many people playing is the relationships that they have fostered within their guilds. That is not enough to keep people playing in the long run.How many of those 11.4 million subscribers are logging on just for raids/RBGs? How many people are actually doing additional content besides raiding/RBGs? And of the 11.4 million subs you have to remember a good chunk are not even on Cata yet because they are in China.
I don't think its the speed at which the expansions and content patches are coming out, I believe its the content and game itself. I think it was wonderful in vanilla and TBC when 10 mans where 10 mans and once you geared those then you moved on to NEW 25 man content. not the SAME content at a harder difficulty.
It's because Kungen retired. SRSLY
Yes please let the next expansion be The Emerald Dream! I've been waiting to see that since Burning Crusade.
Also have to take into account that schools are getting out right now giving the intended age group (grade school through college) more free time to actually play. I know that during school time sometimes I leave it off for a month or two, especially when nearing finals, but I'll probably subscribe every month for the summer now (since I graduated last week.) As for it being boring, I do agree that we go through the stuff they throw us faster and so speeding up release is a good idea, IF it doesn't affect the quality.
I do agree with some of the statements above where content has just gotten stale, this game has become more for PvP and Lore discovery... And even those are getting redundant. Expansion-wise i believe they should start with the Maelstrom because originally that's supposed to be where Queen Azshara is hiding out in the realm of neptulon and according to lore, where the corruption of the Emerald Dream is affecting, so more to the point, I think the maelstrom should be like where you fight the origins of the "Lost Ones" or "Faceless Ones" as well as Azshara + an avatar of this old god (Source of the Emerald Nightmare)
This expansion felt different compared to the last ones.If they learned anything this expansion, they learned that people like big new 10 level expansion with tons of new zones.The new low level stuff should have been added little by little DURING Wotlk, and they should have worked on making it a 1-10 level experience.But at least they learned what people like. After all, they are leading the charge into a fairly new gaming zone, and are trying out new things. They have to make mistakes to learn.Edit: Focusing on low level revamping shouldn't of been their aim, because most of their player base is level 80+ already, and rolling new alts is boring to many. They should have stuck to focusing on higher level additions, because that is what the majority is looking for. The revamped stuff was needed, but really should have been implemented a little at a time.
Oh yeah...I wonder if this means they will begin merging a few low pop servers together?
I disagree... When your busy with real life stuff - Its very difficult to progress, I've just got into cata. heroics. Trying to level alts while keeping my main progressing is very challenging and seems impossible. Those complaining Cataclysm offers no work/content I say "bull". For causal players there is much content and things to do. Those hardcore players with all the best gear at every patch and expansion... Suck it.
Since playing from classic cata was a large disappointment, Even the new 1-60 quest line, they we''re good, but good lord it was over to quick, Leveling in a whole has became far far FAR to easy, This resorts in people not learning their class and just headrolling to 85, 80-85 was a blink of an eye, it takes longer to level from 60-70 for me then to get 85. I'm not sure what the go is blizz, but im kinda brought down by cata, please renew my faith, read the forums, work on feedback, because cata felt like a major patch rather then an expansion
Honestly I don't think it's a matter of how fast they can get the content out but more of how quick they can get the big bug fixes repaired. For example, on my server during patch 4.0.6 the battleground ques were all messed up and we had to que about 2-3 times on average to get into 1 battleground. After talking to a few GMs they promised that in patch 4.1 it would be fixed. Here we are in the new patch and it's worse than the previous patch and they failed to deliver as usual. And it's only the Horde side because I have friends who have Alliance toons on the same server and they don't have the problems. Now it takes over an hour just to get into 1 battleground. Also balancing classes out (yes I know it's pretty hard) is also one of Blizzard's biggest downfalls. I could go on a tangent but i'll leave it as it is.
personally, Im leaving WOW because I cant play, for the brutally awesome lag that patch 4.1 brings me, and the countless bugs thats makes me wonder two things, what is the point of beta tests and ptr, and why I must pay money for suffer almost the same thing as private servers.my guild starts to raid in 25, and I barely can do it in 10. is not the pc, because if well my pc is not a state of the art machine, a intel quad core cpu in a msi p45 mobo with 4 gb kingston ddr800, a kingston 64 gb ssd and a msi nvidia gts 250 1gb gpu exceeds by far the minimal and even the recommended config for the game. and I still must play with all the options at minimum, no sound and at 45 fps max fixed, for a lame 700 ms home and 900 ms world doing nothing but hiding in the AH of valley of honor cuz if I dare to show up in the valley of strength my wow client crash my pc (really sad try btw dividing th latency in two trying to throw some guilt in isp's) . for Christ sake, Im gonna need to play on something like Skynet for being able to raid without freeze, lag and last, a middle fight disconnect?.I love the game, maybe at sick limits, my life in these 3 years was floating around WOW, I was working almost exclusive for pay the subscription, pre release expansions, better and better ISP plans and better components for my pc, which btw in my country really borders the state of the art pc´s available in market, and at the end I can say that I loose the fight. everybody is telling that this patch (4.1) was released too quickly, only with the deadline in mind to compete with rift. well, GG blizzard, if you wanna maintain your players and get them away from rift, I think that your epic fail deserves his own achieve. cuz if I'm living this nightmare with 4.1, I don´t dare to imagine what is gonna be play WOW with something like a bimonthly big patch. just I cant play. period.so, in the epitaph of WOW must say something like "here lies the once best MMORPG in the world, and dies because his players trusted more in him that his developers, who thinks that rushing the stuffs and delivering crap just for the sake of release it before the "competence", was the solution when in fact was the killing shot".so now I'm gonna give it a try to that over mentioned rift (which until now I have not a single clue what about it is), specially for test connection issues, while I enjoy my final 30 days of WOW courtesy of the recruit a friend program and my last fiend/victim. farewell World of Warcraft.
I actually liked Cataclysm, people can't complain that they can't see the new questlines because they level too fast... You can still stay in a zone til you feel you are done with it no matter what level you are. You don't hit level 50 in Un'goro then before you can finish your questing there you are "forced" to go to winterspring. You have the option to stay if you want to. You of course however argue that it would be easier just to head over to winterspring, WELL DUH, you want to get to the level cap and NOT spend 10 years in the new zones? Oh wait weren't you just complaining that it is too easy to get to the level cap and you don't spend any time in the new zones. The new zones are meant to be a nice experience, those who like to experience them should experience them and not complain that they "didn't get the chance to" when it was their own choice to proceed to a new zone. Those who have seen all of it shouldn't HAVE to go through 10 years of questing just to hit the level cap. WoW is very user friendly because they aren't so harsh with trivial leveling experiencing. The removal of death penalties means that people even if they have to go afk for a few minutes can die and not think anything bad of it other than they have to make some slight repairs. There will always be complainers, people who will complain no matter how things are. Evidently people didn't like the way things were in BC and Vanilla with extremely difficult leveling just to level an alt. But now those same people now that things like heirlooms and easier questing are in the game to allow for quicker progression through the leveling aspect of the game, they are complaining its way too easy. There is no pleasing people like those. There is an obvious decline in population because there was a big hype over a new expansion, which brought many retirees back to the game increasing the population momentarily. Obviously once this ended, there was a decline in the population. Anyone who knows anything about marketing knows that after a major new product comes out there is a large increase in use. This is followed by a decrease, followed by a period of stability. Obviously WoW is still a popular game in that there is no other MMORPG that comes anywhere close to the staggering population numbers which WoW holds. If RIFT, the oh so terrible WoW ending franchise got even half of WoW's current population you can bet that they would be more than happy with their product. Rift, I've said it before, I'll say it again is one of those temporary "WoW killers" in that there is a small population that migrates to the game which is followed by those people returning to WoW as soon as they realize the game hasn't met the hype. How many years has WoW been around? And it is still on top of the MMO-World? Hmm seems to me that WoW is doing just fine.