Quite huge news

[BloodOmen]

I thought so anyway

in 6.0 the auction houses of both horde and alliance will be merged, no more swapping over to alliance to buy shit or to horde to do the same, you can buy and sell to both factions.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/322776-merged-ah-a-feature-of-warlords/

 

[Ctuchik]

I'm more surprised it hasn't happened sooner. Blizzard has been moving towards unifying Horde and Alliance since burning crusade with ever increasing "greater threat" bullshit expansions.

Wouldn't bat an eyelid if Blizzard took it even further in the next few expansions.

 

[Raven]

Dying game is dying.

 

[BloodOmen]

Dying game is dying.

dying game with still 7mil+ subscribers

 

[Moriath]

From its start aye lol

 

[Raven]

The server I am on is dead. The server they are merging it with is dead.

I have no idea where they get the figure of 7 mil from. Mostly Asia I imagine.

 

[Moriath]

7 million paying accounts. Doesn't mean they are playing.

 

[BloodOmen]

"The popular online game has approximately 7.6 million players. That’s down 200,000 from February"

As of their last earnings conference call, still a long way to go before its dead. That said they can merge as many servers as they want, there is no limit to how many can be pushed together.

 

[Ctuchik]

dying game with still 7mil+ subscribers

The problem isn't the current number of active subs, it's how insanely fast it's dropping that are. WoW lost roughly 1.5 million subs between late 2011 and mid 2012 and then another ~2.5 million subs since mid 2012 to now according to mmodata.net's graph (it doesn't specifically list 2014, but it's obviously including this year to). That's roughly 110.000 people unsubscribing a month on average.

So yes, while WoW still has 7+ million subs right now it doesn't mean that the game isn't in trouble. And looking at the 12 million subs it had at the end of 2011, losing over 4 million subs in just 3 years doesn't leave much room for optimism.

Dying might be too strong a word, but the game clearly have quite a big problem that Blizzard needs to fix pretty damned fast.

 

[Raven]

Yeah the current expansion is terrible (but so was the last to be fair) It started off well but ran out of content pretty much as soon as you scratched the surface.

Another major problem is the LFR and LFG system, you always, always get grouped with trash (both in ability and attitude) Ability can be forgiven and even improved through helpful advice. Being an angry shit heel cannot be. You have no choice though, at least 50% of the WoW player base are morons. You cannot avoid them.

That killed LFR and LFG which killed setting up groups.

 

[Ctuchik]

Yeah the current expansion is terrible (but so was the last to be fair) It started off well but ran out of content pretty much as soon as you scratched the surface.

Another major problem is the LFR and LFG system, you always, always get grouped with trash (both in ability and attitude) Ability can be forgiven and even improved through helpful advice. Being an angry shit heel cannot be. You have no choice though, at least 50% of the WoW player base are morons. You cannot avoid them.

That killed LFR and LFG which killed setting up groups.

But you can't patch out stupidity. No matter what Blizzard does to the LFG and LFR system, stupid people will still be stupid.

And tbh, that's not something that is unique to just WoW, every MMO with an LFG system suffers from it just as much.

 

[Cirventhor]

But you can't patch out stupidity. No matter what Blizzard does to the LFG and LFR system, stupid people will still be stupid.

And tbh, that's not something that is unique to just WoW, every MMO with an LFG system suffers from it just as much.

That's one of the reasons I detest automatic group finding tools, and usually make my own groups from friends list/guild. Hardly ever see anybody making PUGs in general/trade chat anymore though, which is sad.

 

[DavidH]

So, who's still active and where are you playing?

 

[Raven]

Bloodhoof off and on

 

[DavidH]

I play on Ravencrest (Alliance). Although its very on and off for me as well. Mainly due to nothing left to do until WoD except maybe some achievements.

 

[Deebs]

I am on Trollbane

 

[BloodOmen]

I'm on Earthen Ring (no bum jokes please!)

 

[old.Tohtori]

Alonsus, well started there in january on a Finnish guild in prep for WoD. Playing almost daily.

One of the "dead" servers (let's not get into that)

 

[BloodOmen]

fun to watch, some of the facts I didn't know I must admit.

 

[DavidH]

Looks like release will be sometimes late september, early october. (We can only hope)

 

[BloodOmen]

more than likely, they seem to like end of the year releases.

 

[DavidH]

Indeed, they do. Looking forward to this one.

 

[BloodOmen]

I suspect 6.0 won't be that far off the PTR either, they usually release the 'big end expansion patch' awhile before the expansion so people can adjust, given its already nearing august, it can't be that far away anymore, I would imagine it'll hit the PTR a few days-week after they're done with the talent testing etc on WoD beta.

I really should get the green fire quest done on my warlock before this hits, you get a feat of strength + title if you do it before 6.0, warlock is just an alt though so i've been quite discouraged.

 

[BloodOmen]

To add to the above:

They are giving out more beta keys now via giveaways and competitions and more than likely (not official yet) will start to send out fresh waves of beta invites which implies they're ramping up testing, it'd be nice to get an exact date but I don't think we'll get that exact date until BlizzCon (shall be buying a virtual ticket to watch this as I always do)

Going to make it a personal mission to get back into raiding for WoD I think, been absent from raiding since the start of Cataclysm.

 

[DavidH]

Will be purchasing a virtual ticket myself again. Love to be able to catch all the news live. Oh, and an unique ingame pet doesn't hurt either. Last years was absolutely priceless.

Gonna be focusing alot on raiding this expansion myself. Had a bit of a downtime the second half of MoP due to our little family expanding, so I had (of course) my obligations to tend to. I have a sneaky feeling raiding in WoD will be a better than MoP anyway.

Managed to get done green fire and the CM for my Warlock myself, as an homage to my cabalist in DAoC, since they are the the closest to what you can call mirror classes I guess. So might make that my main for WoD, even though I've mained my mage since day one of vanilla. Although balance druid looks absolutely fantastic for the next expansion, so we'll see.

 

[Raven]

Going to stick to my hunter, though I wont be raiding next expansion due to starting a degree.

 

[DavidH]

Feel free to add my real id (davidvenice@gmail.com)

 

[BloodOmen]

Probably going to stick to hunter or use my DK, I like soloing old stuff, both of those classes excel in doing that

 

[DavidH]

Yep, very true DK seems to be quite strong this next expansion, especially blood. The selfhealing is over 9000!

 

[BloodOmen]

Yep, very true DK seems to be quite strong this next expansion, especially blood. The selfhealing is over 9000!

Yea, not sure though as Lifestealing is going to be a kind of fun stat as well, hunter with lifestealing + tank pet sounds fun.