WoW on the decline

[chipper]

lets face it wow is getting old, cataclysm was an attempt to reinvent the game! in all honesty it failed. i was bored inside of a month and quit 2 weeks later

as said wow is so popular because it requires so little thinking to play it, you are hand held every step of way. quests have convenient little markers dotted over the maps, wheres the exploration to find your mark? it really is dumbed down as much as it can be

wow is succesful because theres just nothing to match it currently the large majority of wow players are 1st time mmo'ers they have little or no interest in trying anything else which is why its base has stayed pretty solid for along time

as for the daoc bashing GTFO! no game has come close to matching its pvp which is why people still bum it me included. okay its old and dated and NF ruined it imo, but OF still remains the best pvp experience to be had on the mmo market. as has been said many times until a company has the bollox to pursue a 3 faction game pvp will always be mediocre. that 3rd faction really throws an element of chaos into pvp shame daoc wasnt produced 10 years later it could have been massive.

 

[Aada]

Well the thing you need to remember about WoW, the crucial point as it were, is that it isn't and never was very good.

Ah another band wagon hill billy boy.

WoW is great theres a shit load to do and guess what? 11 million players don't sub to a game that's shit end of.

Also where do people get off saying most of the players in WoW never played another mmo? is there something to prove this or just another way to discredit the game?

I don't play WoW atm but i certainly log in for 6 months everytime a new expansion comes out now for the small price that isn't bad at all tbh.

 

[Ctuchik]

It has a huge following because it is/was really good. Why didn't other games (except Korean MMORPGs) get many subscribers before WoW if it's just a matter of competition?

WoW is popular because its FOTM to like it, end of story. Even the nerds feel the group pressure...

And a lot of the players actually does not think it is a very good game, but they stay because of the guilds they are in.

That said, WoW USED to be a good game, before the first expansion which i cant be arsed to remember what it was called..

Now tho, everyone runs around in free epics thinking they are 1337 players....

 

[Ctuchik]

Ah another band wagon hill billy boy.

WoW is great theres a shit load to do and guess what? 11 million players don't sub to a game that's shit end of.

Also where do people get off saying most of the players in WoW never played another mmo? is there something to prove this or just another way to discredit the game?

I don't play WoW atm but i certainly log in for 6 months everytime a new expansion comes out now for the small price that isn't bad at all tbh.

Here's a question tho, would you do it all over again if your characters weren't there waiting for you?

 

[ford prefect]

Ah another band wagon hill billy boy.

WoW is great theres a shit load to do and guess what? 11 million players don't sub to a game that's shit end of.

Also where do people get off saying most of the players in WoW never played another mmo? is there something to prove this or just another way to discredit the game?

I don't play WoW atm but i certainly log in for 6 months everytime a new expansion comes out now for the small price that isn't bad at all tbh.

You are entitled to you opinion, mine is that it has very little going for it.....

Incidentally I don't do "Band Wagons".

 

[gohan]

Ah another band wagon hill billy boy.

WoW is great theres a shit load to do and guess what? 11 million players don't sub to a game that's shit end of.

Also where do people get off saying most of the players in WoW never played another mmo? is there something to prove this or just another way to discredit the game?

I don't play WoW atm but i certainly log in for 6 months everytime a new expansion comes out now for the small price that isn't bad at all tbh.

lol so a game you only play like a sheep when an expantion comes out, and even then can't hold your attention cos thiers nothing to do, and you're defending it why????


this is the same person who jumped ship from united to city when the money rolled in tho so can't say i'm to suprised

 

[chipper]

Also where do people get off saying most of the players in WoW never played another mmo? is there something to prove this or just another way to discredit the game?

yes there was a poll on the official forums ofc it wasnt the entire subscriber base but there was alot of voters (this was well over a year ago) a large percentage said this was there first mmo and indeed a good portion had never even heard of the genre before wow,

wow WAS good. cataclysm has just not done anything for wow imo, people blasted through the 5 levels inside of a week and are now bored.

i stuck wotlk out till cata came along i did enjoy that expansion cataclysm is just a let down and i think the loss of 600k subscribers is proof of that

 

[xomer]

wow

 

[Tuthmes]

The main reason WoW has so many subscribers is the fact that it (used to?) run on a low end computer (and still looks pretty) and that its mostly pve. Which is perfect for the casual gamer. Also the game is solid (hard do discribe).

The problem with new mmo's is that it's all bin done before.

There's a "new breed" of gamers which wants to get up there with the best asap. Actually it isnt exactly a new breed, just more of them then there used to be. Just think about how most of us started 10 years ago with DAoC. 99% n00bs (to mmo's)? The fun is in learning things, see'ing new things, etc, etc.

Now when you start a new mmo you get yourself sorted out before you begin and give and read feedback (more then back then anyway). The race is on for who ever gets there first.

Mmo's need to realise that there's a whole generation out there that has seen it all and wants to get to the end as fast as possible. So the endgame must be perfect and leave room for further development of the character.

The endgame tends to be not so good from scratch. :<

DAoC
GW
Age of Conan
Aoin
Warhammer
WoW

All are basically doing the same. With the DAoC having a bonus of beeing actually able of generating mmo action (100 vs 100) that doesnt lag like a mofo (which is another thing that's very important).

Btw, EvE beeing the exception to the rule. But then again I think this game is doing quite well.

 

[BloodOmen]

Well the thing you need to remember about WoW, the crucial point as it were, is that it isn't and never was very good.

Down to personal preference tho, i'm sure you don't speak for the world.

I agree tho from a personal point of view, WoW is past it i'm waiting for Diablo III personally - going to hardcore the fuck out of the EU ladder on that shit.

 

[Marc]

Btw, EvE beeing the exception to the rule. But then again I think this game is doing quite well.

Its doing well because its the only MMO sandbox. It doesnt have to wait for a content patch, the content is driven by the players. The game isnt to everyones taste but it is unique in that its the only sandbox mmo.

 

[Fafnir]

It starts off easy and finishes up hard. It's a really good balance. If you never played it at end-game then don't talk about it.

Tbh, most of you lot think DAoC was the best game ever so I don't rate any of your opinions xD

Not really hard, its just a matter of learning the encounters, while you have the encounters down you pretty much steamroll them. Like when Ice crown citadell came, could take a whole raid session on one boss, but when you learn the bosses you could pretty much do the whole raid in one go.

And how Naxx turned out where you steamrolled thru it with a pugs.

 

[Raven]

There are certainly quite a few people who are really quite clueless about wow in this thread!

And just an FYI. Approx 0.58% of guilds have killed the final encounters on heroic mode and around 20% normal mode... not exactly cleared within a few months...

It has it's faults, especially in PvP but to say it's crap is rather simple minded, it has had 10+ million subscribers, consistently for years. That's around £960,000,000 a year in subs alone, add to that box sales over the years. It's really quite phenomenal.

I will agree wrath of the litch king was a joke with every mouth breather clearing the content pretty fast. Blizzard listened though and ramped up the difficulty for the cataclysm expansion.

 

[Ctuchik]

And just an FYI. Approx 0.58% of guilds have killed the final encounters on heroic mode and around 20% normal mode...

One problem with that statistic tho, Blizzard includes ALL guilds, not just raiding guilds in that. So if they only counted raiding guilds you'd see those statistics sky rocket to well above 50% for heroic mode.

Yes Blizzard made Cataclysm harder, but it's still nowhere NEAR as hard as it should be.

 

[Everz]

WoW is good in small dozes, it's the casual MMO that is there for numbing the brain for an hour or two then going away imo. It's fully setup to deal with the casual gamer rather then the hardcore individual which is the main reason (to me) as to why WoW is a success.

DAoC on the other hand hugely rewarded those who could stick plenty of time into the game, casual never really was catered for, though no game has ever personally got a hold of me like DAoC did, where I'd login at all stupid hours for a fix. It always did not (and made worse by ToA and NF) cater for a casual gamer, thus why It's model will probably never be used again.

 

[BloodOmen]

Yes Blizzard made Cataclysm harder, but it's still nowhere NEAR as hard as it should be.

The content is exactly where it needs to be, you're claim about it not being hard enough isnt supported by any relevant facts beyond top 50 guilds raping content quicker than devs can release it.

300-350 guilds have killed Sinestra in 25m (the first kill basically being by a guild that all speak the same language, have played with each other for years and have very flexible lives to work around raiding not to mention some pretty intelligent people that update their addons ready for raiding new content and formulate tactics)

Thousands upon thousands of guilds havent even made it to Nefarion or Cho on heroic yet let alone killed them (and lets face it, the chances are they wont get them down before Firelands goes live meaning they'll fall behind in content)

My point is: it doesnt matter how hard blizzard make the content, those top guilds will always always always destroy the content long before new content is due and the casuals will always be miles behind (as they are now)

 

[ST^]

Tbh I don't see how any MMORPG can make an encounter extremely hard every time you do it, unless the encounter is unfair. And most guilds that beat these encounters would never have learned how to do it themselves. So much of WoW is reading other people's strategies, which is not a fault with the game.

 

[Helme]

Making bosses random isn't making them hard, it's making them random - I honestly don't see another way to improve difficulty than what Blizzard already is doing, and looking at pure statistics alone I think they're succeeding quite well.

Yes, people are clearing instances faster than Blizzard can put out - and comments about the time they take to put new stuff out aside, there's a major difference between comparing todays players from those starting vanilla WoW, or TBC.

I was a serious raider during both and let me tell you - even faceroll Wrath of the Lich King was harder than those two. The difference was: WotLK didn't have artificial barriers of entry, so it seemed easier because more people were doing it. You didn't have to spend 3 hours a day farming herbs like you did for Naxx, nor did you have to organize and make sure your entire raid group finishes 5 man heroic attunements - which might not sound like much of a problem, but remember this was before they added viable crowd control to half the classes and before Warriors and Druids could AoE tank properly.

Personally, I see it as a vast improvement that these barriers are gone because they were not even close to being any indication of skill - just the amount of time you could spend.

As for the 600k subscriber loss, I'm guessing it's actually the facerollers who quit because I sincerely doubt there's 600k hardcore raiders in WoW.

 

[Raven]

It depends what you define as hardcore. I raid 2-3 nights a week. I wouldn't call myself hard core but we are a raid guild.

 

[Ctuchik]

Tbh I don't see how any MMORPG can make an encounter extremely hard every time you do it, unless the encounter is unfair. And most guilds that beat these encounters would never have learned how to do it themselves. So much of WoW is reading other people's strategies, which is not a fault with the game.

There is one really really easy way they could fix that.

By banning every single addon. Personally i would just love that in WoW.

If they did that even the hardcore raiders would start to struggle and all raiders would actually have to pay attention instead of having 200 addons do it for them.

Or if that weren't enough, they could also scale the instances by average gear level instead of having set difficulties, so the better gear the raid has the more badass the mobs become. And preferably scale in realtime to prevent abuse.

So they would effectively be just as hard with semi decent gear as they would be with the best gear possible.

 

[Shagrat]

add-ons have always annoyed me as well. stuff intruding on my gaming experience, go away.

isnt playing about with the game and getting lost etc all part of the fun. rather than having some quest addon that directs you straight to where you want to go (even though mmo's seem to be dumbing down even further and adding this in from the start now)

ho hum, back to my rose tinted spectacles, and yearning for proper death penalties (uo style) to give the game a sense of danger, and an mmo that doesnt hold your hand and punishes you for being careless (where have mobs that BAF and do cool stuff gone).......

dont think we'll see stuff like this in mmo's again, and thats a sad thing

It's not WoW thats in decline, it's mmo's.........

 

[Everz]

Agreed, every MMO coming out just looks like some carebear gash tripe. Bleh.

 

[Ctuchik]

isnt playing about with the game and getting lost etc all part of the fun.

There's only one game that frequently got me lost, and that's DAoC. The zones in todays MMO's are so fucking small its impossible to get lost even if you tried.

 

[Helme]

I'd say not getting lost any more has more to do with the fact that the games actually come with in-game maps.

 

[Everz]

True.. having 200 printoffs for each daoc zone was luls.

 

[Ctuchik]

I'd say not getting lost any more has more to do with the fact that the games actually come with in-game maps.

Good point, makes my point even more valid tho...

 

[Punishment]

It's all about content with pve based games and eventually it all runs out, pvp should be the focal point of amy mmo

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

By banning every single addon. Personally i would just love that in WoW.

If they did that even the hardcore raiders would start to struggle and all raiders would actually have to pay attention instead of having 200 addons do it for them.

There goes most of your raiding population right there

 

[BloodOmen]

WoW addons are such a hard subject tbh, once over blizzard built raids and content around no addons (giving tell tale signs of abilities bosses were about to use) these days addons more or less play the game for you (and blizzard have started building raids around addons which imo was a grave mistake)

 

[chipper]

There's only one game that frequently got me lost, and that's DAoC. The zones in todays MMO's are so fucking small its impossible to get lost even if you tried.

got lost in frontiers so many times but in the end i had such a good knowledge of the frontiers i could pretty much run an enemy over a hill into either a nice purple con mob or into the line of fire of a keep

mmo's have been dumbed down over the years no question and you can see why to an extent, its to lure in the more casual player as said and it really pains me to say it cos it is one of my favourite types of games but mmo's are a different breed now and its just lost that sparkle it once had SW:TOR will be my last mmo i think as there is just nothing else on the horizon i care about trying

as for addons they can enhance the experience but they can also dumb it down who here played wow as a raidier and didnt have deadly boss mods and be honest but there are some nice touches like bagnon which giv you one bigbag instead of 5 individual ones

until the devs make mods something that has to be reviewed by the devs and certified for use people will make the game as easy as possible for themselves with dozens of mods basically walking them through every encounter hand in hand.