Why 'World of Warcraft' Is Dying

[natoco]

LFR (looking for retards) is a disgrace, which annoyed so many people I have spoken with in game. The fact you don't have to speak to anyone while running it ruined the whole raid experience for the worse unfortunately and If I did not have to do it for quest items, I would not do it. In 5.4 they add flexi raiding which sounds better since its a pre made group and thus has to talk to each other
If they do a whole new game I hope a can take my characters over cause there is no way in hell I will play another mmo, to much time involved, would much rather quit completely than start a new game.

 

[James Martins]

I kept waiting for the day blizzard would allow me to see all the content experience all the raids and dungeons without having the del with the horrible community. The good guilds require a blood aoth to join and the ones that don't cant make any progress.

I had hoped with Mist's this would become a reality but it has not I still have to deal with people. I know its an MMO but they made a game you can solos and never group with people then your expected to deal with people if you want to see all the content. I like the economy of an MMO not the grouping.

If they every made all content accessible to solo players I would return. But blizzard is stubborn about keeping there MMO formula.

But I guarantee any developer makes a game that plays like wow and has there great characters and art style and story but allows all content to be seen by a group or solo player it would be a screaming success. Just keep the MMO economy and ability to see other players in the world and choose to group.

 

[w0_od]

As a vanilla WoW player i can point to 3 design choices that Blizzard made which irrecoverably lead to the eventual demise of WoW

1. Cross Realms. Removing the community aspect hurts any commitment by the players to their servers. GW2 also has done the same thing with their cross realm pvp and generic you are this colour this week mechanic

2. Simplification of game system to allow more subscribers access. Naturally this led to a increase in subs but it also marked the beginning of the end of WoW as a legendary game. Ask any vet and they fondly remember AQ40, Vanilla WoW, original AV etc . I dont even remember if WOTLK was any good except that emo daddy issue cry baby Arthas finally got pimp slapped.
3. Kotick and EA. Their direction of the game is to sell it as bland and easily regurgitated content is not worth paying a subscription for.

in fact nothing blizzard has produced for a while has been worth paying for.

 

[invlem]

There are only so many ways you can pretty up the game before the 'new' is just a slight alteration of the 'old'.

The fact that they got a decade out of this game is impressive. I played vanilla, as well as each expansion, but each expansion held me less and less, to the point where in mists I ran the first 2 raids and said, "What am I doing here? I've done this countless times before".

Eventually the loop of grind/raid/gear just gets plain boring and no amount of fancy additions can make it less so. I've tried many other MMO's recently, like Rift and while decent, they still feel like "WoW" which to me know means boredom...

The MMORPG template needs to be re-written from the ground up, its just cookie cutter clones out there now.

 

[SirGCal]

Exactly like Magnetite2 posted. I got out when my top elite gear was replaced with the next dropped green junk from trash mobs... Grind for months in the raids to have the elite gear to be replaced by every tom-dick and harry... Bite me Blizzard.Geared out again and sold the whole thing.See-ya. Made actually substantially more then I spent also which was very nice and unexpected. I also started in vanilla which was fun and now it's just ridiculous.

 

[super-smashman]

I'll repost my comment I had made on a similar article as it's very relevant.

I have been playing WoW since day 1. I've seen the huge cultural shift that, in my opinion, is the real cause of its decline.

The two big things that fell away are player humility and actual progression.

Back in Vanilla, most players were in greens. Most were still learning how to play. There was a small percentage of the player base that was hardcore and everyone looked up to them because it was obvious who they were. Epics were nearly impossible to get on your own. Hell, blues were out of reach for a large section of the population but that was important! It made most players humble. I'd hear things like: Man, look at that item, I could never get that! I'd have to join a top guild and quit my job and put lots of hours into raiding and socializing. People would genuinely FEAR bosses! We'd talk about certain bosses with reverence to their difficulty. We'd feel like kings for a day when we finally took down that boss we were stuck on. That feeling is gone from the game now. The last 3 expansions have lowered the bar to excellence so far that even the most mediocre, casual player feels like they should be able to topple the last boss. Nobody on my server even killed C'thun until the next expansion came out.

Blizzard's biggest mistake came when they decided that all players should get to see all content. They freaked when they looked at their metrics and saw that less than 2% of guilds were doing Sunwell but that made the dungeon actually epic. Could they not see that what made the game so magical and mysterious was knowing that some content was out of reach? I remember going to school and talking to friends about how world first guilds just downed such a boss. I remember the awe, feeling like these people were celebrities to me and my friends. I remember getting attuned to Naxx40 just so I could go in with a friend and LOOK at the instance! I remember feeling so accomplished for getting attuned to instances and working my way up the progression ladder. I remember it took me and my guild a YEAR to get ready to run Kara! We would run content we could do and backed off the hard stuff until we knew we were ready. We knew where we were in relation to every other guild because it took months of prep to move up a tier! You knew that someone had killed X boss because they were wearing Y armor. Progression mattered. There was no jumping up to where the rest of your guild was just because they were running harder content. Accomplishments were palpable. You wore your boss kills. You guild name was your reputation. All of that has been washed away so that anyone can feel epic.

Now... I could roll a character and within 3 weeks be maxed out. This wasn't impossible before it just required a LOT of friends. This need for others to speed up powering your character has been largely removed. You fact that you can be 90% as strong as a raider by yourself cheapened the experience for everyone but the kinds of people who ragequit and call people faggots. Those people, in Vanilla, would get nowhere because your characters strength and prestige was directly related to how social you were.

The catalyst for all this was opening the floodgates by opening cross server PvE. Suddenly you didn't need your social skills to run 5 man content. You need only push the "find me 4 friends" button. ALL of my friends I made in the game were first met in 5 mans. Socializing worked along side progression. You start by yourself, levelling and learning the game, only socializing when you saw fit. You then decided to take the game more seriously and pull 5 people together and maybe make a friend. You'd join up with one of their guilds because they like the way you play or strategize. You'd decide to start raiding and you go to the easier 10 man content. Your guild grows and suddenly you have enough players to go after the harder 25 or even 40 man content! It was a social progression as much as it was a progression through the content. All of that has been washed away in the name of "let everyone see everything!". I'm willing to bet nearly all players who started playing with me are no longer playing because the core engagement of the game has changed so much.

When everyone is epic, nobody is.