I'd wait and see what its next expansion Cataclysm looks like. Since they seem to be re-doing most of the classic WoW zones and adding new content for high/level end-game that will be the real litmus test for whether the game is going to remain hugely popular for the next few years or not. Cataclysm could be great fun for a few months for many to play. 

---

Originally posted by Nov8tr
www.geeks.co.uk/7282-activision%E2%80%99s-bobby-kotick-hates-developers-innovation-cheap-games-you
Follow this link and tell me you want to give this scumbag company one single dime more of your money.

---

Ehh. Software industry has always been full of various freaks (including Gates, Ballmer and Jobs), but one can't deny that Kotick raised the bar higher than ever. His statements really strain the imagination. But he's been the CEO of Activision since 1991, so I don't believe he's really stupid or uncouth. Someone who stay in his office for 18 years should have learned to avoid obvious mistakes.

The weirdest part of all this is that he probably isn't quite as badass as he paints himself. Activision companies (even apart from Blizzard) still make OK quality games so the fun must be there still. But even without Kotick's confessions it's been clear that the devs are always under constant pressure since they have to rush new games every year or so.

There are no angels in the big business. But why would the CEO of a big and famous company try to look even worse than he is? Why does he try to alienate gamers, partners, employees and journalists? If I were paranoid, I'd say he needs a tinfoil hat. But I'm not so I'm lost here.

You can't complain about something you tolerate(ed), especially for 5 years.....it either makes you look weak or it makes you look dense.....or maybe you're both?

Originally posted by Hydroblunt

Originally posted by lisubab

Several objections, Achievement were copied from AA of EQ1 & EQ2, then LOTRo.

Talent trees are being changed all the time.  That actually tells me the development team is trying something.  Take the paly healer.  When spamming HoL as a single button rules all paly heals, they changed it.  You feel angry b/c they remove some old and tried template/gear combo?  I am ok with that.  They take away 4xT8 druid set bonus, this gives me the incentive to mix and match again.

Top level crafting is useless?  You get to be kidding, with every new batch, I find my JC working at least 1 hour a day cutting every kind of new gems, so is my enchanter, but less business (more competiton).  I sell all my 3xtitansteel CDs every day I log on, within 10 minutes.  I sell my spellweave CD long before the CD is over, people mailed me 4 stacks of cloths and all money upfront, just to have me mailing back the 2 cloths every 4 days.  Every 20hours, an epic gem transmute gets me 50g comfortably.  They are useless?  My crafting nets me 150-200g a day.  Depending on my hard I care to craft.

The rest of your post are opinions, and some of those I echo.  The game does feel old in some ways.  But, I have yet to find another game that provides so much variety under one roof.

 

Blizzard went after Achievements right after Warhammer launched.  It was an obvious copy to keep playerbase, cause, for some strange reason, some players actually care about them.  I played both games, Blizzard paid a very close eye to War's achievement system.  Yes, agreed on the timing.  I do noticed that the first major vendor to use achievement or AAA as it was called was EQ.  I cannot swear who Blizz copied it from, but I would say, the achievement options from Blizz is most varied.  I love the drop from the sky and not dying one.  I also like the fancy combos with each boss.  Killed all three bosses in VoA within a few minutes or something.  Now that is more varied achievement than the LOTRo version of killing 10,000 snails.  (Not that I hate LOTRo, my family still owns 3 lifetimes)

I know talent trees are changed all the time.  My point is that they were blatantly dumbed down.  A lot of it was due to the crying on players.  There were much less hybrid builds.  I know the talent tress were never great for all the classes, but this move really was against what I liked about them.  I missed my mage a lot from prior to patch 3.0.  Whether is it dumbed down or not is subjective.  I like the occasion major overhauls, it does requires a lot of thinking and reassessment.

I said most of the crafting is a joke.  You focus on Enchanting & JC, the primary & most wanted professions.  I was both, I am very well aware about it's earning of gold, although gold is a joke in WotLK now.  150g-200g a day now is nothing, I did more than that in BC.  The rest of the professions are subpar, with engineering almost worthless except for a few items for PvP.  WoW's tradeskill system was never great in comparison, yet it has been dumbed down even more.  OK, is tailoring useless?  Nah, I earn 60g a pop every 4 days making spellweave for people, yes only once every 4 days.  LW and tailor sells well for the leg enchants, not a lot but they always sell.  Pot master is ok, with 2x450 herb alts, I use to sell mana pots for 80g a stack, and they always sell, sometimes before I got time to put them up on AH.  People will send my pot master the moment he logs on "how many stack of XX pots you got today?", BS sells belt slot enchants.  Really the least useful crafting for me is inscribe.  Only got business during major talent tree overhauls.  Good thing for me is, I have maxed all forms of crafting.  So I am always busy making this and that, and with mail in orders, I use to have my slower notebook log on every crafter in turn, everyday, clearing mail in orders, while I raid or do dailies on my main PCs.  It sometimes took me an hour or 2 to finish all mail orders or craft with the mats I collected over the week.  Easily 400-1000g there.  Engineer is really the one that makes me no money so far.

Like I said, I just see nothing fun in the game anymore.  The raid grind got too generic & old with Blizzard aiming to run every player through content.  The PvP is just an endless joke.  The classes keep getting homogenized.  5-mans are very plain, definitely nothing like the original 5-mans which were simply interesting to go through.  What does WoW really offer nowdays?  I asked that to myself and ended up selling the account.  Ok your views, cannot argue with that.

There are much better MMOs out on the market.  You just have to give them a try.

I do feel burnt out at times.  The only way out is to switch to something else, or stop going MMO for a while.

I am looking at the new single player RPG coming up in Dec.  Take a break.  Do something else.  If you feel you want to come back, do so.  When I logged out of UO, I never got the urge to return, same for EQ.  When I logged out of DAoC or CoX, I did return but never last long.  I logged out of WoW, I returned and played for another year +.  That, is the difference.

Wish i had 1% of the cash this game makes in a year.

Will bet i would wish the same 5 years from now as well:)

I'm actually thinking of coming back to WoW.

What I find in WoW that other games can't satisfy me is the sheer mount of content and fun things to do. Of course I can only play for like a month or so before I need a break again.

the main gripe that the majority have against the game is that they are simply burnt out. This is what happens when you play a game so much. They can add all the content and new raids and so on but the feeling will remain unless you take a break or simply limit how much you play. That simply the same thing goes for any game on the market

I agree much of whats happening now is due to players feeling jaded by the WoW experiance . i ve played 5 years on and off and am now in one of my off periods . I daresay i ll dip my toe in WoWs waters again to see what its like again at some point . My main gripe at present is everything seams to be so pigeon holed and spoon fed . WoW was never ment to be a hard core mmo but it is infinatly easier now than it was 3 years back . If i was to pinpoint a moment when it started to go downhill i would say when they introduced faster leveling . The community is pretty horrible now due to the influx of kids playing it . I keep hoping Blizzard might introduce 18+ servers but i imagine they would be very hard to enforce .Although i do think in this current day and age its hugely irresponsible to have adults and children playing on the same server ( you would nt get that in chat rooms so why an mmo ? ) but that does nt just apply to WoW it applys to any mmo . Graphically WoW still is quite nice but it does look 5 years old now .

The one thing WoW us not doing is dieing . There are a lot more medium and low population servers than there used to be so maybe its fair to say its passed its prime both in terms of numbers of subscriptions and quality of gameplay . The Wrath of the lich king was nt a paticulary good expansion pack leveling from 75 -80 was pretty dull .

WoW is great for the casual player and the younger player nowdays and theres still fun to be had in it . Most of the hard core and older players have moved on now to other things .

I

Originally posted by Snoogems

....

everything in my post is accurate and i have stated that the chinese subscription base is dminishing because of the ban on gold farming. also, the reason behind the rapid gain in subscriptions is not because "everyones going for the hot new game", its because of people creating multiple accounts for raf bonuses and paying for 2 months of subscription to get a free zhebra mount and a free month of sub on the main accounts.

Everything you said is stupid.

Chinese sub base is diminishing b/c of the ban on gold farming, you said.  How outdated you are.  Gold sellers sell by hacking account, not by farming.  Chinese gov't's ban on the Chinese servers does not affect the US/EU/Taiwan/Oceanic/LA ... servers.

If the new accounts are purchased for the sake of new mounts, it is sales.  Point is, how many of these new accounts keep going after the first month?  No one knows.  The general feeling among many WoW players are that dalaran is still packed and it is damn easy during peak hours to find 5 for a H daily.  Fact is, whenever someone yells "LF 3dps for H daily", I can never type fast enough to get the invited.  Within 1 second, the 3 spots are filled.  So your claims that WoW is deserted is simply wrong.

The easiest way to prove that there is no one in dalaran is to pull up /who dalaran.  I never have under a filled page, not even during 4am of my side of the world, and that is only the horde side.  Hell no, there are always 5+ people from my guild online during late midnight, and I wonder, how many guilds there are now on my server.

Originally posted by googajoob7

I WoW is great for the casual player and the younger player nowdays and theres still fun to be had in it . Most of the hard core and older players have moved on now to other things .

I

Still the usual crap coming from frustrated guy googa.

He fights official transcripts of Blizzard press conferences that confirmed 11.5M players2009 and he even fights Nielsen social studies of a ... 2 Million samples of US citizens playing the game.

http://www.wow.com/2009/04/09/nielsen-wow-is-most-played-core-game-by-25-54-females/

The vast majority of WOW players is older than 25. Period. Study was very clear on this.

He puts up his big wet thumb and than make statements coming out of his ass.

Talking about a guy upping EVERY negative WOW thread ttitle he can lay his hands on.

I had 350 people in my queue on sunday on my AL Akir EU server (one of the 250+ EU servers btw) and even "new" Aion with its low 18EU servers doesn't have queues anymore.

So I guess: frustration reigns over there in your head.

Be prepared, with patch 3.3 and Cataclysm launching around the corner: take a bath: you'll need it.

Originally posted by lisubab

I do feel burnt out at times.  The only way out is to switch to something else, or stop going MMO for a while.

I am looking at the new single player RPG coming up in Dec.  Take a break.  Do something else.  If you feel you want to come back, do so.  When I logged out of UO, I never got the urge to return, same for EQ.  When I logged out of DAoC or CoX, I did return but never last long.  I logged out of WoW, I returned and played for another year +.  That, is the difference.

I'm not burned out, I'm done with WoW.  The game is dead to me since patch 3.0.  It's as simple as that.  I tried to return during the summer to pass a few months before Aion launch and was really bored. None of my WoW friends in game played anymore. The crafting took a step down, and just like you, I had alts for all the professions.  The rest I already spoke about and plenty of ex-WoW players agree with me.  The game got more simple, more dumb, less interesting.  And WAR's Tome unlocks system is more interesting, by the way.  I was trying AoC, EvE, Aion betas & Ryzom at the same and spent more time in those games.  Hence, bye bye WoW, forever.

I play mostly EvE, which blows WoW out of the water, and Aion, which in my opinion is a better game all around.  There are better games out there, it's as simple as that.  Blizzard chose a direction which allowed it to become the McDonalds of MMOs, and that is fine.  It's not my cup of tea.  But I'm sure millions continue to love it, just like over a billion love McDonalds.

Originally posted by Thenarius

Can't say I don't agree with you. Vanilla was fun, TBC was the best for raiding IMO...WOTLK is pretty much a big experiment. Let's hope Cataclysm will fix it!(Just like resilience, you know...)

I was very much enjoying TBC, aside from Arenas , and felt that overall it was a good expansion even though it did kill off their best work in vanilla.  Was hoping the xpac would be delayed another 6 months so that I could continue enjoying TBC.

I would play on a vanilla WoW server without hesitation.  That is the best content Blizzard has ever done, particularly 50-60 instances & raids. 

Originally posted by Frostbite05

the main gripe that the majority have against the game is that they are simply burnt out. This is what happens when you play a game so much. They can add all the content and new raids and so on but the feeling will remain unless you take a break or simply limit how much you play. That simply the same thing goes for any game on the market

Not really.  The main gripe was that Blizzard was dumbing down the game.   Although nowdays, I think players are being burned out fast since it is so streamlined & so repetitive with no quality goal.

troll attempt = win!

wow IS dieing!!! run for you're lifes!

Originally posted by Hydroblunt

Originally posted by lisubab

I do feel burnt out at times.  The only way out is to switch to something else, or stop going MMO for a while.

I am looking at the new single player RPG coming up in Dec.  Take a break.  Do something else.  If you feel you want to come back, do so.  When I logged out of UO, I never got the urge to return, same for EQ.  When I logged out of DAoC or CoX, I did return but never last long.  I logged out of WoW, I returned and played for another year +.  That, is the difference.

I'm not burned out, I'm done with WoW.  The game is dead to me since patch 3.0.  It's as simple as that.  I tried to return during the summer to pass a few months before Aion launch and was really bored. None of my WoW friends in game played anymore. The crafting took a step down, and just like you, I had alts for all the professions.  The rest I already spoke about and plenty of ex-WoW players agree with me.  The game got more simple, more dumb, less interesting.  And WAR's Tome unlocks system is more interesting, by the way.  I was trying AoC, EvE, Aion betas & Ryzom at the same and spent more time in those games.  Hence, bye bye WoW, forever.

I play mostly EvE, which blows WoW out of the water, and Aion, which in my opinion is a better game all around.  There are better games out there, it's as simple as that.  Blizzard chose a direction which allowed it to become the McDonalds of MMOs, and that is fine.  It's not my cup of tea.  But I'm sure millions continue to love it, just like over a billion love McDonalds.

Good for you, you find EvE and love it.  Others find their games and go along with it.  Win win.

Originally posted by Hydroblunt

Originally posted by Frostbite05

the main gripe that the majority have against the game is that they are simply burnt out. This is what happens when you play a game so much. They can add all the content and new raids and so on but the feeling will remain unless you take a break or simply limit how much you play. That simply the same thing goes for any game on the market

Not really.  The main gripe was that Blizzard was dumbing down the game.   Although nowdays, I think players are being burned out fast since it is so streamlined & so repetitive with no quality goal.

The main gripe was that people has nothing to ramble and keeps dumbing down the arguments when writing nonsense rant here.

See?  What is dumbing down?  Your expression skills is dumbed down when you are unable to provide a reason and resort to meaningless blanket terms.

Originally posted by Hydroblunt

Originally posted by lisubab

I do feel burnt out at times.  The only way out is to switch to something else, or stop going MMO for a while.

I am looking at the new single player RPG coming up in Dec.  Take a break.  Do something else.  If you feel you want to come back, do so.  When I logged out of UO, I never got the urge to return, same for EQ.  When I logged out of DAoC or CoX, I did return but never last long.  I logged out of WoW, I returned and played for another year +.  That, is the difference.

I'm not burned out, I'm done with WoW.  The game is dead to me since patch 3.0.  It's as simple as that.  I tried to return during the summer to pass a few months before Aion launch and was really bored. None of my WoW friends in game played anymore. The crafting took a step down, and just like you, I had alts for all the professions.  The rest I already spoke about and plenty of ex-WoW players agree with me.  The game got more simple, more dumb, less interesting.  And WAR's Tome unlocks system is more interesting, by the way.  I was trying AoC, EvE, Aion betas & Ryzom at the same and spent more time in those games.  Hence, bye bye WoW, forever.

I play mostly EvE, which blows WoW out of the water, and Aion, which in my opinion is a better game all around.  There are better games out there, it's as simple as that.  Blizzard chose a direction which allowed it to become the McDonalds of MMOs, and that is fine.  It's not my cup of tea.  But I'm sure millions continue to love it, just like over a billion love McDonalds.

So how long did you play WoW, all together combined?

approximate

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by googajoob7

I WoW is great for the casual player and the younger player nowdays and theres still fun to be had in it . Most of the hard core and older players have moved on now to other things .

I

 

Still the usual crap coming from frustrated guy googa.

He fights official transcripts of Blizzard press conferences that confirmed 11.5M players2009 and he even fights Nielsen social studies of a ... 2 Million samples of US citizens playing the game.

http://www.wow.com/2009/04/09/nielsen-wow-is-most-played-core-game-by-25-54-females/

The vast majority of WOW players is older than 25. Period. Study was very clear on this.

He puts up his big wet thumb and than make statements coming out of his ass.

Talking about a guy upping EVERY negative WOW thread ttitle he can lay his hands on.

I had 350 people in my queue on sunday on my AL Akir EU server (one of the 250+ EU servers btw) and even "new" Aion with its low 18EU servers doesn't have queues anymore.

So I guess: frustration reigns over there in your head.

Be prepared, with patch 3.3 and Cataclysm launching around the corner: take a bath: you'll need it.

your dropping your age of the average player Zorndorf you were argueing it was 30 last month .  as to the vast majority of wow players being over 25 well i think your proven with that statement just how ridiculous you are . As for me being negative you think anyone that does nt say how fantastic WoW is in every post is negative . You always ignore the fact that i say i still think WoW offers some decent gameplay still even though i dont think the current state of the game is as good as it was or could be .

I tackle you on the issue of subscriber numbers because you never link to the offcial Warcraft website for the latest subsriber numbers only

1) obsure websites with dubiuos reputation 2)xfire figure which most people agree arnt paticulary accurate 3) the may statement of the guiness book of records ( which you dont seam to understand takes guiness around 6 months to corroberate the facts ) .

I dont know what the current subs are and neither do you . My guess and its only a guess is that they ve dropped because Blizzard have stopped releasing them when in 2008 they were doing it regulary .

The day you can link me to the official Blizzard website issueing a recent statement that they still have 11.5 million or more subscriptions i ll happily admit i m wrong .

Maybe they will be able to boast such figures again after the next expansion but obviously they cant at present .

 (As for Aion you ve obviously not read my recent posts slamming the way the launch was handled and the fact they did nt offer free time to players as Blizzard did in its initial months .Hell i even praised Blizzard for the way they handled WoW back then and said i wished Ncsoft were wise enough to do similar ) .

you see the difference between you and most of the other people in these forums is that your a fanatic and they are gamers .

 WoW is dying...but thats what happens to even the best RPGs - they have their prime & they die out, people move on, etc.  Lazy devs and drama-laden people (people in general) are the real death of WoW, but it will be a slow way down when you're that far on top.

The OPs statements however...were not even remotely on target, I'm kind of surprised o_o

PS.  I wonder how much blizzard made on day 1 of race changes...its like 25$ for turning on a lightbulb (of data) for them.  Man i wish I had 1% of that bankroll...

1. WoW starts dying.

2. Cataclysm comes out.

3. Wow sells more copies in a month than any MMO in history including itself and more people subscribe than ever before.

4. WoW starts dying.

5. Another expansion comes out.

6. .........

Originally posted by googajoob7 

I tackle you on the issue of subscriber numbers because you never link to the offcial Warcraft website for the latest subsriber numbers only

1) obsure websites with dubiuos reputation 2)xfire figure which most people agree arnt paticulary accurate 3) the may statement of the guiness book of records ( which you dont seam to understand takes guiness around 6 months to corroberate the facts ) .

I dont know what the current subs are and neither do you . My guess and its only a guess is that they ve dropped because Blizzard have stopped releasing them when in 2008 they were doing it regulary .

The day you can link me to the official Blizzard website issueing a recent statement that they still have 11.5 million or more subscriptions i ll happily admit i m wrong .

You are wrong, because you don't understand what you are reading. 

Blizzard announces subscriber MILESTONES.  The press releases are not some live update to blizzard subscriber levels.  The press releases are only issued when a new subscriber level is broken and we can only assume the next milestone will be 12 million.   

All you can tell from the lack of new press release is that WoW has not broken 12 million subscribers yet or they chose not to announce they did.  Beyond that you can tell nothing from a lack of new press release. 

Concluding that no new press release equates to a drop in subscribers shows your ignorance to the meaning behind the press releases. 

Now before you get your panties in a twist, I don't think there are 11.5 million subscribers either, but that is just my pure blind speculation and I could be shown to be wrong tomorrow.  I have nothing to support that other than a guess.  Nothing I see in game leads me to believe that game is dead, especially like the original poster wants us to believe. 

Originally posted by peenk

So how long did you play WoW, all together combined?

approximate

A little over 2 years.  Played for a year not too long after launch, quit for a year, came back and played seriously up until WotLK launched.

You're wrong.

WoW passed its prime in 2005, when I played it for 3-4 months, liked it for it's solid content, and eventually got bored with the gameplay and quit.  Since I wanted to quit(then did), it must have passed its prime.  That it went from 6 million subs to 11 million since then is irrelevant.  I got bored with it, so it must be on its way out. 

The world revolves around me and my opinion, and thus, the fate of all things within this world are subject to my critical whim; all will rise and fall based upon my sole discretion...

You are right about half the subs being Chinese farmers.  Because it would certainly be a lucrative business to have one gold farmer for every legit player in the game.  Everybody buys gold, and each person buys enough of it to pay one person to gold farm as well as cover overhead, and their chinese WoW account. 

Yes indeed.  Every legit person in WoW buys, say, 200 american dollars in WoW gold each month which leads to the huge profits of gold farmers.

Originally posted by lisubab

Originally posted by Hydroblunt

Originally posted by Frostbite05

the main gripe that the majority have against the game is that they are simply burnt out. This is what happens when you play a game so much. They can add all the content and new raids and so on but the feeling will remain unless you take a break or simply limit how much you play. That simply the same thing goes for any game on the market

Not really.  The main gripe was that Blizzard was dumbing down the game.   Although nowdays, I think players are being burned out fast since it is so streamlined & so repetitive with no quality goal.

 

The main gripe was that people has nothing to ramble and keeps dumbing down the arguments when writing nonsense rant here.

See?  What is dumbing down?  Your expression skills is dumbed down when you are unable to provide a reason and resort to meaningless blanket terms.

It's no rant, it's common feedback if you learn how to pay attention.  The original wave of players leaving had to do with TBC, which did simplify things, although many of them for the good, IMO.  Arena was a big reason for people quitting as well, something that definitely caters to the more mentally challenged.

Blizzard has been making the game easier & simpler, which brought in more newbies who just want to mash buttons while driving away older players that liked some challenge.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by googajoob7 

I tackle you on the issue of subscriber numbers because you never link to the offcial Warcraft website for the latest subsriber numbers only

1) obsure websites with dubiuos reputation 2)xfire figure which most people agree arnt paticulary accurate 3) the may statement of the guiness book of records ( which you dont seam to understand takes guiness around 6 months to corroberate the facts ) .

I dont know what the current subs are and neither do you . My guess and its only a guess is that they ve dropped because Blizzard have stopped releasing them when in 2008 they were doing it regulary .

The day you can link me to the official Blizzard website issueing a recent statement that they still have 11.5 million or more subscriptions i ll happily admit i m wrong .

You are wrong, because you don't understand what you are reading. 

Blizzard announces subscriber MILESTONES.  The press releases are not some live update to blizzard subscriber levels.  The press releases are only issued when a new subscriber level is broken and we can only assume the next milestone will be 12 million.   

All you can tell from the lack of new press release is that WoW has not broken 12 million subscribers yet or they chose not to announce they did.  Beyond that you can tell nothing from a lack of new press release. 

Concluding that no new press release equates to a drop in subscribers shows your ignorance to the meaning behind the press releases. 

 

Now before you get your panties in a twist, I don't think there are 11.5 million subscribers either, but that is just my pure blind speculation and I could be shown to be wrong tomorrow.  I have nothing to support that other than a guess.  Nothing I see in game leads me to believe that game is dead, especially like the original poster wants us to believe. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think Blizzard had reatined 11.5 million it would still be boasting about it . I do remember certain fanbois suggesting it had exceeded 12 million . Blizzard were announcing regular milestones as you put it normally once every quarter up untill December 2009 . Forums all over the new are full of rumour they have lost several million players . The longer Blizzard remain quiet on the subject the more it ll seam accurate . My view is so what if Blizzard have gone down to 7 or 8 million subs its still doing pretty well but there are cetain people  that think the game is just going to go on increasing in popularity which is totally unrealistic .

If WoW went down to 3 million it would still be far from dead but i think there is some truth in that it has peaked and if your right that Blizzard only release milestones then we will never hear a statement regarding how many subs WoW has ever again .

And you know there will still be people in these forums still arguing in 10 years time that it still retains 11.5 million players .