So, alot of people say whatever game they're interested in will be the next "WoW killer", but its been proven over and over again nothing will really KILL wow, but wow itself, and it shows. WoWs playerbase has been on a steady decline for awhile now which with a bit of logical reasoning shows its not the release of another game that gets players away its the change of the game they already love.

Numbers are declining, everyone knows that. But in addition, numbers won't be going up anytime soon either. Not only has WoW tapped into a playerbase of people no one else has before - thus turning alot of people into MMO players - which will likely not happen again anytime soon. But the playerbase also seems to ostracize what few new players there are that do come.

Anytime you ask for help in the game, you get belittled and insulted. anytime you say "I don't know this dungeon I'm new" you get kicked or half the people leave. the solution to being treated this way is apperently "Join a guild" however guilds require you to be 10/12 hard mode with full t50 or whatever they're at now just to join them at all. This makes the game wholely unaccessable to the few people who do want to play it, which is bad for all MMOs, but really accessability is all WoW ever had going for it.

Blizzard, in my opinion has done nothing but show they want they to tap into as many markets as they can with cataclysm completely rechangeing the leveling process because "5% of all players don't make it passed level 10" or some BS like that. But also with mists of pandera going for a more cutesy aesthetic that can't be meant to please the fan base who play to kill giant dragons made out of lava. Say what you will about them "ripping off kung fu panda"(Hint, pandera has been a race in warcraft lore loooong before kung fu panda) but it does show a mind at pulling in different demographics.

But, how will those different demoraphics and new players they wrangle in feel? From my experience...Not too well. The game has become worse then EQ in terms of unaccessability. If you don't know 4 other people who play to learn the game together, don't expect to really do anything other then grind quests to level. and if you do make it to level cap. Don't expect to get in a guild to start raiding - ever..

Also, I should probably explain the title because I know some idiot is gonna come in and not get it. A decline in playerbase could be effectively STOPPED by having new players come in at the same, or greater rate. Thats not going to happen in wow, I feel, largely in part of this.

1) There seems to be plenty of social & casual guilds. At least 2 of my alts are in two different ones. Not every guild is a raiding guild.

2) Early dungeons are easy. You don't have to know the fights and just follow everyone. It is not that hard to learn the ropes on the dungeons. Plus, you can always go to youtube and watch a video.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

1) There seems to be plenty of social & casual guilds. At least 2 of my alts are in two different ones. Not every guild is a raiding guild.

2) Early dungeons are easy. You don't have to know the fights and just follow everyone. It is not that hard to learn the ropes on the dungeons. Plus, you can always go to youtube and watch a video.

That may be your experience. But I, and everyone else I know had something closer to what I said here. I can only speak from my own frame of reference and say can you.

Originally posted by azrael466

Originally posted by nariusseldon

1) There seems to be plenty of social & casual guilds. At least 2 of my alts are in two different ones. Not every guild is a raiding guild.

2) Early dungeons are easy. You don't have to know the fights and just follow everyone. It is not that hard to learn the ropes on the dungeons. Plus, you can always go to youtube and watch a video.

That may be your experience. But I, and everyone else I know had something closer to what I said here. I can only speak from my own frame of reference and say can you.

I agree and what you described is why I left WoW 2? years ago.

Originally posted by MMOGamer71

Originally posted by azrael466

Originally posted by nariusseldon

1) There seems to be plenty of social & casual guilds. At least 2 of my alts are in two different ones. Not every guild is a raiding guild.

2) Early dungeons are easy. You don't have to know the fights and just follow everyone. It is not that hard to learn the ropes on the dungeons. Plus, you can always go to youtube and watch a video.

That may be your experience. But I, and everyone else I know had something closer to what I said here. I can only speak from my own frame of reference and say can you.

I agree and what you described is why I left WoW 2? years ago.

Personally that just sounds like every other MMO to me.   Which is why if I find people I enjoy playing with... I try to round them up into one place.

I mean when my EQ2 guild self destructed... I was on a 2 week vacation.   This was a while ago... 2008 maybe.   When I came back there was simply no guild...   I never really understood what happened.   Someone mentioned death threats and constant harrassment.   I knew that most of the guild has transferred else where and gotten name changes.

That was just.... odd.   On the bright side I had this nice guild house all to myself .. and max'd out all my crafts before I left.

Originally posted by MMOGamer71

Originally posted by azrael466

Originally posted by nariusseldon

1) There seems to be plenty of social & casual guilds. At least 2 of my alts are in two different ones. Not every guild is a raiding guild.

2) Early dungeons are easy. You don't have to know the fights and just follow everyone. It is not that hard to learn the ropes on the dungeons. Plus, you can always go to youtube and watch a video.

That may be your experience. But I, and everyone else I know had something closer to what I said here. I can only speak from my own frame of reference and say can you.

I agree and what you described is why I left WoW 2? years ago.

Its why I quit as well near the start of cata. I didn't even start raiding in cata largely because of it although maybe my realm is just bad. I don't know, I can't speak for all realms as I don't have experience with them all. However on mine, there are next to no guilds at all. The few that are there are raiding guilds that require you to be exactly where they are in terms of dungeon progress which is insane and in my opinion cocky - the only way to get that experience is by doing the dungeons(dur), so really what they guilds are implying is "We're so badass we have people who leave other guilds that're 11/12 hard mode just to join us!" and then wonder why they can't replace the last healer that left..

But its the players in general. WoW players as a whole seem to think everyone who plays already knows EVERYTHING about the game. Which is a self fullfilling prophacy. They act that way, so they belittle people who don't know everything until the game just isn't fun anymore, so they quit.

I feel, however, I should mention that..I am kind of a..Not a loner, persay, but I'm introverted. I don't exactly LIKE going out all the time and meeting people, coupled with the fact I'm kind of shy  so, I don't really know that many people that I like to hangout with, and the few I do aren't into MMOs. So all buddies who played with me I met there...So its not like I can just get my buddies and start playing with them when a new MMO comes out, and its not likely I'd meet anyone who was like "Hey you play wow? You should come to my server". Although thats also a part of a different problem that where I live has no gamer, or nerd culture to speak of but it would appear I've begun to ramble.

The solution to this problem is simple "levelling guild" or "social guild"

I do not know your experience or what server you come from, but on Argent Dawn, EU, there are DOZENS of these little ones. You open the guild browser (awful feature, yeah, but you can browse the server forum too if you prefer like that) and you will stumble upon a 2 or 3 in the first 10 you see.

They take most people, will be level 25 or near so and are great tools to filter out the wow population. Find one that is filled with people you like (might take a try or three) and tadaaa! now you have people you can go to dungeons with, help you level, rp with and what have you. There are miriads of variations and some guilds nowadays are even social/raid. you can join as a social and then get promoted to Raid member once you get there/are good enough.

IF you are really on the only server in the world that has NO levelling guild... well, then it is time to move to greener pastures and find one that has them.

You are correct about the high end of the playerbase. I am part of the %age that left the game before lvl10 the first time i played WoW. I only genuinely started because my friend insisted that I play. Perhaps I was lucky to find noobs like me while I was lvling. I joined a relatively inexperienced guild when it came to raiding so when we got to that point it was a learning experience for all of us. I learned to accept that there is an endless supply of stupid on the internet and that the everflowing chalice of crap players could never be stopped or destroyed.

As I learned to raid more efficiently I grew increasingly frustrated with players who were slower learners. Why does it take more than 3 attempts for people to learn any given mechanic? (I'm not saying learn the entire fight in 3 goes. I'm talking about a single mechanic - dont stand in fire.) Month in and month out I sat patiently while the leaders tried hard to get a solid team together. Yet time and time again bad players left a bitter taste in my mouth and that feeling eventually got the better of me.

I became an elitist ass.

I had to. It was the only way that I could get into the hardest parts of the game. This is an unfortunate fact. No good guild would take you unless you already had X progress. X progress was impossible because you couldn't play with good people. The cycle continues. Eventually people got excluded. People who just weren't good enough were left behind. I personally never felt that end of the stick but I imagine it would have been a shitty feeling to come on raids then be told you can't come anymore. If they never got invited they never got gear or experience to get better. Yet the time it took for them to get better is actually costing me money. Money I would rather spend on the top end of the game. (Time = sub $$)

I really like the social aspect of games and find it pretty easy to get along with guildies. I liked nearly all the people there on a personal level. On a gaming level I only respected 1-2 players.

I forget where I was going with this. I just wanted to tell a story about how a nice noob became a mean, disrespectful, elitist ass.

sadly most people that leave wow one years ,tend to go social gaming (facbook,g+,microsoft social game)

 Heh , these are the real reasons why WoW population are supposedly in a decline :

1- You got a few awesome console / PC games releasing this year

2- Believe it or not , the release of the Ipad3 will yank away some people from any MMO

3- The high anticipation of Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2

4- The soon coming of the Wii-U

5- After 8 years of WoW , it is logical to move on to something new , not because the game sucks , purely because there are other stuff to play out there.

6- WoW population will decline but fresh blood will take over the losses for years to come.

 So in the end , no matter how you look at it , WoW will always have millions , even at 1 million it surpasses almost all MMOs. And saying that the community is mean , well , what MMO doesn't have a mean community? 

Originally posted by SuprGamerX

6- WoW population will decline but fresh blood will take over the losses for years to come.

They lost 2 million players in 2 years, what makes you think that new players will start to fill it up again?

Fresh blood will slow the decline but not enough, if they want to keep current numbers or start gaining again they need to do something. Not sue what would help though.

Originally posted by SuprGamerX

 Heh , these are the real reasons why WoW population are supposedly in a decline :

1- You got a few awesome console / PC games releasing this year

2- Believe it or not , the release of the Ipad3 will yank away some people from any MMO

3- The high anticipation of Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2

4- The soon coming of the Wii-U

5- After 8 years of WoW , it is logical to move on to something new , not because the game sucks , purely because there are other stuff to play out there.

6- WoW population will decline but fresh blood will take over the losses for years to come.

 So in the end , no matter how you look at it , WoW will always have millions , even at 1 million it surpasses almost all MMOs. And saying that the community is mean , well , what MMO doesn't have a mean community? 

Good list, but I think the OP has forgotten the usual pattern. New Expac comes out, tons of people return to check it out + new sign ups > pop dwindles as expac ages > New expac comes out and we repeat the process.

MoP is around the corner, I wouldn't be surprised to hear a bump of 1 million subs for 2-3 months on it's release.

#5 is important, people do get tired of games and there is nothing funnier to me than someone who played a game for 2-3 (or 6) years only to get burnt out and run around claiming it's the worst game ever.  Look, if you're willing to put 2-3 years into a game, that game is amazing (not for 100% of people, but still).  Not many games have the retention rate of WoW, and WoW sheds more subs than other games ever get in the first place.

In the end, it's a slow bleed, but guess what? It's just old. And it's a teastament to Blizzard that they kept it going this long.

Originally posted by Rusque

Originally posted by SuprGamerX

 Heh , these are the real reasons why WoW population are supposedly in a decline :

1- You got a few awesome console / PC games releasing this year

2- Believe it or not , the release of the Ipad3 will yank away some people from any MMO

3- The high anticipation of Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2

4- The soon coming of the Wii-U

5- After 8 years of WoW , it is logical to move on to something new , not because the game sucks , purely because there are other stuff to play out there.

6- WoW population will decline but fresh blood will take over the losses for years to come.

 So in the end , no matter how you look at it , WoW will always have millions , even at 1 million it surpasses almost all MMOs. And saying that the community is mean , well , what MMO doesn't have a mean community? 

Good list, but I think the OP has forgotten the usual pattern. New Expac comes out, tons of people return to check it out + new sign ups > pop dwindles as expac ages > New expac comes out and we repeat the process.

MoP is around the corner, I wouldn't be surprised to hear a bump of 1 million subs for 2-3 months on it's release.

 

#5 is important, people do get tired of games and there is nothing funnier to me than someone who played a game for 2-3 (or 6) years only to get burnt out and run around claiming it's the worst game ever.  Look, if you're willing to put 2-3 years into a game, that game is amazing (not for 100% of people, but still).  Not many games have the retention rate of WoW, and WoW sheds more subs than other games ever get in the first place.

In the end, it's a slow bleed, but guess what? It's just old. And it's a teastament to Blizzard that they kept it going this long.

I agree that number 5 is important, and is probably the most relevent when discussing WoW. For many folks, WoW was their first mmo, and it was the mmo they grew up with (I've had a few guildies who have gone from High School to College graduate while playing). Pretty much anything released after WoW has been a crapshoot, especially since they tried to use the WoW model.

Regardless of how good a game is time will always catch up and claim another victim. GW2, Tera, and TSW might all be different enough from WoW to really put a dent into the population. That's they key, in my opinion, just be different from WoW and you're going to pick up a number of current WoW subscribers who are just bored after years and years of WoW.

I'm going to say WoW is on a steady decline because it's going to turn 8 years old this year.

Originally posted by azrael466

So, alot of people say whatever game they're interested in will be the next "WoW killer", but its been proven over and over again nothing will really KILL wow, but wow itself, and it shows. WoWs playerbase has been on a steady decline for awhile now which with a bit of logical reasoning shows its not the release of another game that gets players away its the change of the game they already love.

Numbers are declining, everyone knows that. But in addition, numbers won't be going up anytime soon either. Not only has WoW tapped into a playerbase of people no one else has before - thus turning alot of people into MMO players - which will likely not happen again anytime soon. But the playerbase also seems to ostracize what few new players there are that do come.

Anytime you ask for help in the game, you get belittled and insulted. anytime you say "I don't know this dungeon I'm new" you get kicked or half the people leave. the solution to being treated this way is apperently "Join a guild" however guilds require you to be 10/12 hard mode with full t50 or whatever they're at now just to join them at all. This makes the game wholely unaccessable to the few people who do want to play it, which is bad for all MMOs, but really accessability is all WoW ever had going for it.

Blizzard, in my opinion has done nothing but show they want they to tap into as many markets as they can with cataclysm completely rechangeing the leveling process because "5% of all players don't make it passed level 10" or some BS like that. But also with mists of pandera going for a more cutesy aesthetic that can't be meant to please the fan base who play to kill giant dragons made out of lava. Say what you will about them "ripping off kung fu panda"(Hint, pandera has been a race in warcraft lore loooong before kung fu panda) but it does show a mind at pulling in different demographics.

But, how will those different demoraphics and new players they wrangle in feel? From my experience...Not too well. The game has become worse then EQ in terms of unaccessability. If you don't know 4 other people who play to learn the game together, don't expect to really do anything other then grind quests to level. and if you do make it to level cap. Don't expect to get in a guild to start raiding - ever..

Also, I should probably explain the title because I know some idiot is gonna come in and not get it. A decline in playerbase could be effectively STOPPED by having new players come in at the same, or greater rate. Thats not going to happen in wow, I feel, largely in part of this.

Other than the part about people being insulted when asking for help I have not seen any of the other stuff. I never had to be 10/12 when I joined my guild, actually learned these fights WITH my guild...

Originally posted by sirphobos

I'm going to say WoW is on a steady decline because it's going to turn 8 years old this year.

The sad part, is that if Blizzard actually put effort into releasing content quicker, it could be on an incline. They've said all of Cata's expac that they wanted to release smaller content packs, but much quicker than they have in the past. Instead, they've released smaller content packs (one of which didn't even have a raid tier), at the same slow rate as usual. This is why the population is dwindling, there is nothing new and fresh.

They usually at least give us a teaser, some sort of Beta or release date. We don't even know when MoP beta is going to start. The big "announcement" ended up being just another way to try to boost their sub numbers, rather than keep players playing.

#5 was onto something, but then fell short. WOW IS OLD!! How the hell long do you think a game can/should hold attention?

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by SuprGamerX

6- WoW population will decline but fresh blood will take over the losses for years to come.

They lost 2 million players in 2 years, what makes you think that new players will start to fill it up again?

Fresh blood will slow the decline but not enough, if they want to keep current numbers or start gaining again they need to do something. Not sue what would help though.

I'm actually in agreement with you on this one Loke. Yeah I know, near impossability right there all by itself. 

For those that don't fully understand the impact of the statement Loke said there. They lost 2 million players in 2 years. Thats about 3.9 people every minute of every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year hitting the 'I will NOT be back button' for WoW. That is a LOT of bleeding. 

Originally posted by Kaocan

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by SuprGamerX

6- WoW population will decline but fresh blood will take over the losses for years to come.

They lost 2 million players in 2 years, what makes you think that new players will start to fill it up again?

Fresh blood will slow the decline but not enough, if they want to keep current numbers or start gaining again they need to do something. Not sue what would help though.

I'm actually in agreement with you on this one Loke. Yeah I know, near impossability right there all by itself. 

 

For those that don't fully understand the impact of the statement Loke said there. They lost 2 million players in 2 years. Thats about 3.9 people every minute of every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year hitting the 'I will NOT be back button' for WoW. That is a LOT of bleeding. 

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by Kaocan

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by SuprGamerX

6- WoW population will decline but fresh blood will take over the losses for years to come.

They lost 2 million players in 2 years, what makes you think that new players will start to fill it up again?

Fresh blood will slow the decline but not enough, if they want to keep current numbers or start gaining again they need to do something. Not sue what would help though.

I'm actually in agreement with you on this one Loke. Yeah I know, near impossability right there all by itself. 

 

For those that don't fully understand the impact of the statement Loke said there. They lost 2 million players in 2 years. Thats about 3.9 people every minute of every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year hitting the 'I will NOT be back button' for WoW. That is a LOT of bleeding. 

 

Still at that rate of decline it would be viable for a decade. Any game that old will decline no matter what the Devs add in, kids don't want to play e game their dad plays, more and more new games come out, more competition it's natural for it to decline to a hardcore few, in WoWs case the few is probably 1m rather than the 50k that other games would decline to.

Yup, agree again. No matter the % rate of decline, WoW will have it's die hards that stay with it for another 5 years or so, Just like all other great games of the past. I mentioned that a bit ago, its not dying, its just entering its Golden Age.