While the LFG dungeon finder is a nice convenience feature, it completely ruined the already dying community.

They should have added in Guild leveling and perks/rewards years ago and never added in the LFG dungeon finder. Many people (even me) just use the Guild system as a means to get access to guild perks like +xp% so you can grind dungeons faster to level new toons.

Actually having more fun now questing and only doing a single dungeon every couple of levels.

They should have focused more on releasing a steady stream of new quests/daily quest hubs and kept heroics at BC difficulty, raiding at Vanilla 20/40 levels.

Should have given more, steady content to the solo player in terms of quests/dailies/crafting and left the heroics/raids to the committed.

Arena was a mistake, battlegrounds were a mistake. Should have forced population balances.

Honestly, I could go on and on.

The "iconic" class ability at level 10 and new trees I actually like a lot, more races / classes = always better then less, phasing tech is awesome and re-do of Azeroth well worth the effort.

Honestly, I think both WOTLK and CATA were "let's do WHATEVER we can to bring in more subscribers, throw an occasional bone to the vets and hope they don't bitch TOO loud and scare off our new customers"

YES. And more they will lose after SWTOR & GW2 will come out............

Ah....and now with Hellgate London & Age of CONAN free to play..........................

They better hurry with that Titan.............. A game doesn´t last forever...............

Just the gear grind.  Level, level, level gear grind gear grind gear grind - expansion - Level level level gear grind gear grind - expansion- level level gear grind gear.... gah

I used to complain about the long, painful grind to level in the EQ's and mastering talents in SWG because it seemingly took FOREVER... but in the meantime, you had a house to decorate, a swoop bike to collect mats for, harvesters to drop, socializing to do, guild houses to build, crafting to grind out and master, drinks and dancing at the local cantina.... it was one big, entertaining ball of choices.  You could change your mind depending on the night, your mood, your friends activities or whatever.

Now... level level level gear grind gear grind gear grind... pretty linear and pretty unimaginative.  Rift copied the WoW cookie cutout and already I'm bored and gear grinding and the game came out in February.  There was a time that I didn't believe anyone over the age of 20 could actually GET bored in an MMO.  Those days have passed.  What used to be an immersive playground of creativity is now a linear, predictable disappointment.  It's just OLD, give us something new.

I stopped playing WoW at the end of February and it's the longest I've been away from the game since I beta tested it.  I'm sure I'll return to Azeroth eventually to check in and see what has changed but that won't be for a while.  It's a marriage that hasn't gone bad... just mundane.

Originally posted by Zzad

YES. And more they will lose after SWTOR & GW2 will come out............

Ah....and now with Hellgate London & Age of CONAN free to play..........................

They better hurry with that Titan.............. A game doesn´t last forever...............

You're post is so ominous, Blizzard is now officially scared. Yes games don't last forever. They will lose subscribers, it's inevitable. They lost me several months back, got bored. IMO though most WoW players won't even know the games you listed exist, the people that leave will go back to console games or wherever they came from.

World of 45 minute "looking for tank/healer" queues is having problems?  Funny, I thought that 45 minute queues were a sure winner back in December.  In fact, I cancelled that month just to break away from the constant influx of people that were sure to be having fun.  Damn... just when I was going to get "looking for tank/healer" tattooed on my forehead, too...

Post Cat I just didn’t find healing fun and normally I love healing - that and the fact that even the mechanics for the revamped 1-60 were all rehashed content (ride a rocket/giant/whatever and throw x or y at something in each zone etc.) made for a very dull levelling experience.

That and the rudeness you got in 85 dungeon groups, just wasn’t fun any more and what is the point of playing something that isn’t fun?

Enjoying healing in Rift again - not sure ill play it more than a year but well 1 year entertainment is good IMHO

 Losing.... lost... done..   Wow is garbage and I do put a large part of my leaving to the community. Gotta hold the shitty developers accountible too for cross server dungeon finder. I'd rather wait for tank/healers that I can hold acountible for being piss poor players than have the strangers that pop into a dungeon, ruin your gaming experience, and go on abou their day.  Good job ruining an already stagnant game.

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Originally posted by Teala

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Originally posted by Gregross111
IMO wow ruined the Genre , easy buttoned everything , released xpacks way to fast making the content before the newest xpack pointless.   Hundreds of raid zones just sit and will never be used again.. Whole cities abandoned for the newest trend.  I left wow years ago and im glad i did.

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I agree...go read my blog about Cataclysm.   I mention that Blizzard screwd up in so many ways with Cataclysm it makes you wonder what were they thinking.   They had all these great cities in the game and in one fell swoop with Cataclysm they become moot.   Nobody even uses them any more.  
Just read here, its in two parts. 
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Teala/012011/21330_My-Thoughts-on-Cataclysm-Part-1
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Teala/012011/21342_My-Thoughts-on-Cataclysm-Part-2
Want to know just how crappy Cataclysm is.
This is still broken, along with many others.   Blizzard does not even take the time to fix something as simple as this.

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That has been fixed since you last posted about it on the official WoW forums in January. I even checked to see if the infamous floating twilight jasmine was still there in game myself (yay for the 7 free days they gave me).

They do fix issues, just they are very slow at it though. There are more bigger issues than floating herbs.

The problem is there is really nothing to do at End Game. Unless you're a hard core raider, the guild rep grind was really discouraging and disheartening for many small guilds.

The new Azeroth content and new races encouraged people to make alts. Yet once they reach Outland or more importantly Northrend (aka icy bland land), they can't stand the sight of the uninspiring old content and quit. Like myself.

Of course there are going to be various other reasons people will quit for, such as raid dungeon nerfs, the new premium services, etc. Some are player's preference and some is Blizzard digging WoW's grave.

I stopped playing WoW at the end of February and it's the longest I've been away from the game since I beta tested it.  I'm sure I'll return to Azeroth eventually to check in and see what has changed but that won't be for a while.  It's a marriage that hasn't gone bad... just mundane.

I think you've got the seven year itch :)  I've never played an MMO that long so it's new to me too, but I kno whow it feels in a marriage lol.   But, I do agree with everything you've said.  IMO, who cares if the community is falling apart.  By most games standards, Blizzard should be down to four servers aith about 5k subbers after this long.

 

WoW built its self up largely from word of mouth and momentum of subs, that same force will eventually see them lose those people too.  The game felt to me when I last played like some one had discovered "The theory of fun" plugged a bunch of numbers into Excel and then said "This is the formula for fun so this must be fun".

Consant re-imagining of classes, lackluster content, boring level progression dated mechanics and too many tools that remove consiquence of action have killed the community of this game.  However the subscriber base will stay strong for a while to come yet.

I will admit WOW is a good game, even though i refuse to play it now. Did you know WOW makes more money per year than the entire nation of samoa?

Actually the hunter focus change did in the Misses and I we were both hunters from the beggining. Blizzard took a class we had played for 5 years and changed it's entire operation into somthing we disliked and told us "tough get use to it"  no chance on giving input and if it should be changed or not. many people with hunters mains left after that. IT WAS A DIFFERENT CLASS AFTER THAT. the rude surly behavior of the change was it. we've been in EQ2 for over a year now and we won't be going back our class is gone forever replaced by ranged rodent(...err I mean rogue)

Here is the story about prison labor in China farming for gold:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/228716/chinese_prisoners_allegedly_forced_to_play_world_of_warcraft.html

China tried to put laws in place to stop this from happenening, but apparaently it still goes on.

I don't know about you, but it makes me sick knowing that a guy you're playing with could be beaten to death any day.

Guild Wars 2 will be another HUGE hit for WoW even tho it's F2P.

Reason is that a lo of people will choose quality AAA title that is F2P and Next Gen over 15$/month game that's growing old and boring. Why pay for something that offers nothing new and when you spend most of your gaming time in another mmo?

I know I wont ever come back to WoW with GW2 on horizon. Limited time I have I'll spend on GW2, not WoW, and I won't need to sub for it meaning plenty of my friends will also play.

WoW IS going downhill. They made game too casual too boring, it lost it's touch. I wish UO was F2P...

WoW became something like Dragon Age 2 - game targeted at wide audience with no specifics meaning it targets everyone but noone in particular so the game has lots of stuff but nothing is superb anymore.

I agree with many others that greed is the main reason they're losing customers every day. They're always thinking of new ways to get money from players, maybe to compensate for lost subscriptions. And after all these years, WoW is one of the few games that doesn't offer any type of veteran rewards. Maybe they think they don't need to grant anything to players considering their revenue but it would come a long way to show some appreciation of their player base like providing free transfers or free faction/race changes.Last anniversary they didn't even care to give players a new pet companion in the mailbox, only the silly and totally worthless achievement.

But I also think another big reason people are leaving is the game world is totally dead. Sure the game world is huge now, but there is absolutely nothing to do after you hit the level cap. And for those leveling up, it fells like they are playing a solo game most of the time until they reach level cap. A few people will do mining/herbalism runs or maybe level up archaeology or do dailies for the 100000th time, but that is solo stuff too.

So where's everybody then ? Where are the thousands or millions of 85s ?

They are all sitting in the major cities waiting on their queues to do heroics/bgs/arenas for the 1000000th time. Some will be sitting waiting for their guilds to put the next raid together.Now it might be true that at level cap that's what you do if you want to get gear for your toons, but sooner or later people will start asking themselves: Why am I wasting my time like this ? Is this game worth $15 a month ? I finally asked myself these 2 questions and decided I will let my subscription run out and will hit the cancel button on 0608.

Now someone earlier was asking why other games are not growing and/or absorbing the players leaving wow. With so many mmos out there, I doubt everybody would go to a particular game so it might be early to tell how much other games are growing, but Rift seems to be doing ok and since it is somewhat similar to WoW I suspect quite a few went there already. It is likely many others will think every other game out will be just like WoW  and will just quit or take a break from gaming waiting for new games to be released like TOR or GW2. In my case, I am playing AoC at the moment and having a good time.

Anyway, that is my opinion.

After reading this, i have to agree. The only problem right now is that Blizard and warcraft really do not and have not had a real contending game come out yet. They have virtually all tried to copy warcraft with a couple of added features thrown in which has not really worked.

Untill a game is released that does have alot of differances i sadly think that warcraft will not be toppled, and i also do not see anything comming close to doing this in the next couple of years either. WoW may lose players in that time, but alot will not be moving to another online game when they leave.

Now as for slow at realeasing content, maybe expansions yes, as it is one every 2 yrs, HOWEVER in that time they also release quite alot of free downloadable content (something alot of other companies either throw out as an expansion or charge for it to be downloaded) somthign that has helped kill a number of games off (soe). I do prefer expansions to come out 1.5-2yrs apart and have free content delivered in between (else it wont be long seeing characters over and about lvl 150).

Alot of playres (current and old) do think that WoW is also too cartoony in graphics, but maybe its easier to keep it at a nice eye candy look. Take Vanguard, EQ2, DAoc, they all look extreamly dated to the eye now, yet Warcraft that release (before vanguard) not long after EQ2 and a couple yrs after Daoc, still looks nice to ones eye. Maybe its easier to keep this updated, or maybe they update this side of things all the time.

WoW will be its own killer

Originally posted by Reckinyards

I will admit WOW is a good game, even though i refuse to play it now. Did you know WOW makes more money per year than the entire nation of samoa?

It also makes more money then the USA ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget

Originally posted by Meugamer

I guess Warcraft players are really pissed these days to no longer have access to the content they paid for.

Grtz to Bobby Kotick for no longer funding this cesspool of spoiled, frustrated and vulgar community that calls itself WoW players.

Hint for those unaware:  even a banner is premium content now.

And this is only the beginning.

 

 

 Thought I would fix that for you.

Originally posted by Galon

The only reason WoW has maintained the subscription numbers to date is they have no competition, yet.  I am sure Rift has taken a few but if SWTOR or Tera Online live up to half there hype than that is when the mass exodus will begin.

 I am surpised to hear this. It seem like since I have been coming to this site, according to many of the people who post here,  every six months a new WoW Killer gets released. This game is going to kill WoW, that game is going to Kill WoW. I see it on a pretty regular basis. That sounds like competition to me. It isn't WoW's fault they fail to live up to the hype.

Time is going to Kill WoW, You can't play the same game and not get bored eventually. That is why most people who play WoW have taken breaks now and then. It's why I enjoy checking out the new MMO's. It is why in the long run WoW will slowly dwindle and the player base will move on to new upcoming games...Like Titan.