As usual, many people are wearing their WoW Doomsday sandwhich boards as a result of Blizzards recent expansion announcement.

Let's assume for a minute that they some of the naysayers are right, that WoW is clearly now catering to a younger audience with the Panda's and Pokemon and the dumbed down talent system (This is NOT the place to argue this, so go elsewhere please).

Could this be a good thing for the genre?  If they push out the more serious and mature players, where will they go?  Will the infusion of new blood into existing MMO's breath new life into them?  Does it increase the potential pool of customers for future MMO's?

I'm not convinced that disgruntled WoW players would move on to a different MMO.  With all the F2P's, you'd think they'd have done that, by now.

Then again, I'm not convinced there will be much more "disgruntlement" for this pack compared to the others.  I'll be honest and say that I have no idea what makes a WoW addict tick.  I've played and enjoyed WoW in the past, but the crack factor has never lasted more than 2-3 months for me.

Time will tell, I guess.

I think very little will change.

For the most wow players it was their first mmo. That bound will never break. Even if they will take breaks they will come back from time to time. So this game can survive for many years now, doesnt matter if there are kung fu pandas or pokemon. Well maybe next year they anounce a more mature expencion and older people come back again to check it out.

So for me is good, when the panda comes I will check wow out again.. propably for 2-3 mounth causual gaming like usually. 

In future I see mmo adicted people jump between the AAA MMOs with and wow will be always an option.

"upcoming"?

If you look back, it has already started. :)

What's the current number who left WoW by now? More than 1million subs? 2million? 3Million?

Better to have f.e. 3-4 big games + lot of others than 1 big mamoth + rest of small fish

The wow website is a big shoping center (UK) i don't think i have an inch where my mouse is not above an Ad.

money  is all they care about.

Originally posted by czekoskwigel

As usual, many people are wearing their WoW Doomsday sandwhich boards as a result of Blizzards recent expansion announcement.

Let's assume for a minute that they some of the naysayers are right, that WoW is clearly now catering to a younger audience with the Panda's and Pokemon and the dumbed down talent system (This is NOT the place to argue this, so go elsewhere please).

Could this be a good thing for the genre?  If they push out the more serious and mature players, where will they go?  Will the infusion of new blood into existing MMO's breath new life into them?  Does it increase the potential pool of customers for future MMO's?

So far I've read a bit of the criticism and honestly most of it seems to come from in many instances people who don't play WOW anymore and had seen the people who are still active in the game being a bit more understanding.

I do think that this though is the million dollar question, will mmo players who's first mmorpg was WOW actually stay in the genre or migrate back to the style of games they played before mmo's more often?

Originally posted by czekoskwigel

As usual, many people are wearing their WoW Doomsday sandwhich boards as a result of Blizzards recent expansion announcement.

Let's assume for a minute that they some of the naysayers are right, that WoW is clearly now catering to a younger audience with the Panda's and Pokemon and the dumbed down talent system (This is NOT the place to argue this, so go elsewhere please).

Could this be a good thing for the genre?  If they push out the more serious and mature players, where will they go?  Will the infusion of new blood into existing MMO's breath new life into them?  Does it increase the potential pool of customers for future MMO's?

Neither really. It's same subject as if WoW destroyed genre by getting those 10-12kk subs while the only thing that it changed was number of ppl playing MMOs at all (before 2k4 it was like 2kk total, now it is 10kk playing WoW and 2-3kk playing other games). As for content if not WoW then it would be EQ but with the same end.

And with new expansion it will be same. Content in games (no matter if MMO or not) usually reflects trends amongst customers and WoW is no exception here.

Originally posted by czekoskwigel

As usual, many people are wearing their WoW Doomsday sandwhich boards as a result of Blizzards recent expansion announcement.

 

As usual ? Quite opposite, I realy dont remmember previous expansions spliting WoW playerbase in opinions on them like kung-fu pandas (sry couldnt resist :)  )

WoW is just old game now and player exodus is long overdue. It will happen, but imo new games like SWTOR and gw2 will have bigger impact than this april fools joke.

Originally posted by uohaloran

I think very little will change.

Except that, everyday, you will need to ask yourself what shaped your life to spend your leisure time with this guy.

Originally posted by Alalala

Originally posted by uohaloran

I think very little will change.

 

Except that, everyday, you will need to ask yourself what shaped your life to spend your leisure time with this guy.

 

 

 

Originally posted by czekoskwigel

As usual, many people are wearing their WoW Doomsday sandwhich boards as a result of Blizzards recent expansion announcement.

Let's assume for a minute that they some of the naysayers are right, that WoW is clearly now catering to a younger audience with the Panda's and Pokemon and the dumbed down talent system (This is NOT the place to argue this, so go elsewhere please).

Could this be a good thing for the genre?  If they push out the more serious and mature players, where will they go?  Will the infusion of new blood into existing MMO's breath new life into them?  Does it increase the potential pool of customers for future MMO's?

New life nah ; The general IQ of this exodus will be so lo it will only make/ruin other games. This post is so hypothetical it is pretty much baseless and of little value. I hope you realise this.

Dunno if there will be an Exodus.    I've lost faith in the judgement of WoW players.    

The only defense I've heard from them for years now is that they've got too much time invested to leave.     I have an extensive history with WoW and Blizzard in general on a personal and professional capacity, so, I've had my fill of the game itself.   I was burnt out on WoW for more years than half the new population in it has even been playing.  

Time invested is a stupid reason to keep paying a monthly fee for a game that isn't at all resemblant of the game we originally opted to buy and play.   This is why I don't think one expansion will kill wow or cause an exodus or whatever.    The current WoW community has no idea why they even play wow, (aside from the brand new players who have no history with it)   I've heard way too many times the same rhetoric.  "ehh I'll just go back to WoW, I already have 10 capped characters"   "ehhh I don't wanna start over from scratch and be a noob again."    "ehh, my guild isn't going to leave so I'm staying"    "ehh they just changed X about classes Y,Z, and Q, so, I need to check that out.  Might feel like a whole new game" <-- (yeah right.)  "ehhh they just added another raid encounter, and Tier 125 gear is coming out next month.  Can't leave now."  ...   all of this sounds unhealthy and not worth questioning anymore.     The long-term player base of WoW doesn't seem to have any reason to stay in WoW that is the result of something unique to WoW at all.  Just addicts who think there's something wrong with experiencing something different or new at the expense of having to learn and explore again.    Oh no!  Level 1!!!  I'm not epic anymore!   ....  well, why doesn't it seem to matter that EVERYONE in WoW is Epic?    Epic means absolutely JACK SHIT now.

Everyone I know and have spoken to, heard from, read about that has a blast in wow right now is either a new player (good for them) or someone with an unhealthy addiction to trying to be the TOP DPS in some raid guild.      If the functionality of third party addons like dmg meters and threat meters and gear DBs and the like were removed from WoW, we'd see the mass-exodus you speak of.

Majority of these naysayers are, like someone previously said, are butthurt ex WoW players jumping to stupid conclusions. I'm sure 80% of them will pick the game up lol.

Originally posted by uohaloran

I think very little will change.

This.  The vast majority of WoW players aren't really "MMO players".  They couldn't even tell you what an MMO was.  They just play WoW.

Originally posted by MMOtoGO

Originally posted by uohaloran

I think very little will change.

This.  The vast majority of WoW players aren't really "MMO players".  They couldn't even tell you what an MMO was.  They just play WoW.

Yes.       Now, let's see how many A__holes only decide to comment about your usage of the words "vast majority".

i.e.  "What majority?  Where's the numbers?  Got links?  Where did you get this info?  How do you know?" ....   sickens me that i'm supposed to act like I'm too stupid to see the lack of consideration and stubborn baseless skepticism in remarks like that.

People know damn well what color the kool-aid is.  They just want to derail a good point that doesn't coincide with their own. 

Originally posted by kostoslav

Originally posted by Alalala

Originally posted by uohaloran

I think very little will change.

 

Except that, everyday, you will need to ask yourself what shaped your life to spend your leisure time with this guy.

 

 

 

 

I m 26 years old and I have already seen 4 wars. So in my case, I would pick panda over "mature blood & gore" any day.

First and most important, thank you for serving our country.  Sincerely.

Now, would you prefer the panda race over another well-established race in WoW?  Say, the Ethereal race

http://www.wowwiki.com/Ethereal

However big the exodus will be you can count me in .

By the way, the only sign of a WoW Doomsday is when they start merging servers because that's big indication of a large player base loss.

But Blizzard is smarter than that. You see, they will not merge servers since it will have a negative effect. Instead of merging servers, they added a "cross server" feature like the Dungeon/Raid Finders which acts as though the servers were merged.

But on thing for sure, the servers (realms) are around LOW or MEDIUM pop most of the time (link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/status)