(10-26-2011, 04:39 PM)Bolty Wrote: There are too many factors at play to pick any one particular reason for a decline in player base. I personally believe it was the drastic difficulty increase that was the single largest reason. Since WoW's release, the game's gotten consistently easier to play in terms of grind investment requirements, time investment requirements, skill level requirements, and so on, and the subscriber base grew accordingly as the game became more accessible. Cataclysm's release was the first moment where this trend reversed, and the subscriber base reflects that.
I *completely* agree here. In Wrath, the masses could jump on for an hour, do a heroic or two *with a probable 90% expectation of finishing the instance, despite bad players*, and then could log off for the night. Of course, Blizzard listened to the 'too easy' crowd, and, while many of us personally enjoy doing hard instances with our guilds, the current pugging of heroics in Cata is a nightmare unless you're in gear sufficient to 'carry the derp' as I call it. My personal experience in pugs is that I'm lucky to complete more than 60% w/o having either too much stupid, or just people who can't/won't do what's needed. MoP is returning to the WotLK level of heroics, while giving guilds/groups of friends the Challenge dungeons that are supposed to offer basically heroics that can't be overgeared.
Now, there's some of you in this thread whose whole WoW experience is built around raiding, and you look at everything through that lens. Some of you can look outside that, but, some of you can't, and I'll remind you that there's a LOT more to WoW than just raiding, to the masses that really pay the bills. These are the people that the announced changes are for. These are the people who will enjoy PokeWoW and Pandas. You're not the target anymore. Conc pretty much hit the nail on the head. Why should Blizzard continue to cater to people that most of the time bash them for every decision they make, anyway, (and some of you are here in this thread) and aren't a huge portion of the playerbase, and also, imo, are the type of competitive people who will run to the newest thing anyway, such as SWTOR, which a couple of you that I'm thinking of the most, have already mentioned.
And yeah, some of you need to take off your rose-colored glasses. Vanilla was only awesome because we didn't know any better. Boss mechanics? Pfft. Tank/spank/dispel, 15 people carrying 25. I was there, too, you know. Vanilla was tedious as hell, though we didn't know any better at the time. Some of you call having to farm resist sets, and tons and tons of herbs for flasks every week 'difficulty'. Attunements, too. Not 'difficulty'. Tedium.
I also think the main 'B team screwup' was listening to the 'too easy' people when they tuned the early Cata stuff. They went the wrong direction, and that's why they're bleeding some subs. Sure, I enjoy the difficulty myself, with people I can trust, but, in a business sense, it simply didn't work. Same thing with Firelands. They overtuned it for the masses, and had to nerf it when too many brick-walled. (Why they nerfed heroic modes, I'm not sure. They can let the "I want it harder" people wipe for a couple more months. They love that.) Of course, some of the hardcores had a fit on Blizzard again for that, convincing Blizzard even more it really isn't worth it to try to cater to them at all. MoP is a step back in the direction of WotLK, where WoW was most successful. Of course, I don't expect agreement on this from all of you. Rose-colored glasses are hard to see well through, after all.
Also, as Bolty pointed out, the game is OLD. I've personally been playing since 1/28/2005, and I know some of you were in beta, so, yeah, it's a long time. When something trumps this, people will leave, and some people will just quit because 7 years is a long time, as Conc said that he may or may not buy MoP because it's just been forever, not because he thinks it's bad. Of course, what trumps this will be different things for different people. Some of you are all excited about Star Wars. Personally, meh, but, more power to you if that's your thing. Personally, I await D3, but, the geniuses that Blizzard are, they offered it to me for free if I kept playing WoW, and took a decision out of my hands for me. I don't have to pick one. I can have both. Easy for me, but, YMMV.
--Mav