IGN: WoW drops to 5.6 mil subscriptions.What happens to the GENRE when the end comes?

[Gryz]

But when I log into an alternate fantasy world I want to experience something that hasn't been all figured out to the point where you know what the most advantageous style of play is. I just want to explore and see what the hell happens.

I agree with you here.

The correct way to solve the problem is to make some content for solo-play, and some content for group-play.

I enjoyed vanilla and TBC, because I would log on any time of the day, and do something solo. Then around 20:00 till 24:00 when some friends or guildies were on, we'd do dungeons. Just one dungeon per night. In the weekends maybe 2 dungeons. And after 24:00, when others went to sleep, I'd do more solo play.

The fun thing about group-play is that you are entering areas in the world that are too dangerous for you to explore on your own. When I did dungeons in vanilla and TBC, I really felt we were "entering in the base of the enemy". By the time I did WLK dungeons, it was just a chore to go get your valor points. All sense of danger, all sense of adventure, sense of achievement, all of that was gone.

One of the biggest problems with WoW is that Activision's first priority is short-term profit. That means minimizing development cost. And the best way to minimize development cost is to try and make content that can be played by as large a part of the customer-base as possible. Indeed, Naxx40 in vanilla was a waste of resources. However, Blizzard went way way way too far here. They are targeting only to the lowest common denominator these days. They want everybody to follow the same path of progress. Yes, pets or even pvp are optional. But still, I'm sure everyone who plays the game agrees, the "correct" or "optimal" path to play has been narrowed down more and more every year. Except mythic raiding. And that's because they have a few "champions" for mythic raiding. They don't seem to have any champions for solo-players, explorers, mid-level skill group-players, etc.

I'd say WoW needs easy solo-content in the outdoor world. And it needs easy 5-man dungeons with LFG, that can be finished in 15-20 minutes. But it *also* needs hard elite mobs in the outdoor world, that require a group. And it needs hard 5-man dungeons that take 2-4 hours to finish. It needs action-packed theme-parked areas with lots quests and rewards. But it also need huge areas that are far away from the cities. That take 15 minutes to reach, where you have to look hard to find quests, where the mobs are really tough, even for people in max-ilevel gear.

Unfortunately, Activision wants to invest only in style of play. It's really a shame. They have the development budget to make a great game for everybody. By not doing that, they leave half a billion dollars worth of subscriptions on the table. They're dumb.

 

[Anubis]

No they are not.
If Blizzard wants to do yearly expansions, they have 3 months until the next one needs to be out. They won't make that.

The game was released on November 23, 2004, and in February 2005 in Europe.
The Burning Crusade, was released on January 16, 2007.
Wrath of the Lich King, was released on November 13, 2008.
Cataclysm, was released on December 7, 2010.
Mists of Pandaria, was released on September 25, 2012.
Warlords of Draenor, was released on November 13, 2014.

That's 23, 22, 25, 21 and 26 months between expansions.

When will Legion be released ? My guess is June 2016. Right before the movie. Or else July 2016, right after the movie. November 2014 - June 2016 is a gap of 19 months.

So we went from an expansion cycle of 21-26 months to an interval of 19-20 months.

Blizzard is pushing Legion, because they want it released at the same time as the movie. That's a one time deal. If there will be another expansion (which there might never be), the interval could go back to 21-26 months easily.

So no, nothing changes.

they are targeting Q1/2 of 2016 for Legion actually, beta will start this fall. 7.0 patch will be before the first of the year

 

[bystander36]

This is sort of why I don't play MMOs anymore. If you're prepared to decide what the "clearly more advantageous" style of play is then you're prepared to decide what my goals should be in playing the game. That tells me you have a clear notion of what it means to "get ahead" in the game, and that you want the game structured to make it so most people gain advantage that way. That's just a complete turn off to me. Don't get me wrong, I love grouping up and doing neat things, and have done an asston of that. But when I log into an alternate fantasy world I want to experience something that hasn't been all figured out to the point where you know what the most advantageous style of play is. I just want to explore and see what the hell happens. Instead of ever more interesting worlds we got ever more complicated theme parks, and _that_ is the way humans really evolved: we want to be led by the hand.

I agree with the idea of not having everything figured out. I hate how all the raid tactics are always known and posted online, even before anyone completes it. I'm just saying that an MMO should be designed so that people group and the only way to make people group is make it advantageous to do so. That just means that either a solo player can't tackle certain things, and that they gain experience faster in a group. The rest doesn't matter much and can have all the unknowns as they want.

Heck, I don't dislike the idea of having solo MMO's too, they just will likely have a much higher turn over rate.

 

[Aikouka]

When will Legion be released ? My guess is June 2016. Right before the movie. Or else July 2016, right after the movie. November 2014 - June 2016 is a gap of 19 months.

That would be nearly a year of the same end-game 6.2 content. People seemed rather tired of that with MoP and SoO.

 

[Sonikku]

I agree with you here.

The correct way to solve the problem is to make some content for solo-play, and some content for group-play.

I enjoyed vanilla and TBC, because I would log on any time of the day, and do something solo. Then around 20:00 till 24:00 when some friends or guildies were on, we'd do dungeons. Just one dungeon per night. In the weekends maybe 2 dungeons. And after 24:00, when others went to sleep, I'd do more solo play.

The fun thing about group-play is that you are entering areas in the world that are too dangerous for you to explore on your own. When I did dungeons in vanilla and TBC, I really felt we were "entering in the base of the enemy". By the time I did WLK dungeons, it was just a chore to go get your valor points. All sense of danger, all sense of adventure, sense of achievement, all of that was gone.

Did you feel a sense of danger in Cata Heroics? Or did you just cartwheel through them?

 

[Anteaus]

In the beginning the game was a mile wide and 3 inches deep and after numerous expansion it is now 5 miles wide and 1 inch deep. Part of the problem is something Blizzard can't easily fix, is that there is actually too much content. The player base is spread out over a large number of zones that are ultimately meaningless.

WoW was at its best when everyone was crammed into Ironforge and enchanting Fiery Weapon on their new blue 1HD Assassination's Blade that marked the beginning of the journey to their 0.5 gear. PVP was ferocious as people fought the PVP ladder for the exclusive gear that only came with sufficient rank. Whoever achieved Grand Marshall was considered a god due the ridiculous amount of time it took to attain and protect it. Getting into a 40-man Molten Core group meant finding the proper guild, earning respect, and then hoping you had enough DKP for the drop you wanted.

I'm certainly not advocating that we throw the bath water out and go back to vanilla, but I am advocating for some things that many here have spoken about. Here is my list:

1. We need goals...things to work toward..things that mean something to those that achieve them.

A. First, we need elite raids with exclusive gear for guilds who truly wish to earn it. They need to be elite enough that it takes the highest raid gear up to that point just to have a chance. As a reward for their efforts, players who complete this or a series of similar raids should not only have the chance to earn absolutely powerful and rare gear that would put them in the highest percentile, there should be an exclusive quest line at the top that will unlock an alternate "heroic" version of each class with some unique abilities that lasts for the extent of the expansion.

B. World bosses need to be more numerous as well as more random.

C. World PvP needs to be unshackled on those servers. Raiding other factions should imbue bonuses to the invader. It's too arbitrary. Dishonorable kills should be used for level mismatch. I don't believe Blizzard should necessarily police PvP, but self preservation could be a type of control. Kill a player sufficiently under leveled and you should get DK which would affect how guards treat you and how much venders cost. Get high enough DK and you'd need to wait for it to go down before going into the cities. As lore has showing, neither the Alliance nor Horde are inherently evil, therefore there is a presumption of morality outside of battle. A level 70 intentionally murdering a level 30 would be balked on either side due to the dirty nature of the act. After all...they are called "Honor Kills", right???

2. I don't understand why Blizzard has declared war on crafting and nulled it out. I think they need to shatter each class into its constituent parts and then allow players to get those abilities from gear that can be customized. Every class should have base abilities, but all advanced abilities should show up as gear components. A cheesy way to describe it would be the materia system from FF7, except it would come from player created gear in which you choose the individual components with numerous unique recipes. Make it valuable for a Warrior to be a blacksmith again dam**t!

3. Hub cities are important, but there should be but one auction house and one back per side. Getting everyone in one place is important for numerous reasons, the largest one being that if players can't show of their hard earned gains, it dilutes the experience. I realize that this is an egotistical take on it, but serious who the F would do a 40-man raids if there was nothing to show off after?

4. I was a big lover of Cata, but in hindsight it was a mistake for Blizzard to bulldoze some of those zones. I truly miss Darkshore and I think terraforming Azeroth was the "cataclysmic" event (yeah yeah i know) that acts as a marker for the big decline. WOTLK was the last expansion of which vanilla Azeroth still existed if not in mechanics but at least in space. Maybe they can use Legion as a vehicle for reversing the great cataclysm. Maybe we can all end up in an "alternate" Azeroth?

Anyways, I'm jibber jabbering about jibber jabber and everyone has an opinion. For me the bottom line is that we have a very large amount of content but very little cohesion. IMO they need to literally remove Outland and Northren from the game and reset the XP curves to compensate. I loved those zones, but as of now all they are are XP dumps and acts to spread everyone out. Blizzard needs to draw the world in tighter and force us into tighter quarters, therefore creating more interaction and by extension, returning intimacy back to the game. I'm sure much of this isn't feasible, nor will it be considered the right thing to do by many. Still, its part of what I think needs to be done.

 

[Gryz]

Did you feel a sense of danger in Cata Heroics? Or did you just cartwheel through them?

Cata is the expansion I played the least. I didn't play at release. (I know Cata heroics were hard at first. I'm sure I would have managed). I played for one month in October 2011, and a month in January 2012. I cart-wheeled through the release dungeons (they were easy by then). But Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman were quite fun, and not easy for pugs. It might have helped that I really liked Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman when they were raids.

I played WoD for 5 weeks in Oct/Nov 2014. I leveled in 5 days (started Thursday, dinged Monday night). I tried to go slow, but still did it in 5 days. On Wednesday I did my first heroics (as a rogue). That was an enjoyable experience. The freshness of the new dungeons. The fact we were undergeared. And it was the first time since early WLK that guildies were actually doing guild-only runs. Two weeks later, everbody was over-geared. Everybody was using LFG again. And the atmosphere in LFG was approaching the same toxic levels as befire. Two weeks of fun heroics, that was what I got out of WoD dungeons.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I have a feeling that something will come along when VR matures a little bit and people will gladly stick their head in a helmet and play for hours. Star Citizen may just become the next WoW.

That would be an interesting result...i.e. everyone goes from playing WoW classes to mining asteroids!