Is WoW dying?

When WoD launched, WOW gained like 2.7 million players. A few months later, WOW lost 3.0 million players. I think the theme was a great choice, but the features they added and the changes they made were a negative.

WOW is never dying. It currently has about 8.0 million subscribers... there are games alive that have less than .2 million subscribers.. in other words, WOW is 40 times bigger than games that still have a development team. In fact, most of those games have more development, patches and update than WOW.

It has always been my opinion that WOW is too big, which allowed them to hire too many middle-managers.. guys who actually add no content to the game, but who make things slower for the actual developers who do the work. In most games, a piece of artwork is created and probably only has 1 person who checks it. WOW probably has layers and layers of ´approval´ before stuff gets added to the game. They recently redid character model which took a HUGE amount of time for that very reason.

 

I think the end times for WoW has been heralded for quite some time, but I don't think it's happening anytime soon. I haven't played the new expac to attest to how good or bad it is, or how or why it contributed to negative opinions, but overwhelmingly when I ask people about WoD or read their opinions it's negative for one reason or another. Personally, I was content at level 90 without garrisons etc but I think there will always be people who want to be the best, have the best gear, most titles, and be equipped to the teeth. WoW has to accommodate those players, but at the same time they have made other gameplay elements so easy that it's alienated a lot of other players as well.

 

Far from it. Warlords of Draenor brought the biggest spike in players ever seen in the history of WoW. Trouble is, most of them left after a short while.
They hype building was masterfully done. So were the quests, the raids, the music everything. These created that spike and it speaks volumes about the game's potential to attract players.
Sadly, the drop in players right after speaks volumes about the lack of character progression in the game. There's just nothing to do anymore. At least nothing related to the new expansion. Once you max everything out, all you're left to do is send your followers on adventures that you yourself should be going on.
WoW can still attract players, but can't keep them as interested , or as busy, as it used to.
I won't die, not for a long time. But it could be so much better.

 

Even though WoW has lost 3 million subscribers, it still has a LOT of players left. I mean, 7 million subscribers are more than all the other MMORPGs have in total, so it's still an impressive number. Of course, the number will keep plummeting until the next expansion pack hits, and that's when the numbers skyrocket again. It's an endless cycle.

 

People just dont´realize how much money Blizzard is making in comparison to other MMORPGs that are still going. WOW is probably making 100 times as much money as DDO which has patches, expansions and a full dev team.

 

I don't think the game is going to die any time soon. It will be a long, slow death and even then I feel like the servers will be open for a long time. The expansion is good, the story line is alright. I love the new character models so much I can't even put it into words. I think a lot of the problem is that people that have been playing it for years experience the new features and get bored with doing the same types of quests after a while. I know that's happened to me.

 

It's going to be a long while before it completely goes away. I think that right now Blizzard needs to re-evaluate and probably go with a WoW 2.0 completely if they want to still stay in the market and gain new market share as well as retain old players. WoD is a good expansion but the huge bulk of WoW's longtime players are grown up now with families and children to take care of. We don't have as much time to dedicate to games anymore and with the economy still sluggish in recovering on top of that- it's harder to keep up as much as we used to. The new players are more spoiled with updated graphics and newer mechanics which plays into WoW's struggle to retain its population. 7 million is good, but it's nothing like Wrath's 10 or Cata's 8-9 million. Then there's the fact that a good number of players are also located in China, so there's that to take into account as well.

 

Yeah, eventually I wont be able to play any longer even to socialize with my friends devonbomer. I go through the same cycle pretty much. I get bored, or annoyed, and I quite. Maybe I try something else for a while, but for the most part I don't play anything. Then, after I haven't played for a while I start thinking about my friends and wanting to rp with them again. Usually I'm not even returning for the game itself.

 

I don't think WOW will die anytime soon, they may lose players often, but they are always gaining new players. I, myself, sometime get bored of the game, and stop playing for a few months, but I eventually come back to the game cause I love it so much

 

Same. I'm currently on a break, but have been planning on getting it back over the summer (so, soon). I do get bored of it and tired of it, but overall I find it a lot of fun and it's a big part of my life in some ways. And the same is true for a lot of people.

 

Yes. It's lost 3 million subscribers in one quarter. If Blizzard doesn't fix their shit they'll lose them even faster.

 

Nope. If you think WoW is dying, then you don't understand how economics work. It's still going strong, that's for sure.

 

HEre's the thing about blizzard's numbers, we never know when they're inflated or not. They have claimed holding 15million people at one point, so its been a huge decline in WoW over the years as they keep releasing expansions to breathe life into the game. Also it doesn't take into account how many of these subs have multiple accounts. I know back whe I palyed it, I had friends that had up to 3 accounts a piece. and I know gold farmers have a lot more.

 

World of Warcraft is probably at its lowest point right now. Players just aren't reacting positively to how casual the game is becoming. They can't keep downplaying the game and making it easier to play. I'd also like to see them make more balance changes in PvP and not just focus their changes on PVE. That would help keep a stable player base.

 

I wouldn't say WoW is dying it's still king of the MMO genre, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Sure it is at a low point, but to a certain degree people say that WoW is dying every single expansion, and WoD is no exception. Personally I still love the game, but due to personal reasons I don't play as much as I used to. I personally still love and enjoy the game completely. Though to each their own if you believe WoW is dying. I doubt any MMO will beat out WoW, unless it is developed by Blizzard.

 

Warlords of Draenor is by far the greatest expansion since Burning Crusade. Yes I can concur that WoW has went through a major decline leading up into Cataclysm and throughout Mists of Pandaria. Burning Crusade was by far the glory days of WoW. Sure Vanilla (Original WoW) included of course, but Burning Crusade was amazing. Wrath of the Lich King was great to but you could feel the change of the game from focusing on those that put their time and effort into the game, being able to show for it, shifting towards meeting the needs of the casual player. Gear was baselined throughout. It was easier for casual and new players to get gear, and near equivalent to what the "hardcore" player was getting through countless hours of trial and error in raids to get their loot in a much harder and difficult setting. Then Blizzard simplified the stats of gear, talents you could pick, so on and so fourth. It really hurt the community and a lot of hardcore, dedicated players through in the towel simply because the game lost its "Epic'ness" so to speak.

Sure the lore always remained engaging and fascinating, that is what I myself love about the game so much (avid WoW lore fan haha) but the game play started to feel a major decline. Specific classes that seemed to just get more love from Blizzard development team, stayed top dogs in the PVP arena spectrum of the game, where classes that had blatant quality of life issues with them, or just flat out no ability to perform in high demand pvp, were left to rot so to speak. For instance if you played a shaman in Cataclysm or Mists of Pandaria, unless you were restoration specc, you never saw the dawn of over a 1700 rated arena team.

Now enters Warlords of Draenor. I don't know what happened, I assume Blizzard realized they had to do something to stop the decline of their player base. As the subscription base dropped from over 13 million during "Wrath of the Lich King" days to almost 7 million proceeding from Cataclysm into Mists of Pandaria. However, whatever the case may be. Blizzard go their "stuff" together and seem to be taking the game and every aspect of it in a much more hands on way. Imbalances of classes, whether it be damage wise, mechanics, etc. You name it, they are evaluated almost on a weekly basis and there are constant hit fixes and patches to address issues in game. Where as in previous patches, you could wait months for an issue to even be addressed, and when it was, they wouldn't if hardly at all, fix the problem. Then you would wait months again, praying that "well maybe in the next patch they will hear my cries" haha xD.

Warlords of Draenor's lore is outstanding, nostalgic, and brings the old feeling of WoW back. Granite it is not literally back to the glory days, but it is leaps and bounds in the right direction and thusly, brought World of Warcraft back on track, in the right direction.

 

Well, WoW is still going strong even after those years that they struggled with some things.
They've lost a part of their userbase but that's only natural. They're going to gain a lot more players soon, for sure.

 

Considering that the game has been going strong for ten years, and currently has 8 million subscribers, WoW is far from dead. There has been plenty of talk, and support, for the idea of it going F2P after some time, but it appears that won't happen any time soon. Though, it is always an option.

I personally believe that as long as Blizzard keeps up support for the game, it'll have a home in the MMO community. It's shaped the genre as we know it, and for that, there will always be a devoted fan base of a few million subscribers.

I will say, however, that the dynamic of the game is changing and taking more of a casual stand point. It may be driving away some of the hardcore players, though those are being replaced, to an extent, by a new player base. Disappointing, yes, but it's the name of the business game.