Is WoW dying?

Discussion in 'World of Warcraft' started by devonbomer, May 27, 2015.

  1. munkeygirlie

    munkeygirlie Member

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    I don't think it's that WoW is dying exactly. I do feel like I see there is a noticeable drop in players, and I haven't researched the statistics to know if it's right or not, but I think that has more to do with individual servers. There are so many different servers that players are spread out. For me it feels like WoW is dying because on the server I have been on since I started the game it is pretty much dead all the time. The server is a Horde heavy server, and I play Alliance, so that never helps either.

    The majority of that feeling is that a lot of the people that I have played for years with have left the game and lost interest, and I haven't. However when I made a character on another server, it had a lot more activity and began to feel like the game I remembered loving. Now it's just a matter of finding a group that I can grow comfortable with again.

    WoW may be losing subscriptions, but it's one of the longest running MMO's out there, it's to be expected. It will have fluctuations but it's not in danger of dying out yet.
     
  2. kabezon

    kabezon Member

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    It isn't. Maybe we've played too long and are just bored.
     
  3. Chris_A

    Chris_A Well-Known Member
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    I would say that it definitely is. There are some revolutionary new MMOs out there, that will take the throne, unless Blizzard releases a really really good expansion. There are some angles in Warcraft lore that they have not yet explored, so there is still hope for the game yet.
     
  4. Azrile

    Azrile Well-Known Member
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    Throughout the life of WOW, there have always been new MMORPGs getting launched that had better graphics and ´innovative´ ideas.. Those two things are a dime a dozen and don´t mean squat if the gameplay is not fun. People have said for ages that the only game that can kill WOW is WOW, and at times I think the devs are trying to do just that. When WOW lost 3M subscribers earlier this year, it had NOTHING to do with another game launching or having a patch, it was completely about WOW.
     
  5. Chris_A

    Chris_A Well-Known Member
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    I think it has more to do with the fact that people are afraid of trying out new things, like the gameplay in Guild Wars 2, or they think there is too much grinding involved, like Final Fantasy XIV, which is totally not true, by the way. I think WoW survives only because people got so used to it and are afraid to try something new.
     
  6. Azrile

    Azrile Well-Known Member
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    There is certainly some of that. But the reason I think most new MMORPGs struggle against WOW is just content. It is totally unfair, but a new MMORPG that launches now has to compete against WOW the way it is now. You always here a lot of comments like ´ GW2 has more content now than WOW had when it launched´.. and that very well may be true, but it isn´t competing against WOW of 9 years ago.

    I think this plays into a lot of what most new MMORPGs have a ton of box sales, but then lose almost everyone after a month or two. You get that ´new car smell´ for awhile, but then you realize the game just does not have as much depth as WOW ( because it is new).
     
  7. rightct

    rightct Well-Known Member

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    Blizzard knows his stuff. If they lose players, they'll just promote themselves more and acquire back the user base. No big deal. They don't even worry about losing 3 million subscribers in a rather short period of time, you can trust me on that.
     
  8. Chris_A

    Chris_A Well-Known Member
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    I agree with you on that one. Although the content in WoW nowadays feels very very rehashed in my opinion. They should have forgone the whole Warlords of Draenor storyline and just focused on the Vortex and the Naga, or maybe an epic battle with Sargeras.
     
  9. qag

    qag Well-Known Member
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    It's not even close to dying. It's still to date the most popular subscription based MMO out there. Yes, it's losing subscriptions, but it's to be expected, the market of MMO's has changed drastically from when WoW was first released. WoW won't truly die until Blizzard releases a successor, decides to cut support and shut down servers, neither thing being something I expect to happen any time soon.
     
  10. troutski

    troutski Well-Known Member
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    Isn't there a new add-on coming in the near future? Yup, the game's obviously dying. :p
     
  11. Snakevenom

    Snakevenom Well-Known Member
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    Yup, their increasing number of expansions cannot save the ever falling subscription rate. They are killing WoW all the time they keep that subscription cost. I unsubbed because there isn't enough to do inbetween expansions.
     
  12. Zimbitt

    Zimbitt Well-Known Member
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    It is not dead or dying but it is close to the edge or already starting on the decline, it is just past its prime and outdated.
     
  13. grinder

    grinder Well-Known Member

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    WoW is still quite popular because WoW was and it is still one of the most popular MMORPG but basically I think that this game is getting really repetitive and the new expansions don't really bring that hype that was famous back in the erly ages of WoW existance.
     
  14. Azrile

    Azrile Well-Known Member
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    One problem is that WOW still has 5M subscribers, which means it is very risky for them to do anything really drastic with the game. Both UO and SW Galaxies tried to do radical changes and in both cases, it cost them a huge chunk of their subscribers.
     
  15. SpartanScooter

    SpartanScooter Well-Known Member
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    WoW is slowly but surely losing it's playerbase. Whet it first launched it was the best and only MMO of this scale out there. But nowadays there are tons of even free alternatives that people play rather than WoW. Also, the game is getting a bit outdated after all that time, It's been over 10 years and the age of the game is very noticeable.
     
  16. Azrile

    Azrile Well-Known Member
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    The graphics of WOW were outdated the day the game launched. I think that is one of the reasons WOW became WOW... because everyone and anyone could install it on their computer. I remember reading the AOC forums during the beta and the support team was basically telling people they would have to upgrade their computers to be able to play. If you are hardcore enough to be in a beta and following a game a year before launch and you STILL need to upgrade your computer to play it, that is a problem.

    WOW does frequent graphic updates ( recently upgrading character models).. but I think their goal is to always to be playable on a $300 laptop from Wal-mart.
     
  17. Supremegg

    Supremegg Member

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    Personally, I think that there clearly is an audience and a demand for WoW. The numbers when Warlords of Draenor dropped showed this but sadly Blizzard did not manage to deliver on their promises.
    Lots of the features were changed (no verious Garrison locations, PvP fixes, etc.) and people got stuck doing the same thing for half a year. People got bored of playing the "menu game" - giving work orders and sending followers on missions.. and when they united with friends they were stuck playing the same 2 instances on joke difficulties.
    I think that Blizz started focusing their resources on Hearthstone because it was a much cheaper game to keep up and it delivered great profit for them. Lets hope that they redeem theirself with "Legion" and bring the players back.
     
  18. Nytegeek

    Nytegeek No namby pamby hand holding over FUD. EXTERMINATE!
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    When World of Warcraft was new, there was less competition. The increase in competition and the rise of free-to-play games combined with people spending more time on mobiles devices hasn't been good for WoW. There are a lot more options for games and entertainment than there was a decade ago. It makes it hard for Blizzard to replace bored subscribers leaving WoW with new ones.
     
  19. tinybutnotfangless

    tinybutnotfangless Well-Known Member
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    Everyone and everything dies. WoW has been dying since Day 1 Vanilla. The same is said about each person. Each person started dying the moment they were born.

    With that said, WoW still has millions of subscribers. They lose a few million and they're still making hundreds of millions of US dollars per year. People go into a flame-fest mode when they see the subscribers for WoW dwindle, blaming it on a myriad of things. The reality is that the day WoW truly is in its last few steps of life, is the day the game has less than 10 servers with about 3 million players or less. That's when Blizzard need to cut down their WoW staff and move them into other games or outright abandon the game or upgrade it to WoW 2.0.
     
  20. Nytegeek

    Nytegeek No namby pamby hand holding over FUD. EXTERMINATE!
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    Actually people don't start dying technically until they have completely finished growing. Their days may be numbered from the beginning but there is a good amount of time before the process starts. As for WoW, it didn't really start dying until after Wrath. Subscriber numbers support this statement.