It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost seven years since a little game called World of Warcraft launched. Since then, it has continually gained momentum, forging a name for itself as, arguably, the king of MMOs. With expansions adding completely new worlds and most recently, completely overhauling the game’s original content, the title has remained fresh – despite the fact that it’s steadily aging.
Following the release of its most recent expansion, Cataclysm, many people feared that the game could be on its decline with – the simplification of gameplay mechanics splitting the player-base. Despite this, Blizzard has stated that the game isn’t going anywhere. While it may be true that World of Warcraft still has quite a bit of life left in the tank, subscription numbers have started to decline in the past quarter, resting at 11.1 million.
This is far from a death omen for the game, but is still a significant decrease for the title. According to Blizzard President Mike Morhaime, speaking on a conference call during Activision/Blizzard’s second quarter financial release:
“In terms of subscriber growth around the world, what I would say we have seen is that subscribership tends to be seasonal and driven by content updates and so as we are heading further away from an expansion launch, it’s normal to seasoned declines where the team is currently working on our largest content update since Cataclysm and that will hit later this year.”
While there is no doubt that a lull in content can lead to lower subscription numbers, with the release of the most recent content patch, “Rage Of The Firelands,” there has not been a dramatic increase – as normally expected. World of Warcraft may still have numerous years left in its lifespan, but there is no denying that it’s slowing down. With highly anticipated MMOs like The Old Republic, TERA and Guild Wars 2 on the horizon, it will be difficult for Blizzard to maintain World of Warcraft‘s momentum.
This doesn’t mean that there will be a shortage of new content making its way to the MMO though. Morhaime has promised a content patch introducing new end-game dungeon and raid content is on its way – along with the rumored expansion, Mists Of Pandaria. As a fan-favorite race within the Warcraft mythos, the introduction of the Pandaren into World of Warcraft could provide a significant bump in subscribers.
On top of new content, Blizzard is still looking at new markets for the game. With the WoW‘s launch in Brazil coming later this year, it’s likely that the company will continue to try to expand the game into new territories. Regardless, there is no denying that the venerable MMO is beginning to show its age. Even with the inclusion of new content, the introduction of newer, more refined MMOs have slowly been wearing away at the title. It may not be on its deathbed, but World of Warcraft is slowly beginning its decline after years of ruling at the top.
With their next big MMO venture, Titan making its way into view, it’s only a matter of time before something comes along which can manage to overtake World of Warcraft as the king of MMOs.
Do you think that World Of Warcraft has worn out its welcome? Do any of the games ahead on the horizon stand any chance of overtaking its supremacy?
Source: IndustryGamers
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I know a guy at work that use to be a hardcore WOW player. Every expansion. He quit because he got so bored of it all. According to him, he was like in the top 3 paladins on his server. Always had uber loot and all the good stuff, but he just got tired of it. He said they’ve (Blizzard) has run out of interesting things to put into the game and they’ve run out of lore, so they rehash it. I wouldn’t know how much of that is true, as I only played it for about 6 months years ago. I enjoyed it when I did play it, but I got tired of the whole LFG thing. He says that’s a lot of what you see now, players standing around LFG.
The LFG thing is vastly improved for healers and tanks. Other classes have to wait about 28 min on average. No connection with raiding guilds usually get you nowhere if you want to raid. PVP is a bit boring still and is meh. I quit for the same reason, got tired of boring stuff after boring stuff. That’s just me though.
Wratch of the Lich king got old fast. Cataclysm I saw what looked to be good. However After seeing the entire game changed. I realized that it really wasn’t. Why waste my time trying to level to max just to stand around and get bored after I’ve done all the raids/instances I could do at that level.
It has not gotten old for me and I have played it for a couple of years. It gets better every year. My hunter loves the challenge of taming new animals, playing with my family and friends and the story still seems interesting to me. There is no need to look for a group. Blizzard arranges them for you. I’ve met many interesting people this way.
I stop playing when they change the game entirely.
Ok so Wow has aimed more towards the hardcore gamer demograph. But let’s be honest the change from Wrath to Cata was huge. It brought back the days of level 60 where you used CC and had to think. But new players really came to WoW during Wrath and it appealed to the casual gamer. But so many couldn’t comprehend the change. Let’s face it, during Wrath if you weren’t good you shouldn’t have been playing. Now during Cata it really seperates good from bad. Most people that couldn’t comprehend this change are dps. And that job is the easiest in WoW. WoW to me is at it’s best now most classes are fairly balanced. So all those complaining take a second and look at what it is, a game is about challenges. Yes easier stuff is fun to an extent, but a game is about challenges and advancement. During this Xpac I’ve never been more aggravated with others. Blizz is doing fine, things just take practice.
Haha no, healing is the easiest and I left WoW because of it’s horrible community, long dps queues, and repetitive gameplay. I moved to Rift and I haven’t looked back. I won’t buy TOR but I might try out GW2 when it comes out.
I’ve played WoW for no more than a year, so the game is, in it’s own way, still new to me.
But I would welcome a new race on both alliance and horde, since raising new caracters in the same places gets really boring. I’ve raised worgens in dwarven territory, nightelfs in human territory etc., and still its boring.
It got a little better after Cata, where many of the quests were changed, but still… a new race, new territory?? sooo nice….
I know this is a sampling of only a few, but it seems the comments can be summarized as:
WoW is boring, it’s the same old thing.
WoW has changed too much it’s not what it used to be.
Hmmm…
Here is MY big problem with WoW at the moment. The Dungeons are TOO HARD! it would be perfectly fine to ME if the dungeons was hard and it was a 1 player game. im currently playing through a game called Catherine. im sure you have heard of it. the game is VERY hard. you actually gotta use your brain in that game to get past levels. well this is the problem with WoW, if your in a (Hard) dungeon and ONE PERSON makes a mistake everyone leaves. yes im running pugs, but every time i get in a guild they ignore me, its like if you havent been friends with somebody for 5+ years in WoW they consider you scum not worth even talking to, much less doing DUNGEONS with. so when they added the PUG system of random dungeons i was very happy, and it worked quite wonderfully. till blizzard decided (Oh. people are having to much fun, lets make things ALOT harder) then later posts on the developer forum how (we needed to QQ moar, and suck it up/man up ect) I DONT PAY 15 BUCKS A MONTH TO BE STRESSED OUT. i pay that money to have fun. if i wanted to be stressed out id walk up to a bum. tell him to kick me in my jibblets and hand him the money afterwards. Blizzard, your working with kids here, quit expecting adult reactions out of KIDS! if its hard they are likely to quit, thus ruining the game and your company. that is all.
if it was just ME in the thick of it, id stick it out. but last time i checked you cant do a 5 man dungeon by yourself currently. something to think about!
Where in this article is a new expansion confirmed? The headline led me to believe that this was big news, but… I didn’t see any. The “biggest content addition since Cataclysm” is probably just the next content patch. That “along with the rumored expansion” sentence is assembled clumsily, and could be read as “Morhaime has promised … the rumored expansion.” But I don’t think that’s actually what you meant. So is that headline just shameless hit-wrangling?
If they had kept the game as easy as Wrath they wouldn’t be experiencing this bleed-out. They were fools for thinking they should snub the average customer in favor of the top 5%.
Lesson for the entire computer game industry: favoring the hardcore is business poison.
I am one of the million that’s left this year. I’m paying Rift now and will be happy to try GW2 and SW soon too.
Sadly, WoW just got very, very repetitive and the ridiculous gear inflation rate has left armour and weapon items effectively as disposible, temporary things rather than something that you used to dream about. There is really no way to fix this now. Significant sections of the community in WoW are horrible.
The Pandarin concept as an expansion just sounds absurd, babyish and the last possible thing that would get us back.
Waste of time and money. This isn’t a game anymore, it’s a service for the meek.
I have been a healer in WOW for years. Tried DPS didn’t like it. Tried Tanking, didn’t like it. I couldn’t figure out what it was that drew me to healing every time until CATA came out. Until CATA, with Tanking and DPS I was limited to the same 5 buttons over and over again for 5 to 10 mins over and over again until the fight was over. How boring. But Healing gave the freedom of being able to use all the tools of your class.
In CATA Blizz decided healers should be limited to the same 5 buttons as every other class or risk OOM every 5 seconds.
After this happened and Blizz took away the very reason I was drawn to that class, what would have been the natural reaction? Bored… quit.
Blizz had 5% of its community complaining it was too easy and 95% doing constructive complaining for things like fixing Alteric Valley, balance the classes, introduce some solo content, reducing the time it took to accomplish anything in the game, to stop making WOW a second full time job and all the time the 5% telling the 95% to stfu.. to nerd rage quit.. on the forums. Well guess what.. Blizz decided to listen to the 5% instead of the 95% in CATA and that 95% responded. 1 million subscriptions lost. Thats a pretty significant number. Maybe this time through Blizz might actually listen to the 95% and try to get old customers to renew there subscriptions. This might actually be a good thing. Blizz might actually have to listen to the 95% for once and stop with the ponpous attitudes they have carried on for way to long.
According to WoWProgress.com there are 1,605,430 level 85 characters that have either personally scored a kill in Tier 11 content, or are members of a guild that has. Performing simple arithmetic, the absolute best case scenario using this raw 1.6M number makes it a fairly safe bet that (of the current 11.1 million subscribers) barely 14% are engaged in raiding. Or to be more succinct… 86% are not.
For the 86% who aren’t rocketing through T11/T12 raids and heroics, increased emphasis on more end game dungeon and raid content tells them that their $15.00 a month isn’t as valuable as the $15.00 a month paid by the 14% of subscribers who do raid. Activision Blizzard’s announcement that frequent “major new raid and dungeon content” releases will spearhead the recovery of WoW’s subscribership essentially indicates that 14% is somehow generating more revenue than 86%. So unless the plan to push more of the same only faster is based on a guarantee that 86% of subscribers will drop what they’re doing to catch up, I don’t see how this fixes the problem… if it even is a problem.
I was a hard raider in both factions. Bliz has always made changes to the game, but these were the last straw for me.
1) Took away too much class uniqueness. Giving mages Time Warp? Giving DK’s a battle res? Giving rogues a HOT? These should have remained with Shamans, Druids, and healers. There was no shortage of them in the game.
2) The LFG system. Took away all the consequense of being a jerk or a ninja in a group.
3) Lore. I was very unhappy with the direction they took Sylvannas. They made her cross a line I felt betrayed her character. Gilneas should have been a full alliance capital, especially since they took Southshore away. Deathwing is an uninteresting villian. The better your villian, the better your story. Wrath had incredible lore, because Arthas was a fantastic villian with a backstory that most people played through. Someone posted earlier that wow has run out of lore. I agree, and Pandas don’t appeal to me.
4) Guild leveling system. It was supposed to foster guild loyalty, but instead made wow a job. I was in a small guild. There were only about 50 of us, and most of us worked full time jobs and had families. We were efficient raiders. We cleared content quickly. But to get the raid buff feast, we had to unlock it with a fishing achievement we just didn’t have time to do. The GM wanted a level 25 guild quickly, so he recruited other people to get it there and posted experience requirements to level the guild. He also posted the top contributers every week. A lot of us no longer felt welcomed.
Great post, been reading a few other stuff on here, Nice Blog.