WoW revenue down 54% in seven months

[Slammy1]

World PvP was fun when I was geared. I liked wrath in that sense, I'd go to the daily instances flagged in PvP gear to see if anyone would attack. Locks in wrath may have been a little overpowered, especially when they tried to run to the instance to unflag and I'd fear and slow them. One man's fun, but leveling a lock in wrath everyone spit on me until I forget what level (then they all ran from me).

I would slaughter locks with my dk. I remember killing this full wrathful lock over and over in a BG and I had like 1/2 the furious gear (lowest tier + non-pvp armor vs highest tier). The key to locks back then was run away, let them chase you. One time I played the los game with the entire other team trying to draw them out from their flag hidey hole. They got so mad they finally ran me down into the welcoming arms of my team mates. I died, but we won while I was in the graveyard.

WoW used to be such a fun game. Too bad they ruined it.

EDIT: I remember killing these 2 level 80 rogues ganking people in crossroads. I let them go but the one didn't understand that I could see him with my voidwalker and kept coming back. I even logged him out in a house and killed him some more when he tried to do it again. Ah, revenge. Then all those times standing on top of other undead in the cubbies in the Undercity, people would walk right by. I used mouseover macros and seeds so I never had to target anyone.

 

[waggy]

man daily quests in Cata and Wrath were amazing compaired to what we had to deal with in Cata and Pandas

cata was bad. pandaland took it even farther.

cata went overboard with phased content. People gushed over the gate one with baldur. so they though more is better.

noe daily's is to drag out the game. when you gated content behind dailys that are even more daily's.

 

[cronos]

I remember the run from Southshore. PvP was great there. There was another way to get there though. Couldn't you get the FP over by the plaguelands? Did we need to be higher level for that? I don't remember if I did that at the lower levels.

The plaguelands is a shortcut but you're level ~30 if you wanted to do SM, and the plaguelands' mob are mid 50s. So even as a stealthed rogue the diseased bears could smell me from across the field Yeah, I did some ghost hopping through the plaguelands a few times because it's such a pain to run from Southshore (remember at level ~30 you haven't got a mount back then).

 

[Anubis]

cata was bad. pandaland took it even farther.

cata went overboard with phased content. People gushed over the gate one with baldur. so they though more is better.

noe daily's is to drag out the game. when you gated content behind dailys that are even more daily's.

i meant TBC and wrath in my OG post, honestly i think the stupud Farm for cooking crap was one of the final nails in the coffin for me

 

[smackababy]

i meant TBC and wrath in my OG post, honestly i think the stupud Farm for cooking crap was one of the final nails in the coffin for me

I never leveled cooking on a single character. I always min / maxed my trade skills and that was it. I had a tank with mining simply because the 40 stam you got from max mining was more than any other trade skill, and I never mined a single node after I hit max.

All of the dailies after BC I think I might have done once. I just played the AH for money.

 

[styrafoam]

To those who actually enjoyed vanilla quests, I have to ask how old you were at the time and what your experience of RPGs was beforehand. I was about 28 when I first started and had already experienced games like Baldurs Gate 2 which had immersive storylines and quests. I come into WoW and by the time I got to level 25 I was wondering if the story was ever going to start. It was just an endless series of 'The knolls are stealing our food! Bring me 10 tiger eyes from that cave of endlessly respawning enemies."

The point i was making was related to the article i had previously quoted. These specific quests that they were breaking (dire maul books, epic mount chains, the quests that tie into the pristine hide/chromatic carapace, benediction, etc) were a small step above what was the norm. They were just kind of dropped on you, they sent you all over the world, and you finished with something that was extremely valuable at the time. The effort and reward are trivial today, but that is the case with everything in vanilla. I'm all for streamlining and improving the experience, but i would also hope that some things could survive.

 

[Chiropteran]

The end game was diverse, if you could get to it. Some of the BC raids were amazing. The problem was 95% of the community couldn't do SSC, let alone, Hyjal or TK.

There are multiple interpretations for that data.

The common assumption seems to be that everyone is just dying to raid, but sadly some couldn't back when raids were harder.

An alternate theory is that in BC, there were meaningful challenges outside of raiding, and the 95% was happy working on heroic mode dungeons (which were actually very hard in BC, unlike recent times), leveling alts, participating in world pvp, etc.

Now, LFR is so easy and brainless anyone can do it and it's rewards outshine anything you can get outside of raiding, so you are effectively forced to raid. Now more people raid, sure, but are they happy? Is it the wonders of LFR that have cause the number of subscribers to plummet?

 

[Soccerman06]

I gotta say, being the highest geared warlock on my server in TBC, and for that matter, one of the highest geared players for the server, world pvp was fun for me. 1-2 shot kills with sb, 12k crits with soulfire in bg killing nearly anyone was awesome. Specifically warsong was awesome, just camp below the graveyard and farm with a priest buddy of mine. I got quite a few hate messages back when I did that, people would create a char on my server just to tell me I was a douche lol.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

An alternate theory is that in BC, there were meaningful challenges outside of raiding, and the 95% was happy working on heroic mode dungeons (which were actually very hard in BC, unlike recent times), leveling alts, participating in world pvp, etc.

I'd rather get teeth pulled then do heroic mode TBC dungeons.

 

[FallenHero]

I'd rather get teeth pulled then do heroic mode TBC dungeons.

No kidding. They were out of control.

TBC content was cool...but too many requirements. And if you tried getting them after a guild had already progressed passed them, good luck! There was no catchup on it. You missed the boat. Honestly killed raiding for me until the start of Cata. Did it again with a guild, then raidfinder destroyed the guild in 2 months.

 

[blackened23]

Since dailies were brought up, the main thing that bothered me is that the rewards for daily quests did not scale with the economy in each expansion; I remember when Sunwell was released, that you could actually make a good bit of gold from those dailies relative to what the game economy was like. I was US-Illidan-horde (high pop) and the typical player had 1000G or less on average. Auction house prices were also in line with this - items such as epics had SUBSTANTIALLY lower costs.

So with the rewards of dailies now being terrible, the only reason to do them is for reputation. I can't say i'm a fan of that, especially with it being required for cooking in MOP (although levelling a profession is obviously optional..)

 

[waggy]

I'd rather get teeth pulled then do heroic mode TBC dungeons.

LOL i HATED TBC dungeons. they sucked ass.

 

[CakeMonster]

TBC was the sweet spot for a lot of people. More 5man dungeons than in vanilla, and with the HC option. And raids were still kind of epic and not easily available without making an effort to be attuned and getting into a guild. And the game was still new and everything was exciting and impressive, and most people did in fact get into WoW in TBC, not vanilla.

HOWEVER, I'm not one of those whiners who claim everything was better back then. The game is vastly better now. The only thing I miss is some content and unique equipment (not downscaled) that you'd have to join with your guild in 25man mode to be able to access. You've got to have some carrots to yearn for.

But 90% of the reason that people whine is that they've grown tired of MMOs but they refuse to admit it and complain about WoW and get nostalgic. When you're done with MMOs you simply can't stomach anymore but you still have the memories and your mind makes you say strange things if you don't do some basic reflecting about what's actually going on in your head.

 

[blackened23]

LOL i HATED TBC dungeons. they sucked ass.

I loved them prior to being nerfed in TBC (heroic 5 mans, that is). They were challenging with meaningful rewards, whereas heroic 5 mans now I can fiddle my way through with no effort whatsoever. I don't even need to pay attention. Accidentally pull a pack of mobs? Hell, no problem, let's just have to tank aoe tank 20 gabillion mobs at once! NO WORRIES! Hell, most of the idiots doing heroic 5 mans don't even have enchants and gems. What a fun time, playing the game with back-peddling S-key morons. That is what WoW caters to now.

That said, that isn't why I dislike WoW. I liked the 5 man heroics in wrath as well despite them being much easier. Anyway, the entire MMO genre has gotten stale and everyone has copied everyone elses idea multiple times, the genre is old and tired. I also don't like how WoW has thrown RPG and MMO out the freakin' window and decided to make the game based on convenience. So much so that it isn't an RPG experience anymore. Whatever - The MMO genre just needs to be deleted and reset with something fresh and new. Maybe EQ next can do that, it has some novel neat and genuinely new ideas. If nothing fresh or new happens, the entire genre just needs to die a slow death.

 

[Anubis]

with the exception of the 2 5 mans in the first zone in TBC i loved those pre nerf, shattered halls or whatever where mobs would 1 shot epic geared tanks was a bit stupid. the others were fun, i really liked Shadow Labs which everyone else hated. was great as a warlock who knew what they were doing

Seduce 1 mob, banish another and fear bounce a 3rd with COR/COE , while DPSing something

was fun times

 

[Aikouka]

Eh, the problem with Shattered Halls was the ridiculous CC requirement. If you had a CC, you were good, but when you play a Rogue, you're still not that useful given you can't reapply your CC. You can maybe only take one person like that and that would need to be the next target.

 

[AViking]

Eh, the problem with Shattered Halls was the ridiculous CC requirement. If you had a CC, you were good, but when you play a Rogue, you're still not that useful given you can't reapply your CC. You can maybe only take one person like that and that would need to be the next target.

Heroic Shattered halls was very difficult. A Rogue was fine as long as they didn't break CC. You simply killed the Rogue's CC target before it broke.

What was crazy fun after a while was to go in there with a T5 geared tank and no CC. Absolutely insane and good times.

 

[Aikouka]

A Rogue was fine as long as they didn't break CC. You simply killed the Rogue's CC target before it broke.

I didn't say that a Rogue wasn't usable, but rather their limited duration, single-application CC limited them to specific targets and preferably only one. I recall times when I was turned down to go to heroic Shattered Halls simply because I was a Rogue, and they wanted a "more reliable CC". :|

 

[blackened23]

I didn't say that a Rogue wasn't usable, but rather their limited duration, single-application CC limited them to specific targets and preferably only one. I recall times when I was turned down to go to heroic Shattered Halls simply because I was a Rogue, and they wanted a "more reliable CC". :|

Uhm, aren't most of the mobs humanoids in Shattered Halls? Any issue with a 45 second sap that i'm not aware of? It's been a while and I don't play rogue, admittedly, but 45 seconds seems like an incredibly long amount of time to land a kill on a differing mob.

That said, the 360 degree cleaves in TBC were so punishing to rogues that you are correct that they weren't brought quite as often. That got patched pretty quick IIRC.

While I liked the 5 man heroics in TBC, anyone remember the pre-nerf raids in TBC? Like, the very very first versions which VERY few guilds got to see with attunements and all? Doing SSC and Hydross pre-nerf in particular was an exercise in hilarity. But man, it was still fun. Don't care what anyone says. That was back when Death & Taxes ruled the roost.

 

[Aikouka]

Uhm, aren't most of the mobs humanoids in Shattered Halls? Any issue with a 45 second sap that i'm not aware of? It's been a while and I don't play rogue, admittedly, but 45 seconds seems like an incredibly long amount of time to land a kill on a differing mob.

I said this, "and preferably only one", which means you didn't take more because the duration may not hold for multiple kills. Of course, it didn't help if someone accidentally broke your CC either. I recall having to do things like quick blinds (back when that took a reagent :|) or break off the current target and try to keep the roaming one locked down while the tank ignored it.

Although, that reminds me of the early days of Rogues and CC. Back then, Sap brought you out of Stealth... unless you had the Subtlety talent, which gave you a 90% chance (for two? points) to return to Stealth. I think that required something like 10-15 points invested into Subtlety just to get it as well, it was a real DPS killer given the best path was Assassination as a sub-tree. But, let me tell you... it sucked when you hit that 10% and got mauled by a ton of mobs, but the groups usually got a good laugh out of it.

 

[alangrift]

I used to play it, and they used to give me free time once in a while to try and get me to come back... But now they seem to have given up on me.

 

[Wolfpup]

Not that interesting, considering WoW is approaching 10 years old. The gameplay has become stale and people are growing fatigued and moving on to other things.
10 really successful years is an awesome run for any MMO, and WoW will probably live on at least another 5 once going FTP.

Good lord...it is almost 10 years old :-O

When did THAT happen? It still feels like it just came out to me.