World of warcraft is dying and how to save it.

World of warcraft has long been the standard by which MM Os are judged. This is partially due to it being a very good game and partially because it makes more money then most African nations. Unfortunately its subscription base has stuck at around 12 million for the last little while and is even declining. Why? The game has only improved with age, so why are the numbers dropping?

The answer is that everyone has had a chance to play world of warcraft by now and already made up their minds about it. Cataclysm brought the numbers up for a few months and then almost immediately dropped shortly thereafter. This spike was from former players who decided to come back, decide it wasn't different enough and then leave. There wasn't a huge spike from new players that decided it was too hard or too dull, it was almost entirely old players rejoining/starting fresh.

You might think this is okay, after all, 11/12 million people is still enough to support the game and then some. But the problem is that the numbers have nowhere to go but down. Video game designers are also an artistic bunch and they can only work on the same thing so long. Eventually the people with talent will either move to other projects or other companies creating a brain drain so the suits take over and you get fucking pandas.

So how do we fix this? How do we get wow back into people's minds and get new people into the game? We don't. We kill wow and start anew with a new engine and a new tale. Whether it be azeroth 2000 years from now or starcraft or something completely new, the important thing is that it be something new and exciting. Something that'll get people interested in picking up a subscription based mmo again.

I posted this because I really, really love world of warcraft and it kills me to see the road the game is going down and because I wanted to start a discussion. A discussion about wow's future, as no one seems to think farther then the next expansion.

I'm not sure you quite grasp the nuances of the phrase, "Save it."

edited 2nd Nov '11 4:09:27 AM by Tyyrlym

I think they should ditch World of Warcraft in favor of the already-emphasised (but could be moreso) multiplayer of Diablo 3, and take Warcraft back to its RTS form. I liked Warcraft 2 & 3 (and the original if I look past the awkward controls), but can't stand WoW, and never have.

There's a lot of other MM Os out there that are in more dire straits than World Of Warcraft, and it's gotten to the point where the "Madden Effect" has started to kick in - they'll buy expansions because it's World Of Warcraft, not because it's actually new or innovative.

edited 2nd Nov '11 4:14:49 AM by SgtRicko

World Of Warcraft has peaked. It's FAR from dying. People are still playing Ultima Online for crissakes.

People are still playing Diablo 2. The issue is not whether World Of Warcraft will survive but whether or not it will remain a massive money spinner if it continues in its current direction. I have to agree with the opening post that the chances of that are not good.

Hey you guys, I've just seen a Youtube commenter claiming that he is now going to cancel his subscription and switch to [insert a World Of Warcraft killer here].

That obviously means World Of Warcraft is dying.

I can't take a man who doesn't use proper capitalisation seriously.

Seconded hard. Speaking as a guy who normally doesn't even like American gaming, Warcraft II is one of the best games I've ever played, and its sad they don't make 'em like that anymore.

(Incidentally, if that game were made today, it would be a proverbial Fountain of Memes. Zugzug for the win!)

Why should anyone bother to save it?

Really, even though I don't even like MMOs I think that WoW was their king long enough. There can never be any progress in the genre if it stays like that (and nearly every other MMO rips it off).

edited 2nd Nov '11 5:02:36 AM by Nyarly

If there's anything (I, some random guy on the internet, think that) World Of Warcraft needs, it's more varied quests. I understand it's hard to come up with variations on 20 Bear Asses, but games like Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic are at least promising to have more story.

I think a good part of it might be Blizzard starting to aim for quality over quantity of quests. I got an achievement for doing 50 quests as a level 14 recently, and I was like: "Yeah, I could not differentiate between that many of the things I just did". Why not streamline the experience further by giving players cutscenes (short, skippable ones, mind) and having less quests from the beginning, but linking quests together in a better way?

Okay, the lore in World Of Warcraft changes more or less every five minutes, but that's not to say you can't do some cool stuff with it. What Blizzard's done with Cataclysm is a good start, but they need to go further. I don't want to go to a glade and kill 20 Blood Elf spies, I want to go around planting misinformation for said spies to get confused by, or to appear in an agit-prop stage production to convince furbolgs to join the Alliance.

Plus, why not specialise quests more based on class? Shaman or druid questlines could be about healing the natural world after the disorder of the Burning Legion, rogues can do the aforementioned cloak-and-dagger stuff, warlocks can do the dangerous thing of flitting between monstrously powerful demonic forces and the ways of normal humanity/dwarfanity/night elfanity/whatever. Warriors should be in a war zone, priests should have religious or philosophical quandries to puzzle while they heal people, mages should get to explore the implications of power and magic. Azeroth is not being used to its potential.

If the World Of Warcraft team got a dollar for every time someone said their MMO was dying they would all have enough to retire in the Bahamas.

It may be more true this time round but it's old news. World Of Warcraft has been dying since vanilla's first hotfix.

See, this is the problem with MMORP Gs in general. One always goes in thinking there'll be kick-ass stuff like this because of the added human element, but then it turns out that they had to dumb the game down because most people just won't get it if you don't, so things need to be as basic as possible. So what you're doing is paying a monthly fee for a glorified Legend of Zelda game. I'd rather have just one well-designed and prepackaged game, than one shoddily-executed one that changes every three months to stay nebulously "fresh."

Really?. I heard about this before, not sure if this the truth this time, but I honestly dont care,

Maybe a glorified Gauntlet game or something.

That's not always true. As I said, some new MMORP Gs are getting around to trying to overcome that problem; it's mostly a problem of marketing. You could have complex story-driven (or at least story-important) MM Os or simple level-grinders just like you can have FPS games like Gears Of War (which puts effort into its storytelling but is not at all deep) or Bio Shock (which gets philosophical up in this shit, yo).

Or Portal. Simple game mechanics, heavily story-driven, audiences and critics pretty much loved it. Okay, that kind of gameplay wouldn't translate to an MMO, but I still say it's entirely possible to do it.

edited 2nd Nov '11 6:19:05 AM by AirofMystery

World Of Warcraft has probably past its peak and is unlikely to grow much if at all from here on out, but it's still pretty big and surely remains profitable. In all likelihood, a bunch of people will leave it for SWTOR or GW 2, but then a significant number of those people will come back for the next expansion anyway. That's how it's been going for years. It's very cyclical.

Honestly, I think the death of WOW would probably be good for the industry as a whole. WOW is currently the number 1 reason not to launch an MMO.

That said, if GW 2 and TOR can hold their own and not let WOW strangle them to death, that will be a step in the right direction.

I imagine a huge sub drop after pandaclysm and a massive sub increase after Sargeras finally arrives.

I gotta say, a major problem I have with World Of Warcraft is that it's not actually much of a war - there's stuff about preparing for war, hoarding for war and such, but the only actual fighting of the enemy you do on a battleground is PvP stuff. It's more of a cold war-type situation if anything, which could be very awesome, but Blizzard hasn't really capitalised on that either.

> there's stuff about preparing for war, hoarding for war and such

Leave it be. Blizzard doesn't know how to properly write a war story, neither do they know how to write a love story (I am looking at you, Aggra)

Then they must hire writers who can! Writers who have ideas about their games on the internet!

I stopped playing World Of Warcraft because of the storytelling, but it wasn't blizzard's fault. It was because i was playing a a Horde roleplayer and the place was overflowing with "Special" blood elves who pranced around with their pretty princess stories or DARK AND EDGY half vampire half incubus.

There where guilds that where run by orcs, but they where so incredibly... Rigid. Too much in the other direction.

Only one way to go, really, mon.

That is a point. If people really want story, they can go on roleplay servers. But still, that seems kind of lazy of Blizzard.