World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[Revenant]

It's the end of the expansion, a lot of people will return upon Legion. From what I've gathered about the upcoming expansion, it will have more content for non-raiders than WoD (Diablo-style drop legendaries, etc.).

Also, realms are listed as low pop because most smaller ones are now connected. To get a representation of how many players are online, visit capitals - or even better - Warspear or Stormshield. They are crowded on higher pop realms.

As for the empty locations, most people nowadays level via the dungeon finder. And even then, the locations are not empty on higher pop realms. I even got ganked while leveling an alt a while ago.

 

[SionIV]

It's the end of the expansion, a lot of people will return upon Legion. From what I've gathered about the upcoming expansion, it will have more content for non-raiders than WoD (Diablo-style drop legendaries, etc.).

Also, realms are listed as low pop because most smaller ones are now connected. To get a representation of how many players are online, visit capitals - or even better - Warspear or Stormshield. They are crowded on higher pop realms.

As for the empty locations, most people nowadays level via the dungeon finder. And even then, the locations are not empty on higher pop realms. I even got ganked while leveling an alt a while ago.

The last time they gave us subscription numbers, it was 4 000 000 players, and they have lost at least another million by now. They started with 10 500 000 players, now they are at around 3 000 000. As I said before, not since the release of the game has the subscription number been this low, and it has never fallen so fast. Those 4 000 000 players was WITH the token, people though the token would bring more subscriptions, but it still fell. There is no alternative reason for the realm populations being low, it's a simple fact, 60% OF THE PLAYERBASE LEFT THE GAME. We have almost half a year before a Legion release, more people will quit for every day, and you're naive if you think they will all return.

Legion looks incredible boring and the Artifact Weapon thing is downright stupid, and trust me, after WoD people will think twice before buying another expansion.

 

[Revenant]

...and 4 million subs are still a hell of a lot for a MMO. Did it occur to you that maybe it's not WoW that is dying, but the MMO genre itself? Do you think the same number of people would play the same WoW today as it was during its peak sub in WotLK/Cata?

Let me tell you what's gonna happen. A lot of casuals will quit the game, but there will always be a number of people who will stay, namely raiders and roleplayers, because they simply have nowhere else to go. Look at Eve Online - its subs are almost constant throughout the years, because the players are comparatively hardcore to those of average WoW players. The inflated WoW subs in the past decade were a pop culture phenomenon, once your typical jocks quit the game there will remain a stable player base for many years. And it will be quite big (that is, in millions).

 

[SionIV]

...and 4 million subs are still a hell of a lot for a MMO. Did it occur to you that maybe it's not WoW that is dying, but the MMO genre itself? Do you think the same number of people would play the same WoW today as it was during its peak sub in WotLK/Cata?

Let me tell you what's gonna happen. A lot of casuals will quit the game, but there will always be a number of people who will stay, namely raiders and roleplayers, because they simply have nowhere else to go. Look at Eve Online - its subs are almost constant throughout the years, because the players are comparatively hardcore to those of average WoW players. The inflated WoW subs in the past decade were a pop culture phenomenon, once your typical jocks quit the game there will remain a stable player base for many years. And it will be quite big (that is, in millions).

For a game that has always kept between 7 (low) to 10 (high) million players over 8 years, having a sudden drop down to 3 million, clearly show us that something is wrong.

Raiders have been just as vocal with their complaints as everyone else, and many of them unsubscribe between raid content. How do you think the raiders feel about an entire year with no new content for them to clear?

Roleplayers have been diminishing by a lot in the last years, I'm playing on RP realms myself and it's very hard to find people willing to do it anymore.

It doesn't help that WoW has been alienating their hardcore playerbase, by focusing more on casual things (with the exception of mythic) and dumbing down the game. Ever since MoP Blizzard has focused on the casual playerbase, and that hasn't changed in WoD. Some of the most hardcore players are the PvPers, and they have been ignored for an entire expansion.

People don't even follow the worlds first anymore, something that used to be huge, we even have a documentary about the race to worlds first. Most of the legendary raiding guilds have also quit and went to other online games instead.

Remember how Blizzard told us that they couldn't give us anymore content in MoP, because all developers were focusing on WoD. Remember how 50% of the things they promised us (Garrison locations, New Capital Cities, etc) never got into the game? People don't get burned twice, which is why that excuse won't work this time around with Legion.

 

[Cromwell]

What do you mean by no new raiding content for 14 months, shouldnt the expansion be out in 5 months?

 

[SionIV]

What do you mean by no new raiding content for 14 months, shouldnt the expansion be out in 5 months?

Legion should be out in about half a year, but the last major patch came out a long time ago. What I mean is that when Legion does come out, it's been over a year since the last major patch. The last major patch came out in 06/23/2015, now if you take into consideration that legion will get released in 5-6 months from now... I'm sure you can do the math.

 

[Bester]

Legion should be out in about half a year

That'll raise the population back to 8 mil for a month or so, and then it's dead, Jim. The last convulsion.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Arguing about WoW expansions now and their effect on the game is like having a heated debate about the effect of this or that speck of dust landing on a giant pile of fecal matter. Screw end-game content, most of that stuff is for OCD nerds, most MMO players would rather just adventure in a MASSIVELY MULTI-PLAYER online RPG. This was what WoW was in vanilla and maybe to some degree in the first 2 expansions, but with every expansion, starting with The Burning Crusade, Blizzard kept removing the massively part, as well as any open world aspects of the game. Human interaction and sense of adventure gradually replaced with queues, search tools, automatic functionality, pointless boxed PvP and so on. This game has been dead for a while now.

 

[SionIV]

Legion should be out in about half a year

That'll raise the population back to 8 mil for a month or so, and then it's dead, Jim. The last convulsion.

I don't think it'll even reach 8 million players. There is also some talk about Blizzard offering free game time with their movie, they are that desperate to get people.

 

[Hobo Elf]

but with every expansion, starting with The Burning Crusade, Blizzard kept removing the massively part, as well as any open world aspects of the game. Human interaction and sense of adventure gradually replaced with queues, search tools, automatic functionality, pointless boxed PvP and so on. This game has been dead for a while now.

If anything there was even more outdoor interaction in TBC than there was in Vanilla. Once you got to level cap in Vanilla that was it, you didn't have any reason to leave the capital except to go to a dungeon. In TBC they added the daily quest hubs that put both factions in the same spot which caused some heated player interaction on PvP servers. It wasn't until Wrath when they started to cut down interaction.

 

[SionIV]

but with every expansion, starting with The Burning Crusade, Blizzard kept removing the massively part, as well as any open world aspects of the game. Human interaction and sense of adventure gradually replaced with queues, search tools, automatic functionality, pointless boxed PvP and so on. This game has been dead for a while now.

If anything there was even more outdoor interaction in TBC than there was in Vanilla. Once you got to level cap in Vanilla that was it, you didn't have any reason to leave the capital except to go to a dungeon. In TBC they added the daily quest hubs that put both factions in the same spot which caused some heated player interaction on PvP servers. It wasn't until Wrath when they started to cut down interaction.

The introduction of LFD (Looking-For-Dungeon) really crushed the realm community. It didn't help that they made dungeons the fastest way to level up, you could sit semi-afk in stormwind from level 15 to 85/90/100.

 

[Israfael]

What do you mean by no new raiding content for 14 months, shouldnt the expansion be out in 5 months?

Currently the problem is that there's no continuity between lesser raiding formats and mythic - before WoD, people could enter next difficulty without the need to assemble another, generally bigger team, like you have to do now. Many old 10 man guilds collapsed because of that, and even more guilds die each day because of extreme roster flux. My guild almost collapsed twice because of that and even at 12/13 mythic there's no guarantee that people will stay. Too much opportunities for gear whores, idiots, sociopaths and just plain dicks to ruin the day for 19-18 others.

 

[SionIV]

What do you mean by no new raiding content for 14 months, shouldnt the expansion be out in 5 months?

Currently the problem is that there's no continuity between lesser raiding formats and mythic - before WoD, people could enter next difficulty without the need to assemble another, generally bigger team, like you have to do now. Many old 10 man guilds collapsed because of that, and even more guilds die each day because of extreme roster flux. My guild almost collapsed twice because of that and even at 12/13 mythic there's no guarantee that people will stay. Too much opportunities for gear whores, idiots, sociopaths and just plain dicks to ruin the day for 19-18 others.

I liked 10 man raiding, and I think it was stupid of them to remove it. It was a way for a small group of friends to be able to have fun and raid together, without needing a lot of people.

 

[Cyberarmy]

They removed 10 man raids ?!?!

 

[Revenant]

No, they didn't. Both Normal and Heroic raids are now flexible, which means they can be done by a group of any size between 10 and 30 people. Mythic, however, is fixed on 20man, which seems to upset some peeps.

 

[shihonage]

Arguing about WoW expansions now and their effect on the game is like having a heated debate about the effect of this or that speck of dust landing on a giant pile of fecal matter. Screw end-game content, most of that stuff is for OCD nerds, most MMO players would rather just adventure in a MASSIVELY MULTI-PLAYER online RPG. This was what WoW was in vanilla and maybe to some degree in the first 2 expansions, but with every expansion, starting with The Burning Crusade, Blizzard kept removing the massively part, as well as any open world aspects of the game. Human interaction and sense of adventure gradually replaced with queues, search tools, automatic functionality, pointless boxed PvP and so on. This game has been dead for a while now.

THIS.

The reason I left "real WoW" is because I was always traversing through massive unpopulated spaces with nobody in sight. It became the dullest single-player RPG in existence. Fuck instanced content. It should never be even close to a main feature in an MMO.

 

[Ulminati]

They gave up on PvP and they won't even introduce a new Battleground in Legion. People aren't doing Arenas anymore, and the PvP content that we have is boring as hell.

Average queue time for arenas yesterday was 10-15 seconds for rated, instant for skirmish. Late at night after the teenaged go to sleep.

The real queues are for battlegrounds and Ashran. And then mostly of your are Alliance. According to worldofwargraphs, 80% PvP players are Alliance. And of those, 85% are human and 10% are night elves (mostly druids) because the human racial ability (free extra trinket) is completely out of whack.

I'm not overly worried about the lack of a PvP battleground in legion - ashran and wintergrasp were the ones I played, and they were both terribly dull. You grind them for a few hours to get your greens, then gtfo. World PvP will probably be better for a short while, then die when they reintroduce flying and everyone is either in an instance of in the air where you can't attack them.

 

[SionIV]

They gave up on PvP and they won't even introduce a new Battleground in Legion. People aren't doing Arenas anymore, and the PvP content that we have is boring as hell.

Average queue time for arenas yesterday was 10-15 seconds for rated, instant for skirmish. Late at night after the teenaged go to sleep.

The real queues are for battlegrounds and Ashran. And then mostly of your are Alliance. According to worldofwargraphs, 80% PvP players are Alliance. And of those, 85% are human and 10% are night elves (mostly druids) because the human racial ability (free extra trinket) is completely out of whack.

I'm not overly worried about the lack of a PvP battleground in legion - ashran and wintergrasp were the ones I played, and they were both terribly dull. You grind them for a few hours to get your greens, then gtfo. World PvP will probably be better for a short while, then die when they reintroduce flying and everyone is either in an instance of in the air where you can't attack them.

I don't know in which thread they linked the numbers, but right now there are around 5 000 - 6 000 people playing the arena, at the end of MoP there were something like 20 000 - 40 000 and at the start of MoP there were over 100 000. This is the reason I'm saying that no one is playing arena anymore, compared to the amount that used to do so before. It doesn't help that only 8% of the people who enter arena are horde. This is also the reason that the arena ratings look completely different now than they did before.

I'm going to have to ask you how much you PvP, if you're not worried about lack of PvP Battlegrounds in legion. Ashran is complete shit, and when you've done every battleground 200+ times, it gets tiresome, and you want something new and exciting.

 

[Scroo]

it's true, wow arena is in a sorry state. 2v2 is a joke blizzard gave up long ago when they just introduced dampening bc they had no clue how to balance healing and in general the pvp community is incredibly small by now. As Sion says, the numbers of arena players is a fraction of what it was a few years ago.

The lack of new BGs and Arena maps for the second expansion in a row now just shows how much of a crap they give about pvp - the pvp talent trees cannot hide this.

 

[SionIV]

Season 15: ~300k
WoD Season 1: ~200k
WoD Season 2 (3rd week): ~20k

Those were the numbers, and now we're under 8 000. You can find the information at arenamate.net if you do a bit searching.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

If anything there was even more outdoor interaction in TBC than there was in Vanilla. Once you got to level cap in Vanilla that was it, you didn't have any reason to leave the capital except to go to a dungeon. In TBC they added the daily quest hubs that put both factions in the same spot which caused some heated player interaction on PvP servers. It wasn't until Wrath when they started to cut down interaction.

Well, I am not saying every single thing in TBC or in WotLK was bad, but the overall direction of them was wrong. Look at vanilla dungeons for example, like Blackrock Depths or Mauradon, these were huge, non-linear places where you had to have knowledge to even know where to go, and could find a ton of side stuff if you wanted. In TBC, on the other hand, the dungeons were basically short linear corridors, where you run through a few rooms, collect the loot, and leave. Wasn't TBC also when they started introducing instanced PvP? I might be wrong, it was years ago. And by WotLK, they had phasing and all that other crap.

The introduction of LFD (Looking-For-Dungeon) really crushed the realm community. It didn't help that they made dungeons the fastest way to level up, you could sit semi-afk in stormwind from level 15 to 85/90/100.

Yep, this I actually remember like it was yesterday. They announced the LFD tool, and it was so freaking OBVIOUS it would ruin human interactions right off the bat to anyone with half a brain. Before that damned tool, you had to actually either know people on the server, or message them from a server list, strike up a conversation, etc, and this would create all kinds of bonds on the server over time. After, nobody needed to know anyone else.

The reason I left "real WoW" is because I was always traversing through massive unpopulated spaces with nobody in sight. It became the dullest single-player RPG in existence. Fuck instanced content. It should never be even close to a main feature in an MMO.

Yeah, it was so crazy how much things changed from when I started playing WoW to around the time I quit (right before Cataclism). I have such awesome memories from the early days, most of which have to do with getting around the huge non-instanced world and experiencing it with other players playing on that server. Off the top of my head, there were certain dungeons with good loot that would be very hard to get to, before the damn LFD teleporter. You needed to get like 2 or 3 group member to the summoning stone to summon everyone else (I might be off on the numbers, was a long time ago), so I remember as an Alliance member, making the long dangerous trek on a PvP server through Horde territory (like the Barrens or those undead lands near Scarlett Monstery), just to be able to get there. That's what creates fun adventures and good stories, now it's just a bare Skinner box.

 

[Ninjerk]

Well, there was also a time when Summoning Stones did't do anything IIRC (just marked that there was an instance portal nearby, maybe opened a LFG chat?) and you needed a Warlock to summon.

 

[J1M]

Well, there was also a time when Summoning Stones did't do anything IIRC (just marked that there was an instance portal nearby, maybe opened a LFG chat?) and you needed a Warlock to summon.

The current summoning stones are version 3. The first two attempts at creating them were so terrible that nobody used them, as you noted. Functionality such as, hey I want to find people to do a dungeon, instead of asking in chat I will fly all the way out to the dungeon and use the summoning stone to add myself to a list of people interested in the dungeon. (And by doing so remove myself from the chat room where others are looking.)

 

[Ninjerk]

Well, there was also a time when Summoning Stones did't do anything IIRC (just marked that there was an instance portal nearby, maybe opened a LFG chat?) and you needed a Warlock to summon.

The current summoning stones are version 3. The first two attempts at creating them were so terrible that nobody used them, as you noted. Functionality such as, hey I want to find people to do a dungeon, instead of asking in chat I will fly all the way out to the dungeon and use the summoning stone to add myself to a list of people interested in the dungeon. (And by doing so remove myself from the chat room where others are looking.)

It's funny that such an idea made it all the way to implementation before anyone thought of it as maybe not such a bright idea.

 

[J1M]

Well, there was also a time when Summoning Stones did't do anything IIRC (just marked that there was an instance portal nearby, maybe opened a LFG chat?) and you needed a Warlock to summon.

The current summoning stones are version 3. The first two attempts at creating them were so terrible that nobody used them, as you noted. Functionality such as, hey I want to find people to do a dungeon, instead of asking in chat I will fly all the way out to the dungeon and use the summoning stone to add myself to a list of people interested in the dungeon. (And by doing so remove myself from the chat room where others are looking.)

It's funny that such an idea made it all the way to implementation before anyone thought of it as maybe not such a bright idea.

What's sadder/funnier is that I believe that I described version 2, after they admitted the stones were useless and set about improving them.