3.1 - will it bring back some spark?

[Blatman]

Seems me and many guildies have finally been hitting the wall on this one, with four long time players already gone, and people actually posting that they are bored, have we run out of gas on this game?

We are very far from elite, still stuggling with Maly 25 and havn't done 3D, but still there just doesn't seem to be the spirit there was in BC and I can't put my finger on it. Have we been playing to long, was the content to easy, have the old players left the game and the waves of new ones brought a different expectation to the game.

I have taken breaks from the game before, longest being about 3 months but for different reasons and certainly not with others feeling the same. With Summer coming in the North as well there are quite a few people indicating their intention to take breaks as well.

Not sure 3.1 will do it, how you guys finding sentiment in your guilds?

 

[TofuMofu]

Well...

My guild disbanded due to a lack of raiding members. People just don't log on as much as before.

I've started leveling other characters as being lvl 80 is boring...

 

[Voicy]

There is definitely a noticeable disturbance in the force.

I think people are constantly disappointed by Blizzard more than anything else... the latest announcement being the pathetic Tier designs set to be released.

The influx of overpowering death knights who roll on every bit of DPS gear there is also didn't impress many people.

As much as I'm enjoying 25man raids, the /roll system has proven to count against me severely... and on top of that I'm still using blue daggers on my assassination rogue since the only 2 daggers fast enough worth using are in naxx25.

I've ended up spending >12,000g on getting my gear up to scratch - only to be outrolled on lvl213 gear by some n00b in 70 epics and northrend greens... Sure - that is an issue that is to be taken up with the raid leader, but there is no DKP in PUGs.

Anyway - the game was very entertaining but has turned into a repetitive raiding & farming "obligation".

As soon as Star Wars: The old republic/Stargate Worlds hits I'm canceling my WoW subby.

 

[Pornolio]

Well from my point of view...

WOTLK is a massive failure. Ulduar wont be enough to keep people occupied.
All the guilds doing naxx now will go to ulduar once it comes out, and unless they open an additional chamber in the chamber of aspects, one instance will not keep everyone busy for too long. Its allready been stated Ulduar will only be a tiny notch up in difficulty from Naxx with the exception of one boss (Algalon) which will be hard.

This is where I think Wrath failed :

1 - Difficulty of the game was removed to cater for more casuals... fine its nice and dandy everyone is doing naxx 25 man heroic now, but at the same time, like any encounter once you have mastered it, its a smooth kill every week. And if even the casuals can clear the hardest instance in game in one night...
2 - You dont require a raid leader with brains anymore. Gone are the days where you had to sit down and analyze how to take down a boss... group setups and contructing a raid force with certain classes. Just slap 25 guys together and everything stacks raid wide.
3 - Gone are the days where you had to enforce careful pulling, and enforce good crowd control. Now its pull everything at once, AOE it down.
4 - No more resistance gear farming. I missed the days in classic WoW where I had to sit and camp out in the undergrounds caves in Silithus to kill a certain mob because I needed his shell to craft resistance gear. You needed insane mats, and it wasnt farmed in 10 min's.
5 - Bring the player not the class... biggest failure of the lot. Ghostcrawler changed a lot of the game mechanics when previous Lead designer Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) left to work on the next generation MMO from blizzard.
Now that healers do very good dps, you end up in a situation on realms where there just are no healers... they dont want to heal anymore.
Same with tanks... warrior dps is damn good !
6 - A lot of classes ended up with redundant abilities. Most classes rely on spamming 1 / 2 / 3 buttons at most. Just from the hunter camp, we lost so many abilities which are now redundant..eg. eyes of the beast for special pulling conditions, Aspect of the monkey, Aspect of the Wild, Distracting shot, the list goes on and on.
7 - Burst damage with class redesigns for pvp. This broke PVP completely.
Having 1k resilience wont help you jack in arena nowdays.
8 - Class imbalances. - Ret pala's immunity and smacking down ppl with their bubbles up.
9 - Epics lost their value. Every Tom dick and Harry has Epic's nowdays.
By making epic's easily obtainable you loose the accomplishment / admiration factor and drive that players had when they saw people with rare or hard to obtain items.
10 - Too many drastic changes at once with classes. No more finetuning, its massive gung-ho changes with serious implications to classes and playing styles.

The subscriber numbers are definately showing churn... lets hope they pull it all together before WoW just ends up being a "regular" MMO.

 

[Blatman]

Pornolio is there any reliable information on Wow subscriber base, that's not controlled by Blizzard, as I only ever hear that its going up - 10 - 11 - 12 million!

Which is kind of the reason for my post. If subscriber numbers are still increasing then the lack of enthusiasm for the game must lie with me and not neccessarily the game content. Perhaps I am klinging to a game which has changed for the better (for the masses) and is not for me anymore.

 

[Abe]

1 - Difficulty of the game was removed to cater
....
massive gung-ho changes with serious implications to classes and playing styles.

And burst damage is just too insane and gear has too much of an effect. There is very little skill required for PVP now days. He who hits first, wins, unless it's a Ret Pally or DK in which case they almost always win. I know I am over simplifying things but, IMO, a skilled player should be able to get ganked and still win the fight, through skill and not gear. Right now, one can get 4 times your health from gear and it's the same for everything. IMO, 2 to 2 1/2 should be the max. I know that flies in the face the WOW model which is all about keeping people online with better and better gear, but thats just my opinion.

 

[Abe]

Pornolio is there any reliable information on Wow subscriber base, that's not controlled by Blizzard, as I only ever hear that its going up - 10 - 11 - 12 million!

Which is kind of the reason for my post. If subscriber numbers are still increasing then the lack of enthusiasm for the game must lie with me and not neccessarily the game content. Perhaps I am klinging to a game which has changed for the better (for the masses) and is not for me anymore.

I have a feeling thats it's on the decline, hence the big move to the "new MMO". Blizzard are probably releasing product sales or people who have subscribed in the last x months and not active subscribers.

 

[Pornolio]

@ Blatman...

Subscriber base numbers are very tricky, because in reality blizzard is the only one with the exact figures. So to a degree, they have contol over how much information they wish to release to the public.

What I am pretty sure of... is when Blizzard state they keep on growing etc, and the WOTLK is doing so well etc, its not always a clear indication of where the game is heading. They wont neccesarily admit a product of theirs is a failure. Keep in mind things like, when they launched Russian realms recently, in that area alone they opened the game to a LOT of russian people, so subscriber figures would pick up a lot, but at the same time, if you keep an eye out on the forums (offical and non-official), you will see loads of people whining and complaining about the state of the game, and granted some of them are only empty threats, but if you look @ account sales etc. and high end guilds stopping / quitting, its a very harsh reality that many of the old school wow'ers are very dissapointed in the new-WoW. The trick for them now, is too hold on to subscribers. Its all nice and good that they keep getting new subscribers, but the key now is to keep them hooked. Once you have cleared everything in game... EVERY week... it does become tiresome and thats when customers leave and start playing something else.

I have seen in a few blue posts, that the dev's were admitting that they broke a number of things in WoW ( like pvp eg.), and that they were worried about customer churn. But the reality is, WoW is also a good number of years old now, and its being seen and felt in its outdated graphics engine. Blizzard knows this hence they are pushing forward on their new generation MMO. I would guess that WoW will only see one more expansion before its competely EOL imo.

 

[Pitbull]

WoW is dying.

I used to be a very big fan of WoW. Currently I'm not even playing no more. I used to miss it if I didn't log on atleast once a Night. Now I just don't have the drive to play anymore. Haven't played for a while

 

[noswal]

Well...

My guild disbanded due to a lack of raiding members.

Mine too... Worshipped by Gods on Lightbringer, a respected guild and having cleared all Wotlk content as a guild.

So many ads on the trade channel for new guilds but which will endure?

 

[Pitbull]

Let me be the first person to tell you what killed WoW


DK's
Since they came to the game, everything else just went south.

 

[nerevar]

it aint epic if everyone has it.

 

[Trixanno]

DK's sure as hell killed my beloved Enhancement Shaman

But on the OP....I, for the first time in probably 2 years, installed single player games on my rig this weekend...AND played it!

 

[Pitbull]

DK's sure as hell killed my beloved Enhancement Shaman

But on the OP....I, for the first time in probably 2 years, installed single player games on my rig this weekend...AND played it!

lol +100

I'm thinking of going out and buying Oblivion. I haven't gone out and buyed games in years I bought BF2 not so long ago but never played it. I'm actually playing it now. I'm so over WoW it aint even funny

 

[wow4life]

I have not enjoyed Wrath raiding - too much farming and little or no sense of achievement.

I used to raid lead in TBC and loved many of the instances (epic moments were first kills of Vashj and Kael). Black Temple was a little poor in comparison but tbh never got beyond RoS before quitting.

Came back for Wrath and cleared everything with my old guild and then stopped raiding. I have since left the guild I formed and I am now focussing on PvP, which I love but frustrated as joining late in S5 with a warrior is painful at times.

 

[TheShogun]

Meh, I'm still enjoying WoW, I'm just tired of seeing Naxx 25 now. My guild has downed Sarth 3D 25 now and we've been farming all the other 25man content for months so people are getting bored.
We've kinda got a 10man team thats just starting to attempt Sarth 3D 10 now and while it is interesting it's not thaaaat exciting.
I've starting playing EVE to occupy myself but I won't be canceling my WoW sub anytime soon.
On Sat I logged directly from EVE onto my Pally alt to tank Naxx 10 and it helped me appreciate that I can really enjoy both games because they both provide entertainment in different ways.

 

[Syzygy78]

How can level 80 be boring? The work only really starts at level 80. Have you bought all the best heroic emblem gear you can get? Are you exalted with all the factions that have the best gear/enchants for your class? Have you bought the best epic craftables for your class? If not, then this is probably why you are not in a top guild. Top guilds last, smaller ones do not. You will find that many smaller guilds lose there best players to top raiding guilds on that specific server. Then suddenly your guild is dead and disbands. You won't find it easy to get into a top raiding guild at level 80 if you don't have the BiS items from 5 man heroics/being exalted. PUGS are sometimes fun, but if a good item drops, even the player who dinged 80 that morning has a chance to /roll on an item. Thats how most PUGs work.

I find WOW is still as fun as it was when I started 5 months ago

 

[Syzygy78]

Meh, I'm still enjoying WoW, I'm just tired of seeing Naxx 25 now. My guild has downed Sarth 3D 25 now and we've been farming all the other 25man content for months so people are getting bored.
We've kinda got a 10man team thats just starting to attempt Sarth 3D 10 now and while it is interesting it's not thaaaat exciting.
I've starting playing EVE to occupy myself but I won't be canceling my WoW sub anytime soon.
On Sat I logged directly from EVE onto my Pally alt to tank Naxx 10 and it helped me appreciate that I can really enjoy both games because they both provide entertainment in different ways.

Our 25 man team isn't too hot when it comes to Sath + 3D, we have not downed him yet in this mode. However, we have a very good 10 man team that did Sath +3D in 10 man. Its nice to run around with the "of the nightfall" title. It is a very tough fight though.

 

[Pitbull]

How can level 80 be boring? The work only really starts at level 80. Have you bought all the best heroic emblem gear you can get? Are you exalted with all the factions that have the best gear/enchants for your class? Have you bought the best epic craftables for your class? If not, then this is probably why you are not in a top guild. Top guilds last, smaller ones do not. You will find that many smaller guilds lose there best players to top raiding guilds on that specific server. Then suddenly your guild is dead and disbands. You won't find it easy to get into a top raiding guild at level 80 if you don't have the BiS items from 5 man heroics/being exalted. PUGS are sometimes fun, but if a good item drops, even the player who dinged 80 that morning has a chance to /roll on an item. Thats how most PUGs work.

I find WOW is still as fun as it was when I started 5 months ago

We all did, but after 3 years it gets a little borring to do it all over again for the 3rd time

 

[semaphore]

i'm currently on my 7th time

i take breaks just to make sure it doesn't bore me to pleats