Cataclysm

[Merusk]

Way to avoid Moihane's statement that the subs were falling faster than after previous X-pacs.

[Rokal]

Ah, missed that detail since the article I linked is laced with PR-fluff.

"Players are consuming Cataclysm's content faster than any expansion before it, so subscriber levels started to drop off more quickly than they have previously."

[Paelos]

Like I've said before, people had recurring subs. The full impact of sub loss won't be noticed until Q2 when those subs (like mine) which were active as of March 31, expired in Q2.

I would expect the sub loss at that point would be 15-20%, or around 1.5-2M subs lost.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Yeah, that 600k could account for monthly subs or even a fraction of monthly subs. What we don't have is data on people who have canclled their 3-6 months subscriptions yet.

[Fordel]

Players are consuming content faster then ever, yet they held off on putting in the new raid last patch because not enough people were along progression wise. 

[Rokal]

People probably consumed the non-raid content faster than ever. 80-85 was pretty fast, there were less 5-mans than in TBC or even Wrath, and the rep grinds were pretty light. Hell, if I wasn't raiding, I'd have probably stopped playing by the end of January because I would have run out of content. Clearly a large portion of the dev resources went to redoing 1-60, but that wasn't technically part of the expansion. Plus people had access to that before Cata even launched. They redid some of the class mechanics in refreshing ways (hunters namely), but there was no new class. 1-60 was pretty fun, but if I already have a shaman at 80, i'm not going to remake him just to do 1-60. You might have done the new 1-60 once or even twice, but your only options were the same classes we've been playing for 6+ years, and you had to redo Northrend and Outlands if you wanted to get your new characters any further.

The old 1-60 was pretty awful, but it's obvious that half (or more) of Blizzard's resources with Cata went into redoing 1-60, and i'm not sure it really paid off.

[Selby]

People probably consumed the non-raid content faster than ever. 80-85 was pretty fast, there were less 5-mans than in TBC or even Wrath, and the rep grinds were pretty light. Hell, if I wasn't raiding, I'd have probably stopped playing by the end of January because I would have run out of content.

My problem precisely.  5 new zones, of which you really only had to do 3 of them to get to 85 (without even really doing serious dungeon runs).  Then at 85 if you aren't geared for heroics, you get to run 3... count 'em... 3 dungeons for gear to try and qualify.  Because I have a strong raiding community they brought me back and kept me engaged.  If I was dealing with what I was dealing with back in January I likely would have quit out of boredom.

The old 1-60 was pretty awful, but it's obvious that half (or more) of Blizzard's resources with Cata went into redoing 1-60, and i'm not sure it really paid off.

I think this is a big issue.  I think the new 1-60 content that I've done is pretty cool and enjoyable, but it's really fast.  And then you get sent to Outlands where the quest structure completely changes and is back to how it used to be with brick walls you try and crash through as fast as possible.  Same with Northrend to a lesser extent.  And considering how many 80's I had when Cata came out, going back to re-level a bunch of characters I already had maxed out just wasn't an interesting time or prospect for me unless I feel like switching servers and leaving all of my friends.  People like me got 5 new zones and 5 dungeons to run until we met the requirements for end game heroics\raids, which definitely shortens the amount of time and effort to spend.

[WindupAtheist]

I've been hearing that Cata isn't out in China yet and most of these losses are from the West, which means it's going to look even worse to the average Joe just looking around his server. How many subscribers did they have in the West, at last count?

Shedding 100k+ subscribers per month, working as intended!

[Sjofn]

I do think another mistake beyond the "eez hard" factor is that there are less choices in leveling from 80-85 than you had going from 70-80. The actual best part about WotLK for me was how different the experience could be, especially between factions. You do Cataclysm once, and you've basically only missed one zone, which is a good idea to go back and do anyway for all the faction. And they're the same for both sides until the Arathi Highlands. That is way, way, WAY less replayability.

[Paelos]

The old 1-60 was pretty awful, but it's obvious that half (or more) of Blizzard's resources with Cata went into redoing 1-60, and i'm not sure it really paid off.

I think this is a big issue.  I think the new 1-60 content that I've done is pretty cool and enjoyable, but it's really fast.  And then you get sent to Outlands where the quest structure completely changes and is back to how it used to be with brick walls you try and crash through as fast as possible.  Same with Northrend to a lesser extent.  And considering how many 80's I had when Cata came out, going back to re-level a bunch of characters I already had maxed out just wasn't an interesting time or prospect for me unless I feel like switching servers and leaving all of my friends.  People like me got 5 new zones and 5 dungeons to run until we met the requirements for end game heroics\raids, which definitely shortens the amount of time and effort to spend.

I agree with that point, and it was an original problem I had with the idea when it was floated as a possible expansion at the beginning of this behemoth thread. I honestly couldn't believe they would be so crazy, and I was admittedly wrong. They were that crazy. You simply can't get enough bang for your buck as a developer pumping most of your resources into redoing part of the game that people simply blast through.

[Rokal]

And they *really* blast through it. Between all the heirloom items, a smaller exp curve, and guild buffs, you blaze through 1-60 in a very short amount of playtime. With heirlooms and the guild buff you outlevel zones before you complete all the quests in them, and usually I found myself gaining about 10 levels per zone if I completed it to the quest achievement quota even if that zone was only supposed to support 5 levels.

Looking at this leveling chart, as an alliance player there are:

5 1-10 zones
5 10-20 zones
4 20-25 zones
3 25-30 zones
4 30-35 zones
3 35-40 zones
2 40-45 zones
5 45-50 zones
4 50-55 zones
1 55-60 zone (Silithus and Winterspring are still in the game, but they weren't redone)

This may seem like a decent spread, if not a little bulky, until you realize that with heirlooms and the guild buff one of those 20-25 zones will last you until level 30. It's actually more like 7 20-30 zones in function, and the same is true for 30-40, 40-50, and 50-60. By the time you reach level 60 with heirloom items, you'll have completed maybe 6/36 zones if you finish the quests in each, or about 17% of the redone content. There was no reason to remake that many zones, most players probably would have been happy with 2 different zones for each level range, not 3-5 (or 6-10 with this particular leveling speed). But instead of remaking half the number of zones they did and leaving the other half untouched, or putting fewer quests in each zone and expecting players to move to new zones faster, they remade everything (save Winterspring and Silithus)

And they did this for two factions   If you consider that they did this for horde and alliance, it's more like 9% of the content

It might have been a good move for a new game where people hadn't already had a chance to try all the classes for the past 6-7 years and you could expect players to make the trip to the level cap a bunch more times, but most players are going to take advantage of 9-18% of the redone content if they repeat no zones (1 or 2 new characters), and they'll probably never really touch the rest.

[Koyasha]

The last character I leveled in Cataclysm before quitting was on a brand new server.  I had only the benefit of being in a guild that had the xp buff.  By the time I had finished Westfall, I was already encountering numerous green quests, and Redridge went grey almost immediately on my arrival.  I gave up questing and leveled the rest of the way through the LFD system, and even with basically no quests, it was still the fastest I've ever leveled a character, including the time I did the recruit-a-friend thing with a friend and we leveled up a pair of characters together.  That was still slower than me solo-leveling via LFD.

I am certain that part of the reason I quit Cataclysm so soon after trying it out was because I blasted through the levels and didn't even see most of the stuff they supposedly changed.  The trip to 80 was far too short.  I probably still would have quit even if it had taken longer - I'm basically tired of WoW - but it would have taken me several times longer before I decided to quit, and maybe in that time something would have been introduced to keep my interest longer.  Probably not, but it's possible.

So yeah, I agree that this time around, people are blowing through the content much faster than ever before, and this probably contributes to people quitting shortly after the expansion.

[Sjofn]

Basically, WoW accomplished something I didn't think possible: They actually did, in fact, make leveling a little too fast. 

[Simond]

To paraphrase an old joke: it wasn't the levelling speed it was the sudden stop at the end. 

[Kail]

Basically, WoW accomplished something I didn't think possible: They actually did, in fact, make leveling a little too fast. 

I don't know about that, 1-60 is definitely the most fun I've had levelling in WoW.  But alts are kind of pointless for me because no matter how fun it is, you know Outland is coming up.  I would have liked to see them do a few new world zones so that you could level from 1-80 in them.  I don't mind Outland so much (dungeon exp is still pretty crazy there), but once you get to Northrend levelling crawls.  And I've already seen it a half dozen times back when it was relevant.  You don't need seven 20-30 zones, not when any one of them will take you basically through the entire ten levels, and you can also level via the dungeon finder or PvP nowadays. Take some of the redundant level 20-50 zones and retool them into level 60-80 zones and I might want to make some more alts through the game, but I'm just dog tired of trudging through Dragonblight over and over.

[Fabricated]

I really liked pretty much all of the 1-60 content I played sadly. If I didn't get burnt out and know that I'd never really be able to raid again after my release-day guild broke up I'd probably have rolled my first horde character to 60.

[Setanta]

You know, if they had redone the original zones as 1-70 not 1-60 it would have made a lot more sense. Engage your audience with your revamp and let them get immersed in the lead up to Northrend, set itemisation away from TBC (itemisation in TBC is now "meh") in the "new old-world" and give the audience an opportunity to skip past the orphaned expansion. There was even scope to re-do original dungeons as L65 etc.

[Mattemeo]

Somewhat irrelevant to Cataclysm but didn't warrant starting a new thread; I started playing my old Human Male Rogue the other night and I just found it so difficult to adjust to after playing females of various species and gnomes. Human males just seem so horribly disproportionate.

And then I found the guy that Blizzard clearly believe makes a fine example for 'average' and based the model on:


That, right there, that's a Human Male hand in WoW. Wtf.

[Samprimary]

When trying to explain sexual dimorphism in world of warcraft:

Draenei: The ever-honorable draenei, while crashing their ship, held to Velen's established policy of 'women and linebackers first'
Night Elves: moonwell gut
Everyone else: the roids

[Sjofn]

Eh, it's not just the human males that have hilariously big hands. Check out a female blood elf sometime. They're huuuuuuge. <3

[Rokal]

I'd have welcomed seeing an alternate 60-80 path through the old world. It's clear that there are more than enough excessive zones in the old world, which could have been re-balanced for 60+. Alternatively, they could have tuned a couple of those zones as 80+ content, so you had more options from 80-85 (or so that they had enough content to push the cap to 90). Obviously as a player, redoing Azshara or EPL is a little less exciting than doing a completely new zone, but if the remake was substantial enough I'd probably have liked it.

STV is a good example of a zone that would have probably worked for this. One of the larger old world zones, almost everyone ran it beforehand so it hits a nostalgic note, and they did a lot of tera-forming so that the zone feels new again. They could have had a build-up to the Zandalari dungeons too.

[Fordel]

So like, how do you make your hands that big? Just a genetic freak of nature or is there some kind of Bizarre training to do that?

It's a fucking catchers mitt.

[Nevermore]

Eh, it's not just the human males that have hilariously big hands. Check out a female blood elf sometime. They're huuuuuuge. <3

That seems more of a case of the hands are normal, but the rest of them are made out of pipe cleaners. 

[Sjofn]

Fair enough! Lady night elves have some major hands as well. Maybe it's an elf thing. No asses, giant hands.

[Ashamanchill]

Okay, it's really starting to gnaw at me; what the hell is on that paper their hands are covering? Is it some sort of zany Russian crossword? a racing form? What the hell is that thing?!?!

[Malakili]

Okay, it's really starting to gnaw at me; what the hell is on that paper their hands are covering? Is it some sort of zany Russian crossword? a racing form? What the hell is that thing?!?!

Crossword

[Simond]

Fair enough! Lady night elves have some major hands as well. Maybe it's an elf thing. No asses, giant hands.

(They're all secretly men in drag)

[Lantyssa]

That seems more of a case of the hands are normal, but the rest of them are made out of pipe cleaners. 

Feet, too.  Draenei have that one quest where they impersonate a barefoot Blood Elf and the size of their feet compared to their toothpick legs is jarring.

[sinij]

Activision Blizzard's earning call was today and we learned, among other things, that the WoW playerbase is down to 11.4M players. That's 5% less than before the expansion. That's down by about 5% from the announced 12 million mark late last year. Interestingly enough, that was right before Cataclysm released. In fact, it's actually lower than the milestone reached in 2008 with the release of Wrath of the Lich King.
 

This after window dressing it as much as possible for earnings call. Actual number might be lower and is still dropping.

[Tannhauser]

Eh, it's not just the human males that have hilariously big hands. Check out a female blood elf sometime. They're huuuuuuge. <3

"She got man-hands Jerry!"

[Merusk]

Fair enough! Lady night elves have some major hands as well. Maybe it's an elf thing. No asses, giant hands.

Based on RP server data, elves need big hands to wrap them around the gigantic orc/ dwarf cocks they're always grabbing.

[Sjofn]

My elves only grab other elf cocks, thankyouverymuch.

[Khaldun]

While you're looking, that is.

[Azazel]

Logged on for the second time in 4 days during my "7 days please come back" trial. Spent about an hour fucking around with my Warlock, just flew from Shatt over to Nagrand and did a half-dozen quests since I had no desire to log on my higher level characters or even my mid-70's alts, since as mentioned a few posts up, as nice as Northrend is, levelling is fucking slow. What stood out to me the most is what stood out to me during that almost-hour when I got 1/3 of my level, was the contrast that WoW had when I started playing, compared to EQ.

In EQ, you often had to sit LFG for 20-40mins before you could get a group to go do something. In WoW, you could just log on and achieve something (in MMO-terms) worthwhile in 20-40mins.
 

[WindupAtheist]

So that Sam Raimi Warcraft movie is supposed to come out in 2013. What do you think the odds are it actually gets made?