Cracks starting to show?

[Evildrider]

If it were account-wide instead of character-specific, I'd potentially be interested. Lucky this pet looks pretty crappy. 

But I bet they make it an "good to have" pet for the new pokemon system.   

[Merusk]

If it were account-wide instead of character-specific, I'd potentially be interested. Lucky this pet looks pretty crappy. 

But I bet they make it an "good to have" pet for the new pokemon system.   

I've been wondering how well my Zergling, Panda and Diablo will function in said system.  Or any of the Blizzcon & Arena event pets.

( can see Tyrael 1shotting my Diablo.. and Grunty vs Zerg being epic.  )

[Fordel]

Everyone knows the balloon will be the one to rule them all!

[Simond]

Horde Balloon used Float!
It's not very effective...

[Soulflame]

At the very least, balloon is probably immune to ground attacks.

[Rokal]

Air-type pets are weak to fire-type pets though, which are bound to be pretty popular between the last few Blizzcon pets. Seems like a poor choice. Water pets like Murky are bound to be the better competitive pick, considering how few grass-type pets are in WoW.

Noobs.

[Paelos]

The harsh reality for WoW subscriptions is in today. It's uglier than I thought.

PC subscription revenues dropped 33% on a GAAP basis and over 81% on a non-GAAP basis compared to 2010. By my estimates they've lost over half their subscription revenues on a recurring basis for WoW.

EDIT: Sorry should have said for NA, not total sub recurring across the world.

To make an even further point, I think net loss of subscriptions during the quarter was probably 5-8% of the total, or around 600-900k on the net loss. But they are chewing through the amount of reserve revenue they accrued back in 2010. If you look at deferred revenue figures, they had over 1.7 Billion in prepaid deferred revenue in 2010. Now, they have only $487M. A substantial decrease.

[Hawkbit]

I subbed last week for the first time since January.  I made it about five days and threw in the towel last night.  No specific reasons, I think I've just grown out of the genre.  I'm going to try SWTOR at some point to test that theory, but gauging how quickly my interest in Rift tanked, I'm guessing this breakup will come down to a "It's not you, it's me". 

[Rokal]

I think it's more surprising that they still have as many subs as they do. At this point, nobody is happy with Cataclysm, and most players haven't had any new content to do for months. I can't imagine someone going through the Molten Front dailies and thinking "yeah, they've got me for another 4-6 months."

[Ingmar]

What I find myself wondering is that if Cataclysm had been what everyone wanted it to be, what their retention would look like. Which is to say, are they able to look at their sub losses and work out roughly how many of them are specifically due to Cataclysm, and how many are just down to "I have been playing this game for DECADES and it is time to move on"?

I mean, if I look at my own diminished hours of play, I don't know how much I can really put on the stuff I don't like in Cata, it is mostly down to the fact that the core group of people who I spent most of the last 6 years playing with mostly aren't subbed right now, and I think I can only blame Cataclysm directly for a couple of those people. Maybe just losing a couple keystone people to Cata issues was enough to crumble the whole thing, but I think there is probably a strong element of people are tired of WoW, Cata or not.

[Rasix]

Unless SWTOR is absolutely terrible, I do not see myself ever playing WoW again.  Mists of Pandaria anouncement didn't even stir me a little (plus I never finished Cata in the first place).  This feels weird, I used to really love WoW.  I'd get bored and unsub from time to time, but know I'd be coming back.  

Not going into full hater mode, guess I'm finally just done.  I'm guessing more than a few people have come to this conclusion.

What I find myself wondering is that if Cataclysm had been what everyone wanted it to be, what their retention would look like. Which is to say, are they able to look at their sub losses and work out roughly how many of them are specifically due to Cataclysm, and how many are just down to "I have been playing this game for DECADES and it is time to move on"?

Cata wasn't even that bad for me honestly.  I didn't even do any of the new content outside of the new 1-60.  Once the heroic situation was laid out here, I just completely lost all interest in powering my goblin through BC and WoLK.  Air left the balloon at record speed.

[Ingmar]

I will probably stay subbed, but not play much until MoP comes out. I have a hard time letting go. I think at one point in 2004 or so I was subbed to like 5 MMOs at once. 

There's every chance that SWTOR will be the main game for me though, the whole Bioware thing makes that inevitable in my case.

[Rasix]

I think at one point in 2004 or so I was subbed to like 5 MMOs at once.  

 

I've held onto my "no two at once" policy since UO.  I think my wife would seriously stab me if she saw 5 subs on the CC.

[Ingmar]

Something along the lines of DAOC, CoH, WoW, Puzzle Pirates, and a brief foray into EQ2 I think. They might not have ever fully overlapped.

[Sjofn]

I cut out DAoC way faster than Ingmar did. I think my highest is three at once, CoX, WoW, and rotating third, generally.

[Fordel]

He'll stay subbed to a game, not actually play it for half a year, then claim you left HIM when he finally decides to return. 


MoP (or the leaked rumor idea of it) was interesting until I got into SWTOR Beta.

[Rokal]

MoP (or the leaked rumor idea of it) was interesting until I got into SWTOR Beta.

Most I've ever had going at once was two, and that has only happened a few times. I plan to have three going briefly once SWTOR comes out, then I'll dump whichever I'm enjoying least.

I do have a friend that has remained subbed to WoW since the game came out, even though he's gone without playing it for 6+ months multiple times.

[Fordel]

I once had two DaoC subs for a few months. My Kobold Warrior and his Assbot Shaman friend.

That was when subs were still 10 dollars per month, and like 7 if you got a multi-month deal or whatever.



Other wise I only sub 1 game at a time, went DaoC for a long time, then WoW, then a stint in EVE where I tried really hard to like the game, then back to WoW, then nothing until SWTOR steals all my money. Metzen's fan fiction isn't going to be able to compete with Bioware for me.

[luckton]

ActiBliz Investor Call Patch Notes

- World-wide subscription numbers now at 10.3 million, down from 11.4
- Profits are still triple from last quarter last year
- Diablo 3, Call of Duty will keep the company in money-hats for years to come, SWTOR and GW2 be damned.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/08/activision-blizzard-loses-1-1-million-wow-players-triples-profi/

[Tannhauser]

I wanted an underwater zone, Blizzard gave me one and I didn't like it.
I wanted to play a goblin, Blizzard gave me one and I didn't like it.
I wanted new quest storylines, Blizzard gave me some and I didn't like them.

So, no, it wasn't all Blizzards fault.

[Paelos]

I think the long and short of this is that Blizzard isn't really that interested in being in the WoW business anymore, and they won't continue to give it much, if any, real support.

[Simond]

Nah, the long and the short of it is they listened to the wrong fucking people when designing (the 80+ part of) Cataclysm and went "Hey, some people are complaining that Wrath was too easy - let's make Cata heroics and raids impossible to PUG! What could possibly go wrong?"

Today: "Oh yeah. That could happen. welp"

[Rokal]

It's like you're arguing about why the game lost subs Q1 instead of Q3. This thread always delivers.

[Margalis]

I wanted an underwater zone, Blizzard gave me one and I didn't like it.
I wanted to play a goblin, Blizzard gave me one and I didn't like it.
I wanted new quest storylines, Blizzard gave me some and I didn't like them.

So, no, it wasn't all Blizzards fault.

And now everyone asked for Panda Bears and Blizzard is giving them that.

Just giving players what they ask for is not game design, Blizzard's job is to give players what they will actually enjoy. You know, Homer's car and all that. Given the history of underwater levels in games an underwater zone just sounds like a bad idea.

Now that said I think at some point sub levels were bound to drop no matter what. The game is old, it looks old, a lot of what was once unique and fresh about it is now regularly duplicated by most every MMO out there. There are two dozen Korean MMOs that look like competent WoW clones and a lot of them have better graphics. (At least technically) To some degree what they offered is now a commodity product.

At this point the game is not going to attract many new players. The last time I heard someone say "I've never played WoW but I'm going to start" was years ago, at this point it's all about slow bleeding. If anything WoW is so big and established now that starting from scratch must feel daunting. The big thing people talk about with Cata is how it drove some old players away but people seem to forget that Cata was supposed to attract new or long-dormant players, something it seems to not have done at all. To some degree I think people are missing the forest for the trees, the whole world revamp thing ultimately looks like a waste.

I don't think Blizzard failed or deserves blame though. The game launched in 2004 and has 10 million players still. The success has been phenomenal but all good things come to an end.

[Paelos]

No I certainly blame Blizzard for putting so much effort into revamping the early levels. We knew it wouldn't do what they wanted at the expense of so many other things that would have actually retained subscriptions, and we knew it when it was ANNOUNCED. And then there was trying to focus on that whole bullshit of releasing actual dungeon and raid content in the first patch, which they completely fucked up, then lied about, then got busted on the lie.

[Kail]

I know two people who were somehow pulled in by Cataclysm as their first WoW experience.  Both loved the game until they lost interest just after level 60 (it didn't help that they had to buy all the expansions separately).

I think the old world revamp stuff was a good idea, if you're looking to attract new players (and they should do this), but maybe not all at once.  Every expansion should have a new "level path" or something, rather than redoing the entire world.  Old WoW, one thing you could say was that it got better the more you played.  With new WoW, you get the best stuff front loaded, and then have to slog through Outland and Northrend to get back to the new content.

[Rokal]

Cata will have gone about a year without releasing any actual new 5-man content, so that's pretty cool.

I think the old world revamp stuff was a good idea, if you're looking to attract new players (and they should do this), but maybe not all at once.  Every expansion should have a new "level path" or something, rather than redoing the entire world.  Old WoW, one thing you could say was that it got better the more you played.  With new WoW, you get the best stuff front loaded, and then have to slog through Outland and Northrend to get back to the new content.

I'm sort of glad they did at all at once, rather than spreading it out. It means the developers only spent a huge amount of time revamping the game in one expansion instead of spending time on it over 3-4 expansions. It means that this expansion was weak but hopefully that future ones will be stronger.

They had to remake the 1-60 stuff though, or let people skip it entirely. Old 1-60 was awful as of 2009, and fairly embarrassing compared to other recent MMOs. If Cata hadn't revamped the leveling experience, people (myself included) would be saying "they need to revamp the leveling experience, it's unbearable". Their mistake was in re-vamping all of the old leveling experience, rather than revamping enough to get people from 1-60 smoothly. Did we really need 4-5 different leveling paths for a game as old as WoW? They chose the 'perfection' route by redoing almost every old zone even thought it wasn't necessary, rather than making more modest plans. Hell, I'm surprised they didn't spend time revamping Silithus or Winterspring, even though the zones became useless the minute TBC launched.

[Sjofn]

I know two people who were somehow pulled in by Cataclysm as their first WoW experience.  Both loved the game until they lost interest just after level 60 (it didn't help that they had to buy all the expansions separately).

I think the old world revamp stuff was a good idea, if you're looking to attract new players (and they should do this), but maybe not all at once.  Every expansion should have a new "level path" or something, rather than redoing the entire world.  Old WoW, one thing you could say was that it got better the more you played.  With new WoW, you get the best stuff front loaded, and then have to slog through Outland and Northrend to get back to the new content.

That mostly indicates to me that at the very least, they absolutely need to do something about Outland. It is by far the weakest chunk of content they have now. Northrend I think still stands up alright, with multiple paths and a focused story to tell without too many sloggy bits (assuming you're new, like the two people you mention ... WotLK is still too recent for those of us who played through it a dozen times already  ). The problem with Northrend, of course, is that the Northrend story is over, and Cataclysm's isn't as good, since it's "let me tell you how awesome Thrall is." I got sick of 80-85 much, much faster than I got tired of 70-80.

[Simond]

Outland is a day or two of playing and you're done. Northrend is a fucking millstone around the necks of all alts I've tried to level through it, and Cata is even worse.

[caladein]

With the exception of the Indiana Jones half of Uldum (which you can skip easily), I enjoy 80-85 a lot more than 70-80 where I strongly dislike half the zones (Borean, Howling, Dragonblight, Zul'Drak) and really only like Storm Peaks and the solo part of Icecrown much at all.

[Lantyssa]

He'll stay subbed to a game, not actually play it for half a year, then claim you left HIM when he finally decides to return. 

It's so true!

[Merusk]

With the exception of the Indiana Jones half of Uldum (which you can skip easily), I enjoy 80-85 a lot more than 70-80 where I strongly dislike half the zones (Borean, Howling, Dragonblight, Zul'Drak) and really only like Storm Peaks and the solo part of Icecrown much at all.

I'll agree with this because so long as you're in a guild and have rested xp/ heirloom 2.0s you can skip the worst zone in the xpack- Deepholm.

[Ingmar]

Unless you want shoulder enchants. 

[Sjofn]

I fucking hate Deepholm so goddamn much. I skipped it has hard as I could on both my scribes.

But I think I hate Vashj'ir more.

Basically Cataclysm's 80-85 zones, for me, range from barely tolerable (Hyjal, Twilight Highlands) to somewhat hateful after the first time (Uldum) to loathesome even the first time though (Deepholm, Vashj'ir). And Twilight Highlands is only still in tolerable as Alliance, because I love dwarves, and I extra love dwarves getting married. WotLK has some shitty zones, but they are utterly skippable, and it took me I think three days of half-assing it to get through this time. Outland, even thought it's a short trip these days, is still fucking Outland, and I hate it like poison.

[Ingmar]

I actually really like Vash'jir, but post-Firelands the game REALLY incentivizes you to level through Hyjal instead because you have to advance the phasing far enough to get to the free 365 gear.