Gaming Has World Of Warcraft finally peaked?

As subscriber numbers tumble, is it the beginning of the end for the subscription-based MMORPG?

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2012/03/15/wowpeak/1

 

I'm one of those figures that has canceled.

Cata pretty much ruined the game, and the endless gear grinding is a waste of time.

Looking forward to Guild Wars 2 instead.

 

Can you imagine the nerd rage when they finally scrap WOW?

 

The game has slowly been limiting player option, such as it's revamped talent trees (you can now basically only put talents in one of three trees, rather than across the three however you please) and general homogenising and "streamlining" of the classes and levelling process(there is a specific right way to play a certain spec'd class, and certain correct gear).
Combine this with serious feature creep, such as tradeskills being largely useless at lower levels and older dungeons being obsolete and it's not hard to see why WoW is starting to fade.
For a large part of it's reign it hasn't needed to do any major improvements to itself, as there hasn't been any strong enough competition: It's hard enough to make an MMO, let alone one that has to compete against a strong playerbase and several years of polish.

But now that there are MMO's on the horizon that don't try to just copy WoW but do something a bit different (GW2) then they should be worried.

Side note: WoW's "Free to play" model is actually exactly the same as the trial, just without the time limit, level 20 probably takes a few hours to get to, and there's very little content available to you at that level (1 battleground and maybe 3 dungons) I think it was just added so they can include themselves on "lists of F2P MMO's" and to stir up a bit of publicity, I doubt anyone actually plays regularly on a free account.
Also; Hellgate and APB are now F2P

 

Never tried WoW simply because I never really got on with those types of games.

I am playing Star Trek Online and actually enjoying it which I thought I never would but it's actually pretty good.

I would give WoW a try but I cannot justify paying each month for a game that may get played for 5 hours a month compared to other games.

 

I actually preferred Guildwars and looking forward to GW2 but I thought SouthPark killed World of Beardcraft already?

 

No one MMO has taken WOW down, but I think sheer weight of numbers may have done the trick.

 

WOW will die when titan is released as most current wow subscribers will migrate to it

diablo 3 will also do alot of damage to it.

blizzard will kill there own game eventually

10mil subs is still 10mil subs however its spun

Wow for me died at the end of the burning crusade when the imortal muru destroyed alot of high end guilds no encounter has ever been as hard as he was and we are unlikely to see it ever again.

Wow went casual and with it gained alot of subs but lost the basis that had kept a few million raiders active and playing at the same time.

Starwars is making money on 2 mil subs so i dout EA / Bioware care less that they are not #1 on some list of subbed mmos, End of the day the gaming industry just cares about cash. And i dout blizzard have not recieved the costs of wow about 100 times over in subs and expansions.

Would love to see there money made i know at point they were making around 1.1billion a year in subs alone add on 5-6mil people buying a £25 expansion and your talking a huge amount of money

No mmo will ever be like wow again, Either in player subs or expansions released. The world is moving on to casual / story based mmos ( see star wars which is just a single player game with some chat stuck on it and a few dungs you can do with others) The hardcore gaming crowd are not the main target of games such as WOW anymore ( to beat orginal naxx 40man required commitment ).

8 years its been a fun trip for blizzard i quit after 7 years over 1000 days played on main character.

 

That would work out at roughly 40% of those 7 years you spent playing wow (not including alts) how the hell did you manage that? Given that you need sleep and presumably either a job or school

 

Think about it, WoW lived an entire generation on the subscription model. Subscription gaming is a goner.

 

funny thing is they tried to make it more "casual//accessible" and killed their fan base

my main gripes and why i quit

#expansions should be free lot of people left because they kept churning out expansions and forcing more financial commitment, they should have done the d3 route. if you have a 6month+ subscription the expansion should be free

#end game content, lets face it they made levelling easier each expansion yet there is sooo much early game content from the previous year. new players skip this content and once they get to the level cap you get hit with the repetitive grind of daily/raids/dungeons/pvp

#Hardcore people left, lots of good players leave as they kept messing with the core of the game, there was too much off spec and gear change. people who put a lot of time into their character and still do it after being screwed every patch finally got tired of the casual backhand blizzard gave them. When a casual people can gear up to you a month later was insulting. Why put so much effort in when you can get half a tier lower by putting in 1-2 hours a day. the gear gap was so close that there isn't a difference.

#hidden boss patch, i'm fine with patching bosses from RNG wipes but every patch it gets dumber and dumber. I see a point where content should be accessible but they did this with heroic and non heroic already. you still get the story line no matter which one you do so why dumb down the hard stuff?

 

^^ Exactly this.

 

What is WoW ?

dunx

 

Rift all the way baby!

 

Has Wow peaked? Yes. Will it die soon? Probably not. Should I measure my level 80 Paladin for a coffin? No, because he has advanced to level 85. (Someone didn't do their research.)

Anyways....

Will the subscription model die with Wow? I doubt it. The advantage of the sub model is that it is a level playing field: the only way to get the really good gear is to go get it, as opposed to pulling out the credit card and buying it. This is why I do not play F2P: for all the talk of "Free," for most people it actually costs more money than a regular subscription, it's just that most people don't realize how much they are really paying. (This is why so many games have gone f2p, they make the owners more money.)

 

'Make love not Warcraft' is basically how I see warcraft players. I remember seeing a BBC documentary about addicts and it was pretty disturbing seeing how badly peoples lives are affected by it

 

Never played it and won't. Just wondered if any of those that have read the excellent Reamde, the Neal Stephenson novel based round and sometime within WoW sucessor.

 

Tabula Rasa killed itself, that's for sure. Regarding WoW, I was a long time player until around 6 months ago but for all the reasons already mentioned - casual mode, talent tree and general customisation cut-downs - I couldn't justify paying for it any more. Thankfully BF3 came out and Diablo 2 on the side has kept me plenty busy.

Oh, screw that panda crap!

 

I recently came back to WoW play a level 80 Mage with my fiance. I plan on playing until TERA is released at the end of April, and then I plan to play TERA until GW2 is released. Then I will finally be happy.

 

stupid and senseless article. a game lasting this long will have a curve with ups and down just like economy or anything else. so this might be just a dip. they seem to have planned quite a few GOOD things for MOP, so im interested to see what's gonna change. you might be right, but simply guessing around is rather pointless and hence i find it rather weird to find an article like this. come on bit tech, you can do better, i know that. please. quality > quantity