WoW Subscriptions Declining...

[Vyvii]

This is because they nerfed Mages.

[GM Fright]

I think it's for the reasons most of the comments listed:

1) Scratching talent trees removes depth
2) LFR on current content removes challenges
3) Pandas are annoying and childish and can't be taken seriously, especially when compared to the Burning Legion, the forces of the Lich King, and the Black Dragonflight.
4) We used to have a term for epics everyone could get just by farming shit repetitively and skillessly: Welfare Epics. Now we just call them our gear. Thanks for the mindless, rewardless gaming experience.


/soapbox

[Hallaer918]

I'm not sure whether to throw flowers for his speech or rotten tomatoes because it is Fright...

I think I will just compromise and throw canned tomatoes instead. Honestly they should have made Fright's old imp the new bad guy. That would have given me all the incentive in the world to continue playing just to kill the little bastard.

[Lydecker Lies]

Don't the new talent trees add more depth though? The old ones were just cookie cutter builds with 5-6 leftover points (if that) to place in irrelevant talents... My Destruction spec and your Destruction spec used to be exactly the same; same talents, same (relevant) glyphs... Whereas now we could both go Destruction, but I don't think we'd pick the exact same skills.

[GM Fright]

Lydecker Lies wrote:

Whereas now we could both go Destruction, but I don't think we'd pick the exact same skills.

Yes we would. In fact, you could go affliction, and I'd be destruction, and we'd still pick the same talents. Then, I could go demonology, and I would still choose the same talents.

They might change for soloing and PvP depending on situations and such, and other classes change depending on whether they are healing or tanking or dps or whatever, but raiding as a pure DPS class they would probably be pretty much the same.

Besides, it's impossible to add depth by decreasing 50 talent points to 6 talent points. Everything is geared towards simplifying (or dumbing down, depending on your perspective) the game for the benefit of very casual (or just unskilled) players, meanwhile they are losing subscribers by the millions. Tells me that the decision to cater to the 13 year old was a bad decision.

I'm doing my best to play as if the things that I don't like don't exist, and I'm enjoying the game for the challenges that do still exist and just the overall character-strengthening format of any RPG. But I hope they reverse or at least stop their recent game-design direction, because its not helping anyone, least of all them.

[Klik]

For all the opinions out there I find myself more in line with Lydecker's first statement. When there were so many choices everyone chose the same. Whatever class/spec was top of whatever became what everyone played and pretty much everyone went to a site (EJ, etc.) and built the same talent tree as the top producers (if you didn't, you didn't get to raid).

As to how it feels now, I've rarely played pure DPS classes except for an alt I didn't really do much with, so I can't comment on that. Hybrid classes still feel unique when changing between the specs.

The old way was fun, but in retrospect would it still be fun now? I mean how many of us burned out due to feeling like it was a second job? Hell this whole guild did pretty much. There's no way in the old days we could run as we do now (one night a week) and still accomplish anything.

I'm torn between the nostalgia of Vanilla, BC, Wrath and the time and effort it took, logging in every day to try to keep up, and how it is now where I can log in if I want, but not HAVE to if I don't.

Hell, I'd guess that at 8.3 million they're still way up over what it was back then.

For whatever it is and whatever it becomes, it still has more draw and staying power than any of the "WoWKillers" that have come and gone. I've tried a bunch of them but they don't hold the same power and fade away rather quickly. Great class systems lack in gameplay and content. Great combat systems lack in class design and content, etc. WoW is the only game that still has it all, even if some of it is lacking (due to change and a lot of nostalgia) in some area(s).

Nothing stays the same forever, I'm still here because it's fun and I like playing with you guys. Now that I think of it, that's the formula that keeps it going even as astronomical (as far as video games go) numbers wax and wane. The game is fun, and it's fun to play together despite the flaws and changes that come and go.

/my two cents

[Amminidab v2.0]

I only take talents that will speed up the process of my death.



















































































clearly

[Somosito]

Amminidab v2.0 wrote:

I only take talents that will speed up the process of my death.

Sterne, you logged in under Mini's info again.

In a moment of seriousness, the talent aspect is pretty much identical, with less buttons to mash. You used to go for caps, and now you go for breakpoints, which are essentially caps.

If anything, I would say that I enjoy being able to spec anywhere and change my talents to better suit a fight. However, that may not be an option for other classes, but I would then say that it's an error of that class's talent tree, instead of the system itself. I suppose you could argue that they could have left the talents the way they were and simply eliminated the need to visit a trainer to respec. While this is true, I would be lying if I claimed to miss having to fill out 60 points, with one here, two there, three over yonder, etc. To me, it's a much more crisp feeling, and it doesn't feel so cluttered. For priests (and to my understanding most of the other classes as well) all those "necessity" talents that were required are now just automatic passives.

Is the game getting easier, or dumbed down? Maybe. We do have an LFR system that is pretty "idiot friendly" and that's somewhat disheartening. On the other hand, you can't get BiS gear from it, and at least for me, it doesn't really make me feel like I worked for anything that comes from it. Being a casual player who showed up late to the party, that system has been very helpful in getting me ready to do what I want to do, so there is certainly a benefit. Again, outside of that, I'm not sure the game is that dumbed down. Keep in mind that this game has been around for a long time. If you play long enough, you're bound to get better, even if only marginally. After so many years, people have made resources to improve your play incredibly easy. In a sense, that makes the game easier, but not because it's become more friendly to the 13 year olds. People just have to be pretty blind to not get better.

There are a few different reasons that subs could be lapsing, and with the number of subs being in the millions, it's hard to say without data that the majority of them are all for one reason, even if that reason is the thing we like the least or hate the most about the game.