The guild I played with pretty much stopped playing WoW after cataclysm. They did all the content and then just quit playing. I was able to get my roomie involved with EVE and she is loving it...little did I know how blood-thirsty of a player she is - I am trying to keep her from just going straight up pirate.
I do not think either of us will be going back to WoW. I played it on and off for a few years, have mulitple 85's. She has been playing since day one and has 10 toons all over level 70, 7 level 85's, and almost every achievement and mount whatnot the game offers - I really thought she would never stop playing - but Cataclysm made her stop.
If we tire of EVE, we'll probably just stop playing MMORPG's all together and stick with single player games - unless a game company comes out with a good game that is a mix between a sandbox and themepark.
So it seems you do not have faith in up coming games such as GW2 or ToR for say? And not to stray off topic good for Blizz if it retains its fan-base for now. But to answer the OP question is CATA that bad? Yes and no. Yes because it is the same ol same old. And no because it is a different drummer. I also stop playing a couple of months ago and I will not go back never WOW for me is dead.
Sub numbers went down, but revenue went WAYYYYY up from the same time last year. Which means they made more money off of less people.
At the end of the day, for a business, revenue is all that matters.
This is true.
It also got me thinking of the countless mmo'ers who dislike warcraft and those who display this to the masses will more than likely lose agression towards it in years to come. Everyone looks in the past through rose-tinted goggles.
I heard somewhere that in the next decade, sitcoms will make refrences to warcraft that only we will understand. Should be interesting in the least.
The game is old and slowly people are finding better games to play with their free time. Thats what happens when you dumb content down so a 2 year old can learn it. They need to go back to the old vanilla WoW ways but I'm not even sure that would help them at this point. TOR and GW2 are on those train tracks ready to steamroll over WoW. Who knows maybe Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 will hep revive Blizzard's success.
It was really over with WOTLK for me but I stayed like many did till the end of that expansion 3.3 for me to see if things would get better. From what I read before Cat came out I didnt even want to touch it. They over simplified the game for the simple minded players. They forced the pvpers to play raids which we hate, they screwed Shaman over and basically replaced them with DKs hunters were ruined, probably one vialble Rogue spec, they ruined BGs by making them QQ friendly and added QQ timers for afkers (TRUTH). Everything had been homoginized and catered towards raiding by the end of WOTLK and it was only going to get worse. Of course they tried this once before, showing no love for pvpers, game balance and casual play and it was called EQ2.
But many of us me included for years said dont let Ghostcrawler put any REAL input into this game, he doesnt know enough, at least Kalgan has some idea of what he was doing, not much but some. Before they release their last expansion I strongly suggest they put some competent Development on top of things, because if Blizzards new mmorpg for some reason doesnt do well or as well as expected, this baby will be more important than they think. Because for the last 3 years they have treated it like Jim Bobs local grocery store.
rage of fire will bring them back in full if blizzard can balance server!the issue isnt the grinding in the daily in rof surprisingly or gameplay issue it is the fact that for once blizzard release one of the best daily area bar none but the server are so insanelly unbalanced that it cut all the fun out of it!and if blizzard say it is impossible to balance server then im sorry to say blizzard and activision will have missed the boat !(again)
Cata is 9 months old. The time between expansions is about 18 months. We have already had 4.1 and 4.2 patches... most people expect 4.4 to be the last patch. So yeah.. pretty close to half no matter how you look at it.
According to posters and CM's on their official forums, the game is more popular than ever. I've seen nothing in this thread that can dissuade me from those statements.
All I'm seeing here are a bunch of ingrates that can't appreciate what Blizzard gave the world out of the love they have for the world. I give thanks every day that I can be a part of the magical lands they created.
All I'm seeing here are a bunch of ingrates that can't appreciate what Blizzard gave the world out of the love they have for the world.
I woulda bought this from you if you had writen what blizzard gave the world out of the love they have for MONEY!
But since you didnt, you clearly have no attachment to reality! This isnt about love, if it was about love, wow would not be what it is today. WoW is about maximizing profits, and that will affect all their gameplay decisions. If it aint about that, I'm pretty sure some lovers are gonna get fired with the best of regards from the investors.
Though I'll give credit to WoW for beeing one of the most successful moneymaking MMO's ever!
The current state of the economy should actually be pushing up the number of subscriptions to games (in general). It's a very efficient use of your money when you think about $/hour of entertainiment.
The current state of the economy should actually be pushing up the number of subscriptions to games (in general). It's a very efficient use of your money when you think about $/hour of entertainiment.
How is it an efficient use of your money?
The average sub fee is $10 to $20 per month per game. For the sake of easy math, let's say you play 50 hours/month (more than 10 hours/week) on one game that costs $10/month. That equals about $0.20 per hour of entertainment. That sounds pretty good right? But if you extend those numbers out over the span of 1 year, it starts looking less and less efficient.
50 hrs/month x 12 months = 600 hours per year of play time
$10 /month x 12 months = $120 per year for sub fees (this is after you bought the game....I'm not even including the initial cost of buying a title like WoW or EQ 2.)
You are still at the $0.20 per hour price.
Now look at a B2P game (either Online game like Guild Wars or console game like say, Call of Duty - you were generalizing about money spent on entertainment and I'll stick purely to video games).
The higher end of prices for B2P games right now is about $60 so I will use that. I will also use the same amount of hours played per year - 600.
$60 divided by 600 hours is $0.10 per hour of game time. In the case of Guild Wars or a F2P hybrid like LotRO, 600 hours is a decent amount of time to spend without worrying much about repetition in the game. In the case of Call of Duty, I'd say 300 hours would be my limit between getting all bonuses and playing multiplayer. So, then buy a second console game for $60 and play it for 300 hours and you've played 2 games for the price of 1 sub game. As time goes on, the hourly price of that sub game stays the same, but the price of the B2P continues to go down.
This is just comparing the different video games, not other forms of entertainment that you can do without spending much money....reading, watching tv or movies, riding a bike or many other outdoor activities, music...all of which can be done more cheaply than a sub fee for a game. And, since it's entertainment, it's one of the first things to be cut from a budget when money's tight.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Nothing really to keep you around at end game unless you're a raider.
PVP:
Tol Barad is horrible.
Badly designed reskins of WSG and AB.
Roll an alt of the new races?
Northrend is unbearable to level through now.
Bingo. A friend and I returned to WoW to level up Worgens, and this is what ultimately led to us quitting again. Outland and Northrend are still in the game, unchanged, and when it came time to level through those old zones (particularly Northrend), all motivation went out the window. We just went back to our old level 80 characters, and even the level 80-85 zones/endgame felt like a grind, so we left for good.
Why are those old zones still in the game to begin with? The "story" has already progressed far past them, so questing through them feels like a complete waste of time. We really enjoyed the revamped Azeroth, but the leveling process should have ended as soon as you complete it. It's the perfect length. The portal to Outland (or Outland itself) should have blown up or something, and our job in Northrend is now complete. Just the thought of going back to those zones makes me depressed.
Cataclysm wasn't enough of a game-changer. WoW stuck so closely to the themepark style of play, people get tired of the same rides in different colors.
But most keep asking for the same rides in all new MMOs being developed ....
If they had developed real money auction I might still would be subscribed to earn some real life money from my 9000 hours of invested game time and developement of profesional services to the other players instead of the chineses having this business for themself.
Quit long ago but the writting has been on the wall back then. Since Activi$ion took over the quality/customer support and and some of the deeper stuff in an already not very deep game has gone downhill, an it showed with first stagnations altough they released the game in the east...follopwed by declines.
The game is not Blizzards priority number one any longer and it shows in a decline. Blizzard is working on too many things at the same time (forced by Kotick). Anyway 11 millions is still a lot and the game will continue being the 800 pound gorilla for a long time.
Also wow players should welcome the decline cause it means Blizz has to get back to what they've been some (pre Activision) years ago, a damn good gamers frist company.
I think you should check your facts. Activision has always been in charge of WOW. Activision came before WOW.
The merger with Activision did not happen till 2008.
To clarify; Blizzard Entertainment never merged with anyone.
Activision Blizzard is the holding company for Blizzard Entertainment and Activision and is the result of a merger between Vivendi Games and Activision.
Someone who actually knows what they are talking about....refreshing.
You can blame one expansion especially since that expansion fundamentally changed the game from when it had peak subscribers. I pre-ordered it thinking that would be it for the next 3 years. HOW DARE THEY CHANGE ME AND MY WIFE'S WINTERGRASP TO TOL BOLLOCKS PVE FEST. WE HAD ENGINEERED MACHINES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
I still blame the original trials of atlantis for wrecking daoc, it turned a great rvr pvp game into a pve grindfest people just scattered into the wind and left.
With all of the money the Blizzard takes in, I was VERY disappointed when they announced that a large amount of development time was spent changing existing content. From my point of view, this was a money grabbing half ass expansion. I think they ran out of steam after the WC3 storyline was completed with the death of Arthas.
Cata could have changed the game in many good ways. Instead, it pushed the aging aspects of the game even further. Healer and Tank shortage? Let's nerf healers and tanks. Fighting to get into raids annoys people? Let's make 5 mans harder. People get tired of tier after tier released? Let's add more tiers. People want more endgame content? Let's shorten endgame to 5 short and boring levels. Rollercoaster buffs and nerfs annoy people? Let's implement a few of them every couple of weeks.
Cata is bad because it took every weak point of the game and expounded it. While a few decisions were awesome, the vast majority of them are quite horrid. Whoever designed this expansion needs to be fired.
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
You can blame one expansion especially since that expansion fundamentally changed the game from when it had peak subscribers. I pre-ordered it thinking that would be it for the next 3 years. HOW DARE THEY CHANGE ME AND MY WIFE'S WINTERGRASP TO TOL BOLLOCKS PVE FEST. WE HAD ENGINEERED MACHINES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
I still blame the original trials of atlantis for wrecking daoc, it turned a great rvr pvp game into a pve grindfest people just scattered into the wind and left.
Actually I blame WOTLK it was the beginning of bad ideas done on a mass scale. Over homoginization, killing pvp, forced pve Stupid imbalanced classes that are one button mashers etc. All CAT did was take all the bad ideas and compress them into a more solid form. CAT simply introduced the OTHER BAD ideas ghostcrawler had in mind. I had been saying since 08 that hes treating the game like a private server. Its like having a spoiled 12 year old with ideas implementing those ideas against everyones will.
Comments
So it seems you do not have faith in up coming games such as GW2 or ToR for say? And not to stray off topic good for Blizz if it retains its fan-base for now. But to answer the OP question is CATA that bad? Yes and no. Yes because it is the same ol same old. And no because it is a different drummer. I also stop playing a couple of months ago and I will not go back never WOW for me is dead.
Edit for after thought.
Sub numbers went down, but revenue went WAYYYYY up from the same time last year. Which means they made more money off of less people.
At the end of the day, for a business, revenue is all that matters.
This is true.
It also got me thinking of the countless mmo'ers who dislike warcraft and those who display this to the masses will more than likely lose agression towards it in years to come. Everyone looks in the past through rose-tinted goggles.
I heard somewhere that in the next decade, sitcoms will make refrences to warcraft that only we will understand. Should be interesting in the least.
The game is old and slowly people are finding better games to play with their free time. Thats what happens when you dumb content down so a 2 year old can learn it. They need to go back to the old vanilla WoW ways but I'm not even sure that would help them at this point. TOR and GW2 are on those train tracks ready to steamroll over WoW. Who knows maybe Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 will hep revive Blizzard's success.
I quited 8 months ago I think.
For me it was..
1. repetitive grind
2. Way to railpark theme this expansion
3. Old game, graphics are getting meh for me.
4. Homogizing all classes
5. The big HP/MP increase in cata making evrything go wack
6. pvp inbalance
7. Blizzard old view changing into a corperate monkey suit buisniss, no more for gamers but more abouth $$$.
It was really over with WOTLK for me but I stayed like many did till the end of that expansion 3.3 for me to see if things would get better. From what I read before Cat came out I didnt even want to touch it. They over simplified the game for the simple minded players. They forced the pvpers to play raids which we hate, they screwed Shaman over and basically replaced them with DKs hunters were ruined, probably one vialble Rogue spec, they ruined BGs by making them QQ friendly and added QQ timers for afkers (TRUTH). Everything had been homoginized and catered towards raiding by the end of WOTLK and it was only going to get worse. Of course they tried this once before, showing no love for pvpers, game balance and casual play and it was called EQ2.
But many of us me included for years said dont let Ghostcrawler put any REAL input into this game, he doesnt know enough, at least Kalgan has some idea of what he was doing, not much but some. Before they release their last expansion I strongly suggest they put some competent Development on top of things, because if Blizzards new mmorpg for some reason doesnt do well or as well as expected, this baby will be more important than they think. Because for the last 3 years they have treated it like Jim Bobs local grocery store.
Nothing really to keep you around at end game unless you're a raider.
PVP:
Tol Barad is horrible.
Badly designed reskins of WSG and AB.
Roll an alt of the new races?
Northrend is unbearable to level through now.
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
rage of fire will bring them back in full if blizzard can balance server!the issue isnt the grinding in the daily in rof surprisingly or gameplay issue it is the fact that for once blizzard release one of the best daily area bar none but the server are so insanelly unbalanced that it cut all the fun out of it!and if blizzard say it is impossible to balance server then im sorry to say blizzard and activision will have missed the boat !(again)
The higher you climb the harder the fall.
True That lol TY
18 months for expansions? more like 2 years
WOW launch 11/2004
BC 1/2007 2 years later
LK 11/2008 22 months later
Cata 12/2010 2 years later
EQ2 fan sites
According to posters and CM's on their official forums, the game is more popular than ever. I've seen nothing in this thread that can dissuade me from those statements.
All I'm seeing here are a bunch of ingrates that can't appreciate what Blizzard gave the world out of the love they have for the world. I give thanks every day that I can be a part of the magical lands they created.
I woulda bought this from you if you had writen what blizzard gave the world out of the love they have for MONEY!
But since you didnt, you clearly have no attachment to reality! This isnt about love, if it was about love, wow would not be what it is today. WoW is about maximizing profits, and that will affect all their gameplay decisions. If it aint about that, I'm pretty sure some lovers are gonna get fired with the best of regards from the investors.
Though I'll give credit to WoW for beeing one of the most successful moneymaking MMO's ever!
Remember, economy aint doin so hot either. A monthly sub isnt as improtant as putting food in ur stomach.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
Gotta use your foodstamps for something.
"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
- John Galt
The current state of the economy should actually be pushing up the number of subscriptions to games (in general). It's a very efficient use of your money when you think about $/hour of entertainiment.
How is it an efficient use of your money?
The average sub fee is $10 to $20 per month per game. For the sake of easy math, let's say you play 50 hours/month (more than 10 hours/week) on one game that costs $10/month. That equals about $0.20 per hour of entertainment. That sounds pretty good right? But if you extend those numbers out over the span of 1 year, it starts looking less and less efficient.
50 hrs/month x 12 months = 600 hours per year of play time
$10 /month x 12 months = $120 per year for sub fees (this is after you bought the game....I'm not even including the initial cost of buying a title like WoW or EQ 2.)
You are still at the $0.20 per hour price.
Now look at a B2P game (either Online game like Guild Wars or console game like say, Call of Duty - you were generalizing about money spent on entertainment and I'll stick purely to video games).
The higher end of prices for B2P games right now is about $60 so I will use that. I will also use the same amount of hours played per year - 600.
$60 divided by 600 hours is $0.10 per hour of game time. In the case of Guild Wars or a F2P hybrid like LotRO, 600 hours is a decent amount of time to spend without worrying much about repetition in the game. In the case of Call of Duty, I'd say 300 hours would be my limit between getting all bonuses and playing multiplayer. So, then buy a second console game for $60 and play it for 300 hours and you've played 2 games for the price of 1 sub game. As time goes on, the hourly price of that sub game stays the same, but the price of the B2P continues to go down.
This is just comparing the different video games, not other forms of entertainment that you can do without spending much money....reading, watching tv or movies, riding a bike or many other outdoor activities, music...all of which can be done more cheaply than a sub fee for a game. And, since it's entertainment, it's one of the first things to be cut from a budget when money's tight.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
Bingo. A friend and I returned to WoW to level up Worgens, and this is what ultimately led to us quitting again. Outland and Northrend are still in the game, unchanged, and when it came time to level through those old zones (particularly Northrend), all motivation went out the window. We just went back to our old level 80 characters, and even the level 80-85 zones/endgame felt like a grind, so we left for good.
Why are those old zones still in the game to begin with? The "story" has already progressed far past them, so questing through them feels like a complete waste of time. We really enjoyed the revamped Azeroth, but the leveling process should have ended as soon as you complete it. It's the perfect length. The portal to Outland (or Outland itself) should have blown up or something, and our job in Northrend is now complete. Just the thought of going back to those zones makes me depressed.
But most keep asking for the same rides in all new MMOs being developed ....
If they had developed real money auction I might still would be subscribed to earn some real life money from my 9000 hours of invested game time and developement of profesional services to the other players instead of the chineses having this business for themself.
Someone who actually knows what they are talking about....refreshing.
You can blame one expansion especially since that expansion fundamentally changed the game from when it had peak subscribers. I pre-ordered it thinking that would be it for the next 3 years. HOW DARE THEY CHANGE ME AND MY WIFE'S WINTERGRASP TO TOL BOLLOCKS PVE FEST. WE HAD ENGINEERED MACHINES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
I still blame the original trials of atlantis for wrecking daoc, it turned a great rvr pvp game into a pve grindfest people just scattered into the wind and left.
With all of the money the Blizzard takes in, I was VERY disappointed when they announced that a large amount of development time was spent changing existing content. From my point of view, this was a money grabbing half ass expansion. I think they ran out of steam after the WC3 storyline was completed with the death of Arthas.
Cata could have changed the game in many good ways. Instead, it pushed the aging aspects of the game even further. Healer and Tank shortage? Let's nerf healers and tanks. Fighting to get into raids annoys people? Let's make 5 mans harder. People get tired of tier after tier released? Let's add more tiers. People want more endgame content? Let's shorten endgame to 5 short and boring levels. Rollercoaster buffs and nerfs annoy people? Let's implement a few of them every couple of weeks.
Cata is bad because it took every weak point of the game and expounded it. While a few decisions were awesome, the vast majority of them are quite horrid. Whoever designed this expansion needs to be fired.
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
Actually I blame WOTLK it was the beginning of bad ideas done on a mass scale. Over homoginization, killing pvp, forced pve Stupid imbalanced classes that are one button mashers etc. All CAT did was take all the bad ideas and compress them into a more solid form. CAT simply introduced the OTHER BAD ideas ghostcrawler had in mind. I had been saying since 08 that hes treating the game like a private server. Its like having a spoiled 12 year old with ideas implementing those ideas against everyones will.