I've been hearing that, I went back to try Cata but just didn't feel it. Now I'm on Rift. I've been hearing more and more that WoW is a single player game with other people playing around you. Lol I can't believe Blizz is failing so much. Also I have to laugh at the people out there that stated Blizz was the unbeatable developer. Since 1990 (when I got deeply into gaming) I have seen great developers come and go, some last years others decades but every so often they just plain screw up and new developers take their place. Its natural and I've been waiting to see Blizz mess up for years now. I knew it was coming, they were getting to big for their own good but here it is, the beginings of it. I'm not a doomsayer, I'm sure Blizz will recover and continue on but will they be considered the spotless and untarnished company... no.
Outside of the guilds wow really has no community. You can play to cap without uttering a single word to another player and you would be surprised if one time someone runs by you they stop to interact or if you interact with someone else be sure to be prepared to get no feedback like 80% of the time. For a while there I thought they were all just botting but then it hit me its just people playing "single player mode" trying to quest as fast as possible to hit cap and then chill in stormwind for 8 hours a day afterwards.
I think the "WoW never even had a community"-crowd, just bases their posts upon the newer ez-players here. Community was very much there for several years, I remember flaming Tseric out of Blizzard with my Mage buddies for example. If you don't know what happened to Tseric, google plz. "Warriors keep popping their enrage - it must be stopped!!"
It's a really good feeling to see something you hate, die, though, I've experienced that already with AoC and STO. Exception is that WoW still has like 10million players even, if we go with the worst case scenario, my hated games are down to 50k if even that.
I remember when I first booted up WoW back '04. Rolled dwarf warrior. First night playing had another player take me all over Dun Morogh and show me the ropes. I can remember doing the soil repeatable quest from Un'Goro crater and mailing the rewards to randomly selected lowbies with the mail labeled "random act of kindness". I can remember realm forums having a ninja looter list that was stickied.
Yea, WoW had a community. Then server xfers happened then the dungeon finder kicked the dead horse into oblivion.
It has always amazed me how WoW has been able to get thousands of people with similiar likes and interests to sit down and play a game together, and turn them into aggressive and abusive elitist bullies.
It has always amazed me how WoW has been able to get thousands of people with similiar likes and interests to sit down and play a game together, and turn them into aggressive and abusive elitist bullies.
Research Skinner Box. Then make competition based upon gear the norm. Pair that with the innate drive to become the Uber Nerd and it is really no surprise at all.
Outside of the guilds wow really has no community. You can play to cap without uttering a single word to another player and you would be surprised if one time someone runs by you they stop to interact or if you interact with someone else be sure to be prepared to get no feedback like 80% of the time. For a while there I thought they were all just botting but then it hit me its just people playing "single player mode" trying to quest as fast as possible to hit cap and then chill in stormwind for 8 hours a day afterwards.
Some people play Wow like a sologame = Wow have no community outside guilds?
Nah, that's not true. Most games have some soloplayers that never interacts with anyone and are outsiders from the community, that much is true. But that doesn't mean that Wows only communities is in the guilds.
Wow is not the top game on my list for a great community, not by far but it isn't this bad. The game could encourage people to group more ("encourage" does not mean "force"), being solofriendly while you level up is one thing but it is hard to be part of a community if you don't interact with others.
It seems like GW2 has some interesting ideas about getting people to interact with eachothers, I hope Wow and other games gets influenced about them if they actually work.
After all is the point of MMOs the fact that you at least sometimes play with other people, there are sologames if you always want to be alone. Playing a MMO only solo is like sitting an entire evning in the pub without talking to a single person.
While that is "only" 5% (and over $100M in revenue annually) of its subscriber base it represents the game shifting backwards and doing so very soon after the launch of a major expansion.
They are losing subscribers after how many years? Every complainer about this game points out how long they've played it and glorifies the early days. Of course it was more fun when you first started.
With subscriptions going backwards, one would think that a natural focus would be to re-energize the community and try to draw people back into the game.
This isn't a restaurant. The game is stale and boring for many. This has nothing to do with the community or Blizzard as a company.
Community is key to long term MMORPG success.
Just how long are we talking before people call it a success and move on?
It has no end game except chase gear by running the same dungeons over and over or raiding the same boss over and over...
Such a horrible end game, Blizz has the money to do anything they want to WoW.
Blizz could easily add in sandbox features that other mmo's have right now, but they're stubborn and pig headed and refuse to.
I will never play WoW again, I refuse to stand in around in town looking like a clone or a hobo/clown since Blizz refuses to implement an appearance tab or dye system.
Blizz has ruined their classes and the fun each class was to play in pve because of trying to balance the classes around arena/pvp.
Sorry Blizz but you should learned from Guildwars on this front and implemented skills that worked only in pvp or pve. This would been the easier and better solution .... but no Blizz you just kept at it and ruined your classes and pve.
Blizz with all their money and smart developers... you can't add more social /sandbox elements to your mmo?
PS: Ghostcrawler you can't say I didn't warn you :P
Can't wait to play ArcheAge
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE Waiting on: Lost Ark Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
Gee, that's a totally new comment, maybe you should trademark it?
It has no end game except chase gear by running the same dungeons over and over or raiding the same boss over and over...
So, what's your raid history? I quit @ february and only by reading your comment here I can swear I've done 50%-75% more than you.
I will never play WoW again, I refuse to stand in around in town looking like a clone or a hobo/clown since Blizz refuses to implement an appearance tab or dye system.
Fair enough. Personally I can't seem to recall when I last felt like a clone since I usually ride a Mimiron's head and get constantly spammed by casuals where I got it.
Blizz with all their money and smart developers... you can't add more social /sandbox elements to your mmo?
Uhm, why would they? They have no reason to add sandbox related things in the game as long is it is a lot larger than any other P2P game on the market.
A game like Rift might earn on trying something like that but Wow is cashing in more money than any other game out there.
As for if Wow is a game for little kids: Blizzard optimize their game for the largest amount of players, that actually makes sense.
You don't have to like Wow, heck I don't but Wow is as much a product of it's players as the other way around. The thing that Blizzard is excellent at is giving the majority of it's players what they want.
The only way to make a successful MMO is to find your own focus group and make them really happy. Blizzard know this, and the same goes for CCP and Arenanet.
If Blizzard thought they would earn more money by adding sandbox features to Wow they would have done so.
Gee, that's a totally new comment, maybe you should trademark it?
It has no end game except chase gear by running the same dungeons over and over or raiding the same boss over and over...
So, what's your raid history? I quit @ february and only by reading your comment here I can swear I've done 50%-75% more than you.
I will never play WoW again, I refuse to stand in around in town looking like a clone or a hobo/clown since Blizz refuses to implement an appearance tab or dye system.
Fair enough. Personally I can't seem to recall when I last felt like a clone since I usually ride a Mimiron's head and get constantly spammed by casuals where I got it.
have a cookie
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE Waiting on: Lost Ark Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
Blizz with all their money and smart developers... you can't add more social /sandbox elements to your mmo?
Uhm, why would they? They have no reason to add sandbox related things in the game as long is it is a lot larger than any other P2P game on the market.
A game like Rift might earn on trying something like that but Wow is cashing in more money than any other game out there.
As for if Wow is a game for little kids: Blizzard optimize their game for the largest amount of players, that actually makes sense.
You don't have to like Wow, heck I don't but Wow is as much a product of it's players as the other way around. The thing that Blizzard is excellent at is giving the majority of it's players what they want.
The only way to make a successful MMO is to find your own focus group and make them really happy. Blizzard know this, and the same goes for CCP and Arenanet.
If Blizzard thought they would earn more money by adding sandbox features to Wow they would have done so.
Why would they?
Maybe to keep subscribers from leaving?
Maybe to show innovation and give it's players something to do other than chase gear by running the same dungeons over and over?
Blizz is showing now that they only care about the money... let the cash cow graze.
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE Waiting on: Lost Ark Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
I think the only community WoW has lost is from here...and I do not think it hurt them too much.
Really I know whole guilds who have up and quit WoW now.
All of us regret buying Cata.
And I know people at my work that just started playing and love the way the game is now...with no hard numbers it is really hard to say the "community" as in numbers of players is falling as fast as people say. WoW stays on the top 30 of games sold on Amazon. Now to say that the people here do not LIKE the community is valid, but with no proof people are just talking out their asses about the numbers dying out fast. I would love to know the people here that did not play WoW before Cat came out and did not like it...they bought Cat and now scream the game is dying because they do not like Cat.
Sorry, didn't read every post, but isn't it about time they give people a "Neutral Faction" like The Argent Crusade, so people that have friends on the opposite faction can choose to join the neutral faction and breath some life into the game again? I honestly thought thats the direciton they were going in WoTLK expansion. I think it could only help at this point.
One tidbit of information I would like from WoW is not just how many active susbcribers they have outside of Asia but what is the average time people play per day outside of Asia.
Because I think a lot of their accounts are players in Asia who are as a crowd very hardcore & love grindy gameplay but a lot of the rest outside asia is people clinging onto their love of the memories of WoW's past and not so much where WoW is now, but they login each day to do a few things, maybe check in with friends / guild mates then logoff.
Op how you leave out pvp. Tbh pvp is one of that major things about wow's success. Remember back in vanilla and tbc when there were a very very small number of people actually reaching endgame contents? Well what you believe the rest of those players were doing? That's right,,, they were doing PvP. In vanilla wow it was Old SV that kept players busy. In tbc Arena was much more accessible than it is today. Also AV although no longer Old AV, was still the main format of BG pvp, and was going through the killing process that Blizzard did to it that got it into the load of shit that it is today. Blizzard killed the pvp now. Also they added a 2 new BG, both of which spread the playerbase even more yet they both feel more like boring rehashes of old BG. I just couldn't get into them. Its the same reason IoC never did well. It was a terrible replacement to AV. The random Bg tool killed AV and 40 man bg queues. Only thing left are the stupid small scale PvP crap. And Arena has gone way pass casual friendly. ARENA IS UNPLAYABLE BY NEW COMERS. Another issue about pvp that was changed for CAT was the way Blizzard did the queue system for the Persistent pvp zones. In cata they made it harder for the larger population faction players to even play at all. That was a killer for me. Having to wait 2 hours just for a chance to do world PvP, ,,,you must be out of your f**king mind. That's why WoW is dying.... I will share this in a new thread of my own. It deserves it.
I have to say that, as unfortunate as it is. This article strikes a sharp point into Blizzard's side. I have yet to totally figure out in my own mind, how an expansion that gave me so many things from my 'want' list for WoW could turn out to be such a disappointment.
Playable Goblins? Check.
Competitive PvP Gear without having to do Arenas? Check.
Rebuilding the original Azeroth into a more dynamic and interesting world with better scripted quests from 1-60? Check that too.
So what happened? Well for one, the new starting race had me replaying a class I already had a 70+ character of. Same with the new 1-60 content, I was effectively retiring my old character for a nice shiny goblin version. 1-60 content isn't as hepful in keeping subscriptions if most users only plan to play it once (I have 70+ of every class, why play it over and over?)
Also look at Rated Battlegrounds. Why did people dislike Arenas? It wasnt because the game mode wasn't fun, it was because it felt like a chore that you HAD to organize a team and HAD to all play together every time to get anywhere. So you take that problem and compound it by making the rated battleground teams require even MORE people? What about that makes sense?
I really hate to say it but Cataclysm was the nail in the coffin for me. My WoW career is finally over. Here's to hoping SWTOR, GW2 or TSW have some staying power.
There is a lesson here. So many players have their want list and believe the game will be better for it. They are often wrong.
As to the 5% drop in population, that is icing on the cake subs. By that I mean, subs beyond the covering your costs or to say pure profit subs. Those are tough to lose.
It's not even denting the icing on the cake subs. Best estimates suggest that Blizzard spend about $4-$5 per player on everything from servers, customer support, content development, expansion development etc. That leaves $10-$11 in pure profit, per subscriber. They of course make far less of Asian subscriptions, which is why the content development team doesn't spend too much time pandering to the cultural insecurities of countris like China, but the player base in Europe and America is still around 5,000,000. That's $55,000,000 a month profit.
I REALISE these are just estimates, but they work out when you look at how much money they are making on the game. Furthermore they haven't specified where these subs were lost, I believe. If they were lost in Asia predominately, then it has little impact on their margins as they make a comparably small amount of money back from the Asians. I would hazzard that - wth the content becoming less grindy - World of Warcraft will see a general decline in players in that market, as they seem to prefer grinding to questy games.
Name a WoW expansion where the entity known as "the community" hasn't gotten angry, flooded forums with QQ posts, and endlessly claimed that they and everyone they knew were unsubscribing. This happens every time, as no expansion can satisfy everyone, and it is the dissatisfied who feel the need to voice their dissatisfaction, while the content happily go on playing.
So... you pay monthly for access to your characters, after you paid box price for the game. Then you pay cash for the expansions, all while paying for Character Transfers, Race and Gender changes, Name changes, and new content like the sparkly Griffins and the like in the WoW Shop. Yet here you are crying about even more "premium" features that should be standard. Get this: YOU ARE ALL GUILTY OF LETTING THEM DO THIS.
You could have fought it at the gate, with "subscription" models. You could have told them to screw off with the WoW Shop. Or when they unveiled dungeons you could only do once a day. Yet here we are, now with "Gear Score" limits and other crap in dungeonsm and charging cash for every new feature. Forgive me for just not giving a damn with the grave you've dug yourselves, and how crazy you let companies like Blizzard go.
If you don't like it, suck it up and quit. Otherwise, bow before your masters at ActivisionBlizzard.
Comments
I've been hearing that, I went back to try Cata but just didn't feel it. Now I'm on Rift. I've been hearing more and more that WoW is a single player game with other people playing around you. Lol I can't believe Blizz is failing so much. Also I have to laugh at the people out there that stated Blizz was the unbeatable developer. Since 1990 (when I got deeply into gaming) I have seen great developers come and go, some last years others decades but every so often they just plain screw up and new developers take their place. Its natural and I've been waiting to see Blizz mess up for years now. I knew it was coming, they were getting to big for their own good but here it is, the beginings of it. I'm not a doomsayer, I'm sure Blizz will recover and continue on but will they be considered the spotless and untarnished company... no.
Nothing good comes from anything that grows to big. Blizzard isn't Blizzard anymore. It's more like Wal-mart to me and i will not support it.
$$$ > You
Outside of the guilds wow really has no community. You can play to cap without uttering a single word to another player and you would be surprised if one time someone runs by you they stop to interact or if you interact with someone else be sure to be prepared to get no feedback like 80% of the time. For a while there I thought they were all just botting but then it hit me its just people playing "single player mode" trying to quest as fast as possible to hit cap and then chill in stormwind for 8 hours a day afterwards.
http://legalbinary.wordpress.com/ - LegalBinary, were the law and mmorpgs, botting, computers and gaming intersect.
I think the "WoW never even had a community"-crowd, just bases their posts upon the newer ez-players here. Community was very much there for several years, I remember flaming Tseric out of Blizzard with my Mage buddies for example. If you don't know what happened to Tseric, google plz. "Warriors keep popping their enrage - it must be stopped!!"
It's a really good feeling to see something you hate, die, though, I've experienced that already with AoC and STO. Exception is that WoW still has like 10million players even, if we go with the worst case scenario, my hated games are down to 50k if even that.
I remember when I first booted up WoW back '04. Rolled dwarf warrior. First night playing had another player take me all over Dun Morogh and show me the ropes. I can remember doing the soil repeatable quest from Un'Goro crater and mailing the rewards to randomly selected lowbies with the mail labeled "random act of kindness". I can remember realm forums having a ninja looter list that was stickied.
Yea, WoW had a community. Then server xfers happened then the dungeon finder kicked the dead horse into oblivion.
TRUST THE COMPUTER! THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND!
Stay Alert! Trust No One! Keep Your Laser Handy!
Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues!
The second Guild Wars 2 comes out WoW will lose most to if not all its player base.
It has always amazed me how WoW has been able to get thousands of people with similiar likes and interests to sit down and play a game together, and turn them into aggressive and abusive elitist bullies.
Research Skinner Box. Then make competition based upon gear the norm. Pair that with the innate drive to become the Uber Nerd and it is really no surprise at all.
TRUST THE COMPUTER! THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND!
Stay Alert! Trust No One! Keep Your Laser Handy!
Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues!
Some people play Wow like a sologame = Wow have no community outside guilds?
Nah, that's not true. Most games have some soloplayers that never interacts with anyone and are outsiders from the community, that much is true. But that doesn't mean that Wows only communities is in the guilds.
Wow is not the top game on my list for a great community, not by far but it isn't this bad. The game could encourage people to group more ("encourage" does not mean "force"), being solofriendly while you level up is one thing but it is hard to be part of a community if you don't interact with others.
It seems like GW2 has some interesting ideas about getting people to interact with eachothers, I hope Wow and other games gets influenced about them if they actually work.
After all is the point of MMOs the fact that you at least sometimes play with other people, there are sologames if you always want to be alone. Playing a MMO only solo is like sitting an entire evning in the pub without talking to a single person.
While that is "only" 5% (and over $100M in revenue annually) of its subscriber base it represents the game shifting backwards and doing so very soon after the launch of a major expansion.
They are losing subscribers after how many years? Every complainer about this game points out how long they've played it and glorifies the early days. Of course it was more fun when you first started.
With subscriptions going backwards, one would think that a natural focus would be to re-energize the community and try to draw people back into the game.
This isn't a restaurant. The game is stale and boring for many. This has nothing to do with the community or Blizzard as a company.
Community is key to long term MMORPG success.
Just how long are we talking before people call it a success and move on?
WoW is an mmo for little kids now.
It has no end game except chase gear by running the same dungeons over and over or raiding the same boss over and over...
Such a horrible end game, Blizz has the money to do anything they want to WoW.
Blizz could easily add in sandbox features that other mmo's have right now, but they're stubborn and pig headed and refuse to.
I will never play WoW again, I refuse to stand in around in town looking like a clone or a hobo/clown since Blizz refuses to implement an appearance tab or dye system.
Blizz has ruined their classes and the fun each class was to play in pve because of trying to balance the classes around arena/pvp.
Sorry Blizz but you should learned from Guildwars on this front and implemented skills that worked only in pvp or pve. This would been the easier and better solution .... but no Blizz you just kept at it and ruined your classes and pve.
Blizz with all their money and smart developers... you can't add more social /sandbox elements to your mmo?
PS: Ghostcrawler you can't say I didn't warn you :P
Can't wait to play ArcheAge
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
I think the only community WoW has lost is from here...and I do not think it hurt them too much.
Really I know whole guilds who have up and quit WoW now.
All of us regret buying Cata.
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
Uhm, why would they? They have no reason to add sandbox related things in the game as long is it is a lot larger than any other P2P game on the market.
A game like Rift might earn on trying something like that but Wow is cashing in more money than any other game out there.
As for if Wow is a game for little kids: Blizzard optimize their game for the largest amount of players, that actually makes sense.
You don't have to like Wow, heck I don't but Wow is as much a product of it's players as the other way around. The thing that Blizzard is excellent at is giving the majority of it's players what they want.
The only way to make a successful MMO is to find your own focus group and make them really happy. Blizzard know this, and the same goes for CCP and Arenanet.
If Blizzard thought they would earn more money by adding sandbox features to Wow they would have done so.
have a cookie
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
No cake?
Why would they?
Maybe to keep subscribers from leaving?
Maybe to show innovation and give it's players something to do other than chase gear by running the same dungeons over and over?
Blizz is showing now that they only care about the money... let the cash cow graze.
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
And I know people at my work that just started playing and love the way the game is now...with no hard numbers it is really hard to say the "community" as in numbers of players is falling as fast as people say. WoW stays on the top 30 of games sold on Amazon. Now to say that the people here do not LIKE the community is valid, but with no proof people are just talking out their asses about the numbers dying out fast. I would love to know the people here that did not play WoW before Cat came out and did not like it...they bought Cat and now scream the game is dying because they do not like Cat.
Sorry, didn't read every post, but isn't it about time they give people a "Neutral Faction" like The Argent Crusade, so people that have friends on the opposite faction can choose to join the neutral faction and breath some life into the game again? I honestly thought thats the direciton they were going in WoTLK expansion. I think it could only help at this point.
One tidbit of information I would like from WoW is not just how many active susbcribers they have outside of Asia but what is the average time people play per day outside of Asia.
Because I think a lot of their accounts are players in Asia who are as a crowd very hardcore & love grindy gameplay but a lot of the rest outside asia is people clinging onto their love of the memories of WoW's past and not so much where WoW is now, but they login each day to do a few things, maybe check in with friends / guild mates then logoff.
In vanilla wow it was Old SV that kept players busy. In tbc Arena was much more accessible than it is today. Also AV although no longer Old AV, was still the main format of BG pvp, and was going through the killing process that Blizzard did to it that got it into the load of shit that it is today. Blizzard killed the pvp now. Also they added a 2 new BG, both of which spread the playerbase even more yet they both feel more like boring rehashes of old BG. I just couldn't get into them. Its the same reason IoC never did well. It was a terrible replacement to AV. The random Bg tool killed AV and 40 man bg queues. Only thing left are the stupid small scale PvP crap. And Arena has gone way pass casual friendly. ARENA IS UNPLAYABLE BY NEW COMERS. Another issue about pvp that was changed for CAT was the way Blizzard did the queue system for the Persistent pvp zones. In cata they made it harder for the larger population faction players to even play at all. That was a killer for me. Having to wait 2 hours just for a chance to do world PvP, ,,,you must be out of your f**king mind. That's why WoW is dying.... I will share this in a new thread of my own. It deserves it.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
It's not even denting the icing on the cake subs. Best estimates suggest that Blizzard spend about $4-$5 per player on everything from servers, customer support, content development, expansion development etc. That leaves $10-$11 in pure profit, per subscriber. They of course make far less of Asian subscriptions, which is why the content development team doesn't spend too much time pandering to the cultural insecurities of countris like China, but the player base in Europe and America is still around 5,000,000. That's $55,000,000 a month profit.
I REALISE these are just estimates, but they work out when you look at how much money they are making on the game. Furthermore they haven't specified where these subs were lost, I believe. If they were lost in Asia predominately, then it has little impact on their margins as they make a comparably small amount of money back from the Asians. I would hazzard that - wth the content becoming less grindy - World of Warcraft will see a general decline in players in that market, as they seem to prefer grinding to questy games.
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
Name a WoW expansion where the entity known as "the community" hasn't gotten angry, flooded forums with QQ posts, and endlessly claimed that they and everyone they knew were unsubscribing. This happens every time, as no expansion can satisfy everyone, and it is the dissatisfied who feel the need to voice their dissatisfaction, while the content happily go on playing.
So... you pay monthly for access to your characters, after you paid box price for the game. Then you pay cash for the expansions, all while paying for Character Transfers, Race and Gender changes, Name changes, and new content like the sparkly Griffins and the like in the WoW Shop. Yet here you are crying about even more "premium" features that should be standard. Get this: YOU ARE ALL GUILTY OF LETTING THEM DO THIS.
You could have fought it at the gate, with "subscription" models. You could have told them to screw off with the WoW Shop. Or when they unveiled dungeons you could only do once a day. Yet here we are, now with "Gear Score" limits and other crap in dungeonsm and charging cash for every new feature. Forgive me for just not giving a damn with the grave you've dug yourselves, and how crazy you let companies like Blizzard go.
If you don't like it, suck it up and quit. Otherwise, bow before your masters at ActivisionBlizzard.