Originally posted by Datastar I feel thier problem isnt the f2p/b2p games out there, its the dumbing down/lack of innovation across the board on all of blizzards games over the past few years. Thats just my personal opinion.
I'll jumping in on this and agree.
I decided to resub about a month or so ago, didnt bother getting pandavision. It had been about a year plus since I played last.
And oh my fucking god, this wasnt the game I played and loved 5 years ago, and like 2 years ago. It was like Datastar said, dumbed down to the point of a game like Wizard101.
Blizzard took away almost all of the choices that the player used to make and made them for you. I mean my god the talent trees are designed so a 12 year old cant make a mistake. I remember custom building my arcane mage, you cant do that anymore, its all laid out for you. It literally was revolting.
Same with my Disc priest, I had a great solo leveling/dungeon build. Its gone, it cant be made. And the new options blows, ie it sucks dick. (Sorry mod if you have to edit, I do feel strongly about it.)
I mean we've seen the choices in that game kinda get simplified over the years. But this was so bad I found the game un-fun. I honestly cant see how the 4,6, 8 plus year veterans can still enjoy playing this game after Blizzard has taken so much choice away from them.
Sad really. It was a game I enjoyed coming back to even it it was for only 6-8 months at a time. I seriously considered asking for my $15 back, thats how disappointed I was.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
I was one of those people that left in the last 6 months. The game is still great but i've been playing on and off since 2004. I'm just not really interested in it anymore.
And to the people that are saying Blizzard isn't innovating enough or should add more content - that's nonsense. The game is just getting old. People are doing other things in their lives now.
Math - according to their numbers, users dropped from about 9.2M to 7.9M.
Users - not specifically $15/mo subs, could be a big chunk of time-card types overseas, we don't know.
We do know because revenues and earnings beat expectations. That could never happen unless most of the stubscribers that were lost were very low-paying ones.. ie china cyber cafe.
Also it is pretty obvious they are from China because of um.. a major f2p game that launched there, made in china, promoted in cyber cafes.. and already boasting 20M players.
For a long time, many people said Blizzard was ´cheating´ by including those low paying internet cafe players. Well, now you are seeing what happens when they leave en masse.... subscribers drop like a rock, while revenues and earnings are fine.
Just 1 thing here, wasn't blizzard saying they had 11-12 million subscribers BEFORE they started in china. I do know that servers had dropped significantly with playerbase and many who are on low populated realms are transferring off to ones that are full. Eventually the empty servers with players left on will have nothing and will start to leave (like me) I still have a subscription but this may be the last one for a while, I will not pay £15 to move a character (and I have 10), I will not time sink levelling new chars on a different server (some things cannot be regained, like titles/mounts/pets and crafting schematics that have been removed). Some are server based only and some are account based, server based will be lost and the achievement system is all screwed up now, meaning you will have to sift through completed achievements to see if that actual character has the bloody thing or not.
Lets face facts. Games like TERA, SW:TOR, Aion, and LOTRO were only kinda popular when they were s2p games, but once they converted to f2p, they experienced HUGE population booms. The same will happen if/when WoW converts to f2p, and right now, I think it's less of a matter of "if" than it is of "when". In fact, even if they made it b2p where players had to buy the expansion packs but not need to pay a subscription, that would create a similarly huge population boom (and might be enough to bring me back).
It will only go f2p when they feel they have milked the cash cow as much as they can and it is dry. They are far from that... an Accountant somewhere will be doing the numbers to calculate what point the subs need to drop before switch to f2p. 8 mil subs still brings in quite a bit per month.
NO game last forever. I don't think anyone is losing sleep because they cant go play pacman, dig dug , q-bert and donkey kong. Those games are so old no one plays them anymore. WOW is getting old, people have been there and done that and moved on.
Originally posted by wowclones NO game last forever. I don't think anyone is losing sleep because they cant go play pacman, dig dug , q-bert and donkey kong. Those games are so old no one plays them anymore. WOW is getting old, people have been there and done that and moved on.
Speak for yourself. I have dig dug, q-bert and donkey kong on my Iphone and I play them a lot when I'm waiting for my plane at the airport or when Im in a taxi or just when Im bored.
Damn, it seems like everyone here is chomping at the bit for WoW to go F2P. Well, sorry to disappoint, but that will never happen. Why? Because the game is still generating some serious revenue. Though they may have seen lower than their usual earnings, Blizzard/Activision is still making big bucks off of WoW. I mean, come on, Blizzard can still afford to have customer service you can call. Most other MMOs don't even have that. Actual people to call and SPEAK TO, not some faceless "leave an email with your problem and we'll get back to you eventually" BS customer service.
And even if WoW went F2P, players would see a massive decline in content and maintenance. The majority of the staff would be laid off due to lack of funding. Customer service, GM support even basic server maintenance would go. The game would be operated by a skeleton crew of the bare essential developers needed to just keep the game running.
F2P is the last ditch effort of dying games in an attempt to lure players in with the promise of free content only to charge them out the ass for the littlest, stupidest of things like extra bank space, extra bag slots, skins for their armor, faster mount speed, faster leveling and other basic things that come with the subscription to a P2P game. F2P games are basically Pay to Win games. The more you pay, the less you have to actually do. It's just like saying "Here's a 100 bucks, max out my character, give me the best gear and a ton of ingame money".
The only way those remaining 8 million subs will leave is if the game either A.) Completely kills itself or B.) Someone develops a theme park MMO that can compete. Considering that WoW's 10 year anniversary mark is fast approaching, the game as evolved very well over the past 9 years, so the odds of it failing due to bad development doesn't seem likely.
As for B.) someone making a theme park mmo that can compete, well, the evidence speaks for itself. 9 years and every mmo released has done nothing but try to copy WoW. Practically every MMO released in 9 years has been a WoW clone. Same UI, same basic set up, same leveling system, same skill tree concept, same gear rating system, same everything. The fact of the matter is, when it comes to theme park MMOs, WoW is king.
So, to everyone who says WoW should go F2P, forget it. It will never happen. If the subscription base dropped to 100k or less, I could see the possibility. But they still have over 8 million subs, a number that probably fluctuates upwards more than downwards, and that equals to a lot of money. And considering they have enough lore and material for at least 4 more expansion packs, WoW wont be going anywhere anytime soon.
when they lose enough people to not be overwhelmingly the most populated MMO out there, we will talk about it dieing until then can we please stop having one of these the world (of warcraft) is ending threads every time some random online game site ( hundreds and hundreds of the things) says WoW has lost subs.
F2P may be the way of the future, but ya know they dont make them like they used to Proper Grammer & spelling are extra, corrections will be LOL at.
Math - according to their numbers, users dropped from about 9.2M to 7.9M.
Users - not specifically $15/mo subs, could be a big chunk of time-card types overseas, we don't know.
We do know because revenues and earnings beat expectations. That could never happen unless most of the stubscribers that were lost were very low-paying ones.. ie china cyber cafe.
Also it is pretty obvious they are from China because of um.. a major f2p game that launched there, made in china, promoted in cyber cafes.. and already boasting 20M players.
For a long time, many people said Blizzard was ´cheating´ by including those low paying internet cafe players. Well, now you are seeing what happens when they leave en masse.... subscribers drop like a rock, while revenues and earnings are fine.
I give you the doubt of just being ignorant and clueless, instead of a straight out liar.
Maybe get your facts straight? Its like everything of your claim in whiteknighting crusade is untrue or almost completely falsified. You don't seem to know anything.
I give you a hint to educate yourself until next time:
Snail Games never even announced player numbers, nor ever mentioned a number of 20M.
Tencents Chinese P2P MMO earnings all grew, except for WoW.
ActivisionBlizzard reported the second lowest earnings for WoW in their entire history..
what game is he talking about cause i don't know of any NEW major MMO being launched over there that want already over there at least not recently.
i could just be ignorant on this one i don't pay a ton of attention to oversea gameing, aside from JRPGs
F2P may be the way of the future, but ya know they dont make them like they used to Proper Grammer & spelling are extra, corrections will be LOL at.
Wow sounds like a good game to try, but something in me tells me I really shouldn't invest time into a 9 year old game, since I'm late to the party anyway. Losing 1,3 mil subs isn't exactly the best marketing campaign to attract new players, either. I was so invested into other MMOs and FPSes during the wow explosion that I didnt even know it existed until 2008 when a friend briefly mentioned it.
A group of friends and myself (all WoW veterans) recently decided to resub and start playing again. Only one of us played Cataclysm. We are having fun, although we randomly picked a high pop server to play on, and we found out a couple days ago that apparently we are in the minority as alliance in a server with a huge horde presence (Area 52).
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop. Subscription = Actual content updates!
Originally posted by crasset15 Wow sounds like a good game to try, but something in me tells me I really shouldn't invest time into a 9 year old game, since I'm late to the party anyway. Losing 1,3 mil subs isn't exactly the best marketing campaign to attract new players, either. I was so invested into other MMOs and FPSes during the wow explosion that I didnt even know it existed until 2008 when a friend briefly mentioned it.
People are eating through content and unsubbing and resubbing when new content comes out, they're doing it quicker and faster than normal because a lot of them have caught on that is the best way to get all the content and then be done with the game at a more casual level.
They lose a lot of casual players due to this, that is why they are investing in developing 'flex raids' and more content for every level of game play. A lot of other games are doing this as well.
All good things must come to an end. WoW is already 30+% below it's peak subs and falling. Nonetheless, it's still probably a decade from being shut down.
Which is all fine and dandy if you ask me. They had a good run, stealing their formula from EQ and all.
WOW is the last man standing in fantasy based MMO's. Take EVE and that one is the last man standing in SF based MMO's.
Last man standing as ... having active SUBSCRIPTIONS.
The rest went free to play and seriously free to play in an AAA developped MMORPG is the last road to nowhere.
Because these MMORPG's (at least those with a real open world behind them - not like World of Tanks) are simply too costly to produce for the free to play model.
F2P works perfectly for small program groups on small games with little development costs and very casual game play.
Blizzard knows this and so they changed to games like HS, BAS and of course Diablo 3 (on consoles)
Much easier to program, hardly content updates needed and money makers from the start.
I bet HS will bring in more money in its first 6 months than any new MMORPG from Blizzard could gather. Because the sub model is simply finished for mmo's and so a "new" mmorpg will never have a return of investment.
Not for the next 5 years anyway. People are fed up by them.
Having played WoW from the vanilla to Wrath for me it has nothing to do with it not being F2P, but simply because Blizzard made the game so easy it no longer presented any challenge. I remember when pulling more than one mob in even the lower level dungeons meant death or just barely scraping through, now it's pull the whole room or even two plus rooms worth of mobs and just AoE them down and Blizzard think that's supposed to be fun. They completely destroyed any tactical elements from the game so that even a two fingered chimpanzee could breeze to end game content all whilst eating a banana and hanging from a tree.
Blizzard have backed themselves into a corner where they are now stuck with the simplified gameplay that they have created. The crazy thing is even now I see people complaining that it's to hard or takes to long to do something, I'd like to think these people are just kidding, but sadly they aren't. I often wonder why some people play MMORPG's because they really only want to play them like a single player game.
Yeah, I just recently cancelled my subscription. The game has grown too 'cutesy' for me. It feels too simple for a practiced mmo player like me. I had wished the game had grown with me. Somehow, I feel we have went our separate ways. I have been playing Rift and loving it. I also am taking my money back to Warhammer Online as the ultimate sign of my dissatisfaction in WoW. Could you imagine beleagured WAR teeming with disaffected WoW vets as the ultimate protest vote? As WoW's subscriber leak away, WAR's grows? What message would that send? Hey, we want a more serious version of this universe--maybe?
Lets face facts. Games like TERA, SW:TOR, Aion, and LOTRO were only kinda popular when they were s2p games, but once they converted to f2p, they experienced HUGE population booms. The same will happen if/when WoW converts to f2p, and right now, I think it's less of a matter of "if" than it is of "when". In fact, even if they made it b2p where players had to buy the expansion packs but not need to pay a subscription, that would create a similarly huge population boom (and might be enough to bring me back).
f2p doesnt typically bring players back, and brings in new people. there isnt a large pool of people who havent played WoW that will suddenly play it if its f2p.
I'd disagree, even friends that played hundreds of LoL games that took a break are now back to playing...it wasn't indefinite. For it to work though, Blizzard's next expansion would have to be free and then turn over to a f2p model more than likely. Could wait two more expansions but by that point f2p might not be enough because wow will be like 10+ years old.
People seem to be forgetting that WoW lost more subs then any 3 sub based games currently have combined. Its far from dieing people still play games like EQ1, DAOC, Ultima Online and EQ2 which also came out the same time as WoW. WoW will continue losing subs but I really doubt blizzard is going to just let the game die without a fight. They are pumping out major content patches at a rapid pace and some of these patches have more content then other MMOs xpacs. And anybody that has done the Legendary Questline will see they are allluding to a burning legion themed xpac which should hopefully bring more players back and at least keep the game going strong till Titan (which I really hope is WoW 2) comes.
Lets face it WoW is the number 1 MMO for a reason, sure it has allot of easy mode content but they have a ton of content to for hardcore gamers like challenge modes, hardmode raids and heroic scenarios. Not to mention WoW has extremely competative pvp with arena and BGs and they also have cross-realm play so no matter what time you come on to play you can always find people to do any content with.
Resubbed on Sunday and bought Mists of Panda Land after a year and half break from the game. Having alot of fun but i had to transfer off of my old server Natherizm because of how dead it was. Last i played nath i believe was full or high pop now sitting at medium. Stormwind * Ironforge were like ghost towns as was the MOP content.
Originally posted by Datastar I feel thier problem isnt the f2p/b2p games out there, its the dumbing down/lack of innovation across the board on all of blizzards games over the past few years. Thats just my personal opinion.
I think it's a combination of both.
So many games are going F2P now, many of them "premium" mmos. WoW's subscription doesn't seem to have the value it used to. If you think about it, vanilla's final patch was 1.12 while BC's was 2.4, that's a drop of 2/3 in the content patches released in the 1st cycle. As WoW aged, less and less content was added but the price stayed the same (less bang for your buck).
The other factor is how Blizzard is ignoring it's players and doing what it wants and how it wants it. They admitted arenas were a mistake that imbalanced pvp, yet.... they are still doing arenas. They say they want to "simplify" resource management then... add another resource to manage. They say they want you to "bring the player" but in MoP they put in so much phasing tech that people can't bring their players.
I also think that the 3rd problem is recycled content.
Heroics are just recycling an existing instance. I'm in the same dungeon, fighting same mobs, who path the same way. Sure they hit harder and take longer to kill but it IS still essentially the same thing all over again. Then when Wrath hit, they went into recycling overdrive. First Raid? Naxx Recycled. Next Raid? OS recycled 4 times (0D, 1D, 2D, 3D). Later on we get 10m, 25m, 10m HM, 25m HM instances. It's the Same Map, with the Same Mobs, in the Same Place, doing the Same Attacks. Sure the 25m HM fireball hits harder than the 10m normal, but it's Still A Fireball. So this led to burnout and people leaving.
It's like Blizzard is just getting lazy and tries to do the minimum possible work. Why make 4 unique instances when we can just reuse the same one 4 times! /yawn
My wife and I tried playing WoW again for a few weeks. During that I was doing that, school, and finishing up The Last of Us. I kept trying to level my 89 druid to 90 but I just couldn't will myself to do it! To my surprise my wife, once a diehard WoW fan, couldn't do it either. We just found the game tried and worn out. WoW's still good and has the population to prove it has a fanbase, but we just can't get into it anymore, it just doesn't have the luster it used too
Playing: TSW, D&D NW, Defiance (more the tv show than game >.> ) LotRO, DCUO
Comments
I'll jumping in on this and agree.
I decided to resub about a month or so ago, didnt bother getting pandavision. It had been about a year plus since I played last.
And oh my fucking god, this wasnt the game I played and loved 5 years ago, and like 2 years ago. It was like Datastar said, dumbed down to the point of a game like Wizard101.
Blizzard took away almost all of the choices that the player used to make and made them for you. I mean my god the talent trees are designed so a 12 year old cant make a mistake. I remember custom building my arcane mage, you cant do that anymore, its all laid out for you. It literally was revolting.
Same with my Disc priest, I had a great solo leveling/dungeon build. Its gone, it cant be made. And the new options blows, ie it sucks dick. (Sorry mod if you have to edit, I do feel strongly about it.)
I mean we've seen the choices in that game kinda get simplified over the years. But this was so bad I found the game un-fun. I honestly cant see how the 4,6, 8 plus year veterans can still enjoy playing this game after Blizzard has taken so much choice away from them.
Sad really. It was a game I enjoyed coming back to even it it was for only 6-8 months at a time. I seriously considered asking for my $15 back, thats how disappointed I was.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
I was one of those people that left in the last 6 months. The game is still great but i've been playing on and off since 2004. I'm just not really interested in it anymore.
And to the people that are saying Blizzard isn't innovating enough or should add more content - that's nonsense. The game is just getting old. People are doing other things in their lives now.
We do know because revenues and earnings beat expectations. That could never happen unless most of the stubscribers that were lost were very low-paying ones.. ie china cyber cafe.
Also it is pretty obvious they are from China because of um.. a major f2p game that launched there, made in china, promoted in cyber cafes.. and already boasting 20M players.
For a long time, many people said Blizzard was ´cheating´ by including those low paying internet cafe players. Well, now you are seeing what happens when they leave en masse.... subscribers drop like a rock, while revenues and earnings are fine.
12M was a worldwide number so will have included China.
I concur that they need to act to keep servers active and that paid transfers should not be required.
It will only go f2p when they feel they have milked the cash cow as much as they can and it is dry. They are far from that... an Accountant somewhere will be doing the numbers to calculate what point the subs need to drop before switch to f2p. 8 mil subs still brings in quite a bit per month.
Speak for yourself. I have dig dug, q-bert and donkey kong on my Iphone and I play them a lot when I'm waiting for my plane at the airport or when Im in a taxi or just when Im bored.
Damn, it seems like everyone here is chomping at the bit for WoW to go F2P. Well, sorry to disappoint, but that will never happen. Why? Because the game is still generating some serious revenue. Though they may have seen lower than their usual earnings, Blizzard/Activision is still making big bucks off of WoW. I mean, come on, Blizzard can still afford to have customer service you can call. Most other MMOs don't even have that. Actual people to call and SPEAK TO, not some faceless "leave an email with your problem and we'll get back to you eventually" BS customer service.
And even if WoW went F2P, players would see a massive decline in content and maintenance. The majority of the staff would be laid off due to lack of funding. Customer service, GM support even basic server maintenance would go. The game would be operated by a skeleton crew of the bare essential developers needed to just keep the game running.
F2P is the last ditch effort of dying games in an attempt to lure players in with the promise of free content only to charge them out the ass for the littlest, stupidest of things like extra bank space, extra bag slots, skins for their armor, faster mount speed, faster leveling and other basic things that come with the subscription to a P2P game. F2P games are basically Pay to Win games. The more you pay, the less you have to actually do. It's just like saying "Here's a 100 bucks, max out my character, give me the best gear and a ton of ingame money".
The only way those remaining 8 million subs will leave is if the game either A.) Completely kills itself or B.) Someone develops a theme park MMO that can compete. Considering that WoW's 10 year anniversary mark is fast approaching, the game as evolved very well over the past 9 years, so the odds of it failing due to bad development doesn't seem likely.
As for B.) someone making a theme park mmo that can compete, well, the evidence speaks for itself. 9 years and every mmo released has done nothing but try to copy WoW. Practically every MMO released in 9 years has been a WoW clone. Same UI, same basic set up, same leveling system, same skill tree concept, same gear rating system, same everything. The fact of the matter is, when it comes to theme park MMOs, WoW is king.
So, to everyone who says WoW should go F2P, forget it. It will never happen. If the subscription base dropped to 100k or less, I could see the possibility. But they still have over 8 million subs, a number that probably fluctuates upwards more than downwards, and that equals to a lot of money. And considering they have enough lore and material for at least 4 more expansion packs, WoW wont be going anywhere anytime soon.
F2P may be the way of the future, but ya know they dont make them like they used to
Proper Grammer & spelling are extra, corrections will be LOL at.
what game is he talking about cause i don't know of any NEW major MMO being launched over there that want already over there at least not recently.
i could just be ignorant on this one i don't pay a ton of attention to oversea gameing, aside from JRPGs
F2P may be the way of the future, but ya know they dont make them like they used to
Proper Grammer & spelling are extra, corrections will be LOL at.
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
People are eating through content and unsubbing and resubbing when new content comes out, they're doing it quicker and faster than normal because a lot of them have caught on that is the best way to get all the content and then be done with the game at a more casual level.
They lose a lot of casual players due to this, that is why they are investing in developing 'flex raids' and more content for every level of game play. A lot of other games are doing this as well.
All good things must come to an end. WoW is already 30+% below it's peak subs and falling. Nonetheless, it's still probably a decade from being shut down.
Which is all fine and dandy if you ask me. They had a good run, stealing their formula from EQ and all.
That's just, like, my opinion, man.
WOW is the last man standing in fantasy based MMO's. Take EVE and that one is the last man standing in SF based MMO's.
Last man standing as ... having active SUBSCRIPTIONS.
The rest went free to play and seriously free to play in an AAA developped MMORPG is the last road to nowhere.
Because these MMORPG's (at least those with a real open world behind them - not like World of Tanks) are simply too costly to produce for the free to play model.
F2P works perfectly for small program groups on small games with little development costs and very casual game play.
Blizzard knows this and so they changed to games like HS, BAS and of course Diablo 3 (on consoles)
Much easier to program, hardly content updates needed and money makers from the start.
I bet HS will bring in more money in its first 6 months than any new MMORPG from Blizzard could gather. Because the sub model is simply finished for mmo's and so a "new" mmorpg will never have a return of investment.
Not for the next 5 years anyway. People are fed up by them.
Having played WoW from the vanilla to Wrath for me it has nothing to do with it not being F2P, but simply because Blizzard made the game so easy it no longer presented any challenge. I remember when pulling more than one mob in even the lower level dungeons meant death or just barely scraping through, now it's pull the whole room or even two plus rooms worth of mobs and just AoE them down and Blizzard think that's supposed to be fun. They completely destroyed any tactical elements from the game so that even a two fingered chimpanzee could breeze to end game content all whilst eating a banana and hanging from a tree.
Blizzard have backed themselves into a corner where they are now stuck with the simplified gameplay that they have created. The crazy thing is even now I see people complaining that it's to hard or takes to long to do something, I'd like to think these people are just kidding, but sadly they aren't. I often wonder why some people play MMORPG's because they really only want to play them like a single player game.
I'd disagree, even friends that played hundreds of LoL games that took a break are now back to playing...it wasn't indefinite. For it to work though, Blizzard's next expansion would have to be free and then turn over to a f2p model more than likely. Could wait two more expansions but by that point f2p might not be enough because wow will be like 10+ years old.
People seem to be forgetting that WoW lost more subs then any 3 sub based games currently have combined. Its far from dieing people still play games like EQ1, DAOC, Ultima Online and EQ2 which also came out the same time as WoW. WoW will continue losing subs but I really doubt blizzard is going to just let the game die without a fight. They are pumping out major content patches at a rapid pace and some of these patches have more content then other MMOs xpacs. And anybody that has done the Legendary Questline will see they are allluding to a burning legion themed xpac which should hopefully bring more players back and at least keep the game going strong till Titan (which I really hope is WoW 2) comes.
Lets face it WoW is the number 1 MMO for a reason, sure it has allot of easy mode content but they have a ton of content to for hardcore gamers like challenge modes, hardmode raids and heroic scenarios. Not to mention WoW has extremely competative pvp with arena and BGs and they also have cross-realm play so no matter what time you come on to play you can always find people to do any content with.
Aloha Mr Hand !
I think it's a combination of both.
So many games are going F2P now, many of them "premium" mmos. WoW's subscription doesn't seem to have the value it used to. If you think about it, vanilla's final patch was 1.12 while BC's was 2.4, that's a drop of 2/3 in the content patches released in the 1st cycle. As WoW aged, less and less content was added but the price stayed the same (less bang for your buck).
The other factor is how Blizzard is ignoring it's players and doing what it wants and how it wants it. They admitted arenas were a mistake that imbalanced pvp, yet.... they are still doing arenas. They say they want to "simplify" resource management then... add another resource to manage. They say they want you to "bring the player" but in MoP they put in so much phasing tech that people can't bring their players.
I also think that the 3rd problem is recycled content.
Heroics are just recycling an existing instance. I'm in the same dungeon, fighting same mobs, who path the same way. Sure they hit harder and take longer to kill but it IS still essentially the same thing all over again. Then when Wrath hit, they went into recycling overdrive. First Raid? Naxx Recycled. Next Raid? OS recycled 4 times (0D, 1D, 2D, 3D). Later on we get 10m, 25m, 10m HM, 25m HM instances. It's the Same Map, with the Same Mobs, in the Same Place, doing the Same Attacks. Sure the 25m HM fireball hits harder than the 10m normal, but it's Still A Fireball. So this led to burnout and people leaving.
It's like Blizzard is just getting lazy and tries to do the minimum possible work. Why make 4 unique instances when we can just reuse the same one 4 times! /yawn
Playing: TSW, D&D NW, Defiance (more the tv show than game >.> ) LotRO, DCUO