BL is now H 8/8 and announced they are all quiting WOW

[Brenstel]

I saw this thread on the forums and it was quickly filled with the usual rhethoric...WOW too easy, too hard and OHHH NOOOES a top guild went caput...I guess no one remembers D&T from vanilla...the original guild member all went bye bye but WOW went on....I would admit LFR is easy, especially since my mage in one day won 4 tier pieces in one sitting, but does anyone really think that the casualness is going to hurt warcraft in the long run since most people that play are casuals?

[Numerical]

Death and Taxes - were very good and people aspired to them. This still remains to be the case with the current top guilds.

Raids are there for casual users but it will still be the "hard modes" for the more advanced. Is it a good thing as it is now? No.

[Tharia]

That is just a small part of what's been happening since the release of Cataclysm. Mark my words,
by the time Mists of Pandaria gets released, the player base for WoW will be half or less as compared
to the release of Cataclysm. It doesn't help that it seems the MoP expansion is targeting those
between the ages of 10 and 16 and anyone who still plays WoW that also loves playing the
Pokemon games (as that particular aspect seems to be the most prevalent aside from the panda race).

I personally also think that WoW, if it is to continue on, should have a major overhaul to bring its
graphics up to current date norms and not just the cinematics. I understand that would take
a lot of time, disc space and planning, but it's quite do-able and Blizz certainly has the resources
to speed it up considerably. In all honesty, if they don't, then soon WoW will be ranked along side
of games, like Runescape, as far as graphics quality goes.

I know this particular topic is of high debate and there are strong arguments for all sides, and some
of which I agree with from other points of view as well, but ultimately this is my point of view.

In closing, my feelings towards MoP expac is a last ditch effort to keep the little kiddies and the
Pokejunkies playing WoW to milk the game for every last cent they can. Same with their D3
offer - it would just be cheaper in the long run to simply buy D3 outright rather than deal
with paying for WoW for a whole year and likely not play it once D3 is live. IMHO anyway.

[Teleri]

Same with their D3
offer - it would just be cheaper in the long run to simply buy D3 outright rather than deal
with paying for WoW for a whole year and likely not play it once D3 is live. IMHO anyway.

That was my thinking. I also wonder what is going to happen, and it will happen, when someone cannot continue paying for the year they signed up for? Will Blizzard send out the ambulance-chaser lawyers to recoup the contractual money owed? Will that even hold water in a court of law?

Even if you dont know Kaplan and Prado both designers were in a guild in Everquest called Legacy of Steel. Which was even before Death and Taxes. While DnT was certainly the more famous/ Infamous (who could forget the post of that girl. right?).

I don't want to knock WoW for I have too many fond memories of it, but one has to wonder about MoP...........

[Tharia]

That was my thinking. I also wonder what is going to happen, and it will happen, when someone cannot continue paying for the year they signed up for? Will Blizzard send out the ambulance-chaser lawyers to recoup the contractual money owed? Will that even hold water in a court of law?

I'm pretty sure they just revoke your digital copy of D3 and prevent you from playing it online via IP block or something more sinister and force you to download a patch which blocks the game from being played all together. I highly doubt they would bother taking anything like that to a court room unless someone cracked and supplied copies of D3 to everyone who wanted it.

[Cremate]

They are setting WoW up to become a Free-to-Play. If you are familiar with many of the F2P MMOs, you will start to notice the signs over the next year or so.

Why? Because no monthly subscription means less responsibilty to the fan base; no responsibility to create new content, and no responsibility to continuously fix game mechanics and balances. This will free up their resources to finally move on. They will still feed off of the money made from WoW... but that money will eventually be coming from a method similar to D3: the AH cuts.

D3 is the last installment of their "legacy games". By legacy, I mean games that we have been waiting on forever. Starcraft II and D3 have been the big development focus for Blizzard for the last 5 years.

A few months after D3 is released, expect MoP and another Starcraft II expansion to be it for blizzard for a while. A year into MoP, WoW will become Free-to-play, which will free up all of their resources to focus on "Titan", their next big MMO... and the official WoW-Killer. Fitting it will come from Blizzard itself. It brings to mind the wise Bill Cosby addage: "I was the one that brought you into this world... I will be the one to take you out of it!"

[Bellarionna]

starcraft 2 has 2 additional expansions in the works (probably already completed) the zerg expansion and the protoss expansion (from what i understand)...

D3 = spring 2012
MoP = summer 2012
Sc2 X1 = fall 2012



I also find it funny that most of the people on this thread are all "retirees" themselves... maybe looking for some validation to their retirement. "hey they did it, so it was ok for me to"... just a thought

[Darkrytez]

I also find it funny that most of the people on this thread are all "retirees" themselves... maybe looking for some validation to their retirement. "hey they did it, so it was ok for me to"... just a thought

I would say so. To be honest wow has been wearing very thin for me for a while. I played since beta of vanilla. The joy and excitement I had back then is nothing like what I have had in the last expac cata. Now with MoP being talked about I find myself weary of it. Usually I feel like a kid at christmas but now meh.

Truthfully I am waiting and buying time till D3 and i feel most of us are to. Now that I reread that post bell did you mean we retired becuase others did? Just wondering.

After playing for the last 6 or so years (lost count) personally I find myself in the same boat as Tharia. I also agree cremate they have talked about it in the past, and it would open up so much more. To be honest I am kinda sceptical about the whole Titan mmo.

btw bell i spaced everything out for you lol

[Ninjapaws]

They are setting WoW up to become a Free-to-Play. If you are familiar with many of the F2P MMOs, you will start to notice the signs over the next year or so.

WoW becoming Free-to-play will NEVER happen.

[Darkrytez]

I doubt that Ninja. Why would you continue to make money on something that is dead? Only way to bring back fan base is to go free to play. Once Diablo hits you know the amount of players will plummet even more. Thats a known fact but blizzard wont loose out on money. With as many people that opt in for the year payment for free D3 it doesn't matter. They have made so much money off this game they honeslty dont need more. Plus with D3 you get to pay real money for AH stuff? Logic behind the reasoning why would you keep something going when the player base is dwindling down? Look at DCU. Their player base sky rocketed after it went free to play.

[Ninjapaws]

think about it...it doesnt make sense for them to go free-to-play

there will ALWAYS be a warcraft fan base no mater what, making the game free to play with completely stop the companies income, they would only be making money off of new retails of the game.

even if the population goes down to 1,000,000 people those people are still paying atleast $12.50 a month. that being said, they are making $150,000,000 a year off only 1,000,000 people. thats insane. even with a population of 55,000 people $8,250,000. im pretty sure blizzard can take the subscriber hits, they gotta be making something like 85% profit right now from monthly fees alone.

to this day DAOC still has a fee, but imo they should of went F2P when its population finally dipped below 50,000, the game came out in 2001.

blizzard having the kind of fanbase they have, will always have a cult fan base that will play the game till it dies regardless if they have to pay the monthly fee or not. and seeing that. population dips and they transfer people to other servers and start shutting down, we got how many servers? the US has 124 servers alone.

even if they start putting ads in the game, no company is going to pay enough money for the fees to be significantly reduced. teh game regardless how many subscribers leave as long as the game is above 1,000,000 people i cant ever see this game going f2p, and even then i dont see people leaving this game even with all teh QQ about MOP, people always come back regardless of what they put in the game, because there is honestly no other game out there like this, SWTOR comes close but its 2 different levels, its like comparing apples and oranges. the one thing i dont like about SWTOR is there is no difference really in models for weapons and the models for gear is limited too(yes ive been data mining looking at this), the game has great gameplay but on a character visual level its lacking.

imo if they actually make the fights in Normal and Heroic HARD enough that will last the world top 10 guilds atleast 3 months, im not talking the 7 boss releases, im talking they actually release a instance like Ulduar & Naxx with atleast +10 bosses and actually making the heroic modes hard and the normal modes hard and the LFR well they can just leave that how it is cause LFR already wipes on the current difficulty.

imo this game lost its way when they started releasing instances with 6-8 bosses and made the heroic modes easy enough that the top 10 guilds spend 1-4 weeks. which means a normal guild will be done with them in what couple months. im not saying AM isnt normal, we had alot of problems in both raid teams with what comps we are running and peoples attendence, but i honestly believe if we didnt havethose problems we would of def both teams gotten H Rag down in a reasonable amount of time, we have/had the skill for it.

[Tharia]

I also find it funny that most of the people on this thread are all "retirees" themselves... maybe looking for some validation to their retirement. "hey they did it, so it was ok for me to"... just a thought

I honestly don't see how you see that, I retired for reasons beyond the game and events surrounding it. Sure, I'll admit the game as a whole has lost my interest, but that's not why I quit playing it. If things in my life had gone a little differently about 4 months ago, then it is likely I would still be playing now.

[Darkrytez]

think about it...it doesnt make sense for them to go free-to-play

there will ALWAYS be a warcraft fan base no mater what, making the game free to play with completely stop the companies income, they would only be making money off of new retails of the game.

they wouldnt be cutting their income at all. they have other games that will bring them the money. wow is not their only source plus titan

[Ninjapaws]

they have other sources of income, but not on any level that WoW is. its insane.

[Darkrytez]

all i can say is wait till d3 comes out