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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWhy are people leaving WoW?
by Amanda Rivera 
Jun 13th 2007 at 3:53PM
When I read on Warcraftrealms that players have been steadily leaving WoW since the release of the expansion, I admit surprise. There is so much content in TBC I can't imagine anyone getting bored.
Why then are people leaving the game? Is it that they see it as something conquered once you reach 70? Is it that despite how much content Blizzard puts out it just never is enough? What do you think Blizzard can do to stem this downward spiral?
[via Warcraftrealms]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 8)
Arawn Jun 13th 2007 4:40PM
One possible problem could be that people who spent all the time grinding to 60, raiding for their tier X gear, and throwing themselves into the original end-game content before TBC suddenly found themselves looking like scrubs compared to people who blew through the whole 70 levels at once decked out in world-drop greens post TBC. Talk about an insult! (I am one of the latter folks, by the way) I've never seen Rag in-game, and the people who slogged through 40 mans, etc. suddenly had their elite-ness canceled out.
Now, consider what that means in terms of retaining people. Bliz does not delete accounts. These people have just had the experience of sticking with their level 60 to get the uber stuff only to have that extra at-the-level-cap effort be basically nullified by the level cap raise. If I were one of these people, there's a very large reason to just hit 70, log out and wait for the next level cap raise in the next expansion, and cancel your account to save money knowing you can just reopen it upon the next expansion.
Toptank Jun 13th 2007 4:40PM
You want to know whats going wrong with WoW? Just look at the ADVERTISEMENTS placed by google on your own site! "wow Gold & Powerleveling - www.xxxxxx.net Very Cheap wow Gold, Fast Delivery 24/7 powerleveling 1-60 159/15 days".
That's whats going wrong. Cheaters. Bots. Farming not for fun but for a living.
This sucks. I quit a year ago, always looking at wow-sites for new interesting content in the game. I have found nothing. TBC? bah. Old wine in new bottles. Arena? Naa.
Coherent Jun 13th 2007 4:44PM
Wow, so many good comments here, and very likely to be true. @5, @10, @12, you guys are all more or less right as I see it. It's not a single factor, but a combination of them all, plus of course that it's summer, so there's lots of outdoor RL content to explore.
I think TBC did a lot of stuff right, and I like a lot of what I saw. But it's also true that it didn't introduce any radical new gameplay concepts to explore and exploit. People want something that radically shakes up the game.
For me, also, I'm disappointed that there was absolutely nothing new for 20-60 players. I've been slowly leveling a hunter (I've never played a hunter before) and...
It's so boring. The old areas are completely deserted, NOBODY is doing any of the old instances (the loot tables in them are all completely obsolete and underpowered compared to the TBC areas)... The whole world is still stuck with the exact same quests and quest chains and loot that they've always had.
The 20-60 content is stuck in Groundhog Day. The world never changes. I think a lot of ordinary people enjoy playing low-level characters, and they've been leaving because they're sick of the same old same old quests and areas, and not interested in raiding ubercontent at endgame.
Radical new gameplay elements would help, too. Something crazy, like letting people buy boats and zepplins and sail them all over the world, or castlebuilding and siege warfare for uberguilds, or mounted combat...
When you release an expansion for an MMO, it also has to be a new game, not just more of the same. You're asking for people to stay with your game another year, and that's a long time. They need something new to do.
10pound Jun 13th 2007 4:45PM
You can't really call it "leaving WoW" because my account is still active but it is Summer. I live in southern Cali where the weather is great and I can see the beach from my house. Between volleyball, surfing and drinking beer with friends (re: looking at non animated women in non animated time outfits) ranks a lot higher than grinding rep, questing or raiding.
See you in October I suppose.
10pound Jun 13th 2007 4:46PM
(re: looking at non animated women in non animated **tiny outfits)
someone Jun 13th 2007 4:47PM
I can speak for the shamans, the class is a PoS and there is no reason to play it, many just quit because they dont want to relevel.
As soon as wow gets some competition its going to die, its got a monopoly right now, but its not going to last forever.
simplehiker Jun 13th 2007 11:56PM
@11
I totally feel your opinion on high level devaluing everything. As a new player that started a few months ago I am sick and tired of 70 rolling alts on the server running instances where the gear and gold mean nothing to them. They need roll everything and tell other players (usually newbies) its ok to need roll everything because this is all just junk to them. Then you have a player like me who relies on this "junk" to buy big items such as a first mount by selling this "junk" items at AH.
I am currently starting a reroll on a underpopulated server to try and avoid this massive item value inflation.
The game needs to work in a remort system where players can be reborn again as level 1 and gain some over all benefit to always keep low level game play worth playing and improving by the developers.
Jamatron Jun 13th 2007 4:48PM
Same crap, different level. Thats pretty much it.
Birthmark Jun 13th 2007 4:52PM
Interesting.
Simply adding more content doesn't make a game better. Especially if that new content is inferior to older content. They tried to fix something that wasn't broken imo. I'm just not having fun anymore. I admit that I HATE the expansion. New races don't excite me. Adding new zones doesn't really excite me. I LOVED leveling in Zangramarsh, but after I'm level 64 is there any reason to spend time in that zone again? No there isn't. I love my Bloodelf twink rogue. But does my twink being a bloodelf excite me? Uh no, not really. What about my draenei bank character? Nope, not exciting. And draenei and bloodelfs aren't even that cool. I hate both for different reasons actually. I'm not even a big lore person but the lore behind the draenei is just retarded. Spaceships? No thanks. Get that crap out of my game please. And I think bloodelfs ruined the horde and I don't even play horde. It totally ruined their hardcore vibe of "it's cool to be ugly and evil" that horde had going for it. Now the horde seems like a noob anime faction.
It's nice to see statistics that reinforce my feelings that the expansion just kinda blows. They added alot of new stuff. And the ideas behind some of the new stuff were great. Finally rewarding pvp players for skill instead of time investment! But arena kinda sucks and I have 2000+ rated teams. You're making raid sizes smaller so it will make it easier to have enough people online to raid? Yay! But 25 man raids suck. They don't feel anywhere near as epic as 40 man raids did. All it did was destroy my guild and make us leave laot of people out who raided with us every week for over a year. It was like destroying my online family.
I admit, I was upset when I heard an expansion was coming. I finally had almost all epics for my 60 character and I was working on completeing my tier sets. We had just started Naxx as a guild and I really loved that raid instance and wanted to complete it. But then came patch 2.0 a month before the release of the expansion which totally changed classes massively. And everything was bugged as hell so we gave up on raiding and did PvP instead. That was sad. I LOVED Naxx. I was like "Crap, we JUST started in here. I LOVE thise place. I wanna kill Patchwerk this month. This sucks..."
I simply liked the game at 60 alot more than I do at 70. I loved hanging in Ironforge inspecting everyones gear and joking around. I loved running out front of IF to duel for like an hour with like 2 dozen other people out there. The game was just more magical and fun back then. Now we all have to hang out in crappy Shattrah with nothing to do. There's no place to duel and there's not even an AH. The old World of Warcraft was my favorite game of all time. But the expansion is just a grind fest and having to start all over again with getting gear SUCKS. And I hate alot of the class changes made which seem to be more rapid and drastic than ever. Everything is so out of whack now. Druids and paladins are taking my tanking jobs. I can't DPS for crap now when before the expansion I was literally #1 on the damage meters for quite a few fights. I can't even hold aggro now without spending 60 points in prot. I hate my class now. It's simply not fun to raid with.
The game has just changed too much. And I think as the graph shows, most of it wasn't for the better. I liked it when classes had defined rolls. I'm sure alot of druids hated being resto, but they tolerated it didn't they? I didn't know too many druids who said "if I can't be feral or a moonkin in a raid then I'm quiting this game!" I didn't see any druids or paladins leave the game for those kind of reasons ever. Everyone had defined rolls that were the same for over 2 years and they accepted it without question. You knew with certainty that if you rolled a certain class you'd have THIS specific job or roll in endgame. I think the game was just more balanced back then. Now after the expansion it looks like the devs are constantly trying to tweak everything to make hybrid classes better than pure classes or make sure hybrid classes don't become too leet so everything keeps changing. That pissed off alot of warriors for example who left the game in droves when they were no longer respected for the MT position. Now one class is the flavor of the month so alot of people reroll it because it made their main class obsolete. Only for it to get hammered by the nerf bat by the time you get that class to level 64 lol.
Well, that's my rant. It just sucks to see a game I loved not be fun anymore. I'll probably be leaving too. Waiting on Warhammer...
SickoftheGrind Jun 13th 2007 4:58PM
Yep, Syrio and the others have said it well.
Grind grind grind, same ol' same ol'.
Bad professions, bad quests (like others have said: let's see some loooong epic freakin solo quests), and the nerfing of the old world and instances.
Now, you do realize that they nerfed the old world to force everyone to buy TBC. Because if you don't you REALLY are left out in the cold, playing your old toons in a mostly empty wasteland, unable to find groups for most things. Alas, I have loved this game, but the end of my time in WoW is now visible on the horizon.
Eegg Jun 13th 2007 5:01PM
Agree with #5. So much of the *fun* of the game has been sucked out of it by over-serious raiders and weak gear.
The heroics are a huge disappointment to me, personally.
Preston Jun 14th 2007 11:39AM
Um, isn't that just a surge we're seeing at the TBC release, then a minor dropoff as the dust settles, which is to be expected?
NerdblurbSteve Jun 13th 2007 5:04PM
Personally, i think the drop off can be attributed to the folks who decided not to upgrade to BC finally leaving the game.
Life at 60 is a wasteland now with the expansion pack out, so unless you love leveling from 1-60 over and over, WoW for permanent 60's is pretty much dead.
Rich Jun 13th 2007 5:09PM
I think part of the drop off my also be due to new players leaving. The expansion promised alot of new features. If you never played before, you have to slough through the 20-60 to see it. That section is not exactly newbie friendly in the TBC era. Everyone is in the Outlands and the old world is a ghostland.
perambulator Jun 13th 2007 5:10PM
*raises hand* The hard drive on my gaming computer crashed and I haven't budgeted for a new one yet. It doesn't make much sense to pay Blizzard if I can't play the game. But I'm still reading this blog and following the game.
PyroAmos Jun 13th 2007 5:12PM
theres no inbetween for 10 mans to 25 mans... old raid progression went something like
ZG/AQ20
MC
BWL/Ony
AQ40/Naxx
now its
Kara/Zul'Aman (when it comes out)
(Big empty spot)
SSC/TK/Gruul/Mag
MH/BT
you could argue gruul/mag up to the MC spot, but those are onyxia-like fights, walk in, kill boss walk out, hardly a raid, more like a instanced-world boss.
our first/only run in MC (after months of ZG clearing), we ran it with 33 people and cleared to baron, think running any of the 25 mans with 18-22 people would would have a slight chance of clearing anything? also raid encounters are alot easier to get 'unlucky' (IE tank get 2 shotted), and require more specific clases (mag req 4-5 tanks, 4-5 warlocks, 7-8 healers, and a couple dps war/rouge for interupts), gruul takes 6 or 7 healers, and these are 25 mans so aprox 1/3 of your raid has to be healers. They also require less teamwork and tend to be retarded burn fights, killing a mob before ur tank is unlucky and takes 2 back to back hard hits and dies. All in all the raid scene is very very disapointing.
another thing is atunements, you have to clear kara and gruul several times after 30 people grind out revered cenerian, before you can even set foot in SSC. Anyone remember atunement to MC that you completed when you were lvl 56?
next is obsoletion, not only are all the old raids/instances obsolete now, but the gear everyone raided for years to get is replaced by tier green in hellfire penensula.
and last but not least, theres nothing to look forward to at the very end of raiding. You used to be able to look forward to naxx as the defacto-elite raiding instance, with guilds that could kill trash there being the elite, and guilds that cleared a boss there the super-elite, with the gear to prove it. BT/MH are cleared already. And the epics from them... while better than the ones from TK/SSC, are not much better. Its not like back then where you see something and you know it came from AQ40 or Naxx, cause its that good... now its like.. that from the eye? ahh BT? wow cool. yay.
They could fix some of it by making SSC atunement significantly easier (like say, go in heroic SP, talk to the guy and your atuned), and make it easier (so 20 ppl fully geared kara/gruul/mag, could clear a few of the first bosses), cut drop rate of all bosses in half, make BT about 5x as hard as it is, and doubling the stats on every piece of gear there, lightening up the class-requirements for some of the encounters, and make bosses hit less hard (or increase the armor value on warrior gear so if they miss 2 parry/dodges in a row they don't die).
But they wont, cause that would require alot of work to tune correctly, so ppl will prolly keep leaving once they get exaulted all factions and realize theres not a whole lot left to do.
John Jun 13th 2007 5:16PM
I wonder how relevant these statistics really are, or even what they actually MEAN....are they log-ins? active accounts? cancelled acounts? dormant accounts? does it reflect new accounts vs. old accoutns? is this a normal kind of cycle, like summer vs. winter?
braydn Jun 13th 2007 5:22PM
i love the expansion and i can't wait till the next one comes out, i have played WoW since the last beta before the release and have taken two 2 month breaks from the game each year, i played the expansion for 2 months to lvl 66 and then for unplanned reasons i had to take some time off, i just got back in a month ago and got from 66 to 70 and just got Kara attuned. my guild just started doing kara runs so we have lots to look forward to. i love this game.
but i have not heard anything to back up that people are "leaving the game" in any official way. yes, some people are bored now that they ran through the expansion to lvl 70 in a month and are now bored of rep grinding and arenas are old hat to them and they burn out so quickly and now need a new fix instead of being happy with everything they have.
it is summer. people are out of school, planning trips, want to get outside, catch some re-runs on TV they missed during the year, need a break from the game, etc...but are they really leaving in huge numbers? i don't think so folks....
also, the game is 2 and 1/2 years old. it is hard to bring in radical exciting changes without breaking the game as a whole. people who have good social ties with each other and/or belong to good guilds are not leaving the game. that is why raiding is so important and there are so many raids to do you can never run out. heck, i still wanna go back and run blackwing lair and naxx just for the fun factor. i watched all theT V i wanted this year and recorded it on the old cable box DVR, so this summer there is NOTHING to watch on TV and i will be hitting raids with the guild 3-4 nights a week. heck, i still have not done one quest in nagrand, shadowmoon valley, or netherstorm and still have 15 quests to do in blade's edge. i got gold to make! need an epic flying mount. need to lvl my tailoring and enchanting. man, there is so much to do, i am so damned happy!
i think some people leaving the game is a good thing. the game will tighten up with the riff-raff gone and people can just enjoy the game more on a relaxed pace. then when the next expansion comes out in a year and half everyone and their babysitter and milkman will come back to the game and guess what, there will be 20 million people playing by then. then once the lvl race to 80 or 90 is over, those people who get bored easily will leave the game after several months, but just a small minority of course. lather, rinse, repeat for each expansion.
now 5-6 years down the road, i hope that blizz comes out with a startcraft MMO. THAT would be new at least in looks nd design. but the basics will still be there, classes, professions, raids, pvp, arenas, battlegrounds, guilds, gear, vanity pets, etc...
this game ain't going anywhere anytime soon and no one can touch it for at least 10 years. blizz will remain on top for the forseeable future, so get used to it. they make the best games and everyone knows it, so cry if you want to, but unfortunately it's not your party anymore.
danno Jun 13th 2007 5:33PM
What we saw in our small-ish (50 person) guild was a mad rush by half the guild to get to 70 and do all the content they could. They finished by March, were running heroics by April, and now everyone is pretty much 'done' with the game. The only two things that go on most nights are farming or battlegrounds, with the occasional plea by a level 66 to run an instance, which is usually met with a chorus of "Nah, I'm bored with Auchindoun/Botanica/whatever." This has, in turn, led most of the non-70s to play less and less, meaning there less to do, meaning more farming, meaning more people getting bored with the game. We've lost, probably, 5-6 people in the last two weeks alone.
I also think it's just a factor of the game having been out for two and a half years and people are moving on to new things. A lot of people are looking forward to World of War-Hammer-Craft-Online, a few moved to Vanguard, and a lot who just started doing other things in general. It's a natural part of the MMO evolution, and while it was nice to dream that it was IMPOSSIBLE that WoW could ever lose subscribers, it was going to happen eventually, and 30 months seems right about on schedule.
PyroAmos Jun 13th 2007 5:34PM
@ also, the game is 2 and 1/2 years old. it is hard to bring in radical exciting changes without breaking the game as a whole.
yet they managed to break the game as a whole while not bringing radical exciting changes, that takes talent
wait 'til you clear kara for a few weeks and you'll see what we're all talking about