Blue posts and other WoW news: PTR schedule, layoff rumors are still false
by Adam Holisky 
Nov 8th 2011 at 9:00PM
Don't forget to check out The Daily Quest and our Weekly Podcast Roundup to find out what else is going on in the WoW community. And if you have a news tip, feel free to drop us a line and let us know.
Thanks to Macaluso for this week's image!
Blue posts
PTR Testing Schedule Nov. 9
More testing, we had to push the testing from the 8th back a day.
Wednesday November 9
10:30 PST Zon'ozz 25 Heroic
14:00 PST Hagara 25 Heroic
15:30 PST Warmaster Blackhorn 25 Heroic
17:00 PST Spine of Deathwing 25 Heroic
The testing schedule can change at a moment's notice, check this forum for the latest info.
Wednesday November 9
10:30 PST Zon'ozz 25 Heroic
14:00 PST Hagara 25 Heroic
15:30 PST Warmaster Blackhorn 25 Heroic
17:00 PST Spine of Deathwing 25 Heroic
The testing schedule can change at a moment's notice, check this forum for the latest info.
Layoff rumors? Yup. Still false.WoW news from other sites
- MMO-Champion Fangs of the Father Questline, BlizzCon Photos, Blue Posts, Fan Art
- Wowhead News New Site Feature: Transmogrification Sets
- J. Allen Brack talks to Wired about Pandaren and pet battles
- Reader UI of the Week: Mark addon territory with Aeide's setup
- WoW subscriber numbers down to 10.3 million players
- Ol' Grumpy and the grimoire of gear inflation
- Rumored "mass layoffs" at Blizzard never happened
- Totem Talk: Resto shaman advice for healing groups, DK tanks, and heroic instances
- 5 reasons you should love The Burning Crusade
- Patch 4.3 PTR: The (real) ghosts of Darkmoon Faire Island
- WoW Moviewatch: The Purpler
- The Queue: Is there golf in Azeroth?
- Around Azeroth: I can see all obstacles in my way
- Win a Mega Bloks Thrall figure from WoW Insider
- Breakfast Topic: What WoW holidays need to be improved?
- Metareview: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
- Activision reports record digital revenue, raises 2011 financial outlook
- Skyrim is getting a day one patch, more DLC than you can shake a giant sword at
Today in WoW brings you the preceding days's WoW and gaming news. Also of community interest: our podcast listing, staff blog and Twitter listings and WoW websites and blogs (all part of our Guide to WoW Resources). Find out what's going on in the WoW player community every week in The Classifieds.
Filed under: Today in WoW
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Hih Nov 8th 2011 11:58PM
Can't tell if serious.
David Nov 9th 2011 12:19AM
If you want the game to crash, fire Ghostcrawler. I don't know a single person more competent then GC and balancing all the classes. Most of the people who complain don't know shit about all the other classes, let alone their own class.
The reason it isn't 100% balanced is that is completely impossible unless you remove nine of the classes. WoW is the most balanced game compared to it's size you will probably ever see, and you can thank GC for a lot of that.
thawedtheorc Nov 9th 2011 1:06AM
People would take you seriously if you did not type in all caps and actually had a good idea.
No game will last forever and the changes they are making are breathing a lot of freshness to the game. At the heart of WoW is the discovery and at the heart of Cataclysm was updating the entire Old World and polish off adding the last few zones.
They made some mistakes in this expansion and I do not see them doing it again in the next one.
For all the attacks you directed at Ghostcrawler, I think you missed that you sound even more egotistical and maniacal than you would believe. People hate people like that.
The whole Kung Fu Panda stuff though is frankly childish and ignorant. All of us old school Warcraft know Pandaren has been a part of the game before someone like yourself could type your name on that keyboard you are abusing.
My only issue with Ghostcrawler seemed to be he became too personally invested in the game and at times I have wondered if he made changes to classes out of spite or to improve whatever favorite class he chose to play. ie the change to Mages to be able to root Feral and Boomkin Druids. But I simply wonder. Some people took it personal who play Druids. Now my main is a Druid, and it sucked... but ehhh. I hated when I played Mage that I had no way of stopping a Druid carrying a flag.
Just did not register as a dark cloud over my gaming experience that some drama queens like yourself made it.
Now run along and take your Ritalin/Ativan/Xanax or whatever it is Ms Cartman has you taking at the moment.
Cheers
thawedtheorc Nov 9th 2011 1:24AM
Glad to see those were vicious rumors. It is so easy to destroy good people with lies. There is a part of human nature that I call shark. They smell blood or weakness in a good person and they lose their damn minds jumping in on the destruction. I believe only rape and murder are worse evils.
GC puts a lot of heart into the game and anytime new spells were added it added more variables to juggle. It is like trying to corral cats or mold water.
For any of you feel the need to bash someone who works hard, I have to wonder what traumas did you endure that made you so freaking petty and hateful.
I just believe at this time in the world we have a lot of spoiled and mean spirited people who just want to complain.. .because it works for them in their lives.
ThatGuy Nov 9th 2011 1:53AM
Dont suppose the count includes china? cus didnt like...the government have WoW shut down since like..halfway through wrath?
Paul Nov 9th 2011 2:08AM
Yes, but it reopened since then.
When China shutdown before Wrath, WoW lost 6 milion subs. You'll really notice if China was shutdown again.
Paul Nov 9th 2011 2:02AM
"Thats why its lost over 1 million accounts and growing."
No, no, no. There is no single reason that these players stopped playing.
WoW has lost over 20 million subscripbers since it's original launch. If that's all Cata has lost, then it is the most well executed expansion to date.
Cataclysm issue is that it's not attracting new players at the same rate as any previous version of the game. That was ineviavable though. So many of those 20+ million are just people that tried WoW to see what the fuss was about. For the most part, these players stopped playing because they don't like MMORPGs, not specifically because they dislike WoW.
To understand what is really going on, you actually need to talk to more than 5 people that have quit. Here's a potential list of reasons;
-Don't like MMORPGs
-Content X was too easy
-Content X was too hard
-It's not F2P
-I can't afford it right now
-PVP is balanced to my tastes
-My guild disbanded
-A different product that better appeals to my tastes has been released
-Not enough content at level85
-Development cycle is too long
-I don't like art assets being recycled
-Being hacked caused too much stress
-Disagreement with story choices
-Recently made unemployed
-Just became a parent
-New job means I can't raid with friends anymore
-Ugly breakup in game
-Ugly breakup WITH game
-The product no longer appeals to be, regardless of changes
--Various combinations of the above
To cite any ONE reason as the cause of the 20+ million that longer play is a waste of time.
Paul Nov 9th 2011 2:07AM
Damn, that was suppose to be a reply to an earlier comment. I wont repost in the correct area, this is long enough.
However, I will add;
Since the number of new players that can join the game is finate, the number of new players being able to join will only go down over time. The only way to guage the success of a WoW expansion is to compare to total number of sales of the expansion and then compare it with it's subscription numbers near the end of it's cycle.
For example, if Wrath sold 18 million units, and had 12 million subs when 3.3 was released, it failed to retain 33% of it's playerbase. If Cata only sold 13 million units and now has 10.3 million subs, then it lost 20% of it's playerbase.
No one is actually looking at a comparison of expansion sales to active subs to declare if Cata is a success or a failure. Thinking everyone that stopped playing during Vanilla, TBC or Wrath will EVER return is a waste of time.
thawedtheorc Nov 9th 2011 6:45AM
@Paul
Excellent!
yujie.max Nov 9th 2011 2:32AM
I downvoted him even though his posts are already gray...because, well, you know.
Rialle Nov 9th 2011 2:43AM
While proclamations that "WOW IS DEAD" are premature, the writing has been on the wall since Ghostcrawler was put in charge. He has no clue how to run things, as painfully shown by the last two expansions. I agree that the smartest move Blizzard could make would be to ditch him.
(Really, Cataclysm's ONLY saving graces were gnome priests and the fact that heroic and raid content wasn't a total joke like Wrath.)
Like it or not, WoW is about to get hit by a 1-2 punch from TOR and GW2.
(And even Final Fantasy XIV 2.0 looks far more promising than Mists of Pandaria, to be brutally honest.) It would not surprise me in the least to see WoW's population halved by this time next year.
I'm honestly not that impressed with TOR, but it is at the very least more interesting than the crap Ghostcrawler has been churning out since Wrath came out. I have no personal plans to sub to TOR, but I know many current and former WoW players who are planning on making the switch. This is likely not going to be another AoC/WAR this time. It looks like TOR is going to be REAL competition.
I used to think that WoW was rock solid, with no chance of it being dethroned by anyone but Blizzard themselves. I was wrong, because I didn't anticipate Ghostcrawler. He managed to take the greatest MMO ever released and turn it into something that isn't even worthy of being called "World of Warcraft" anymore.
This post is gonna go black in five seconds, but it has to be said. WoW is likely to soon be eclipsed by other games.
Greg Nov 9th 2011 7:54AM
I'm sorry, but Final Fantasy XIV?
I don't normally hate on things here- but this is a VERY special case.
If Blizzard kept a chart that depicted all the 'threats' to WoW listed from top to bottom-- FFXIV would be somewhere in the sub-basement. FFXIV is one of the most abominable titles to every be foist upon the MMO gaming community. In fact, I really can't think of a game worse. And that's even considering that MMO remake of Nude Mike Tyson's Punch Out.
FFXIV 2.0 does not look more exciting that even the water retexturing in Cataclysm. That's pretty much an objective fact.
But hey, if you find it so awesome- go. Immerse. Enjoy. You should do what makes you happy.
I paid 80 some dollars to give FFXIV a chance. I regretted it very much. When Square came to my inbox to apologize, I simple said thanks. You are forgiven. I'll see you again when you make a good game. But it wasn't true. I LOVE square games. So I ammended my response. I changed it to- I'll see you again when you make a playable game.
I still have not returned to FFXIV.
Faar Nov 9th 2011 3:24AM
@Rialle:
"Since Ghostcrawler was put in charge"?
He hasn't been put in charge of anything for years, and maybe even since 2004, when he first joined the WoW team. He's not the game director, he just oversees the player class and related stuffs team, and he's not the only person ON THAT TEAM. A team's a team; that means they make decisions as a group. He's the one that gets to represent those decisions as the team leader.
People seem to think that just because Greg's one of the more visible game designers at Blizzard in terms of community interaction he can make every decision about WoW arbitrarily himself when in fact he's just one person amongst a number of team lead underlings who all report to a boss above them.
I think Blizzard made plenty of mistakes with Cataclysm; lack of endgame content, too grindy content, bad difficulty curve for heroic 5mans and so on, but for chrissakes, give the guy a break, alright. He doesn't deserve HALF the criticism you people are slinging at him.
Faar Nov 9th 2011 3:27AM
Cataclysm has launched in China. They announced that at Blizzcon this year.
Faar Nov 9th 2011 3:30AM
This comment was made in reply to ThatGuy above.
God damn buggy POS commenting/reply system... *grumble grumble* Why aren't WowInsider switching to the new system used by all other Joystiq sites already? This one is terrible and everybody's known it for years.
Ralod Nov 9th 2011 4:49AM
It is very odd how the internet is so quick to jump on any rumor that sounds evne a little bad about blizzard.
Killik Nov 9th 2011 5:49AM
It's not just Blizzard. Lately, for some reason, people seem to be latching onto anything doomy in the news lately. We're all waiting for the world to end and looking out for the first, tell-tale sign.
Bossy Nov 9th 2011 4:50AM
The decline is due to several VERY different reasons.
Some keywords: recession, new internet toys (I pads, Facebook games), FREE to play MMO's and conversion of subs to FTP, 7 years of WOW, Cata heroic difficulty, wrong marketing for NEW players (basic box AND 3 expansion boxes seriously...) etc ...
I don't think I have been happier with the general class design as it stands now. My paladin is no longer laughed at like in early Vanilla and I can play about any class with LOTS of fun in the BG's (which is why I play this game for mostly).
So all the above keywords apply. And putting the blame on to one person is very childish and reminds me of some terrible things that happened in our recent history (from witch burning to mass mass murder of "those to blame".)
This being said: the decline was NOT due to PAY to PLAY competition, because in this 12 months period of decline nothing came out that wasn't even MORE losing players than the 12% WOW losses (Rift declined on Xfire with 80% and closed more than 50% of its servers already and FF 14 was a disaster from the very start). Lotro and dozens of others went ... free to play though).
I am quite sure the new sub based MMO's will suffer very high losses past the 3 months launching periods too.
---> My personal opinion: many factors are involved but I really DO think that subscription based games are no longer as valid as they used to be (and sw tor past 3 months will prove it).
The Diablo 3 module could work as a safe haven against that dreadful free to play cash shop I hate.
I hope it (but that's nothing more than hope).
Killik Nov 9th 2011 5:45AM
Getting Ghostcrawler to directly communicate with the player base was a noble experiment but it failed. His pronouncements were so freighted with meaning from the Blizzard gods that people analysed every choice of word and read into them things that weren't there. They took nerfs as a sign of personal antipathy. He became the scapegoat for every way the game failed to please all the people all of the time.
I have massive respect for the guy, not only for being a developer on an amazing game. But also for keeping his cool when confronted with the raging of a community that, perhaps, engages with Warcraft a bit too passionately. I miss his sarcastic wit on the forums, but it must be hard to joke when you're aware that your words are genuinely going to hurt some people.
Dragoniel Nov 9th 2011 6:10AM
I personally think, that people should think less and play more. I honestly can't understand why would any WoW player care if the subscriptions are receding or not – if the game is good, play it. If you don't like it - stop it.
Really now, if you would read on some random internet blog, that SAMSUNG sales are decreasing, would you ditch your new monitor as well?
That's just silly, no other way to put it.