The last I heard of World of Warcraft was that it’s losing steam. Blizzard’s juggernaut finally stopped growing and has actually been on the decline. The Cataclysm announcement seemed to spark interest for some a while back but without a hard release date, it’s tough to keep ex-WoW players’ interest.
I was thinking today about my former days as a WoW player and I realized I haven’t heard a single thing about the actual game in at least a year. I fired up Chrome and made my way to the official site to see what I had been missing. As it turns out, not much.
The first two news stories are about new fan art and a couple new wallpapers. Further down the list you’ve got some news about the CCG and an announcement for a shamelessly branded wireless headset. The only game content story is about new Random Battlegrounds, which from what I can gather is just a way to queue for all the battlegrounds at once for some extra bonuses. It sounds like something that could have been implemented years ago.
It’s pretty tough to revisit WoW without thinking about the game’s eventual demise. At this point Cataclysm seems like a stopgap – just another way to buy time until the next great MMO. The revised leveling system and zones sound cool, but I’m willing to bet people will still burn out when they get to Outland/Northrend. Can you imagine leveling to 80 again? I know I can’t.
Posted in: Development, MMO
Tags: blizzard, blizzard news, expansion pack, world of warcraft, wow, wow expansion, xpac
Guess you were a bit premature with your comment “The last I heard of World of Warcraft was that it’s losing steam. Blizzard’s juggernaut finally stopped growing and has actually been on the decline.”
Despite the down economy, despite the fact that the current expansion is nearing the two year point, Blizzard announced they now have 12 million subscribers.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/07/world-of-warcraft-reaches-12-mill
ion-players/
Actually, Bob, this post was written six months ago, at a time when WoW subs were indeed down and continuing to slide. It’s no surprise that 2 months before the new expansion numbers are back up. Old players are likely resubbing to get their accounts in order and new players that have the time and want to rush to 80 before the xpac still have time to do so.
That’s definitely good news for the game, though. Nothing is worse than an empty MMO.
I agree with the author concerning the point of wow going downhill etc. WOTLK started off pretty decently but with the constant nerfs and Flavor of the month classes such as DKS the game quickly slid downhill.
I used to play wow when someone was decked out in epics you knew it took time,skill and teamwork. Now its enter a dungeon and smash the keyboard.
Blizzard is trying to please everyone and provide instant gratifaction. As the game dumb downs with each patch, players become bored looking for new content. Blizz cant keep up with this demand.
To put this all in perspective as TBC was ending, less than 1% of guilds were in sunwell, I would imagine at the end of WOTLK the number is higher than 50%.