Now, for something entirely un-worldly

You might have heard of that game called World of Warcraft (henceforth “WoW”), which has been one of the the preferred escape-from-reality venues of the gaming public for a decade. In re. the part of the participants that have for the past 6+ years or so been lamenting “WoW is dying/dead”*…

…subscriber wise – it gave Blizzard (the developers) sweat on their collective brows when it dropped the sub no. from ~12 M til under 7 M – the worst drop ever, thus bringing it back to early BC figures. Yes, WoD (the latest installment in the game) brought it back up to top 10 M as there was 3.3 M subs sold the first 24 hours after WoD launch in November ’14, but this still doesn’t change the fact that the WoW crowd is getting worn out – more than they were in Wrath, Cata or MoP. WoD has content- and polish-wise been very well done, yet still the players crash out all the faster now. The Old Guard, those names you knew back from Vanilla (and from the time where people got pissed off that the Staff of the Twin Worlds trumphed everything they had busted their asses for pre-BC) is largely gone – most re-dicovered life outside of the fantasy land as well as the responsibilities that comes with crossing the boundary of one decennial to another – the remainder is the hard core which will probably stay forever (but who are often so caught up in the game that they just don’t respond to whispers…). Aside from the Vanilla Veterans and the rest of the pre-Wrath Old Guard, the game has increasingly been tuned to appeal to casuals with a gentler learning curve and easier accessibility of both quests and gear (rewards).

This is nice and commendable as it opens up the in-game experience more to people with less time on their hands (and a lower frustration threshold), BUT – on the other hand it also means that now, the game has a much larger contingent of players that have few compulsions not to drop out at a moments notice. Easy come, easy go in this case. So, while the subscriber base got a (deserved) solid boost with the release of WoD, the change in demographics over the years means that it’s likely to eventually crash out relatively rapidly, when the casuals have had their fill, or simply need to attend to the demands of the non-virtual aspect of living.

Speaking of that, we still live in a world where there are mounting problems with unstable and collapsing societal economies, growing worries of security and safety, environmental issues are slowly turning into outright problems, and so on.

The perverse consequence of this is that as the world becomes too ugly to face, and the economy weakens to a point where otherwise-regular social life with going to the movies, clubbing, restaurants, and enjoying the daily large moccachinos and whatnot becomes too expensive, the entertainment-distraction that can be bought with a monthly €14 fee becomes more appealing. Thus, as the world get swamped in problems, these virtual worlds might just prosper.

So don’t call WoW dead just yet.

*) Including yours truly, though I imagine I’ve learnt my lesson.

3 thoughts on “Now, for something entirely un-worldly

  1. peterbp Post author

    Otoh, a commenter in the WOW forums said that the “Glory Days of WoW are over”. That much I agree with. WoW will live on with a multi-million player-base, but it’s not new and shiny anymore (the commendable artistic job of WoD nonwithstanding), “everyone” knows the game, and by and large anyone who have heard of WoW and a likely to play it, are already in. There’s no new seas to sail for Blizzard irt. WoW, and we’ll see in the coming 3-6 months how many of those who came back for WoD will stay, and how many will jump ship.

    As for getting a sense of how Blizz’ is puttin other cards in its hand, have a look at the different games that are now present in the Blizzard launcher … Diablo, Starcraft, Heartstone, Heroes of the Storm (yeah, those MOBA games – Blizz is very late for the show, but they have enough of a presence to still be able to wedge themselves into a market already dominated by League of Legends and Defense of The Anciencs 2) and what else to that will arrive in the coming years as Blizzard expands and diversifies its franchise away from its flagship product.

    Oh, and I just noticed: WOW was launched in the EU on the 11th of Februray 2005. So, happy 10th Anniversay, WOW-EU…

    1. peterbp Post author

      Did I really do a post in World of Warcrack? Oh.

      To kick that ball o’ tar a bit further down the road, some more observations:

      * Blizzard added a webstore to sell various shinies/crap to the addic^H^H^H^H^H players some years back. The initial contents were physical stuff like plushies. That was slowly and increasingly supplemented by in-game items, like (vanity) pets, mounts, funstuff. This has been in line with the general tides of change irt. how games comapnies make money: To offer in-game additions/skins/useful stuffs for cash.

      * Since ‘Cata, it has become SOP for Blizzard to offer a character-boost to the base level of the new expansion for a single character, to allow a player with low level toons to immediately throw themselves into the new game content. Fine, though there is ofc. a utility for both parties in this: That the player is more likely to become immersed in the new content, and as such become ‘hooked’ for some more subscription periods. As can be expected – those subscriptions are a MAJOR cashcow for ‘Blizz in a way that other games publishers can only dream about.

      * So, you get a – ONE – free boost per expansion. Fine. So which this means instant access to new game-world content, it – and here comes my pet rock… – it adds EVEN FURTHER to the “instant gratification” personality aspect / ditto playerbase. Yes, the stretch from 1 to 80… 85…. 90… 100 widens the gulf between puttign your toon into the world and reaching the ceiling of effecting questing-hood. BUT – Blizz had already added significant relaxations of the otherwise slow, tedious and difficult leveling-up process: mid-BC, leveling gravitas 1-40 was relaxed, more graveyards for the usual post-death-marathon were added continually… whereas the old thresholds for getting mounts were 40 and 60, it was relaxed to 30 late BC, and 20-40 in mid Wrath. Heirloom gear was seen from Wrath onwards, granting 1-20-more % extra XP for each kill etc. Cataclym explicitly designed the journeys through Azeroth to reduce ‘transport downtime’ for the player, and of course, all elite creatores were not that anymore with Cata onwards. Warp 7 ahead, Knight-Captain L33tHaX0r!

      So only the most bumbling and uninformed player would be struggling at the old pace to progress. (True enough, there have been quite a bit of those over time…).

      * Thus players are given a surefire way to level quickly with all obstacles removed. Personally, I’ve seen online ‘friends’ blast from 1-80 in a week give or take when it was full-steam-ahead, and in the later expansions the same or less due to all the heirlooms and better knowledge of the world layout combined with constant use of the Dungeon Finder.

      * The Dungeon Finder introduced in Wrath opened the gate to dungeons, wide-open, to all of the players with no effort… though in all honesty this was a blessing for those who have tried spending 1+ hours yelling down the Tarde Channel for this and that class/role needed for This and That dungeon, and with the team finally “commited” to go, and the travel across a continent is done, the party dissoves because the tank/whoever is sent to bed by his mom, or has a untimely case of diarrhorea, two of the party members gets pissed at each other, or such.), Dungeons got maps that not only showed people with a shoddy sense of direction how to get around (a prime example being myself), but also an explanation on how to do it – no effort needed to actually learn the boss mechanics from bottom up, just do as it says, and boom. Whereas the fastest possible dung run in BC was Slave Pens, that could be done in 25 mins with a decent team, pretty much every dung in Cata can be done in 20 min with a decent team, assuming no fuckups. This was expanded to raids with the Lookign For Raids feature.

      * …which leads me to the grand finale: That, as touched upon in the parent post, and the preceding text, the Wow playerbase has the game content served to it on a silver platter with all of it available for the taking with a fraction of the past effort required: Leveling is a breeze, transport is faster, the introduction of the Dungeon Finder in made it MUCH faster and easier getting a dungeon group, you got ubiquituous flying mounts. But…since relatively little actual effort was needed to either getting these things or getting to the point where the end-game or end-ish game content was, the effort-achivement mechanic was gutted. (Don’t get me started on the idiotic ‘Achivement’ system – more Bing-Bong feedback to give the player some endorphin rush to further hook him/her, though of course it became a nuisance for all games from that time on, just look at Steam for each bleedin’ game has that crud bolted-on. That aside…). Yes, OBVIOUSLY the game was made more acessible in terms of accessibility, understanding and participation, immersion to the novices, BUT in doing so it was DUMBED DOWN (yes, you’ve heard this often before, now shush), with player characteristics continually changed and eventually cut entirely (and some mechanics time and time again changed to great annoyance and confusion, such as the glyph system), again, but doing this, the time and effort of the old players, and potentially of the soon-to -be old players, that would be thrown into the game by these people would be wasted, thus gutting the REAL achievement experience: That of proper, hard learning and the scars from doing so on their hands and feet. Warstories to be told and laughd at by the old-timers. Gone.

      Old-timers and those appreciating learning by fighting and the value of doing it that way, the rewards of doing it that way are an engdangered species: They are continually alienated from the game, sore thumbs in guilds and a wider game-world that is full of newbs with short attention span, a need for instant gratification, no patience and egotistical attitudes. (OK, not all have a combination of all those sad propensities, but you know /that type/….).

      So. As per the Prime Directive of megacorps these days – profit maximisation – a maximum amount of customers must be allowed into the game world, and they must be offered enough shinies to want to stay. And when/if thed end up staying for a caretain amount of time, they are mose likely to buy shite in the webstore. Profit! Though I doubt it goes that way for very many of the newcomers – easy entry means easy exit: The low-attention-span customers are the ones least likely to stay loyal customers, and thus we are at the spot where neither of the customer classes will reward Blizz with their dosh.

      To confirm this hypothesis, the latest quarterly subscription number for WoW showed that WoW-WoD lost MORE players from Q1 to Q2, than WoD brought BACK to the game from end of Pandaria (fucking furball land…). Gg Blizz.

      Last blast for tonight: The further reinforce what is described above, WoD has had only 2 content patches (one of these being absolutely, laughably anemic), and it now SOP for BLizz irt. WoW to release expansions much more often (with just as little content addition per expansion as now) – ie. once every year as opposed to the circa. every 2 years as from BC onwards.

      Patient had been diagnosed with a short attention span and a resultant requirement of high stimulant inflow. However the stimulant saturation level has been reached: We are increasing stimulant dose in attempt to keep the patient stabilized.

      No – WoW isn’t dead… but it needs more juice than ever to just stay afloat.

  2. peterbp Post author

    Annnnnnnnd:

    Forbes lays it down.

    By all accounts, Activision had a pretty good day yesterday. After reporting that their second quarter revenue was $759 million, beating the projected estimates of $665 million, shares rose 6%. There was, however, at least one indication that one of their best revenue sources is continuing to dry up.

    The quarterly report revealed that World of Warcraft is now down to 5.6 million subscribers, its lowest level since 2006. Despite a surge back to 10 million six months ago during the release of the expansion Warlords of Draenor, since then, subscribers have been fleeing the game in record numbers. Last quarter, the drop was to 7.1 million, now, it’s tumbled further, making for a 44% dip in six months.

    They are moving towards a Free2Play (Hearthstone) model and other titles, such as the upcoming Overwatch. The competition has intensified over the years and the general pricelevel (lim -> zero) is hard to compete with when you’re on an expensive subscription model.

    To reiterate, the game certainly isn’t over, but that wet towel is about to have most of the juice wrought out of it (and so have the customers). GG.

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