World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

[RogueIce]

As far as I'm concerned, WarCraft canon ended back in II and Beyond the Dark Portal.

I liked some of the ideas and general concepts of III but the execution was pretty poorly done.

EDIT: Fuck it, I'll make a new thread about that.

[TheFeniX]

I'm not really too concerned about the cannon in general, but I have to agree with Darksider's comment on Alliance getting the shaft. The ending to MoP manages to be worse than Cata. At least in Cata, they just ignored the Alliance, but in MoP, Varian walks up to a beat up Thrall and Voljin and says "You guys nuked our cities, enslaved our citizens, and followed a madman into Oblivion (only rebelling once he went past the former), but if you do it again we will be very angry and do mean things because fuck Sun Tzu, some Pandas told me I'd be evil for protecting my people.

But hey, Alliance will finally get something in the next expansion, right? "It is the era of an Old Horde, forged with steel rather than fel blood. A union of great orc clans, the Iron Horde, tramples the planet Draenor beneath terrifying war machines. Azeroth falls next. Worlds uncounted will follow." Aaaaaaahahahahaha. Holy shit, I would so swap factions if I gave two shits about the story or didn't feel Orgrimmar was hideous. Ironforge all the way baby.

It's still lost on Horde players and Blizzard why Alliance aren't happy. But I don't give a shit because I've got my Endbringer transmog, which was funny because a Warlock picked a fight with me on the way to Underbog. A Warlock, picking a fight with a DK. Was classic. It's been so long since I PvPed with my DK I was throwing Obliterates and still managed to down him with 40% of my life left. Now if Razorgore would just drop The Untamed Blade, I'd be good to go.

Anyways, supposedly dailies are going away in the next expansion and it's nice to see something (possibly) something with the Draenei. Blizzard is supposed to be adopting a Timeless isle standard when it comes to endgame grinding. Also, some kind of accelerated leveling system based on the user's preference. But still nothing about Transmogging legendaries, so fuck it.

[TheFeniX]

I have to say, cross-realm is a terrible solution to fix issues with low pop realms. It does nothing to combat absurd price-gouging by the community as you still can't trade cross-server and it even further hinders farming that you will need to do to make up the difference. Older zones are awash with people farming lower level mats and now I'm forced to compete with them whereas earlier on my dead as Hell server, I could hit groups of mobs without molestation because there's just no one there. Now Icecrown is crawling with Horde and Alliance at all the good farm spots and fighting over goods gets old after a while. There are 90s whole-sale clearing entire areas for mats or just to be assholes. Hellfire Peninsula.... holy shit. Just god damn, it's wasn't this bad even back on KilJaeden. I took me 25 minutes to farm 40 fel iron. In MoP, I can score 160 ghost iron in that amount of time.

I'm messing around to level a warrior and no one even cares to group, so it's just more competition I don't need.

I broke my promise to avoid PvP and have been going pretty hard on my Rogue. I have shit for gear, but I'm already hell on wheels in PvP after just getting my trinkets and weapons, but in the open world, I'm still at a massive disadvantage to people in better PvE gear. Combined with an Undead Warlock from Proudmoore server (a PvE server, mind you) swapping over to our Timeless Isle to farm bloody coins, because he'd probably get run roughshod on his own server, it's getting fucking ridiculous. He's in mostly tier gear with more than a few pieces of heroic, only using the PvP weapon and trinks, I'm assuming for the power bonus. He has 800k HP and even with all my CDs up on my DK, he can kill me in less than 5 seconds with guards hitting him. In BGs, Warlocks are essentially a free HK for my DK.

Basically, he gets to sit safely on his server not being molested while he's not flagged, then can find someone to group with on oqueue or just on our server, and bypass the normal restrictions. Good call when I already have to fight dipshit groups of roving Horde so much, I finally just start training entire groups of mobs into them over and over until they realize ganking me is too much of a hassle.

The gear disparity once again fucks melee as we need higher weapon damage as part of our core DPS, whereas a caster can easily swap a 540+ PvE weapon for a 522 PvP one and get more benefit from the power. I can't afford the DPS loss. The secondary stats on PvE gear combined with the atrocious bonus per stat on Power and Resilience does not help. And if Blizzard stopped to look why people are stacking Stam over either would tell them something.

So, open world PvP is pretty much like SWTOR was for me as a raid geared player missing only one piece of rakata gear: fucking overkill and not fun. Unless you were a pre-nerf operative or were also raid-geared, I was going to brutally murder you and there was nothing you could do about it. Base resilience was a shitty solution to a shitty stat. Cross-Realm and base resilience should have come with an option to transfer your characters to a PvE server because this is just such a bad idea, you'd have to never deal with PvP to think it's a good one.

All-in-all, that's my only complaint going back to the game. The questing in panda land was pretty good, the areas well designed and nice to look at. SoO is a great raid with fun mechanics. The gear all looks pants-on-head retarded, but there's transmog. But PvP outside of BGs is a fucking gear-check. If you attack someone in the world, you should immediately get knocked down to (at a minimum) a 522 ilvl.

Also, Ghostcrawler quit Blizzard.

[TheFeniX]

Blizzard has been pushing out some realm "connections," rather than straight up merges. I assume this is done to keep their server counts up to forestall any "WoW is dying!" talk. On one hand, it's nice that Naz isn't totally dead now (we got heaped in with Blood Furnace and Mannoroth), but it also means hitting rares, among other things, is pretty much impossible. Trade chat is unbearable. Trade was annoying back in LK on Kil'Jaeden (7/12 ICC pst LK kill ach, have 3500GS!), but at least it was pretty much game relvant. But now it's just people spamming about selling shitty vanity items (and yes, I get how stupid it is on my part to bitch about people trading in trade chat). I finally just moved it to it's own tab.

Just like when the dreaded Illum patch hit SWTOR, I made the mistake of porting to Timeless after the merge just to see how bad it was, stupidly expecting the raid of tards farming coins wouldn't have a mage, and immediately got my bubble stolen while I attempted to hearth out. I LOSed and ported after I ressed, but timeless is looking to be hella-broken for quite a while and it makes me glad I'm completely done with it outside the weekly boss kills.

I'm still amazed a lot of the fights in SoO have yet to cause me to lose interest. They do a pretty good job of balancing the line between you getting bored and focusing on your rotation and being rote-memorzation fests where one small misstep means you die. Even being melee, DKs have loads of utility in a lot of the fights that I miss when I play as my pally. Yes, pallies have loads of raid CDs, but it's more "hit a button to help the raid."

[Broomstick]

Blizzard has been pushing out some realm "connections," rather than straight up merges. I assume this is done to keep their server counts up to forestall any "WoW is dying!" talk.

Yeah, yeah - they've dropped a few millions subscribers but they're still the biggest game out there, at least they were last I checked. At this rate it will be at least a decade before they turn the lights out for good. Seriously, they're nowhere near dying.

Keeping reserve server capacity is probably a good idea - next expansion release they'll get another bump in the subscribers until the easily bored drop out again. They'll already have the capacity to handle the bump in place.

I don't mind the connections - it's nice not to feel like I'm in a complete ghost town anywhere but Panderia. Yeah, I'm weird, I still like leveling, especially since it's not nearly as grindy as in vanilla.

[Lord Revan]

I assume those yelling "WoW is dying, WoW is dying!" the most are those want to be special by bashing on WoW even though everyone and their mother have been doing that since vanilla.

Tbh the problem with a lot if not all so-called "WoW killers" is that they don't really have that much of an own identity or that they misjudge what makes WoW so popular.

[Vendetta]

Yeah, yeah - they've dropped a few millions subscribers but they're still the biggest game out there, at least they were last I checked. At this rate it will be at least a decade before they turn the lights out for good. Seriously, they're nowhere near dying.

Whilst it'll be a long time before WoW is shut down for good, I wouldn't be surprised if its numbers drop precipitously in the next couple of years. There's not a lot of new blood coming into WoW, so as people simply stop caring about the experience it offers enough to pay a subscription for it they don't get replaced. My guess is that it'll drop to maybe 1M subs in the next 18 months to two years but then stay at that level long term.

Just putting a different skin on it like ESO, Wildstar, SWToR or any of the other games still trying subscription models and going free to play in under a year* doesn't work, people can see it's still WoW and they're either burned out on the whole model or still playing WoW.



* My entry for the "how quickly does ESO go free to play" sweepstake is 9 months, Wildstar I don't think will get critical mass at all and so will be more like 6 months like The Secret World.

[Kuja]

I could theoretically be tempted back to WoW if I just heard five words, those being "Chris Metzen hit by truck."

[Civil War Man]

Yeah, yeah - they've dropped a few millions subscribers but they're still the biggest game out there, at least they were last I checked. At this rate it will be at least a decade before they turn the lights out for good. Seriously, they're nowhere near dying.

In terms of subscriber numbers, they've been in almost uninterrupted decline for about 3 years now. Due to the age of the game, the decline will probably continue for the most part, with the occasional bump for stuff like new expansion launches, or leveling off for a few years before starting to decline again. It's a safe bet that the game's population will never even come close to reaching its late Wrath/early Cataclysm high water mark again.

It's more accurate to say that the game is dying, but it will be a long time before it's dead. People often say that Rome wasn't built in a day, but it also didn't fall in a day.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, but the pace of that "dying" is so slow it's ridiculous to use the term. If they lose a million subscribers a year it will still be the better part of a decade before it's done. "Aging" might be a better term for what's going.

Yes, in decline, but starting from such a peak that Blizzard is going to continue to rake in profits for some years to come. People talk like Azeroth will have the plug pulled next week and that's not going to happen.

[Broomstick]

Whilst it'll be a long time before WoW is shut down for good, I wouldn't be surprised if its numbers drop precipitously in the next couple of years. There's not a lot of new blood coming into WoW, so as people simply stop caring about the experience it offers enough to pay a subscription for it they don't get replaced. My guess is that it'll drop to maybe 1M subs in the next 18 months to two years but then stay at that level long term.

You seriously think WoW is going to lose 87% of its players in 18 months? Really? Based on what?

On top of that, it's not inconceivable WoW could gradually move to different income model.

As for free-to-play games - my experience has been that while a certain basic level of game play is, indeed, free anything beyond that requires you pay one way or another. This notion that people are producing games for nothing is ridiculous because if they weren't earning money on it somehow they'd be doing something else for a living.

[TheFeniX]

Keeping reserve server capacity is probably a good idea - next expansion release they'll get another bump in the subscribers until the easily bored drop out again. They'll already have the capacity to handle the bump in place.

That's what I figured it was about. Naz is dead, so it will be funny to see queue times on Mannoroth when the next expo pops while Naz guys are actually doing content.

It's hilarious, there's like a whole load of BF and Manno guys raking on Naz. "Lol server is shit" in trade is like a constant buzz. We used to bag on idiots like that in SWG all the time. Supposedly, there's a not-so-insignificant group of people trying to stop Naz raiders for scoring any Manno pugs, but that could just be cross-server bullshit. Morons will get over it soon anyways, little can hold their attention for that long.

I don't mind the connections - it's nice not to feel like I'm in a complete ghost town anywhere but Panderia. Yeah, I'm weird, I still like leveling, especially since it's not nearly as grindy as in vanilla.

The one thing they didn't learn from LK was that the idea of two separate leveling zones is a wonderful thing. Borean Tundra was a gank-fest, but Horde couldn't be bothered to fly all around Howling Fjord looking for 70s to gank. It also doesn't feel extremely dated like BC/Hellfire does. Cata couldn't compete with this because both entry zones (Hyjal and Vash) are faction neutral.

Still, it's looking like Blizzard is taking notes and WoD is being talked up to be a completely different leveling and end-game experience than what WoW has offered before.

And if Blizz shed 80% of it's user base in 2 years (which would be next to impossible), that would likely kill WoW in of itself with the shareholders having heart-attacks. I think they've learned their lesson from Cata anyways: don't listen to the 1% of the user-base and force the other 99% into content they aren't suited for.

[Sharp-kun]

My response to "WoW will be dead in 18 months" is "Look at UO and Everquest". Everquest got its 20th expansion last year though I suspect the average gamer thinks it shut down years ago.

I'm in my quiet pre-expansion stage. Log on to hope against hope Blingtron gives me something and to work up mats for a Sky Golem for the wife. Not really raiding at the moment but do the odd bit here and there.

[White Haven]

Heh, it's weird hearing people talking about Mannoroth; that was my old stomping ground waaay back in the day.

[Civil War Man]

Yeah, but the pace of that "dying" is so slow it's ridiculous to use the term. If they lose a million subscribers a year it will still be the better part of a decade before it's done. "Aging" might be a better term for what's going.

Yes, in decline, but starting from such a peak that Blizzard is going to continue to rake in profits for some years to come. People talk like Azeroth will have the plug pulled next week and that's not going to happen.

The death taking a long time doesn't suddenly make it not death. I mentioned the Roman Empire because it took centuries to die. Hell, it continued to limp on for decades after being sacked multiple times. That doesn't mean it wasn't dying when the Visigoths or the Vandals were attacking.

WoW's is not to the "three months to live, get your affairs in order" point of dying. I just use the term because, unless the devs pull off something miraculous, it's never going to recover from the losses it's already taken, and Mists currently has the distinction of having the worst subscription numbers since Vanilla WoW. Even a great expansion probably won't cut it at this point. It would have be a phenomenal once-in-a-lifetime generation-defining masterpiece to bring it back up to Wrath-era numbers. The best Blizzard can hope for is that the losses level off at some point, and the quality of Warlords and future expansions will be a major factor in determining when that happens. I'm not nearly as bearish as Vendetta is, but I could easily see it dropping to 5-6 million in the next two years, give or take. It'd still be an impressive amount when compared to its competitors, but it'd also be the worst numbers WoW posts in nearly a decade.

[bilateralrope]

As for free-to-play games - my experience has been that while a certain basic level of game play is, indeed, free anything beyond that requires you pay one way or another. This notion that people are producing games for nothing is ridiculous because if they weren't earning money on it somehow they'd be doing something else for a living.

They aren't running the game for free. They are just selling cosmetic and convenience items can keep a game profitable even if not everyone buys them.

How much of WoW's decline comes from people seeing free to play, or even single purchase games like Guild Wars 2, and then deciding that WoW doesn't offer enough to justify paying the monthly subscription ?

[Sharp-kun]

Not sure. Most people I know that have stopped haven't really gone on to any other mmo's and tended to stop more due to the length of time they'd been playing - burn out - rather than any issues with WoW itself.

[Broomstick]

They aren't running the game for free. They are just selling cosmetic and convenience items can keep a game profitable even if not everyone buys them.

Correct.

And WoW is already incorporating that, with mounts and pets available for real money, and now there's a direct in-game link to the "Blizzard store". WoW level 1-20 is already free-to-play. As I said, it's conceivable WoW will move to a different form of income stream.

How much of WoW's decline comes from people seeing free to play, or even single purchase games like Guild Wars 2, and then deciding that WoW doesn't offer enough to justify paying the monthly subscription ?

I've joined free-to-play games (my current favorite is Fallen Earth) and I have a copy of Guild Wars... but I still mostly play WoW. Because I prefer that particular game. In part I prefer it because there are so many things to do and so many ways to play it. Also, despite a lot of bitching, WoW has better customer service and takes care of bugs and glitches much faster than the FtP games I've experienced and I think having steady sub money coming is has something to do with that.

As Sharp-kun points out, quite a few people who dropped WoW didn't move to another game, they stopped playing MMO's. Most of the people who founded the guild I'm in got married, got jobs that required more of their time, had kids which required more of their time... They just don't have hours a day, or hours a week, to devote to things like raiding or grinding.

I think Civil War Man is right - it's going to drop off to 5-6 millions subs in the next couple years. That's still massive numbers. I don't think it's ever going to break 10 million subs again. I'm not sure that really matters. 5 million is plenty to justify keeping the lights on.

And, like I said, they might move to a different means of generating income, in which case who knows how long it will continue?

I've been with WoW since vanilla and I never imagined I'd still be playing it 10 years later. It's been a pleasant surprise that it worked out that way.

[bilateralrope]

As Sharp-kun points out, quite a few people who dropped WoW didn't move to another game, they stopped playing MMO's. Most of the people who founded the guild I'm in got married, got jobs that required more of their time, had kids which required more of their time... They just don't have hours a day, or hours a week, to devote to things like raiding or grinding.

Those reasons for leaving sound don't sound new. I suspect that previously new players have made up for those people leaving, but new players have dried up for various reasons.

[Vendetta]

Whilst it'll be a long time before WoW is shut down for good, I wouldn't be surprised if its numbers drop precipitously in the next couple of years. There's not a lot of new blood coming into WoW, so as people simply stop caring about the experience it offers enough to pay a subscription for it they don't get replaced. My guess is that it'll drop to maybe 1M subs in the next 18 months to two years but then stay at that level long term.

You seriously think WoW is going to lose 87% of its players in 18 months? Really? Based on what?

Bear in mind they lost about 2 million subs in the first half of 2013.

The simple fact is that as the game gets older it gets less and less attractive. World of Warcraft is an ancient gameplay model now, autoattack plus hotbar was a fine solution to mass synchronisation in 2003 when internet speeds were much slower, but even highly similar MMOs now can make moment to moment gameplay more interesting. Let alone whatever comes out of things like Star Citizen or Everquest Next/Landmark. And releasing expansions is a two edged sword, every time a new way of doing the same thing opens up, and all the gear you grinded for in the last expansion is useless compared to whatever drops you're getting in the new stuff, it makes a subset of players jump ship because they can't be bothered to do the same thing over and over again.

Every time a new MMO is released a set of players will leave, it used to be certain they'd be back, but now? I suspect that many players who dropped WoW for ToR are playing neither now, and the same will happen with ESO, and possibly even more with EQ Next.

And when people leave an MMO they remove one of the factors that keep other people playing, the people playing. Many people play MMOs more for the people they're playing with than the game experience, if a large number of their friends have already quit, their reason for staying is much reduced. Which means that losses are accelerative.


They won't move to a new income model, the point of games moving to free to play is getting player numbers in, and WoW is too old to benefit from that.

[Broomstick]

Whilst it'll be a long time before WoW is shut down for good, I wouldn't be surprised if its numbers drop precipitously in the next couple of years. There's not a lot of new blood coming into WoW, so as people simply stop caring about the experience it offers enough to pay a subscription for it they don't get replaced. My guess is that it'll drop to maybe 1M subs in the next 18 months to two years but then stay at that level long term.

You seriously think WoW is going to lose 87% of its players in 18 months? Really? Based on what?

Bear in mind they lost about 2 million subs in the first half of 2013.

Right, at the end of an expansion when they normally lose subs, and it was nowhere near 80% of that player group. I still see no reason to expect 9 out of 10 current players to dump it in the next year and a half, that's just ridiculous.

The simple fact is that as the game gets older it gets less and less attractive. World of Warcraft is an ancient gameplay model now, autoattack plus hotbar was a fine solution to mass synchronisation in 2003 when internet speeds were much slower, but even highly similar MMOs now can make moment to moment gameplay more interesting.

Depends on what you find interesting. Not everyone wants to learn a new movement/action system every 6 months. There is a subset of players for whom old and familiar is comfortable. There is, in fact, an entire genre of games based on resurrecting games originally designed for platforms like the Apple IIE and such and making them compatible with modern systems so nostalgic old farts can indulge in them.

Every time a new MMO is released a set of players will leave, it used to be certain they'd be back, but now? I suspect that many players who dropped WoW for ToR are playing neither now, and the same will happen with ESO, and possibly even more with EQ Next.

I know a crapload of players who tried out various other MMO's and came back, too. What you're talking about there is anecdote and both sides can play that game.

And when people leave an MMO they remove one of the factors that keep other people playing, the people playing.

Hence, the connecting of realms.

Many people play MMOs more for the people they're playing with than the game experience, if a large number of their friends have already quit, their reason for staying is much reduced. Which means that losses are accelerative.

Guilds and permanent groups are much less important to WoW than they used to be, so it somewhat offsets that.

They won't move to a new income model, the point of games moving to free to play is getting player numbers in, and WoW is too old to benefit from that.

Except they are already moving towards a different model, as I said upthread. There are still new people coming in.

The thing is, WoW doesn't need to have 10 million subs to keep going. A few million is sufficient to make the game profitable enough to keep it going. The peak subs were a fluke, based partly on being in the right place at the right time, and Blizzard knew that all along.

I've been hearing for 9 years WoW is moribund. Yes, everything ends eventually, but WoW isn't going to lose 90% of its player base as quickly as you assume.

[Highlord Laan]

I've looked at Fallen Earth a bit, and it looks fun. But I've been deceived by that before. Is it any good, Brookstick? How is it community wise? And will is scratch my Fallout itch?

[Broomstick]

I never got really involved in the community as such - I'm one of those folks who like playing in an MMO but am a bit of a loner. I get to know some of the other players and I'll join a group but I also spend a lot of time wandering around on my own. FE is usable by both groups and soloists, which by my reckoning is great.

It has an usual faction system, where you have six factions instead of the usual two. Up to a certain point you can also remain neutral though past that point it becomes very hard not to start inclining towards one or another. There is also a mechanism by which to change your faction, and in theory you could gradually go from one faction to the one most hostile towards the original faction. It would be very long and grindy, but you could do it if you wanted to.

The combat system is also different. No auto-attacks. You have to take a much more active role in combat, particularly targeting. I wasn't that thrilled with it to start but after awhile I started to appreciate the skills involved. A lot of people don't like it, though, they would prefer auto-attack and click-targeting.

The people who made this game really like crafting. It's a huge part of the game. Virtually everything as far as equipment or clothing can be fabricated by players, and in fact, a lot of it can only be obtained by either making it yourself or buying it off the auction house rather than NPC's or quest rewards. As things get more advanced you wind up gathering raw materials to make the components to make the parts for something complex, like a vehicle or even a campsite, refining your own fuel, and so forth. Again, this appeals to some people (I enjoy the gathering of materials and crafting) and others absolutely hate it. If you don't like to gather/craft you'll have to buy stuff from other players, and getting the money to do that might be a bit of a challenge. If you hate crafting don't play this game.

On the upside - you can start projects and the crafting will go on even if you're off questing or even logged out. Most people will set up a queue of projects then go off and do other stuff while it cooks.

One unique and interesting thing about this game is that the terrain is based on a real-life area. The map is that of the area around the Grand Canyon, and indeed you do get some canyon views. It's also definitely post-apocalyptic, very gritty and cobbled together sort of atmosphere, quasi-ruined buildings.

Because I like gathering, crafting, selling stuff on an AH, and solo gaming as well as group stuff and MMO community there's a lot of appeal for me. Not sure how much it resembles the Fallout series as I never played those, but it's a frequent contrast and comparison between those two games.

[Civil War Man]

Right, at the end of an expansion when they normally lose subs, and it was nowhere near 80% of that player group. I still see no reason to expect 9 out of 10 current players to dump it in the next year and a half, that's just ridiculous.

While I don't think that subscriptions will drop as fast as Vendetta's predicting, Mists launched in Q4 of 2012. That drop of 2 million happened early in the Mists of Pandaria expansion cycle. Some of that drop can be explained as correcting for the pre-expansion spike in subscriptions, but even then it's not a good sign when close to 20% of the player base unsubscribes in the first six months of the expansion. Especially when each expansion has historically had a 2 year life before the launch of the next one (which, considering that Warlords is not even in Beta yet, is probably not a streak that will be broken this time around).

[Simon_Jester]

As for free-to-play games - my experience has been that while a certain basic level of game play is, indeed, free anything beyond that requires you pay one way or another. This notion that people are producing games for nothing is ridiculous because if they weren't earning money on it somehow they'd be doing something else for a living.

I think Vendetta's point is that this is actually a more effective revenue model. It's better at sustaining the interest of people who don't play the game continuously, it's got a lower investment barrier to entry, and it lets players choose their own level of $/month spending that they're comfortable with.

There's a fair number of freeloaders. But the more avid players will almost invariably be willing to spend money on the game, if you provide a good enough set of incentives for them to do so.

By contrast, with a subscription model, if you ever get bored enough with the game to drop your subscription, it's very probable that you will leave and never come back.