It’s the game that put the MMO genre on the map – sure, it may not have been the first MMO, but it was definitely the one to make the genre mainstream and turn it into an incredibly popular area of the market that companies have been trying to get into for years afterwards. But nobody seems to have come even close to the success that Blizzard saw with “World of Warcraft” and now, over a decade later, the game is still running.
However, it’s not clear how much longer this is going to continue – reports about the player numbers of “WoW” keep getting worse and worse, and the title seems to be losing players at a steady pace. At some point, Blizzard are going to have to take a step back and reevaluate if it’s worth keeping it running for much longer.
The latest reports indicate that about 5.5 million players are still actively playing the game, a decline of 44% compared to the end of 2014. And some reports put that number into an even grimmer context – it’s apparently the lowest that the game has gone since 2006, and more players keep leaving it on a regular basis.
What kinds of changes could Blizzard make to reverse the situation? According to many critics and fans, there’s not a lot the studio can actually do at this point. Even if they removed the monthly subscriptions and made the game free to play, that would still not address the main issue.
And that’s accessibility and attraction to new players – right now, someone looking to get into a new MMO has absolutely no reason to go for “World of Warcraft”. The game’s mechanics have been copied and perfected over and over again in various other titles, its player numbers keep dropping as we said above, and those that remain usually have extremely well-developed characters with a lot of gear and experience.
Seeing them running around can be a bit disheartening to a new player who realizes how much time they’ll need to invest in the game before they reach that stage – and by then, who knows what else will have come out on the MMO market. It’s definitely not a game that has a lot of potential to grab the attention of newcomers to the genre, and without new players, its survival will depend solely on those that are still playing it from before.
So, according to some, Blizzard’s best strategy right now would be to focus on retaining as many of their current players as they can and pleasing their active fanbase. The studio can host various events in the game, create new content to keep players interested, and of course engage their community as much as possible. But in the end, that’s about it for their options.
Expansions are actually the studio’s best bet right now for this reason, and it’s pretty clear that they have been trying to capitalize on that fact for some time now. There’s no denying that the latest expansions for the game have been of superb quality, but some industry experts have been questioning the merit in developing them.
Because it’s obvious that a lot of work goes into creating each new content package, and if that work isn’t justified by the sales for the expansion, this creates an obvious problem for the studio. So far, this hasn’t happened – but some players apparently feel like that moment is getting closer and closer lately.
Who cares. One thing that will be eternal is y ability to stomp all of you needs at Kiss pinball! Heck, I’ll even let the first ball drain…
There are so many things that I miss about WoW.
– I miss the amount of customization… talent trees with a talent every level, or at least every other level.
– Lots more abilities, learned from trainers, and that I could pick and choose which ones I wanted.
– Professions being meaningful. I loved to be able to progress in professions while leveling the character, and the gear would be superior to anything obtained from questing. Now, there’s no point to professions compared to quest rewards, at least until whatever the current endgame is.
– In particular, I would enjoy playing a Warrior/Paladin with Blacksmithing, and really enjoyed being able to find and open treasure chests in dungeons.
– Class quests
The list goes on and on. Over time, every last one of these things have been steadily removed from the game, leaving me with nothing left to enjoy. I would probably still have a sub if even half of these features were still in the game.
It will be at least 10 years before WoW goes below $150mil in revenues.
Here is are some flaws or weaknesses in the world design on which Blizzard developers may wish to contemplate — (1)gear is a driving motivation. Players will play as long as the gear they are playing for is “meaningful”. Meaningful means that the gear level is not made irrelevant so shortly after obtained, irrelevance comes upon the leaking of the next major update or chapter, and that obtaining high level gear is not easily done as queing for the next weekly. A root of this problem is in the linear nature of progressions, zones, and, for the most part, lore and story lines. A suggestion here is to toss the zone progression and build quests and storylines that overlap, that are layered and multi-demensional. Few new players will join and build a level 1 when the since that much, if not all, of the new and exciting content is 100 levels away. That distance in playing time and in lore and in character building become too huge to contemplate. DK jump option helps but the divorce from all the earlier zones leaves the new player feeling cheated from the skip over. So does buying a level 90 jump–this is no benefit and does more harm than good. Leave the twinks out the equation — I suspect that most twinkers also have a toon or two topped out. Make the 100’s quest in the same areas as the 10/20/30/40/50/ — shrink the world and make the world more meaningful to all players and all levels. Not hard to do. Scale Dungeons and raids – you are doing that already. Scale them all for all levels. This does not mean simply reboot the world as it is — reshape continents and let level 100 beasties roam Westfall. Retool aggro so lowbies don’t autopull and die — that is just dumb on so many levels. A monster is a monster regardless of your level and different beasties should be more and less aggressive so you can engage or not. Whatever. I need to go log and kill stuff for stuff that will be replace in 6 months will stuff I can’t even play for now. woot woot :-/
Considering that what Everquest never hit more then 300,000 or so subscribers and Sony keeps that thing around still…plenty of money to be made.
Say it dropped to 1 million players..many times the number required to remain profitable. Some changes with number of employed people, number of active servers will have to be made but it still would be done.
They talk as though 5 million players is not alot. Not to many MMOs have that many and all the ones that failed would of thanked whatever God they believe in to have reached those numbers even for a short while.
I agree with William in regards to some of the good aspects being taken away. A true bummer.
@William
I feel the same!
They pruned the game radically, and charged more for less content. They could easily fix the problems, but I’m not sure if they’re listening to their screaming player base who all know the house is on fire, but Blizzard keeps pouring gasoline on it, as if they want to ditch WoW asap.
– Revert professions to how they were in Cata – not even MoP. MoP had too many time-gated cooldowns, and WoD was MoP on steroids as far as bad profession designs go.
– Bring flying back to max level unlock with gold ONLY, and a tome for your alts like WOTLK. Making it an achievement for finishing all outdoor content then leaving nothing to do at end game outside of instances is a giant mistake, and only angers players who don’t do instanced content (the majority of players.)
– Make rares RARE again, and not one & done. Content needs to be repeatable – for rewards you don’t have yet.
– Keep all treasures with epic/rare loot inside places where you can’t fly. Outside where you can fly can be the grey stuff – if you didn’t already acquire them during leveling before you could fly.
– Revert to quest lines that aren’t so gated behind other quest lines. If I don’t want a garrison, I shouldn’t be locked out of 90% of the quests.
– Stop lying and withholding info from your customers. The way flying was handled, I’m surprised more people haven’t left. The single most unprofessional thing I’ve ever seen from a company the size of Blizzard. The player base was troubled and toxic BEFORE this, and now, due to the ridiculous division of camps of PvP anti-fliers who want fresh prey to gank, and don’t want them to flee on flying mounts, verses the pro-flyers, when before it was a CHOICE everyone was free to make….
WoW needs to get back to sandbox-mode. Where you can log on, and participate in the content of your choice, and not be forced to participate in content you loathe.
However, the single biggest problem is flight. Put it back like it was. It’s quite obvious to everyone with a functioning brainstem who isn’t in complete denial and believes Blizz can do no wrong, that this is the single biggest reason people have left in such a short span of time. Blizzard strung everyone along over flight for over a year and when they finally announced NO FLIGHT ANYMORE, they reversed that decision in less than 10 days due to the outcry, and probable mass exodus that was initiated minutes after the announcement was made.
the flight was taken out because the maps were not ready. The players would get stuck all the place and the end result would be worse then no flight. At any rate, we know they worked on it and the flight will be in next patch
“” everything william and moet said. Plus I want to put my hunter pet on aggressive. I want to log in a month later and not have to relearn how to play my favorite classes. I want the land back the way it was before cataclysm. I want heirlooms thrown out so ppl will actually want crafted items. I dont want ppl getting free lvl 90s. I want all the dungeons put back the way they used to be. I want the pve questing to actually be challenging. I want to know why there are still freaks hanging out in goldshire. I want blizzard to stop selling flying mounts. I want to run out of mana once in a while. I want hogger to be a badass again so ppl have to form groups to kill him. I want flight points to go directly there and not do all the ridiculous circling around. I want blizzard to make a classic wow for tablets. I want to know why an april fool joke (pandas) became a reality. I want death knights to start at level 1. I want to throw down 4 totems with 1 click. I want hunters to have ammunition and hand weapons. I want slots for wands. I want spells I learn not taken away and moved to level 70. I want to reset my tree for free. I want my warlock pet to stay 1 size. I want quest chains to earn totems and warlock pets. I want to climb on the stable roof in wsg. I want to buy poisons for my rogue. I want enchants to be tied to character level, not item level. And I hate these scaleable dungeons. Already did bc stuff a bazillion times, why would I want to go back and do it all again?