Blizzard CEO: "WoW subscriptions have stopped growing"

[Vendetta]

Oooh, in that case they'll love Tatsunoko vs. Capcom! Take a look at the amount of damage being done:

Pfft, it's not real massive damage unless you start out doing single digits and end up doing billions. And get a trophy for it. Like Disgaea 3.

[Crossroads Inc.]

A good way to see how different the zones are, is roll a new character - Say roll an orc, then roll a blood elf, then try a DK. You can actually see a huge difference between the early starting zones that were in Vanilla WoW, and the way WOTLK is. The early zones are absolutely universally horrible, roll a Tauren and you spend most of your first 10 levels, running around an absolutely huge zone, that's practically empty.

I can see retention being so low, because even as an experienced player, with the Bind on Account items (that grant extra xp and are far better stats wise) it's painful to level those first 10-20 levels, because of how awful the starting zones are. And like Stark pointed out, the population in most starting zones is pretty low now, unless you're rolling on a newly opened server, on some servers the population is almost overwhelmingly level 80s, or people who have rerolled and are just powerleveling past you.

After BC came out, I leveled up ALL my other Horde characters in the Blood Elf Starting area. I was able to get from 1 to 18 about Twice as fast as I did in Durotor and the Barrens. Also with the quest reward items at 18, I could go direct to level 20+ areas and level even faster,

So yes, the differeance between old and new content is dramatically changed,

[Oskuro]

There aren't bored 80s in Orgrimmar any more?

What? No, they are all in Dalaran. Everyone is in Dalaran. I doubt a majority of the population would care if Cataclysm actually nuked the Vanilla cities and replaced them with Murloc villages.

And DKs harmed your honor rating, thus limited your access to good PvP gear, since back then it was a ranked system, rather than a point-buy system (Meaning that you could be unable to use the high-rank pvp gear you owned if your rating dropped). I assure you, the day they changed the system, and thus wiped the Honor System slate clean, the amount of low level area flattening skyrocketed, and made obvious how much did Dks help reduce that.

I was there, young boy, when all the endgame douchebags of the realms decided to steamroll the starting villages. AT THE SAME TIME. </old sage voice>

[GuppyShark]

When I remember world PVP mattering, it was the endless Tarren Mill / Southshore tug of war. And back then HKs and honor points had no actual worth or value at all.

[Skgoa]

Oh man, I think I still have screenshots of Southshore Guards killing me inside Tarren Mill's chapel.
But yeah, that was the moft fun I had in any kind of pvp apart from that on encounter with a nelve huntard in Ungoro, wich lasted for hours and took place across the hole zone... oh and that HU Mage who thought she could just come in, kill me and take my grind spot south of the goblin racetrack. fun times!

[ArmorPierce]

Most fun I had in WoW pvp was way back when it first came out. There still weren't that many level 60s since the game been out for maybe a month so we gathered all the higher level (mostly 40+) horde, announced the capitol, ogrimmar that we were raiding Stormwind. We took the ship over to booty bay, went and hung out for a bit at grom'gol (was that the town?), hugged the shore and swam to westfall and ran into sotrmwind castle and killed the High commander/king there. Was the first time our server killed a city leader and probably one of the first across all servers. We celebrated and then heard that there was a Alliance counter attack at the undercity so we gathered the troops and flew off to defend the city, I have a video I made of the defense of it still and pictures of us setting out to attack. Back then people actually defended the cities. A few months ago I tried the tial and watched a group of about 15 people waltz into the silvermoon and kill the king. I was like wtf, what happened to defending your city when it is under attack?

[Jon]

^On my server the Horde generally do a good job defending their cities, I've found as an attacker. When I usually go on a 4 city raid we start at Org and work our way through thunderbluff, undercity and finish off at silvermoon. Org usually puts up a good fight, thunderbluff is normally a cakewalk and undercity can sometimes be a struggle. Silvermoon is always pretty easy to deal with- in the latest raid party I joined to do it the leader decided we'd start at silvermoon and work towards Org last. Silvermoon boss fell with ease but by the time we ran over to Undercity there was a formidable response waiting for us and that was that. When I see Stormwind or Ironforge under attack though, most level 80s are too busy sat on the floor or using the dance emote outside the auction house to get up and do anything about it.

[Oskuro]

People in WoW are very benefit-driven. There's no direct benefit in defending cities, so the people doing it are a minority. Same with most of the content, if there are not fat loot rewards, people skip content. Again, I consider this to be a major design flaw in WoW and similar games, but well, that's how it is.

Know what was tough? Trying to take on the city bosses just before WotLK, when every guard was upped to 80, yet players were capped at 70, and stepping into the throne rooms would aggro every single one of them. It was fun seeing Tyranide slaughter our whole raid.

[GuppyShark]

Damned Hunters were the only ones who could do appreciable DPS since their attacks ignore level differences.

My guild took a shot at it once but it turned out one of our members tipped of an alliance guild - they rushed us when we had Tyrande nearly dead.

[PainRack]

The only title I feel tried to refine things was Warhammer Online, with its focus on PvP battlegrounds. Unfortunately, it got bashed with being too similar to WoW, and not WoW enough (yay, doublethink!).

As much as I love Warhammer Online, the decision to rush WH online before WOTLK was the most stupid mistake they could ever have made. Sure, releasing it early means you get to crow about how achievements, game book and etc was yours before WOW got on the train, but it wasn't that drastically new. The lack of players after a while just sunk the damn game before bugs, carpentry online and shit got in.

[Broomstick]

Warhammer had a achievements first? I thought Guild Wars had it first?

Well, I could be wrong - I'm a gamer but not an authority.

[Oskuro]

First instance of Achievements I remember is City of Heroes.

As much as I love Warhammer Online, the decision to rush WH online before WOTLK was the most stupid mistake they could ever have made.

Not sure it was such a stupid mistake, back then WoW was losing a lot of subscribers, and a lot of people were of the opinion that WotLK was going to be a half-assed effort on Blizzard's part. The actual quality of the expansion was a surprise to many (myself included).

Also, an important part of the MMO lifecycle is to get to the critical mass point where people join because their friends are already playing, taking advantage of people being bored of WoW was only logical back then.

[Minischoles]

Honestly, on the newer servers people might defend, but on the older servers (like mine) you really won't find many people prepared to defend the old cities. Sure they might defend Org or SW, but that's because that's where people go to use the AH, and they sorta just get swept in. Announce that a city is getting attacked on my server, and people will probably mock you rather than actually help. As long as the AH NPCs are left alone, alliance can do what they want. It's even worse for somewhere like Silvermoon or UC, where very few people ever actually go.

[Oskuro]

And poor Exodar. So shiny, huge and new, and almost instantly turned into a ghost town. Shathrath and Dalaran's portals haven't been kind to the regular cities.

[PainRack]

Warhammer had a achievements first? I thought Guild Wars had it first?

Well, I could be wrong - I'm a gamer but not an authority.

Shit. My sentence structure is phrased badly. What I meant was pushing it out before WOTLK so that you could claim Warhammer Online had achievements BEFORE WOW. Not Warhammer was the first game to have achievements.

Not sure it was such a stupid mistake, back then WoW was losing a lot of subscribers, and a lot of people were of the opinion that WotLK was going to be a half-assed effort on Blizzard's part. The actual quality of the expansion was a surprise to many (myself included).

Also, an important part of the MMO lifecycle is to get to the critical mass point where people join because their friends are already playing, taking advantage of people being bored of WoW was only logical back then.

Even if the Lich King was half assed, something that Blizzard isn't wont to do, the fact that Blizzard was doing something to get subscribers back into WOW, and the release dates were such that it would critically impact your OWN subscriber base during your own starting days should had been easily anticipated.

The massed emptying of Warhammer shortly before WOTLK came out sunk the game, they realigned the servers to get population higher again but throwing people all these difficulties and annoyances around the time their first subscription would have ended can't have been good.

It made things worse that even as a casual player, it was the players that made Warhammer more enjoyable than WOW. Its odd, I loved how simple they made the quests, and the presence of hidden quests/lore actually made the game very fun in terms of exploration. This even if you didn't refer to the rapidly growing forum threads. But their quests wasn't as...... sustaining as WOW single player quests for some odd reason. I'm not sure whether its because of the nature of the game and its hype, but quest linking/grinding in WOW was somehow more sustainable for me even as War made the quests easier to complete, easier to find, had a logical progression that wasn't as travel crazy as WOW was in some aspects and drop rates/spawn rates were high.

Or perhaps it was that. The "difficulty" of the quests in terms of time and effort expended made it more playable single player, whereas Warhammer quests were so simple and myriad that it was just a matter of collecting them after a while.

It didn't help that the epic quests were party based, or that like the Vampire tower in Marshes of Madness, you don't see the significance of the quests until you clear that PQ. I always cursed myself for not getting the quest to open that damned chest before clearing that PQ. It was easily the most epic PQ I did in the game, more cool than the Lair raidfest anyway. So, good content were all party based. And reaching high level to get to the cities raid was.... boring because the newer servers were not capable of handling real fort raids, and of course,gear grind. Its a pity that I never got to the top tier before they collapsed the servers....... at least I would had experienced how it would feel like for people to actually flip the cities.

[Civil War Man]

And poor Exodar. So shiny, huge and new, and almost instantly turned into a ghost town. Shathrath and Dalaran's portals haven't been kind to the regular cities.

On my server, Exodar is one of the more popular Alliance bank alt cities, so it's not completely deserted. The bank and AH are really close together, and the forge/anvil are a fairly short hike away. Not as convenient as Thunder Bluff, but that place is a bank alt paradise. Exodar may even become more popular as a bank alt city when Cataclysm drops and people flood back to Stormwind and Ironforge.

[PainRack]

Is undercity really that deserted? I was under the impression that thanks to WOTLK, UC become more crowded.

[Jon]

I keep hearing about 'no more sanctuary cities' in Cata- are people just talking about no new sanctuaries or is something changing with Dalaran etc?

[Ghost Rider]

I keep hearing about 'no more sanctuary cities' in Cata- are people just talking about no new sanctuaries or is something changing with Dalaran etc?

No cities like Dalaran/Shattrath.

And thank fucking god, fucking hellholes literally create a new level of fps problems because every fucker and his dog is there sitting and waiting for either WG, a BG to pop, or a raid.

[Darmalus]

I keep hearing about 'no more sanctuary cities' in Cata- are people just talking about no new sanctuaries or is something changing with Dalaran etc?

No cities like Dalaran/Shattrath.

And thank fucking god, fucking hellholes literally create a new level of fps problems because every fucker and his dog is there sitting and waiting for either WG, a BG to pop, or a raid.

Lag issues aside, Dalaran is the first city I can visit (well, without fighting off the guards & players), as horde, that actually feels like a city instead of a camp/slum/ruin/art project.

Here's hoping the goblins have an actual city.

[Jon]

I think the gnomes getting theirs back?

[Darmalus]

I think the gnomes getting theirs back?

Yes, or at least, the surface. Maybe the trolls can stop slacking off and kick that level 10 voodoo troll out of Echo Isles.

* Gnomecoming King - You assisted High Tinker Mekkatorque and the Gnomeregan Exiles in the recapture of Gnomeregan's surface.
* Gnomecoming Queen - You assisted High Tinker Mekkatorque and the Gnomeregan Exiles in the recapture of Gnomeregan's surface.

[Crown]

The shaman water totem quest comes to mind. Its an epic tour around Azeroth, resulting in a feeling of acomplishment that I only got again when we started to get pretty good at killing bosses in AQ40.

Ghetto edit: And I can't understand why anyone would claim that vanilla WoW was lacking in tactical depth. You could easily beat everything, if you did the quests that were meant for your level or you had a party. But if you DIDN'T stay in this casual gamer zone, there were plenty of challanges. The totem quest I mentioned above has you (amongst a long list of other things) fetch some quest item out of the midst of some kind of bog giants (forgot what they were exacly) in southern Ashenvale. Try doing that alone in the middle of the night as a lvl20 Shaman in greens and few blues. Those fucking giants respawned almost as fast as I killed them, and since they were higher level than me their aggro range was quite long, meaning I never ever had a save zone to eat/drink.

This is a classic example of how the same stimuli can produce such drastic reactions from two different people, because my reaction to that 'quest' was NEVER AGAIN!

What a fucking waste of fucking time. My god, you were in essence being PUNISHED for gaining Ghost Wolf form ... only druid cleanse poison AND aquatic form combined sucked more donkey balls than the shammy water totem quest, and this is coming from a guy who had an Alliance Warlock (hi running through Dustwallow Marsh at level 19!) as his first character!

[Broomstick]

I found the Shaman totem quests quite a tactical and planning challenge, and I've been playing strategy games of one sort or another for over 30 years. Not that I'm some genius at it, but I do have more experience and skills in that regard than the average mouth-breathing teenager. No, it wasn't a cake walk. Now, I personally enjoyed the challenge but then I really do like the Player-vs-Environment experience.

The early Druid form quests could be equally scream-inducing - and I say that after having done them as a much more experienced player who was familiar with the world map and stuff had already been nerfed.

I occasionally get nostalgic for some of vanilla WoW, but I'm honest enough to say that yes, some of it truly did suck and should have been done differently.

[Civil War Man]

I found the Alliance water totem quest to be worse than the Horde.

The Horde quest had more running back and forth across the entire world BS, but the Alliance version had a few major irritants.

1) The primary quest giver is underwater, so it takes forever to get to it.
2) It sends you to Ashenvale in what is otherwise a very neatly self-contained starting zone, so you are almost guaranteed to have to walk the entire way.
3) A side effect of being self-contained, Azuremyst and Bloodmyst are also very isolated.

But yeah, when it comes to the Elements, I've found Earth, Fire, and Air to be pretty easy-going while Water are just a bunch of assholes.