We shouldn't be all that surprised that China, where afaik all players play via time cards, has not taken to MoP. To be blunt too much time is required doing the dailies to be economical on a time card model. Especially if there are a lot of F2P games in competition as has been mentioned up thread. There is an adage that the military spends too much effort on re-fighting the last war instead of anticipating the next one. That's the thinking that lead to the MoP Wall of Content. It was an over-reaction to Cata. Imo the MoP changes solved (well mostly) old problems at the expense of creating others. So add me to long list of those who are unhappy with how unfriendly this X-pac is to alts.
Activate f2p option and people will come back :)
I'd guess CRZ and the lvling in pandaria from 85/90 also took longer, but they already starting to downsize it... and, I suppose also bcs most people were hoping for a more lore related expansion instead of pandas etc. I suppose if next expansion they make Emerald Dream or about Azshara and Burning Legion they would get a lot of people back too. I like pandaria and the content but I'd like more lore related about these topics content.
"The problem is _______" "They all left because _____" None of you could possibly know the reason it's down subs unless you went and polled every single person who unsubscribed.
All things die. The only real variable is timing: there are things that can be done to both hasten and postpone inevitability. What is sad to see is hastening when the intent is a (badly researched) attempt at postponing; hurting in a misguided/misunderstood attempt at helping.People don't mind working for something if they think it is worthwhile.It's how much the game continues to draw you in with story (interesting lore and plot developments), it is how much it connects you with friendly people who you share community/fellowship with, it is the fun/adventure/challenging-but-still-surmountable you have/experience in it, it is quite importantly how effectively it distracts you with the aforementioned from noticing any (hopefully limited) repetition in what you are doing. When the shroud falls or there is too much of an automaton quality then it suddenly dawns on the user that "hey this is repetitive, boring, taxing and maybe kind of pointless".That is sort of how I have been feeling lately, although I'm probably not likely to outright quit anytime soon.That all being said, people quit for a variety of reasons and you can't do anything to keep them all happy, I just know that a lot of people I know and knew felt that way before they quit, some haven't unsubscribed, some come back for major patches, but the magic is gone, they're off playing other games and they don't stick around to do more than -see- the new content.Just throwing all realms together (right now) is a really terrible idea for a variety of reasons, mostly involving various serious shocks to the entire system that may be enough to cause the whole thing to crumble and leave only a portion of the whole as survivors who stuck around to pick up the pieces.I think CRZ (in theory anyways) or limited, strategic server merges are the answer to some of the problems now facing the game. However, CRZ as presently implemented has created a number of bugs and issues (for one you still cannot /who a zone and see people from the other servers there and there are times that names of people from other servers just won't resolve for minutes or longer to the client).CRZing auction houses is absurd sounding to me considering Blizzard's (bad) track record of issues with larger auction houses (right at this moment the GetAll feature of nearly all auction houses is not working, probably not related to CRZ in anyway to be fair; however there is another bug involved sold auctions not showing up which is suspected to be related to CRZ considering it started when it was implemented and does not occur in org/SW). IMHO smaller servers should just be merged to resolve issues like this that CRZ doesn't and shouldn't address.
One minute you're on top!
It's not about the content, it's not about the dailies, it's just about the player community who is totally different (in the bad way) from the first WoW players (old DAoC, T4C, Everquest, UO & co players...)Old WoW players as I (playing since closed beta) have a different life and don't have much time to play this game now. New players (=playing MMO since WoW) are totally different players from us: they want everything fast, now, they don't have any patience. Trying to grab console players is a big mistake of Blizzard because this kind of players are bored very fast.Just look at the trade chan in any major city: so many people spamming for rbg / arena looses to make their point, chinese gold sellers, people asking for an ilevel (they don't even look at your reforge/gemming optimisation, spec) so high for normal / hm bosses... These guys don't %^&*ing care about the lore, they just want to clear the content FAST, have the best ilevel and then ? they stop. These guys are the same who download gigaoctet of music, they are not players, they are consumers.Another devastating combo for end game content is: same mechanics for 10 years + more and more adds on = boring bosses. Remembered my first 40man raid when you had to read/listen to the boss emotes to know what was coming out next, you had to watch player aura for debuff now you just @#$%ing do what your boss mod say (lol at the auto message in chat bubble "debuff on me, move awa") you have $%^&ing big powerauras, etc... Content is really too easy for old players and the skill of wow players is general is getting lower and lower.There is less and less social aspect in this game: remembered under WoW 1.0 when you had to talk with others guilds to learn from fights, tactics, there was a real exchange. Now people just go to youtube/tankspot or any other website to learn the strategy: wheres the fun if you already know the strategy before pulling the boss ? Leading players to stay with their guildies and that's it. There is no community but millions of small communities. Also remember the first battlegrounds: there was a leader, people were focusing on strategy to win and people who were doing @#$% were hardly blamed and spotted on the entire server as a lamer (=no more raid, no more donjon). Now ? Crossrealm bg = people do ^&*!, do what ever they want, farm their achievement and ruin other people pleasure without consequences. It's the same with pickup raids: because theres no big community people flame and trash talk, blame noobs, etc... because "it's just a pug lol, who cares about having a bad rep in a pug group ?".Edit: Oh, forgot about bots. Blizzard doesn't seem to care about them because i'm $%^&ing reporting the same guy for running in circle 24/24. Got screens/vid of him/them stuck in a tree, but they are still playing after weeks of reports. WoW will ends like Diablo 2: full of bots.The community is killing WoW.