by Drain » Thu Apr 14, 2016 6:16 am
During Wotlk, Activision bought Blizzard, and they wanted to completely change the game, mainly dumbing it down so that any brain dead monkey can get through it. Cata, the first 100% Activision content, totally changed the game to this end. They even went as far to fully change 1-60, pissing on everyone that originally worked on the game, and adapting it to fit their new zero effort easy mode philosophy, something WoW was originally never intended for.
But it's amusing to see a company doing exactly the opposite of what got it all the subs to begin with. By making the game difficult and time consuming, players had longevity, aka a reason to stick around paying subs every month. Now you can blow through everything in the game in less than a month, and will probably be bored afterwards. We original players subbed for YEARS. The casuals they replaced us with typically sub for a new expansion, run it for a few months, then quit until the next one comes out. Now which one is more valuable to a business? They thought that by catering the game to casual newbs, they'd attract new players. But with 12M subs, they basically already had everyone already. It makes more sense to maintain and keep what you have, not dump these for new people. Not running legacy servers for former patches further pissed away subs. With each expansion greatly changing the game, it's stupid not to host each one. And with the change of direction after Wotlk, they began to lose more than they gained.
With MoP, they drove the game further down the kiddy rabbit hole with monk pandas, which they ripped right out of Kung Fu Panda. This spoke loudly about who the game was now intended for. Their newer expansions just don't work because like George Lucas with his terrible prequels; they have no idea what originally made the game great or why so many people played it. They don't understand anything about its original design, why that was successful, or why the current one is a bust. All of the right minded developers that knew what they were doing were driven off years ago. What's left are chuckling Activision numnuts selling bobble head pets in between Hearthstone and Overwatch advertisements. But at this point not even they care about the game. They shifted to newer revenues, F2P and MOBA games, which are far more profitable on a revenue vs development scale. WoW is only around because enough players still play it to justify it running. If the subs ever dip low enough, they'll hock it in a heartbeat without bothering to try to save it.
WoW is done. As the MMO it was originally designed to be, it's been done for a long time. It's now a BG/arena MOBA, Facebook AP, and social network. And this is why MMOs in general are done. Not enough players want to actually go out in a world anymore. They want to sit in their city, their garrison, or whatever gaybob farm, and just click through menus to do everything. The most popular games on the internet now, other than MOBA shooters(ie CSGO), are MOBA lane games(ie Dota2). So MMOs, a fad of 2000-2012, are done. You're not going to see another decent proper MMO for a very long time. No one knows how to make one anymore, and no one even wants to try.
