http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.htm

Articles about this chart:
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/articl...Compiled&fid=4
http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/06/13...e-leaving-wow/

Arguments that Wow hasn't peaked:
a) gold farmers / user bans are influencing the trend
b) people aren't leaving wow per se, but growth has probably leveled
off and students are taking a break over the summer

Arguments that WoW has indeed peaked:
a) statements by Blizzard that there will be no new realms for the
indefinite future
b) collapse of battlegroups for the first time in wow
c) this chart

Discuss.

I have heard from a lOT of people that wow is same old same old and
they are getting board.
all of them say NERFS are getting them pissed off big time.

of course wow wants one thing LOTS AND LOTS of time online.
so nerf them one by one....if they had nerfed everyone at the same
time it would have been a LOT MORE problems and screaming.

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 07:39:46 -0700, DJB <burnsdavidj@yahoo.com> wrote:

>http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.htm
>
>Articles about this chart:
>http://www.warcraftrealms.com/articl...Compiled&fid=4
>http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/06/13...e-leaving-wow/
>
>Arguments that Wow hasn't peaked:
>a) gold farmers / user bans are influencing the trend
>b) people aren't leaving wow per se, but growth has probably leveled
>off and students are taking a break over the summer
>
>Arguments that WoW has indeed peaked:
>a) statements by Blizzard that there will be no new realms for the
>indefinite future
>b) collapse of battlegroups for the first time in wow
>c) this chart
>
>Discuss.

On Jun 14, 10:39 am, DJB <burnsdav...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.htm
>
> Articles about this chart:http://www.warcraftrealms.com/articl...e-leaving-wow/
>
> Arguments that Wow hasn't peaked:
> a) gold farmers / user bans are influencing the trend
> b) people aren't leaving wow per se, but growth has probably leveled
> off and students are taking a break over the summer
>
> Arguments that WoW has indeed peaked:
> a) statements by Blizzard that there will be no new realms for the
> indefinite future
> b) collapse of battlegroups for the first time in wow
> c) this chart
>
> Discuss.

The problem was BC wasn't long enough.

I think people who were already at 60 were holding out long enough to
play the expansion. When the expansion came out, they played for a
few months, got an epic flying mount, ran some instances, and then it
was the same as it was at 60. New content is added too infrequently
to keep them playing.

Re-rolling a new character is also a lot harder now that you have 10
extra levels to go if you want to get them to end game stuff.

Outland should have had more zones, or they should have also added
Northrend, and made the level cap 80 to accomodate the extra
questing. Buff low level questing to allow for faster progression to
the new content. I'm against being abel to start out at a higher
level as people don[t learn how to play that way.

When/if a new expansion comes out, you will see a lot of people return
to WoW, but again, only for short time, when the population will again
level off.

"lcpltom" <lcpltom@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1181835053.356819.293430@g37g2000prf.googlegr oups.com...
> On Jun 14, 10:39 am, DJB <burnsdav...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.htm
>>
>> Articles about this
>> chart:http://www.warcraftrealms.com/articl...e-leaving-wow/
>>
>> Arguments that Wow hasn't peaked:
>> a) gold farmers / user bans are influencing the trend
>> b) people aren't leaving wow per se, but growth has probably leveled
>> off and students are taking a break over the summer
>>
>> Arguments that WoW has indeed peaked:
>> a) statements by Blizzard that there will be no new realms for the
>> indefinite future
>> b) collapse of battlegroups for the first time in wow
>> c) this chart
>>
>> Discuss.
>
> The problem was BC wasn't long enough.

Yes indeed. AND the BC loot tables made many old world runs obsolete. With
the ability (at level 58!) to go to the Outlands and replace even epics with
green drops and quest rewards, there was little incentive to run Strat,
LBRS, UBRS - and forget about raiding! Too much time, too many repair costs,
and no hope of finding 40 people willing to run.

>
> I think people who were already at 60 were holding out long enough to
> play the expansion. When the expansion came out, they played for a
> few months, got an epic flying mount, ran some instances, and then it
> was the same as it was at 60.

Haven't even bothered to get to 70 and the flying mount. Most instances I've
run are pugs - and while it is nice to meet new friends, I miss the old raid
groups.

> New content is added too infrequently
> to keep them playing.
>
> Re-rolling a new character is also a lot harder now that you have 10
> extra levels to go if you want to get them to end game stuff.

Yes and no. IMO it is not the extra 10 levels, but the fact that a good
portion of the game is now skipped, that makes levelling less appealing.
There used to be rewards for making 60 ... epic mounts... epic gear... end
game raiding content. With a dearth of folks doing the level 60 content, the
game gets boring quickly.

>
> Outland should have had more zones, or they should have also added
> Northrend, and made the level cap 80 to accomodate the extra
> questing. Buff low level questing to allow for faster progression to
> the new content. I'm against being abel to start out at a higher
> level as people don[t learn how to play that way.
>
> When/if a new expansion comes out, you will see a lot of people return
> to WoW, but again, only for short time, when the population will again
> level off.
>

Agreed.

There's nothing new about this. Every MMO levels off over time and a
core group of dedicated fans remain. The thing blizzard has going for
them is their subscriber base is MUCH bigger than other MMOs in the
past so their remaining core fans will be much bigger.

There are only so many times you an run the Barrens (or the alliance
equivilant) before you really get tired of rolling new characters. Im
fortunate in that ir eally dont have much time to play so my lock isnt
even level 70 yet, which means the BC content is still fresh and
entertaining. Im sure whern i get to 70 and start the rep grind to get
all the awesome enchants ill get bored.

"DJB" <burnsdavidj@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1181831986.427268.45950@q19g2000prn.googlegro ups.com...
> http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.htm
>
> Articles about this chart:
> http://www.warcraftrealms.com/articl...Compiled&fid=4
> http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/06/13...e-leaving-wow/
>
> Arguments that Wow hasn't peaked:
> a) gold farmers / user bans are influencing the trend
> b) people aren't leaving wow per se, but growth has probably leveled
> off and students are taking a break over the summer
>
> Arguments that WoW has indeed peaked:
> a) statements by Blizzard that there will be no new realms for the
> indefinite future
> b) collapse of battlegroups for the first time in wow
> c) this chart
>
> Discuss.

One thing I have noticed about each wow server, I have played on, (all US
servers) is how remarkably alike they are, relative to their population,
ie., whether they are high or low pop.

When you see a guild with 100+ people still listed but only a hand full are
actually playing anymore for a couple months, then one can deduce that the
numbers in the chart are still not accurately reflecting the sharp decrease
of players. Last Friday night prime time, there were 3 raids in Karazhan,
with, not pugs, but, merges, a couple Gruul Runs, and then a splattering of
2-3 groups in most of the 5 mans. I did a /who to every guild of any one
who ran by me in Iron Forge. The biggest guild on the server had 18 people
online. Most had 5-10 online. A few had 12-15 on. I checked all the
biggest guilds on the server and did/who on all the instances. This is a so
called "full server" In the Bg and Arena queing in SW there were 5-6
people hanging around and a spattering of people in Nagrand and Blades edge.

Hangers on are leveling Draenei and Blood Elf alts right now just to have
something different to do, rather then sit somewhere with there lvl 70,
since raiding is so crippled right now due to players quitting. And the new
players seem almost unnoticable. There is moderate activity in Skettis and
Netherwing, people working toward Ray and Dragon mounts.

People can check there own servers and see if they see the same phenomena.
In terms of observable players, appearances are a decrease of Friday night
activity of what appears to be around a 70% decrease. Summer has nothing to
do with it, I've been through 3 wow summers and I have always kept tabs on
the /who listings and I've never seen this big a drop.

Hard evidence is what you really see, not numbers on a chart, that are still
including avatars still listed but not playing any longer.

I think some people are waiting for Warhammer and some are waiting for
Hellgate London 9the only one i am interested in) I spent one day in Lord
of the Rings, found it unbearable but apparently some people have moved over
there. I think there is more activity on the General wow forum, of people
bored of actually playing, but still attached to wow out of habit.

Blizzard should start combining servers, because the low pop servers are in
hell and the high pop servers need people now too. I would like to finish
content. It would also be fun if there were people wanting to do the old 40
person raids with alts of different classes. There are others that want
this, but they are like voices calling out in the wilderness. I would love
to do Ony and MC and BWL with my Dranenei Warrior, just to experience it
that way, but will there be anyone else around to do it? Blizzard really
broke the game. Tis a pity for the new people.

Alot of people have quit because their lives had come crashing down around
them from too much wow. Of course it is good that they do real life
instead.

dc

DJB <burnsdavidj@yahoo.com> writes:
>Discuss.

Who cares? *
--
* PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
like corkscrews.

PV wrote:
> DJB <burnsdavidj@yahoo.com> writes:
>> Discuss.
>
> Who cares? *

Hmm, that strikes me as more of an interesting point than maybe you even
intended it to be. Because really, if we enjoy playing, we play. If not,
we stop. Is it necessary for us to analyze industry trends and what not?

Well, I guess the really hardcore people like to talk about this stuff,
but for me it falls on the much less interesting side of WoW conversation.

John Salerno <johnjsal@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
>> Who cares? *
>
>Hmm, that strikes me as more of an interesting point than maybe you even
>intended it to be. Because really, if we enjoy playing, we play. If not,
>we stop. Is it necessary for us to analyze industry trends and what not?

Exactly why I said it. *
--
* PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
like corkscrews.

On Jun 14, 11:45 am, "L" <lisaanne_quiltshatess...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "lcpltom" <lcpl...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1181835053.356819.293430@g37g2000prf.googlegr oups.com...
>
>
> > The problem was BC wasn't long enough.
>
> Yes indeed. AND the BC loot tables made many old world runs obsolete. With
> the ability (at level 58!) to go to the Outlands and replace even epics with
> green drops and quest rewards, there was little incentive to run Strat,
> LBRS, UBRS - and forget about raiding! Too much time, too many repair costs,
> and no hope of finding 40 people willing to run.
>

BC is a decent expansion. It's about equal to the expansions I saw in
Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot. The problem is that WoW has a much
much larger playerbase than those games and BC's been the only
expansion. Nothing wrong with BC itself, just the fact that WoW
should be on expansion 2-3 by now, especially considering the massive
number of players WoW has.

And as for making old stuff obsolete, that happens all the time.

Most of the Everquest world got to be completely empty. The longer
the game went, the less lower level players there were and the bigger
the world got. Result, players concentrated in a few high-gain areas
and the rest of the landscape was a barren wasteland.

In DAoC, Mythic Entertainment eventually had to open up "classic"
servers where expansion material was disabled. The older players had
already done the extremely difficult raid level stuff, and there was
simply no way for newer players to scrape groups together enough to do
it, and no way for them to be competitive with the older players who
already had the gear and benefits of it. So Mythic just opened
servers where the old raid level stuff was simply deactivated.

I'm going to feel this same situation in WoW pretty soon. My warlock
has no realistic hope of getting his epic mount as nobody is going to
want to run the old instances required to complete the quest for it.

A shortsighted mistake that Blizzard is making, imo, is the raid
progression. It caters only to a current core group of players. You
will always have people quitting the game, and a smart developer
should welcome new blood to replace them. Making a series of
obstacles to overcome is great for your current playerbase to give
people some sense of advancement and achievement after they hit max
level. However, each hoop you make people jump through makes it that
much harder for new players to ever catch up. I believe keying is a
bad idea in the longterm. Everquest introduced that and Blizzard
shouldn't have copied it, they should have learned from the fact that
EQ eventually dropped it and introduced variable difficulty on-demand
instanced content. And DAoC followed suit. A fixed progression for
endgame content is just not a sustainable proposition for the
longterm. Each time you shift the endgame out again, the old endgame
becomes obsolete. Level 60 people are questing and grinding for 70,
they don't want to spend forever raiding level 60 stuff. Way too much
effort when there's a whole new continent waiting. Come next
expansion, Kara runs will be a thing of the past and anybody who
hasn't done them by then will never be able to as the playerbase will
just move on.

To keep the content viable, what Blizzard should be doing, in my
opinion, is tracking the usage of the instances and when it drops
below a critical level they need to rebalance the difficulty or add a
new difficulty version of it so that it is doable with fewer people.
Having regular instances and heroic instances is all well and good but
that doesn't address what happens to the raid-level stuff on Azeroth
now that Outlands is there, or what will happen to the Outlands
raiding content once the next expansion comes out.

>
> > I think people who were already at 60 were holding out long enough to
> > play the expansion. When the expansion came out, they played for a
> > few months, got an epic flying mount, ran some instances, and then it
> > was the same as it was at 60.
>
> Haven't even bothered to get to 70 and the flying mount. Most instances I've
> run are pugs - and while it is nice to meet new friends, I miss the old raid
> groups.
>
> > New content is added too infrequently
> > to keep them playing.
>
> > Re-rolling a new character is also a lot harder now that you have 10
> > extra levels to go if you want to get them to end game stuff.
>
> Yes and no. IMO it is not the extra 10 levels, but the fact that a good
> portion of the game is now skipped, that makes levelling less appealing.
> There used to be rewards for making 60 ... epic mounts... epic gear... end
> game raiding content. With a dearth of folks doing the level 60 content, the
> game gets boring quickly.
>

Yep. That's exactly what I was talking about above. When you
obsolete what you've already produced, either by making it pointless
to do by creating too many more powerful items that are more easily
obtainable, or by making it impossible to do by not recognizing when
the overall interest level in the content makes it no longer possible
for those who are interested to gather enough power to complete it,
lthen you kill your game. Blizzard is doing well with the PVP but
their bog standard conventional static approach to PvE content was
proven not to work years ago.

The developers of Everquest and DAoC eventually had to start offering
real solutions to problems and producing real expansions to the game
system itself to keep players. Blizzard is still a ways away from
having to do that. They're still at the point where they can just add
a new purple axe to the item database and get all their players into a
frenzy over it. But that will change eventually and Blizzard will
have to start adding things to keep the game fresh rather than just
add more of the same.

>
>
> > Outland should have had more zones, or they should have also added
> > Northrend, and made the level cap 80 to accomodate the extra
> > questing. Buff low level questing to allow for faster progression to
> > the new content. I'm against being abel to start out at a higher
> > level as people don[t learn how to play that way.
>
> > When/if a new expansion comes out, you will see a lot of people return
> > to WoW, but again, only for short time, when the population will again
> > level off.
>
> Agreed

Sure, because BC didn't change gameplay. It didn't add new gameplay,
it just extended the existing gameplay. The new stuff -- sockets &
jewelcrafting, races, and flying mounts -- were pretty negligible
additions that don't really change the WoW experience much in the big
picture..

On Jun 14, 1:26 pm, patrick.bar...@standardregister.com wrote:
> On Jun 14, 11:45 am, "L" <lisaanne_quiltshatess...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "lcpltom" <lcpl...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> >news:1181835053.356819.293430@g37g2000prf.googleg roups.com...
>
> > > The problem was BC wasn't long enough.
>
> > Yes indeed. AND the BC loot tables made many old world runs obsolete. With
> > the ability (at level 58!) to go to the Outlands and replace even epics with
> > green drops and quest rewards, there was little incentive to run Strat,
> > LBRS, UBRS - and forget about raiding! Too much time, too many repair costs,
> > and no hope of finding 40 people willing to run.
>
> BC is a decent expansion. It's about equal to the expansions I saw in
> Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot. The problem is that WoW has a much
> much larger playerbase than those games and BC's been the only
> expansion. Nothing wrong with BC itself, just the fact that WoW
> should be on expansion 2-3 by now, especially considering the massive
> number of players WoW has.
>
> And as for making old stuff obsolete, that happens all the time.
>
> Most of the Everquest world got to be completely empty. The longer
> the game went, the less lower level players there were and the bigger
> the world got. Result, players concentrated in a few high-gain areas
> and the rest of the landscape was a barren wasteland.
>
> In DAoC, Mythic Entertainment eventually had to open up "classic"
> servers where expansion material was disabled. The older players had
> already done the extremely difficult raid level stuff, and there was
> simply no way for newer players to scrape groups together enough to do
> it, and no way for them to be competitive with the older players who
> already had the gear and benefits of it. So Mythic just opened
> servers where the old raid level stuff was simply deactivated.
>
> I'm going to feel this same situation in WoW pretty soon. My warlock
> has no realistic hope of getting his epic mount as nobody is going to
> want to run the old instances required to complete the quest for it.
>
> A shortsighted mistake that Blizzard is making, imo, is the raid
> progression. It caters only to a current core group of players. You
> will always have people quitting the game, and a smart developer
> should welcome new blood to replace them. Making a series of
> obstacles to overcome is great for your current playerbase to give
> people some sense of advancement and achievement after they hit max
> level. However, each hoop you make people jump through makes it that
> much harder for new players to ever catch up. I believe keying is a
> bad idea in the longterm. Everquest introduced that and Blizzard
> shouldn't have copied it, they should have learned from the fact that
> EQ eventually dropped it and introduced variable difficulty on-demand
> instanced content. And DAoC followed suit. A fixed progression for
> endgame content is just not a sustainable proposition for the
> longterm. Each time you shift the endgame out again, the old endgame
> becomes obsolete. Level 60 people are questing and grinding for 70,
> they don't want to spend forever raiding level 60 stuff. Way too much
> effort when there's a whole new continent waiting. Come next
> expansion, Kara runs will be a thing of the past and anybody who
> hasn't done them by then will never be able to as the playerbase will
> just move on.
>
> To keep the content viable, what Blizzard should be doing, in my
> opinion, is tracking the usage of the instances and when it drops
> below a critical level they need to rebalance the difficulty or add a
> new difficulty version of it so that it is doable with fewer people.
> Having regular instances and heroic instances is all well and good but
> that doesn't address what happens to the raid-level stuff on Azeroth
> now that Outlands is there, or what will happen to the Outlands
> raiding content once the next expansion comes out.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > > I think people who were already at 60 were holding out long enough to
> > > play the expansion. When the expansion came out, they played for a
> > > few months, got an epic flying mount, ran some instances, and then it
> > > was the same as it was at 60.
>
> > Haven't even bothered to get to 70 and the flying mount. Most instances I've
> > run are pugs - and while it is nice to meet new friends, I miss the old raid
> > groups.
>
> > > New content is added too infrequently
> > > to keep them playing.
>
> > > Re-rolling a new character is also a lot harder now that you have 10
> > > extra levels to go if you want to get them to end game stuff.
>
> > Yes and no. IMO it is not the extra 10 levels, but the fact that a good
> > portion of the game is now skipped, that makes levelling less appealing.
> > There used to be rewards for making 60 ... epic mounts... epic gear... end
> > game raiding content. With a dearth of folks doing the level 60 content, the
> > game gets boring quickly.
>
> Yep. That's exactly what I was talking about above. When you
> obsolete what you've already produced, either by making it pointless
> to do by creating too many more powerful items that are more easily
> obtainable, or by making it impossible to do by not recognizing when
> the overall interest level in the content makes it no longer possible
> for those who are interested to gather enough power to complete it,
> lthen you kill your game. Blizzard is doing well with the PVP but
> their bog standard conventional static approach to PvE content was
> proven not to work years ago.
>
> The developers of Everquest and DAoC eventually had to start offering
> real solutions to problems and producing real expansions to the game
> system itself to keep players. Blizzard is still a ways away from
> having to do that. They're still at the point where they can just add
> a new purple axe to the item database and get all their players into a
> frenzy over it. But that will change eventually and Blizzard will
> have to start adding things to keep the game fresh rather than just
> add more of the same.
>
>
>
> > > Outland should have had more zones, or they should have also added
> > > Northrend, and made the level cap 80 to accomodate the extra
> > > questing. Buff low level questing to allow for faster progression to
> > > the new content. I'm against being abel to start out at a higher
> > > level as people don[t learn how to play that way.
>
> > > When/if a new expansion comes out, you will see a lot of people return
> > > to WoW, but again, only for short time, when the population will again
> > > level off.
>
> > Agreed
>
> Sure, because BC didn't change gameplay. It didn't add new gameplay,
> it just extended the existing gameplay. The new stuff -- sockets &
> jewelcrafting, races, and flying mounts -- were pretty negligible
> additions that don't really change the WoW experience much in the big
> picture..- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

As for your warlock epic mount, it shouldn't be too hard to get a
group for those.

I got a 70 paladin and a 70 warrior to help me in scholo, we 3-manned
it all the way to the alchemy lab and even downed Ras while we were
there.

For the DM west portion, I had the same 70 paladin, the 70 warrior
switched to his 70 hunter, i got a 70 shaman, and a 63 rogue. Took
about 45 minutes to run through DM west. Only 1 death the whole time,
and no wipes either.

Beyond that, everytime I am in a city I see people in the Trade
channel looking for a group for DM west. I even have other warlocks
whispering me when they see I have the Dreadsteed asking for help/
advice on the quest line.

Now something more interesting in terms of server population. In
March, I switched to a PVP realm, and as I did I checked out the
census for that realm. At the time, the alliance to horde ratio was
1.3:1. A very good ratio considering most servers were looking at 2+:
1. Last night a guildy came online and said he was just looking at
the census data and that our realm has fallen to 3:1. Now this could
be because of a decline in horde players, or an increase in alliance
players. Its hard to really tell.

I know, its normal for alliance to out-populate the horde, but the
drastic change in population over only a few months was somewhat
shocking.

"lcpltom" <lcpltom@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1181835053.356819.293430@g37g2000prf.googlegr oups.com...
> On Jun 14, 10:39 am, DJB <burnsdav...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.htm
>>
>> Articles about this
>> chart:http://www.warcraftrealms.com/articl...e-leaving-wow/
>>
>> Arguments that Wow hasn't peaked:
>> a) gold farmers / user bans are influencing the trend
>> b) people aren't leaving wow per se, but growth has probably leveled
>> off and students are taking a break over the summer
>>
>> Arguments that WoW has indeed peaked:
>> a) statements by Blizzard that there will be no new realms for the
>> indefinite future
>> b) collapse of battlegroups for the first time in wow
>> c) this chart
>>
>> Discuss.
>
> The problem was BC wasn't long enough.
>
><snipped>
>
I agree with what you said but snipped it. The fact is that for a great many
people at or near level 60 when TBC was released and either raiding or
looking to raid soon, the whole game actually got a heck of a lot smaller.
Initially it just felt like more, bigger, better but once the dust settled
it's become clear the game has effectively shrunk to a fraction of what it
was. Recent content patches are trying to address this but there is a long,
long way to go yet just to regain what has been lost in relative terms.
Once the excitement of hitting level 70 was achieved (which is just far too
easy imo) the grind for instance loot begins. Those first two weeks, at
least in my experience, sowed the seeds of many guild breakups where
previously there had been regular inclusive 20 / 40 man raid events and
guild organised 5 man instance runs on a level playing field (all level 60)
it became every man for himself which resulted in small, exclusive, cliquey
groups forging far ahead and irritating those who couldn't spend their
entire waking life playing the game or simply couldn't get "in" when they
were online.
Then when raiding did start, a couple of weeks after launch for many, the
new instance player caps caused tensions for places on the phat epix
treadmill that saw many guilds start imploding as the WoW fanatics
(euphemistically called core players) took the places they'd raced for.
A lot of people were left feeling disillusioned and a bit disoriented. For
what it's worth I was one of those cliquey players who forged ahead but I
also felt somewhat pressured at the time. Being in an active guild there was
always the perception of not wanting to get left behind., that's all changed
now though.