This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Consider this a warning for all: attacking people and implying they are stupid will result in a ban. I'd warn via email but I'm in bed on my iPhone. But seriously, cut the nasty tones out. We can disagree nicely.
You want to know why this game is in decline (imho)?Blizz is trying to gain a bigger subscriber base by homogenising all classes. It's killed alot of games in the past and I'm not specifically talking about MMORPG's. It really affects dedicatedcommunities devoted to the game (eg, mod designers, forums etc). It's done for a short term gain and is not a sustainable solution. Why was WotLK such a big success? Subscriber base peaked, the game felt alive. Content felt likeit flowed, it was fun to play, progression wasn't just for the hardcore raiders and it implemented a whole bunch of new ideas. You felt empowered because playing your class filled a specific niche and youwere different. Self importance is huge in a game like this. Why would I just want to feel like the next pleb playinganother class? It doesn't make any sense.Cata is basically a whole new game and when you change a game that much, you better have theformula right or else people just think about investing their time somewhere else. Why do you thinkthey implemented the new mechanics before cata was released? Why were stats simplified? Why diddruid's lose their tree form? (disclaimer: last point raised due to personal reasons =P ) Would I have kept playing if these things all hit at once?
I'd like to remind everyone of the we have here, especially in regards to name calling and other unneeded offensive language. There are way better ways of dealing with simply not agreeing with each other.
I think that for casual players, the pacing is good. Some of us simply can't spare the time to raid or see every ounce of changed and added content. But we can try. If they bring out expansions too quickly, the casual players like me will simply lose interest because we haven't been given enough time to see as much of the current content as we would like. Hard to find the balance.I still haven't seen the Zandalari heroics because I'm slowly working towards a high enough gearscore (never during Wrath would I have imagined myself saying that...). I don't have a single exalted Cataclysm faction. I haven't even seen Tol Barad, let alone done any dailies. But what I have done is levelled two toons to 85, one to 84, fully cleared two zones with my main, run a handful of heroic instances, and levelled archaeology to 525. :)Blizzard shouldn't feel the need to cater to those people who zerg content and then complain that there is nothing left to do. But as I said earlier, they also shouldn't wait too long because not everyone is super casual and doesn't have a choice but to take their time to experience new content when it is released.
My opinion on the subject is that there is a mix of reasons for the decline:1 - Dead game-world: a series of choices made by the developers, killed life on Azeroth. I am talking about three things mainly. the dungeon finder, the flying mounts, and the arena/battleground-oriented pvp. We all like and love those features, but those very features changed WoW forever: it became a instanced game, very different from the open-world game it was on Vanilla. No one travels through the lands of Azeroth. Everyone is sitting in Orgrimmar/Stormwind waiting in queue for battlegrounds/heroics. Even the few players who need to set foot outside capitals (for farming mats for example) can easily fly over mountains and rivers, rendering completely useless the entire terrain. Cataclysm was comprehensive of a big appreciated old-content revamp, but one question raises on my mind: what is the point of revamping the entire continents of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, if no one is using those continents any more?2 - Endgame focus: Every MMORPG has a focus on endgame, and it's okay. But I think wow exceded in this way. First of all, the easiness: not talking about raids and hi-level content on heroic mode, that still prove to give some sort of challlenge to the majority of players; I am talking about the open-world levelling: quests and 5-man normal dungeons are ridiculously easy. I remember when 5-man dungeons were a pain in the ass: long and challenging adventures to be completed with real-life friends or even random people within the game. Same thing for group quests (once called elite quests): it was really necessary to party with someone to accomplish the mission, and that was an excuse to socialize. Today it's no more: anyone, even a child can solo from level 1 to level 85 without any problem. This tends to be boring (no difficulty = no fun), and that leads to heirlooms and related fast level-grinding. Obviously, more accesible content brings new players, but in the long run I think it makes the game really meaningless. Second point is professions: again, those are useless until on 525/525 skill. It doesn't feel right. It's simply not funny to level up the skills if what you gain in return is useless for 85 levels.3 - Lack of rivalry: I mean, who does really feels the rivalry between the horde and the alliance? I know there are PvP realms, but the direction WoW took clearly tends to be the PvE-realm way: the only moment of competition is the arena/battleground. This is really really stupid imho. It completely disrupts the feel of danger and competition, it contributes to kill the world as I was saying in the first paragraph, and even the lore of the game goes right in the trash can.4 - Outdated graphics: I know this argument is minor and trivial but... it's year 2011 and still same graphic engine developed nearly a decade ago.Conclusion & Synthesis: There are eightyfive completely useless levels, tens of completely useless and extremely easy 5-man dungeons, and over five hundreds useless profession-skill-points. Not mentioning the useless continents. This is too much to be acceptable. The game, definirely is a race on grinding 85 levels as fast as possible, flying from place to place not even looking at the world-detail, teleporting from instance to instance.
Sorry, but I can't take seriously people, played no more than 1 role in 5 classes at most, using the word "balance" as an argument against game's class designers. It's beyond me.
a lot of people are just getting bored of the game, especially the long time players. expansions and updates are cool and fun to get, but its getting to the point where the polish is not lasting as long as the one before. i think it about time Blizzard started looking into a new MMO to replace the World of Warcraft. its only going to get harder and harder to get people to stay. with new games coming out with the intention of "killing" the World of Warcraft its time to pull a new better game out.