re: World of Warcraft continues to hemorrhage subscribers...

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And they have made millions and millions and millions doing it.

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WoW's subscriber base experienced its most accelerated growth during vanilla and TBC - no LFG, no LFR, no handouts. There was an "investment challenge", as Bungie would describe it.

LFD was introduced during Cata, and subscriptions started to level off. During Cata, the talent trees were completely expunged from the game. Handouts were more prevalent. Subscriptions dropped down to 9.1 million by the end of the expansion.

Enter Mists of Pandaria. LFR was implemented and even more complexity was removed from the game. Currently, the game is sitting at 6.8 million subscribers, its lowest since 2006.

Bungie has stressed that they want Destiny to have an "investment challenge, gameplay challenge, and cooperation challenge". WoW used to triumphantly sport all three.

Now? Not so much. It's devolved into a completely vapid experience.