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

I think one thing that is missing from this equation is a lot of those original players have families now probably. If you were 18 years old when WoW was released you'd be nearly 30 now.

I just think a lot of the original millions are exploring other aspects of life now.

WoW is a game that is a game that will live on the people who still love it. Sure, the numbers have dropped tremendously, but 6mil is still pretty strong for that old of a game.

The money isn't what would keep from playing. If I want to play a game that I like, I would pay $15 a month for it. If you don't like the game anymore, don't waste your money, but $15 a month isn't THAT bad to pay, and I'm no baller. I feel like I'm paying for the best MMO to my liking when I pay that, IMO. Others don't feel that way, and that is totally fine.

I'll be the first one to tell you it isn't the game it used to be, nor will it ever be again, but Next expansion is shaping up to be a good one, so I expect a good number to come back, more than MoP.

As far as the gameplay goes, LFRs don't bother me as much as others because I just dont do them that often. What bothers me is the LFD, I loved grouping with my close friends outside of game for a dungeon while leveling and what not back in the good ole days, but now its very easy to jump in the queue and level largely by playing with strangers through the LFD tool.

There's more to this than a lot of people are getting. They stated in this conference call that they are seeing record subscription revenue. I'm not sure how it correlates with the drop in subscription, but it is real. As much as the haters like to rejoice, WOW is not dieing. at all.

And to clear up the Hearthstone is FTP and thus worthless toward revenue myth someone mentioned earlier, FTP games bring in a ton of money, it is why you see a lot of other MMOs go FTP. They have stated before that even during beta when they were doing account wipes and resets as part of the test process, people were already dumping tons of money into decks and the like.

I'm an admitted WoW fanboy, but there's a reason that the team at HQ aren't freaking the frick out about the falling sub numbers. Are the taking note and planning because of it? Sure. But it's not death's knock on the door like the haters like to propagate.

What is hearth stone

revenue generation comes from micro-transactions purchasing decks or card packs, etc.

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People can place blame on the loss in subscriptions due to the age of the game, but I firmly believe that Blizzard's inexorable campaign to dilute the complexity from this game and democratize the content are both big factors. They feel that everyone should be able to experience everything within the game, and that if something is too "difficult", then it requires an overhaul.

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I'd look into the history of Lord of the Rings Online to counteract that argument a bit. Maybe it was a different audience, but that game was a mid-level game, certainly not easy, certainly not harsh, that was growing. As soon as they started adding end game raids it got a little better. Then they started GATING end game raids through gear that took hundreds of hours to get. And such was the end of the game, starting with Mines of Moria.

They started losing subscribers, and they lost enough to follow up Moria with an expansion that shifted towards FtP, and democratized content a little more Then, I believe 24 months after Moria they were on the FtP kick to reinvigorate subscribers, which also didn't work.

They were/are done pretty much. It's still kick with sub 1-million players, but that's about it.

At its prime, the game was a more structured EQ with a solid, challenging end-game. Of course, the big guilds could farm end game stuff, which did screw the market, but that was it. They made it harder and made gating time consuming and it completely failed.

Actiblizzard call of duty creed. We play the game for you. Have some epic loot, and a pet onyxia to poke battle with. Introducing new 2 man raids, in a revamped BRD with less branching paths and tough enemies!

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They removed talent trees from WoW because "everyone picks the optimal stuff anyway". Blizzard never put skill and stat trees in Diablo 3 because "people just did the same stats anyway" or "skill trees lead to people messing up their characters".

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... that's because it was true

no one picked their own talents with the talent tree. You just looked up what the best talent specs were and went with it. How is that "complexity"?

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Blizzard makes way too many incorrect assumptions

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lol. They've only added complexity with the new talent system. You have actual choices now. Sure you can look up the most popular build but now you can pick talents that go with your play style

For instance I'm maining an arms warrior right now and in bgs most other warriors pick bladestorm + bloodbath for the straight dps, but I go with shockwave + storm bolt for the extra cc. It's great for setting up kills on flag carriers.

The old talent system would have never given you this option

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WoW was sick in its original form

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I felt a disconnect with the game whenever they started revamping classes. The classes were great in their original form. Then they revamped the warlock class that just started a snowball effect of class revamps. I must say, WSG in Vanilla was some of the most fun I've had as a gamer. It was great taking down raiding guilds who had cleared MC and BWL in nothing but instance gear.

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What is hearth stone

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it's bad magic: the gathering with a snazzy UI