Poll: For School; Explain the WoW Exodus OR Explain why it is a myth

[Twilight_guy]

I played WoW for a brief time. I stopped because I got to the max level and did a bunch of little stuff but found that the prospected from there for my character were boring and grindy. From an economic stand-point, I found that there service to be good but at some point, I felt it lost its inherent good traits and became routine and so I moved on to something else. I was happy with the mechanics and, aside from some deep flaws in there design that are unchangeable, thought that everything was put together quiet well. I left for my own reasons not because they changed it.

 

[Tiger Sora]

Like the reason many quit. WoW just started feeling like a job, and real life commitments needed to come first. I couldn't raid anymore, the game was super dumbed down. It just wasn't my scene anymore.
Thinking back, I started a few weeks before ZA came out in BC, so I was still learning how to swing a blade at that point, and for a long time after that. (I leveled as a holy pally to 66, I'd no idea what I was doing. Thankfully I was taken under another pally's wing). ^_^
Hell I was raiding Kara by the end of BC.
Minus massive computer being broken issues I played all through Wrath. Which was the best and worst of times for me.
Had fun in Cata but didn't like the dumbed down everything much, but I at least understood why they were doing it.
Now, I haven't played, I don't remember when I quit, sometime after DW came out. So a long while. So I can't say for the new expansion to much.
But WoW has been in decline play wise since the end of Wrath for me, even though I had a ton o fun in Cata. It just wasn't the same, won't be now.
I'll never have to find out though, never again shall I step foot inside that game again. So I promise here and now.

 

[DanielBrown]

I quit after Cataclysm because I got so damn bored with it. Had been playing on and off since 2005 and the only reason I stuck around that long was due to my friends that played the game. When they got inactive I didn't have a reason to stick around anymore.

Now some of them play again and I got a Scroll of Ressurection since they want me to play MoP, but fuck was the game still boring. Hadn't played for a year yet still I couldn't even play for more than an hour at a time tops. It's amazing how they keep dumbing down the game more and more.
Won't be renewing or getting the expansion.

WoW also seems to constantly be a "Who can be the biggest douche"-contest. I'd rather stick with LOTRO where the community isn't retarded.

 

[Torrasque]

I haven't seen a huge exodus and I don't even play WoW. I see 7-9 friends online playing MoP while I am playing Starcraft 2, and these are guys that either lost interest in the game or quit altogether.

The fact of the matter is that WoW has been in slow decline ever since wotlk's release. It wasn't that noticeable since there was a huge influx of new players, but I played from 2 months before wotlk, to 1 month after cata's release. During that time, my friends list changed, my guild changed, my server changed, and it wasn't just a matter of people going to different servers or the usual, it was people quitting altogether. I eventually quit because I lost interest in the game and there wasn't anyone still playing that I enjoyed playing with.

So yeah, mass exodus? Maybe pre-pandaria because people think its a joke, but I've seen a lot of people playing it.

 

[sanquin]

I quit because I was tired of guild drama.
I quit because I was tired of the game's fairly distasteful community as a whole.
I quit because I was tired of the constant rebalancing of classes.
I quit because I was tired of the fairly limited number of instances/heroics/raids that were available at the time.
I quit because the gameplay had gotten somewhat stale.
I quit because I couldn't stand how much WoW was shifting toward social gaming and E-Sports.
I quit because I wasn't happy with what I perceived as a dumbing-down of game mechanics (ex: the new talent trees for Mists of Pandaria).
I quit because I couldn't stand the tonal shift with this expansion and its cartoony pandas.

But most importantly...

I quit because I had a massive backlog of other games that I really wanted to experience, but couldn't really find the time due to my crazy raid schedule (if I wasn't at work, I was probably raiding... which got to feel like just more work).

I agree with all of these, and add to them:

-I quit because I've seen it all in that game by now.
-I quit because even BG pvp has become a boring gear threadmill. (Don't have top gear? You need to get top gear because otherwise you'll suck. Do have top gear? It's boring because you have nothing more to get.)
-I quit because GW2 is giving me a far better and more fun gaming experience so far.
-I quit because I was getting sick of the monthly payments that haven't changed in price since I started playing, in this day and age of tons of decent to good FTP mmorpg's.
-I quit because after having played the game for 6 or 7 years, the game has lost all of it's appeal to me, to the point where I would have to force myself to get on, and still watch a movie or a series on my second screen just to keep myself from getting bored.


As for the exodus. It's definitely happening now. Slowly but surely, but still. WoW's peak was in 2010 with over 12 million subs. After MoP's launch wow insider was proud to announce they broke the the 10 million. So that's a loss of 2 million subs in 2 years. And that's not counting the amount they might lose again after the MoP craze has worn off.

Sales too suggest that WoW is now slowly on decline. Cataclysm sold 3.3 million copies in the first 24 hours, and 4.7 million or so in the first month. In the first week MoP only sold 2.7 million.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I played WoW through WOTLK to the point of content exhaustion. I'd seen the zones, I'd done the dungeons, I'd done all the raids I was going to do without turning raiding into a full time job, I'd done the quests, I'd leveled the classes that truly interested me, I'd done the guild thing, etc, etc. At that point, what you're left with is what a certain sub-demographic of MMO gamers likes to call "the end game", which is infinite repetition in the name of perpetual, incremental progression. As I find that to be MADNESS, I quit at that point, and I have not been back (Cataclysm was tempting, but at that point newer MMOs were getting close and I thought it best to wait).

MMOs can be a lot of fun, but you can't really play them forever and not get bored unless you're of a very, very particular stripe. I lack the gene that allows me to raid for hours and hours and hours on end, week after week after week, to get some boots that I will replace with new boots when a new raid is released.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

Pandarans were part of WoW years before Kung Fu Panda, just so you know...

Anyhou, allow me to be the first "it's a myth" voice.

I've played since Vanilla, and this "exodus" happens every single expansion or major patch without fail. It just seems fresh now because MoP came out recently. Every time, there's a loud hew and cry from a very vocal portion of people how THIS expansion ruined/nerfed/casualed/ WoW to the point of no return. The game still survives, still rakes in money, still keeps on chugging.

Sorry. Didn't know.

... Kinda goes to show how much I don't care about this series, though.

 

[L0dest0ne]

I started playing around WotLK, and quit shortly after cataclysm. I was fun for a few months, but the experience of just grinding over and over again got stale. Fun to play with friends, though.
I'm considering going back for Pandaria, but I really don't feel like paying for the subscription again.

 

[Inconspicuous Trenchcoat]

I've played off and on, here's why I left each time:

First played late into Burning Crusade. Stopped playing a bit after Lich King came out, because I was a poor kid at the time, and had no one to play with. I'd had my fill of solo content and a few pugs. Later in Lich King, I came back for a few months. I really started to love healing 5-man pugs here. The dungeons were tough enough to be interesting, but not so hard that a pug would frequently fail to complete it. I loved carrying 4 pugs as a healer. I had to be on my A-game and it was glorious. I left when the dungeons were nerfed so much, that I was barely needed and they were just boring. The fact my guild slowly fell apart didn't help (due to lack of skill, we were bad, it was funny--they were fun to play with though. However, our general lack of talent caused members who believed they were "the talent" to leave for greener guilds. Then guild slowly disintegrated and that was the final nail in the coffin). I came back in Cata. I left because I was just tired of MMO gameplay, and couldn't stand the idea of subscription fee for it anymore. And then they started to nerf things again. So, I just quit while I was ahead.

I barely raided at all, and didn't care I never got to see everything. I preferred the game having mysteries in it, I'd never see. Made sure there was always a new level to strive for. I don't understand people who think they deserve to see the whole game with little effort simply because the paid for the game.

If Pandaland didn't require a subscription to upkeep, I'd probably buy it just to casually heal and tank pug 5-mans, which I like doing. I like attempting to "carry" a group--if only in my mind. I doubt I'd play it anywhere near enough to justify $15 a month.

 

[White_Lama]

Still play it, been playing since early WotLK.

Pandaria is very much a saving grace for WoW, Cataclysm was VERY boring.

AND ERMAGERD I CAN HAZ A FARM LOL!

And I have made like 10 best friends in a week, which is a hell of a lot easier than in real life

 

[DoPo]

There needs to be another option in your poll: "I already abandoned the ship"

I agree. And I suppose it's what OP is after, even. I stopped playing WoW about a couple of weeks after they announced the second race for the first expansion. Because the Draenei were just mega stupid. Also the other changes in lore they brought in. I was almost OK with the Blood Elves and I did come across leaked information about the Worgen (yes, back then) and I would have been fine with them as a choice (but I'm not quite so sure about the other lore mumbo jumbo, though). But it wasn't them. And I wasn't. So I stopped playing.

 

[miketehmage]

I couldn't really vote, I stopped playing before pandaria was released but not because of the upcoming expansion. I'd just had enough, cataclysm had made the pve aspects of the game too easy and therefore boring. And it had broke 2v2 arenas with the healing rework. So all that left was 3v3 (which yes is the main bracket anyway I know) but I was absolutely fanatic about playing arenas and it was hard to stick to one team to build rating when I'd happily lose it all and play with random scrubs just to get my fix.

Then I heard about the pandas.

Pandas were the final straw.


And I swear to god if any one of you try to say "HERPA DERPA HERP BUT TH3 p4nd4$ w3r3 al34dy anounc3d b4!?!?!!? HERPA"

I will reply with, "Yes, yes they were, but as an april fools joke."

EDIT: Actually after seeing some of the other posts in this thread, I thought of a few more reasons. One of them was from the guy with kennen for an avatar.

I completely agree that there should be content that I shouldn't see, it should be a mystery, it shouldn't be something that any scrub can do because then it isn't special. When I was playing vanilla WoW at 12 years old I had a blast and I loved inspecting the "pro" players with their one or 2 epic items (yes epics were THAT rare back then) and going "Wow I can't wait until I can do that"

I didn't actually start raiding to an acceptable standard until WOTLK, which I think was the peak of the game (I know opinions differ but I don't know many people who would say that about Cata). I think they got the difficulty in wrath just right, heroic ulduar was killer as was the Lich King in ICC. (By the way I feel sick at the fact that any old pug can zerg Deathwing. that's just not right. Far too casual.)But my favourite thing about WOTLK? The tone. the overwhelming sense of importance you got as a raider.

I was part of an elite force, azeroths main weapon to fight the lich king, and there is little hope for me to succeed. But I'd try. Every quest and dungeon and raid felt important.

In Cata? The tone sucked. The whole thing was tongue in cheek (Which I know blizzard do throughout the game) But it just seemed so ridiculous to shift from such a brilliant hopeless tone from WOTLK to the "Well, there's a big bad dragon, get your boots on we're gonna go stamp on it's head. We'll probably be back for dinner though."

 

[Padwolf]

I'd still be playing if I had a desktop computer to play on. I still love WoW, I enjoy raiding from time to time, but I really love exploring, I love doing quests, I like reading the quest descriptions. WoW has done a lot of good things for me in all honesty. Made me less shy, I found a best friend on there that I've now known for 6 years (or longer, I've lost count) and has given me a great time. Also when I play on it I did a lot of thinking that helped sort out some things in life, it gave me the quiet time to think.

I think the music is fantastic, the graphics are great, the atmosphere in some places is nice. Also I love to collect mounts. I love the amount of detail the game has, the amount of things I can do in the game. I can make characters with different professions. Sure there is a grind to that, I won't deny the game has faults, but I love using my imagination and turning the grind into a big adventure for my character. I kept fleshing my characters out, giving them stories, a background, personality. My favourite is my main, my hunter, with her great panther friend. I had a really nice guild, friendly and helpful, came to join me in questing, raided with me. A great guild.

I miss WoW greatly and can't wait to get a new computer in a few weeks time and play again. My hunter shall ride again soon!