[Mack]

WoW has released content yesterday to further update on the Shadowlands.

Fun fact : Tim Russ (Tuvok from Star Trek Voyager) is one of the voice actors in the trailer below as well!

Source: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/worl...rlives-bastion

[Account003]

Can't believe that people still voluntarily play this game...
The addiction is strong in this one...

[Mack]

Can't believe that people still voluntarily play this game...
The addiction is strong in this one...

It's not, if you consider people still play games which have maybe 2-3 episode content release in a whole year and just more items to purchase in their online shop.

When a game has so much content that after an absence of ~10 years you have alot of catch up on, it gets interesting that's for sure. And then when there's no lag and smooth + instantaneous ability activations - you realize how useless other games are and how paying for promo boxes and just posting screenshots is not worth the game time experience anymore.

But hey, that's me. We all make voluntary decisions.

[Account003]

Don't get me wrong, even though I cured my addiction after my Deathwing 25 man Heroic kill 9 years ago, I still follow the lore.
But looking at gameplay, gameplay cycles and Boss fights... "Been there, done that."
And as I predicted, Classic Servers also aren't "the bringer"... Mostly because noone who current day plays and especially talks about it, has even the feightest clue what made Classic...well "Classic".

It's something you never ever can replicate.

[Heyallo]

I stopped playing not too long after I hit 120 in the current expansion, my main reason for playing was with friends, who all slowly disappeared from the game (but I talk to a lot on discord still so)

[Mack]

I stopped playing not too long after I hit 120 in the current expansion, my main reason for playing was with friends, who all slowly disappeared from the game (but I talk to a lot on discord still so)

I play with our own UFPlanets Community right now. I'm pretty much brand new because I changed from US to EU to play with the boys on Teamspeak and they're super helpful. I'm also not playing to get stats or anything as of right now but pretty much to catch up on the story thus far.

Sammygm is the lore encylopedia of World of Warcraft

[AlexRider]

Sammygm is the lore encylopedia of World of Warcraft

So he has to be renamed into "SammyWikiWoW"!

[Heyallo]

eh, I don't wanna switch to EU, sadly the latency is just too terribad =(

[Bar'ol]

Gameplay sure is 100% more interesting than the boring snore fest that is Spacebar Online, where the only means of progressing your character is by giving Cryptic your bank account details, and levelling up your 100th Reputation, whilst being trickled fed content every so often.

Why wouldn't people voluntarily play this game? It's way better than most MMOs currently on the market.

It really isnt but to each their own. If you enjoy it good for you.
I think LOTRO is the better mmo but here we are hehe.

I however agree about the content updates you all get. I hate how sto just releases like two or three episodes at a time and call it new update/expansion/chapter whatever they are calling now a days rofl.

[Three of Seven]

STO lacks what most MMOs have, and that is a reason to do the content, STFs used to have gear drop, and there were very rare consoles that you had to grind for, there was a reason to stuff at one point. Now, there's no point trying to get drops from queues, because those drops are worthless, anything worth anything is locked behind rep, or money.

Now, the rep system, is garbage, I said it when it came out, and I'll keep saying it, it's pretty much a spreadsheet, you fill it out, and come back to it the next day, it's a job, not a game. Then there are high level traits that are locked behind money, not even lockbox ships, but money.

The only thing STO has going for it now is to be the very best DPS, if you aren't interested in that, you can play the story, but once you've completed that, there's not much left to do, unless you want collect everything. PvP is dead, and there's no user generated content from the foundry. It's a real shame.

I got bored of WoW because of the story, and some of the changes to mechanics, I hated BFA, but it is still mechanically better than STO, because there are reasons to do dungeons, you get gear in normal dungeons to gear you up for heroic to then gear you up to mythic. That heroic progress also gets you gear to start raiding on normal, which can then get you to heroic, there are reasons to play. For STO, if you want to do elite queues, just throw money at the game and become one with the spacebar.

I honestly do wish STO would give more incentive to play content, but for me, it doesn't.

[Petrarch]

Conversely LOTRO bores me silly and I've not touched it in years. As for STO, the only reason it's not a mobile game is because it's not available on phones but it's slid very heavily into what you'd expect to see on iTunes or Play, over the last year especially.

My WoW days are behind me now, though for me, the peak period of WoW was not classic, but the first expansion, The Burning Crusade. There was just something nice about the game at that point and it hasn't had that in the subsequent packs. The seasonal rot so to speak set in for WoW during the Wrath of the Lich King era and really took hold during Cataclysm. The last pack I tried was Legion and it was fine, but the magic was gone for me at that point. Of course, your opinions may vary!

I'm in something of a non-MMO mode currently. I've walked away from both STO and SWTOR and I'm now looking at the 4X style of games to pass the time while waiting for Cyberpunk 2077.

[aceman67]

I stopped playing wow with BFA. The story was ok, but the mechanics were just meh.

And I've made my opinions on STO clear when the legendary bundle was released.

TBH, FFXIV is the only MMO in a long time that's really grabbed my interest and kept it. The story is great, the Devs ACTUALLY cares about the community and keep them updated in changes, and there's new content on a regular schedule, in fact, they never missed a content update in 7 years until COVID-19. If you feel burned out with Wow Or STO, give FFXIV a go, the recent changes to the free trial gives you literal MONTHS of content.

[Account003]

Gameplay sure is 100% more interesting than the boring snore fest that is Spacebar Online, where the only means of progressing your character is by giving Cryptic your bank account details, and levelling up your 100th Reputation, whilst being trickled fed content every so often.

That is true, for now.
WoW has since WotLK a continuous declining player base (you can look up the numbers till the point Blizzard stopped reporting them) and had a big fat reserve of the almost 13.000.000 active player to burn through, from back in 2010. In 2018, according to internal leaks via battle.net shenanigans, of that number only around 3.400.000 active players were left. In late 2019, according to Activision, the re-release of Classic doubled the active subscriptions of WoW (my personal guess is that at that time around 1.900.000 to 2.000.000 active player were left). And I don't think that these numbers are that high these days, as I mentioned before:

And as I predicted, Classic Servers also aren't "the bringer"... Mostly because noone who current day plays and especially talks about it, has even the feightest clue what made Classic...well "Classic".

It's something you never ever can replicate.

I'am not one of these "WoW is dying" morons but to say it with Blizzards own words: "No king rules forever."
And Blizzard has, in my opinion, seen the writing on the wall too... Since 2015 you can buy inGame currency for real money (20 Bucks for what, ~30.000 gold? Which was even back in 2011, when I last played, only loose change) and the other stuff in their item-shop got, at least in Merkel Dollar, ridiculous expensive... One (1) trivial mount, no matter how old it is, how fast it is and if it can fly or not costs more than a T6 Ship here!
Also other stuff got more expensive...
Faction change (for ONE character) -> BÄM 30 Bucks
Server change (for ONE character) -> BÄM 25 Bucks
Race change (for ONE character) -> BÄM 25 Bucks
Gender Bender (for ONE character) -> BÄM 15 Bucks

Only thing that stayed the same is renameing one (1) character for 10 Bucks.

True, they get way more content than we do but we don't have to spend 40-55 Bucks (if you want the silly bonus content it's 55) each 1.5 to 2 years for 4-5 content patches (unless you're Warlords of Draenor...) besides the 11 to 13 Bucks á month for subscription (depending on your payment model).

Yes, all in all you get "more Bang for your Buck" but if the "Bang" only changing color for the past 9 years...
And NO, I don't defend F2P - it's just another way to screw with your customers.

They can keep the game on life support for a long time, especially with re-releasing old expansions to bait former players for a month or two but at some time the active subscriptions will dropp so low that it becomes uneconomical and there will not be 800 spare employees around for firing, to balance the papers.
And I bet my ship that, at least since 2015, the plans to turn the game into F2P over night are already in the desk, waiting.

After 16 and 1/2 years the game (and the genre in gerneral - because everything that is with current tech possible already has been done by someone) has overstayed its welcome. When was (by any developer) the last real "WoW-Style" MMO released? When was the last MMORPG released?
And while braindead game jurnos title stuff like Fortnite, Warframe or Battlefield V as "MMO" because "DUH Multiplayer = MMO *drool*"... F*cking Clash of Clans and Raid: Shadow Legend is an "MMO" in their "opinion"... Okay they also title someone a "gamer" if they play one hour a week Candy Crush or any other "Smart"phone game...
I start ranting again...
...that's not what I'm talking about.

If I look at the list and straight up ignore re-releases of ArcheAge, Black Desert ect. and Addons for WoW... Yeah December 2014, the orginal release of Black Desert Online almost 6 years ago.

[Three of Seven]

That is true, for now.
WoW has since WotLK a continuous declining player base (you can look up the numbers till the point Blizzard stopped reporting them) and had a big fat reserve of the almost 13.000.000 active player to burn through, from back in 2010. In 2018, according to internal leaks via battle.net shenanigans, of that number only around 3.400.000 active players were left. In late 2019, according to Activision, the re-release of Classic doubled the active subscriptions of WoW (my personal guess is that at that time around 1.900.000 to 2.000.000 active player were left). And I don't think that these numbers are that high these days, as I mentioned before:

I mean, that's still more than STO, which is getting below 5k on Steam, LotRO is getting maybe up to 3k, Black Desert Online is getting anywhere between 15k and 30k on Steam, ESO is 15k - 50k, SWTOR hasn't been on Steam long, but currently between 10k and 20k, so even if WoW dropped to 1mil, it would still be the most popular by a long show.

After 16 and 1/2 years the game (and the genre in gerneral - because everything that is with current tech possible already has been done by someone) has overstayed its welcome. When was (by any developer) the last real "WoW-Style" MMO released? When was the last MMORPG released?

Camelot Unchained is a new gaming coming out, has some WoW style to it I think from some of the screenshots - https://camelotunchained.com/v3/
New World is something coming out next year, but more DnD style I think - https://www.newworld.com/en-us/news/...er-progression

How popular either of those will be, who knows.

Edit: https://bestreamer.com/gaming/most-played-mmorpg-2019/ - Gorn'a be a long time till WoW is dethroned.

[Account003]

I mean, that's still more than STO, which is getting below 5k on Steam, LotRO is getting maybe up to 3k, Black Desert Online is getting anywhere between 15k and 30k on Steam, ESO is 15k - 50k, SWTOR hasn't been on Steam long, but currently between 10k and 20k, so even if WoW dropped to 1mil, it would still be the most popular by a long show.

Yeah... Problem is that the part you're answering to with this is just the introduction to my main argument...
And I wholeheartedly believe that if that number dropps below 1.000.000 some suit will either push the F2P Button or pull the plug.
Because Blizzard is no longer run by "product persons":