It was getting suspicious that Blizzard had not put out a PR over MoP’s sales as they do with all their products’ sales. Everyone kept whispering, “It’s the online sales, Malstrom. Everyone will buy it online.” And there is no reason to not buy it digitally. Even the Collector’s Edition is offered digital minus the art book and mouse pad.
Mists of Pandaria sold 2.7 million in a week.
Cataclysm sold 3.3 million in a day.
Wrath of the Lich King sold 2.8 million in a day.
Blizzard was waiting to put out the press release hoping sales would pick up or something. Every website I went to had the Pandaria commercial on it.
I am a World of Warcraft player who played in the MoP beta and did NOT buy Mists of of Pandaria. Once my Annual Pass runs out, I will unsubscribe. But I’ve already officially unsubscribed since the end of Cataclysm.
I got bored of the MoP content. I expect people will as well as the months roll on by. The oriental themes also won’t connect to people’s imagination in the long run.
Everything felt like treadmills. Challenge dungeons were a ‘treadmill’. Pet battling was a ‘treadmill’. I loved collecting pets. At the end of Cataclysm, I had around 180 pets collected. However, that’s been shot to hell with the changes that pet battling had. You can collect three of the same pet, level each one up to level twenty five, and sell or trade them. Some pets only come out when it rains or at a certain time. Blizzard intends for everyone to have ‘more stuff to do in the world’ by concocting these ridiculous treadmills. Do we really need a pet treadmill? Do we need a ‘build your own farm’ treadmill?
But that is not the reason why I quit WoW. WoW’s userbase is changing, and I felt like I was in a different game because of it. It dawned on me that this game was not for me anymore.
Why can Everquest remain stable with all the countless expansions it has, but WoW begins to lose much of its subscribers after only a few expansions? When Blizzard changed certain things, they changed the userbase of the game. For example, as a raid leader I have to bench people in order to get a raid to succeed. In Vanilla, no one had any problem being benched. However, lately, they do and are shocked and mad. Why? Consider that the WoW player is not allowed to fail in the game’s content up to getting to raids (where they arrive to the raid leader). In older WoW, the game would fail you in dungeons or even in questing. It actually felt like a game. You can’t have a game if you cannot lose (and it seems the Game Industry has a modern fever for trying to invent games where no one can lose as if that is possible).
Raid leading is a thankless job. Not only do you have to put up with the morons who want to be carried, you have the people who spend all day in raid instances (not leading, only following) who think they are better than anyone else. They love the E-Peen. Yet, they are incapable of running a guild or running a raid. WoW has become a Manchild R Us.
I’ve fled WoW back to Starcraft 2. At least in Starcraft 2, the game is skill based. People who are good at the game are actually good. Unfortunately, I have to deal with the age issue (Starcraft 2 is easiest when you’re in your early 20s. It is a different game when you are decades older.)
Back to Pandaria, Blizzard is not even getting the Pandarans correct. This is how Pandaran were portrayed:
This is how Pandaran are portrayed in MoP:
Not exactly badass.
I think the decline in sales has more to do with the poor state of the economy, the change in the playerbase, and people’s anger at Blizzard’s lack of service. The $15 a month is not just to log in to the server. The $15 is for Blizzard to keep putting out content. When MoP came out, the last content patch was in November of 2011. Eight months of no new content! Nothing! WoW had never gone that long without a content update. Even in Wrath, they put out Ruby Sanctum to tide people over.
Blizzard developers feel it is beneath them to do constant content updates. Blizzard has already stated that due to the higher art used, people should expect fewer updates. And Blizzard also announced that they will introduce no major innovations to WoW. So WoW is nothing more than just the same raids, dungeons, and questing structures over and over until no one wants to pay anymore for the ‘experience’?
It’s difficult to take anyone’s opinion on WoW. Everyone who bought MoP and is playing it will, of course, say it is ‘brilliant’. Saying anything else is just them admitting they are idiots for buying something and subscribing to something that isn’t ‘top notch quality’. And the people who dislike MoP will never admit it is ‘great’ if it is as that would make them look stupid for not wanting to take part of a ‘great’ experience.
But the numbers do not lie. If MoP was truly exciting, we would see better sales numbers. Maybe people who wrote MoP off will get excited and come back in, but I doubt it.
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