World of Warcraft Finally Loses Subscribers 413
bonch writes "After seven years and a highpoint of 12 million subscribers, World of Warcraft has seen a loss of nearly one million subscribers in the last six months for the first time in its history, according to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime during an Activision earnings call. However, the game remains the most popular MMO, and Morhaime said Blizzard plans to reverse the trend with fresh content. Some believe that the loss in subscriber interest is a sign of the game's inevitable twilight years. Blizzard also recently received a trademark for 'Mists of Pandaria,' fueling speculation about the next expansion pack."
Re:It feels old and already seen (Score:5, Informative)
EVE Online has a huge interesting world where everything goes, and is tailored much more towards PVP. World of Warcraft is just too much about PVE and grinding that environment, which really isn't that fun, especially considering it's an MMO
Actually, WoW has become more and more about PvP. The problem though, from my point of view as someone who's played since "vanilla" but recently just kind of lost interest, is that most WoW players used to be primarily PvE players who enjoyed world PvP and the occasional battleground match. These days more and more players are "kids" who just care about the organized and ranked PvP, Blizzard even crippled world PvP on PvP realms (quickly respawning elite lvl 85 NPCs kind of take the fun out of the old-style world PvP in and around towns).
I miss the fights in Hillsbrad or the horde invasions of Darkshire. Of course, back then there was also less of a gap between someone who was still leveling his/her character and someone at the level cap. If you were level 25 and in Darkshire when the shit hit the fan you could still put up a fight, these days when world PvP does happen it's always a bunch of lvl 85s with maxed out PvP gear who are able to tear through anyone but others who are also lvl 85 and in full PvP gear (PvE gear is useless for PvP these days).