Blizzard Launches WoW ''Starter Edition''

I didn't need more than 1 day of the 14 day free trial to figure out this game isn't for me.

I love Warcraft Universe and lore and books and comics, and RTS games... But really dislike WoW games. Tried to play it about 4 times now, and everytime just quit after playing less than an hour. Does Blizzard have a solution for people like me??

If you quit prior to BC (6 years ago), you can play the expansion that came out 5 years ago for free! Oh wait! That's only if you resub, though! LMAO. Pathetic...

It won't matter.
Everything in the game feels so used, and every new thing they implement just seems like something that should've been there all along, and thus is never appreaciated. The game is over. Really. They can keep adding content to keep a few million players happy, but most casual players will be bored by it anyway.

This is a nice little benefit for new players but pretty stupid as this does nothing to sway long term players from quitting.

It's clear that WoW had hit its peak long ago when it came to subscribers and once that happens there really is only one way to go and that down. In no way am I saying WoW is dead but its going to gradually lose players over time eventually coming down to the most hardcore and dedicated players. Servers will merge until there is one per region and soon after that it will shutdown for good. I've seen it happen before and even WoW isn't immune to such.

This is of course assuming they don't go free to play eventually. Which will expand its life but even then nothing lasts forever. Whether you love or hate WoW you have to admit it will be quite a event to see when the giant gets laid to rest.

Yes and roughly 2 months after it's shut down, people will wish they could still play

The Burning Crusade expansion isn't good enough to convince people who quit pre-BC to come back. That xpac was pretty boring compared to the others.

The first timer has to buy the battle chest, Wraith of the lich king, Cataclysm, and one month play time totaling $108 or a game card totaling $122. This is no way to get new customers and will confuse customers on what they much buy. The latest expansion plus monthly cost should be the only things required for play.

Ah, World of Warcrack, no thanks Activision.

Blizz understands that WoW is done. This move is just one of many designed to stop the hemorrhaging and maintain cash flow until Diablo III and more importantly Titan hit. They have said repeatedly that all of their real talent has been pulled from WoW to work exclusively on Titan. WoW will continue to backslide and be regurgitated content under the hands of interns and new hires at Blizz. That being said I still play not exclusively because of the game but because it allows me to interact in a fun way with my friends stationed all over the world.

This. I'm just lookin forward to Titan.

They already completely re-did nearly every aspect of the 1-60 game for "new players" that is a LOT more casual friendly with faster leveling, better zone design, more interesting and diverse quests, etc.

If anything the real stagnation is in the "end game" because no matter how many new dungeons and raids they add, it'll always be more of the same.

The really need to explore new, different styles/types of content beyond dungeons/raids and daily quests.

I am very surprised after all this time they have not added in any Warhammer like Public Quests or Rift like invasions/dynamic content.

They have completely and totally shied away from open-world PvP in favor of their battlegrounds and arena's and PvP event zones like Tol Barad, but to bring the veterans back and keep them playing, we need open world dynamic PvE and PvP content!

yep truer words were never spoken, Look at EQ , the game that started the MMO craze, it died and well it's sequel couldnt even last out. Who knows though , there were many inheirantly wrong things with EQ 2 ,but with blizard's record i could see a WoW 2 possibly even surpass WoW 1 in players.

however , i will yank my hair out if blizzard releases a WoW 2 before making a warcraft 4 RTS. (ie i cant really stand MMO's) and i hate teh fact that so many companies are jumping to moo's with IP's taht used to be RTS or single palyer RPG ( such as SW:ToR). sure muliplayer games are great , but the market is started to get flooded with games that focus too much on MP, especially MMO's .

i really miss the days where beter single player games were more numerous , oh well , at least i can look forward to Skyrim for single player rpg fun.

oh damn you're still here!

600,000 jumped ship to play Rift.

Why is so important to be right? Why are so many persons pointing to the death of WOW, a game still being played by so many?

No matter how good a game or experience is, it will always get stale, after doing it for a while. WOW will not be dead until everyone who can play it has moved on, and there are still a lot of people who haven't tried it. With one caveat, it certainly won't be worth it to maintain the servers if the total number of users fall below a certain threshold.

It always amazes me that everytime a WoW article comes out so do the WoW haters. If you don't like it then don't play it, but don't try to convince everyone that wow is "dead" and "done" and is not a good game. It makes you look rather pathetic to post on a game you don't even like. Blizzard could lose half of its subscribers and STILL be 5-6 times more popular than the closest #2. When a valid competitor arrives then a discussion can be had about which is better and why, but there is obviosly no real competition at this time and Blizzards has the Facts to prove it.....all 11.4 MILLION of them

Oh and by the way, I just put my flame suit on so BRING IT!

Whats the best source of information on the Titan project?

The Titan project lead guy/gal.

A good move by Blizzard IMO. Now we need Diablo 3.

I played WoW on my 386 sx, 4mb ram and 60mb hard drive....... on mmy current system, this is not the game for me. They need a major over haul

The original game, first expansion, and 1 month of game time will cost you $19.99. Considering the amount of hours you put into the game for those first 2 releases, I'd say it's WELL worth it.

It's not like you have to buy all content on the first day.

second best?

Why does Ultima Online never get any love? Came out in 1997 and was the first MMORPG to have 100K subscribers. Hell, Richard Garriott (Lord British) was the first to coin the term "MMMORPG" in the first place.

Oh, and get off my lawn.

I liked ultima online. It was fun. But once I had all of my characters maxed on two accounts, I got bored. Gave it to a friend to mess up his spare time.

This is a smart move on Blizzard's part. They're recognizing that the only "new" subs they're likely to get are those who play very, very slowly and haven't seen much. It's an infinitesimal portion of their subscriber base that might just grow because of this move, and it won't harm the big moneymaker, the casual with all the xpacs that plays a few hours a day, in any way. In fact, it might bring some friends of said casual player on board.

Most of the "hardcore" players are gone. They got bored a long time ago. I'd guess, from playing WoW for as long as I did, that half the players are people who are only hanging around for the social aspect, about a quarter are kids who just now got access to the game, and maybe that last quarter are people that have actually played the game long term and are sticking with it.

The rest of us are playing newer games like RIFT and Aion, and waiting for things like SW:TOR, Titan, and whatever else looks interesting.

Oh, and by the way, there's no need to speculate on when WoW hit its peak. The numbers have been made public. They had around 12 million subscribers about halfway through WoTLK. After Cata came out, it got close to that again, then rapidly dropped off to 11.4 million, lower than pre-Cata.

They had a chance to really reinvigorate the game with Cataclysm but skipped it, for some reason. I'm really not sure what they were thinking. Why give some users the boot by upping the system requirements but add little or nothing in the way of end game that wasn't already done many times before? Hell, last I saw, there wasn't even any new models for end game mounts. Even the "new" drakes were re-skins of re-skins. No one wants to grind for that.

I don't know about anyone else, but I "jumped ship" because it was harder to get decent groups for dungeon runs. I can tank or heal just fine, depending on which lvl85 character I bring, but having to deal with totally incompetent group mates is infuriating. DPS bringing in other groups of mobs because of tab targeting or bad positioning kills a group run really quick. Oh, there are bad tanks and healers too, but those are far fewer than stupid DPSers. I just got sick of it and left for Rift.

Yep, this goes back to what I was saying above. As people who know and have played the game leave, the odds of getting a kid who had no idea what he's doing will increase.

Say what you will about everyone being a noob at some point but that doesn't mean I want to spend hours teaching them, nor do I want to spend two hours doing a thirty minute heroic because that guy is 12. Then when I leave, because I keep getting kids, your odds of getting a kid next time you hit the LFG queue increases.

Eventually you end up with a bunch of kids playing the game (Runescape) and they don't even like each other.

In the meantime, the only people left that are willing to play an MMO but haven't tried WoW are...more kids. The ones who are left get fed up with it and leave en masse for other games.

I agreed with the people that said that, since WoW was still very much on top, it wasn't "dying". Right up until I saw that the population is down from what it was pre-Cataclysm, less than a year after release.

The fact that they're basically giving away some of that extra server space is smart but it's just a tourniquet.

Need proof that even the biggest can die while still maintaining a decent size? Look at General Motors.