I think you go too far by saying time doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the decline. Sure WoW was still successful up to Wrath, but time has an affect on any game, and with MMO's it's magnified. There is always going to be the "been there done that" attitude and as time passes it spreads.

Myth is right in that you can't totally change a game. This is WoW, it's always going to be WoW. To make wholesale changes to the dungeon system, or the combat system, you are going to basically change from WoW to WoW 2. Why would the devs bother to do that instead of making a whole new game? Even if one system were changed it wouldn't be enough to make WoW feel new.

A game as old as this cannot be revitalized with a few simple changes. Sure some of the changes might seem cool to some players, but the old player base will always harken back to the day.

At this point in time, WoW is a senior citizen. It's not dead, it's dieing. A game with WoW's sub base will take a long time to die to be sure, but it's dieing all the same.

 

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It's obvious that the game age IS part of the "decline". Same thing for 7 years.
Some people on their own agenda want to believe it's mostly because of Cata and Ghostcrawler that the game finally (after 7 DAMNED YEARS) starts to slightly decline. Fact is many people are just tired of seeing WoW after all this time, and the changes to the old world weren't enough to make them want to explore, Stormwind is still Stormwind even with flying and the claws of Deathwing in two towers.
Yeah, there are some changes to the game I also disagree with, notably the dumbing down of classes and talent trees. On that, yes, I agree, the game reached it's top in WotLK, and declined. But the rest of the game is still exactly the same. Quests, Reputations, PvP/Honor, Dungeons, Raid, still the same thing... and yes, after 7 years, many got tired of it, not only because the model didn't change, but also because the landscape didn't change (still Azeroth, still Blackrock Mountain, etc...).

Mithan is definitely right when he says WoW is not even remotely close to die. Hell, CRAP games were able to survive several years after their crappy bugged release. WoW is not crappy and bugged, it's still the smoothest experience for the newcomer and the oldtimer alike. It will easily do 5 more years, if not 10, even if subs drop, because with still 10+ million "health", there's a huge margin before death.

I'm 100% sure now that I will not be playing WoW the day the game really shuts down. But I kept some common sense and WoW is definitely FAR from being even remotely dead today.

 

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As I have stated in another thread now, since Asheron's Call and Everquest still have people playing them and are not "dead", thus it will be for WoW. WoW will never truly be dead, until Blizzard decides to axe the servers themselves. Will WoW diminish like AC and EQ, certainly.

As far as why WoW is declining, to sit there and say that this is the definitive reason is just wrong. There are several reasons that it is seeing decline and all of them are contributing factors. These include the age of the game and how Cata plays in comparison to Wrath, as well as other issues that Cata has in regards to the overall game.

Yet, to say that Blizzard, one of the most talented developers in PC games, can't at least come up new systems to add to the game is just ludicrous. For instance, the Path of the Titans system was one feature many players were excited to see in the game, and it got scrapped and Archeology got changed due to it no longer being related to the actual Path of Titans. This makes archeology for the most part a completely useless secondary profession because unlike fishing and first aid, that actually has a purpose in the game for your character, archeology does nothing, except for RNG Rare loot.

Another complaint is the nerfing and buffing according to PVP. You mean to tell me that as talented as Blizzard is that they can't come up with a system were your PVE skills act one way and PVP skills act another with completely different stats. Of course, I suppose the main issue for this lies in the fact of World PVP. Hence, the solution would be simply that World PVP retains the stats of PVE skill stats, only when you enter a structured PVP format will your skills take on the PVP form the stats. This would at least alleviate some of the constant buffing and nerfing that is rampant with any new expansion.

You mean to tell me that Blizzard couldn't introduce a system similar to Skirmishes that are found in LOTRO, to give casual players content for them to play and explore while earning rewards in that system. I mean apparently they have enough time to introduce a cosmetic system in the game, that doesn't really add any new content to the game really. It does change how people can spend their time in the game I suppose, chasing after the gear sets they like, but it is nothing that is actually NEW and changes why the players should be paying blizzard to play the game.

That is the most important aspect when it comes to the game, you have pay to play. So, if Blizzard isn't providing anything new in the last 7 years that really changes how people spend their time in the game or why people should keep giving Blizzard a sub fee, you see the results of a decline for a variety of reasons not just one definitive reason.

Even the polished and refinement that Blizzard has been able to do during the course of WoW lifetime isn't enough to keep sustaining it with out at least adding in new ways for people to play and spend their time in the game, and I don't mean just running around collecting old armor sets. Blizzard should have been leading the way in many ways with pushing innovation in the MMO Genre space with them having the money to actually do so with WoW's success. Yet, they haven't, they have been content with just letting things ride out the way they have because it has seen them get the "12 Million" subs they previously had, so the model has been successful for them up to a point.

Anyway, I don't buy the fact that oh its a seven year game and it has just gotten stale, the only reason it has gotten stale is because Blizzard themselves grew too content in earning the money they were and didn't see any reason to risk and add new forms of content to change how people play the game in the genre they have been dominating the last 7 years.

 

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I actually like Holy Power. I can see why Healers wouldn't, but as Ret and Prot, I enjoy it.





EQ2 actually has a system where skills just function differently when used on players by default. No special thing required for BGs or anything. It's already in WoW, take a look at CC skills, like Polymorph or Repentance. The tech is there, they just don't use it.

 

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40 minute DPS queues.

 

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Still waiting for someone to post evidence, any at all, that "7" is the magic number that contributes to decline, when the game saw nothing but exponential growth for the first 6.

 

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Don't hold your breath

 

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While I don't doubt that some of the playerbase is getting tired of WoW, the top contributors to people I know (or discuss with online) leaving WoW are:

1) The gutting of any choice in talents in 4.0.
2) The drastic redesign of class mechanics in 4.0.
3) The further "on-rails" design of quests, including railroading low-level quest zones. (Want to skip a zone and start in the middle? DENIED!) Does anyone even remember what it was like choosing whether or not to do quests that were orange/red to you?
4) The angular change in difficulty ("CC is now required", gratuitous AoE, etc.) of instances in Cataclysm.

Only one of these can be mitigated with experience/gear. Hell, even my mother complains about the changes making the game boring and she's never been a raider and has only run instances when I PL her through them.

 

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Nah Spooky, 7 isn't the magic number, it is 12, 12 years of similar game type based on the EQ Model, Refined by WoW, then copied ad nauseum from this in every game due to WoW's success.

Though I do get the point you are making, as I said in my post, I think there are several contributing factors that is seeing the decline, age just being one of the many.

 

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I play less and less because after 7 years I am pretty bored with the game. Thats all the evidence I can give you. I hope its a start!