Are GCs days numbered? We can only hope. Not even Tseric was able to create a debacle like GC has. Atleast Tseric only truly pissed off the shaman community (bus shock!), and not everyone in general. Tseric certainly didn't cause a near 1 million subscription drop, that's for sure. If anything, people probably came back after Tseric was fired.

Sad thing is, I used to think that this game was going to run into problems because of Tigole and Furor (two Everquest class bigots). Little did I know that an even bigger game nazi was lurking around the corner, that nazi being our current crustacean overlord.

The only other case I can think of where a lead developer totally screwed up a game worse was John Smedley and the total joke that SWG turned into. Even then it's probably close though. SWG didn't have many subs to begin with, certainly not 12+ million. But over all they have both probably lost the same number of subs.

Simply put, I see Ghostcrawler as being probably the worst thing to hit WoW since rep grinds, and probably even before. I wouldn't be surprised to hear rep grinds were his idea.

 

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baiting/inappropriate

 

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15 yard penalty! ! Unnecessary roughness!

No Advertising Spam!

This post makes no sense whatsoever.

 

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I love how some of you are criticizing what Kewk said without offering any rebuttal. I can see his point. Before, players were mostly happy and subscriptions weren't dropping like a rock, so there was no motivation or reason for Blizzard to go through the time and trouble of implementing these often requested features.

Now, players are mostly unhappy, subscriptions are dropping like a rock and they suddenly have some serious motivation to add these features in the game in an effort to stop the declining subs.

You are probably correct to some degree. Most people don't get how games are made.

All features are budgeted in, using money, time, how much players want it and overall effect on the game as far as change goes (and other factors) before it gets added.

Changing armor 5 years ago was pretty much unheard of, but these days, most MMO's have some form of rebuilding the look of Armor and since people are asking for it, it is easy to see why they decided that a "useless" idea is now a "good" idea.

They say that Housing is never going in, but in 2 years from now, they may change their mind if they feel that player housing will attract/keep players going in the game.


Blizzard is clearly losing people and the people who do play, are probably not as focused as they used to be. The few people I still know that play, do not do all the stuff they used to do, they basically log in and raid and


The next expansion will probably offer some real changes to the game because that it is the only way a game this old can retain players.


Either way, WoW's best days are behind it, but that doesn't mean WoW is dead. WoW will probably go for another 10-15 years.

 

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These statements are mostly true, the problem is, they don't detail "the why". And the why is, Cata sucks balls. WotLK was insanely popular, then GC the douche comes along and completely revamps the game in Cata and WoW starts losing significant subs for the 1st time. So the Devs start throwing fluff at the players without addressing the real problem: Cata sucks balls. Look at it this way:

1) More of the same game play, meh - not exciting, but wouldn't have made me quit.
2) Busted up the zones, made everything new - Hmm, ok, that's a little exciting, it's a good thing.
3) Screwed up healing badly, worst decision ever, take one of the primary roles, the least fun one to begin with and make it completely suck. VERY BAD.
4) Take solid classes that are fun to play and make everyone of them less fun to play, add the stupidity that is priority systems and stupid clunky mechanics, for absolutely no reason. VERY BAD DECISION.

That is just 4 points I came up with off the top of my head. 2 extremely bad decisions, 1 ok decision, and 1 neutral decision. Factor in that human nature will focus on the bad and you have a recipe for disaster.

The fact that GC, who leads the dev team is an ultra arrogant ass who would never admit he was wrong. And now you have the reason that WoW is bleeding out.

 

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The simple reality is that no one can take on as much criticism as GC has, coupled with the loss of a million customers (coincidental or not), and survive in the corporate world. Business 101, when management is not producing, they get replaced because people tend to get reallllllly upset when you are not making as much money for them as you used to

 

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These points are pretty much the crux of the problem. But Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom and arrogance, will never admit it, nor will they ever fix it. To do otherwise would be admitting they were wrong, which is something that will never happen.

 

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