Do the dev's actually play this game?

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

Except it hasn't. WoW's been getting a net loss on subscriptions more and more with each expansion, spiking lower each time, and then having a larger fallout than the expansion before them. The attrition is real. WoW is the Wowkiller.

This game has copied WoWs design in most of everything so that is not a good sign then. Then again the game still has by far more subs than any other game so. It is quite funny to see FFXIV do the exact same thing as WoW in terms of progression which is a large part of why WoW is losing subs (aside from the fact that it is just getting old); pure vertical progression to the point where many play for a couple of weeks each patch get bored and then unsub and come back several months later when the next patch/expansion comes around. Yoshi even said it himself he is fine with it, but to me it is just bad game design, both from a resource perspective as a developer since you just scrap your old content instead of expanding on the world continously, but also as a player it just leads to me feeling there is no point in doing much of anything aside from just following the storyline. I see so many say there is a lot to do, except grinding tomes every patch in the two new dungeons isn't a lot to do for me. Not to mention the backwards progression of 24-man after 8-man raid. I mean we just got a new expansion and what does it mean? We are back in 2.0 all over again which really isn't a good thing.

[Duelle]

It is quite funny to see FFXIV do the exact same thing as WoW in terms of progression which is a large part of why WoW is losing subs (aside from the fact that it is just getting old); pure vertical progression to the point where many play for a couple of weeks each patch get bored and then unsub and come back several months later when the next patch/expansion comes around.

Progression doesn't figure much into the equation, unless you're talking about content droughts like having 12 months of nothing but Siege of Orgrimmar.

People generally feel disenfranchised by some of the bullshit blizzard chose to pull with WoD, which is why subs have dropped so sharply. As I said, Blizzard promised a bunch of stuff and didn't deliver, did a bunch of stuff no one asked for (twitter and selfies integrated into the game), made professions worthless, centered the entire Draenor campaign in your garrison, made it a pain in the ass to move around the world, and cut out loads of content (including the zone that would become Netherstorm).

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

Progression doesn't figure much into the equation, unless you're talking about content droughts like having 12 months of nothing but Siege of Orgrimmar. People generally feel disenfranchised by some of the bullshit blizzard chose to pull with WoD, which is why subs have dropped so sharply. As I said, Blizzard promised a bunch of stuff and didn't deliver, did a bunch of stuff no one asked for (twitter and selfies integrated into the game), made professions worthless, centered the entire Draenor campaign in your garrison, made it a pain in the ass to move around the world, and cut out loads of content (including the zone that would become Netherstorm).

Content droughts has a lot to do with it and that is what I meant. Pure vertical progression leads to content droughts to a much larger extent than horizontal progression does which is a problem. Devs can't keep up with the players and this becomes more and more apparent as the game gets older and less money sunk into it for content creation. I was not saying it was the only reason WoW is losing subs, but yes it plays a big part in it.