So, lets talk about one of the biggest online games of all time, Blizzard's golden goose: World of Warcraft.
Admit it, you have played this game before even if it was only the 1 week trial because a friend/cousin/brother told you how cool the game was and they really wanted you along the ride.
It got so popular that even South Park dedicated an entire episode to it, and most would even say that episode ("Make Love, Not Warcraft") is the best in the entire series. The show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone played the game so much that it was delaying their work, and there are other famous people that play the game, for example: Aubrey Plaza, Mila Kunis, Vin Diesel, Mr. T, and many, many others.
When the game got released back in November 23rd, 2004 it hit the world like a tsunami, hundreds of thousands of people flocked towards Blizzard, later on it added up to the millions, peaking at 12 million players, but everything that goes up eventually has to go down... right? Well, with the first 3 expansions (The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm) from 2004 to 2011 the developers saw nothing but green numbers for almost 8 years.
But then it went straight down, seeing occational rises when a new expansion sees the light of day, never to the same numbers it had back in 2012 though. It is still pretty impressive for a game to hold millions of players for over 15 years, they must have done something right, I know they did, I've played the game from 2009 up to this year (July 24th, 2019 as of today) with breaks every now and then.
So my question is, why did people stop playing? There are a lot of reasons, so as a dedicated player I'll answer this question to the best of my ability:
1 - The game is 15 years old, people grew out of it: This the main reason thrown at me when I ask my friends that no longer play the game, most of them started their journey when they were kids, highschoolers or at university, and as time passed on they grew up too, which brings me to my 2nd point.
2 - People no longer have the time to dedicate: Let's be real, an MMO is almost a part-time job, if its a good game then it wont feel like it, in your great adventure time will pass by real fast, hours will feel like minutes, and that is a no-no when your wife/husband is yelling at you because you dont spend enough time with her anymore while holding your crying 1 year old baby. Like I said on my first point, people grew up, little Timmy the highschooler freshman is now Thomas the supervisor of interns on a financing company, its hard to save time for a videogame when you also have work, family and a social life to mantain.
3- Too many changes, and not all of them were positive: Blizzard weren't oblivious to the problems before mentioned, and what was their solution? Make the game more accessible so that Thomas can play even if only 2-4 hours a week and still see rewards coming from the time dedicated, the only problem was that the rewards obtained in that small timeframe did not feel like an accomplishment, and this is a problem that plagues the game to this day. So now you have casual and hardcore players alike leaving in droves because whats the point in getting the new flashy dragon mount when everyone else can get it with little to no time at all? If everyone is special then nobody is.
The journey back in 2004-2011 was something like this: start with a new character and while leveling, you see him/her: Tyranikus the Dragon slayer, a player equipped with shining armor from head to toe with a huge and very menacing sword, pretty epic right? So you set your goals, I want to look like him/her, so you play, play and play for weeks, even months to reach that point, and when you finally get there, oh boy, does it feels glorious...
Nowadays when you buy the new expansion DLC you instantly get a character boost which gets you dangerously close to max level, killing the experience, most of the work required and the satisfaction of reaching your goal, if you give people the option to go through the easy route they will always aim for it, ouch.
So there you have it, 3 solid reasons (in my humble opinion) why people have stopped playing World of Warcraft, I hope you can relate if you are a WoW veteran or an active player, and if you have never played the game then hopefully this helps you understand the downfall of this mighty titan in the great world of gaming.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, on August 27th, 2019 Blizzard debuts World of Warcraft: Classic, a server running the original game that released back in 2004 which started it all, so far the Beta was massively popular on Twitch, bringing up to 210.000 viewers, let's see if they manage to bring in old and new players to this project.
Thanks for reading, my name is Krommus and I'll see you folks next time.