World of Warcraft has been on a downward decline for many years. But is WoW dying? That completely depends on your outlook! I prefer to keep a glass half full outlook, but numbers do not lie. From the games peak of of over 12 million players, to its current meager player base of 1.67 million players, it has been a tumultuous journey. Blizzard has made many decisions that we as a community have condemned, and even quit over. But what were they? Keep reading to find out!
How Blizzard KILLED World of Warcraft
Blizzard has made many missteps in their administration of World of Warcraft. From the combination and merging of servers, to the inception of Looking for Raid. Blizzard has gone out of their way to remove the individual identity from the game, a sort of spiritual bloodletting. No longer are players representing their servers, guilds and friends. There is no separation of identities. A player is a player is a player. Ad nauseum.
World of Warcraft PVP is Dying, Dead, Gone
One of the biggest issues however, is Blizzard’s utter neglect of world PvP. World of Warcraft nowadays is all about Mythic+ and Raiding. PvP has been forgotten about completely.
With the removal of world PvP objectives such as Halaa and the Spirit Towers in Terokkar, as well as diminishing world PvP events like Wintergrasp have left players with little incentive to partake in open world PvP. And what world PvP does exist is plagued with balancing issues due to overpowered abilities granted by PvP talents.
There are rumors that Solo Queue Rated Battlegrounds are coming for Dragonflight PvP, but is it already too late? Have the players given up on PvP? It certainly feels like it so far. The difficulty of doing Rated PvP is finding a guild or a good arena partner, and getting them to communicate with you via voice. It can take hours, if not days just to find a group of like-minded players to do PVP with.
We’ve not even mentioned the Toxicity that can be sometimes involved in this part of the game. Blizzard is yet to include a form of “Justice” or “Punishment” for being toxic in World of Warcraft and as a result people are more than comfortable to be as toxic as they wish. Even a game like League of Legends, notorious for toxicity has features to manage toxicity. This is just another reason World of Warcraft is struggling on the ropes in this final round.
Boring Raids are Killing World of Warcraft
Who wants to kill a boss like Sylvanas for 9 minutes before the “real” action starts? Honestly what were they thinking. Let’s see how many hoops we can make players jump through before we make the boss fun to fight. Imagine how much time players wasted, getting through those first 9 minutes just to actually have a shot at killing Sylvanas Windrunner. These types of poorly design raids in World of Warcraft are absolutely hurting the game.
Raids have become more and more tedious, with little to no reward for players. What’s the point of fighting a boss that’s just going to drop gear that’s outdated or out paced by the time players begin to clear Mythic +?
This type of monotonous gameplay is why World of Warcraft is dying. The game is losing its player base, and raids are a big reason why. Players want to be challenged and have fun while raiding, not just constantly running the same boring fights over and over again.
Reputation Grinds are Killing World of Warcraft
How many times can a player realistically grind for reputation to purchase mounts or pets that are available on the WoW store? These store mounts and pets give players an easy way out, taking away from the hard work and dedication it takes to earn them in-game.
The WoW Token also adds to this problem. Players can simply buy game time with real world money, instead of earning it through in-game means. This is not only harming the collector community, but the entire player base as well. People are becoming lazy and not wanting to put in any effort to progress their characters.
The World of Warcraft in-game store needs to stop offering mounts and pets that can be earned through gameplay. This will encourage players to work towards their goals and improve the overall collector community. Otherwise, the integrity of the game will continue to decline.
Conclusion to Why WoW is Dying and What to do from here
So there we have it, our list of why World of Warcraft is dying. Battle-Shout is planning to write another article about why WoW is on the return, but we need to see the game doing better before that happens. Dragonflight presents many opportunities for Blizzard to improve the game, but will they take them?
“ICEBERG ahead!” What can Blizzard do….
Overall if Blizzard want to guide their game and narrowly miss that iceberg with this Titanic we call World of Warcraft, they must listen to their player base. Blizzard needs to make changes that will improve the gameplay experience while also maintaining the integrity of World of Warcraft as a whole. Only then can they possibly prevent its decline and eventual death.
Blizzard needs to work on releasing more content for players to explore and keep them engaged. This can include new raids, dungeons, zones, and storylines. Without constantly updating the game and offering new challenges, players will quickly become bored and move on to other titles.
