It isn’t surprising to see, World of Warcraft has taken a subscriber hit.
To quote a recent source:
http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/706-is-warcraft-in-trouble
“So when Activision-Blizzard announced earlier this month that subscriptions of its crown jewel had fallen 5 percent, heads turned. Was the mightiest title in the persistent world universe finally showing signs of weakness?”
In reality, this is only 600,000 or so subscribers. In truth, it’s a trend. Warcraft peaked, as mentioned by our interview with a Blizzard employee in our last post, and they mentioned that WoW had hit it’s peak and now has been declining. Hard evidence has now came out to back that up.
So, what does that mean?
In the rumor mill, there is talk about WoW becoming free in the future. This is talk down at Blizzard, but, it’s rather small and still in the “hey, what would happen if we did this” stage. Nothing has been written in stone and that would probably be a last resort for them.
It seems like people are flocking to play the new Star Wars MMORPG coming out. 1.6 million people now have signed up in an attempt to be beta testers. A very nice chunk of people indeed. So, what’s my advice on this?
BUY THE COLLECTOR’S EDITION OF THIS GAME IF YOU CAN AND SELL IT LATER. I promise you, that it will be worth something among not only fans of the game later on but Star Wars lovers everywhere.
But I didn’t come here to tell you guys about Star Wars, let’s talk a little more WoW shall we?
Well the most recent patch still doesn’t change much for Ret. The only big change you are going to probably see is that Need rolls now bind your gear to you. So no more looting and selling items.
Is this fair?
To an extent. I mean, sure, it’s a dipshit move when people roll on gear only to give it to someone else. At the same time though, if I won something, then after talking to someone they need it more and I decide out of the kindness of my heart to give it to them, then yes, I’d like the option to give it to them. Now, we will probably need to put in a ticket to a GM to do so.
Overall, sure it helps with ninjas but at the same time has some draw backs. I think at this point we are starting to get to the point of there is too much security on items. Blizzard is focusing on puggers and not promoting guild/team play with this change.
Is this the route we want to head down? For now maybe but I think the restrictions are really making you build your character one way. I think wow was better when people had to think about their gear, think about their items. Now it’s more “you have to play this way” and “cookie cutter or fail”. Talent choices are suppose to be hard to make? Who are we kidding here? You still get the same talents for the same thing, PvE or PvP raid or none raid.
That’s my rant and now I’m done.
May 31st, 2011 - 4:06 am
4.2 is pure shit again, not a suprise that the game is losing players
May 31st, 2011 - 8:33 am
What does this have to do with Retribution Paladins?
We’re getting our crippling WoG nerf halved in 4.2, all of our heals will be critting 50% harder, Repentance will have a range 5 yards greater than right now, and Guardian of Ancient Kings will attack whatever target we attack – not to mention SoR now proccing off of all attacks (including AoE) being able to crit, hits unlimited targets through Seals of Command, and gains the 15 Expertise bonus from Glyph of Seal of Truth.
Why go on about WoW subscriptions, other games, and PuG loot rule changes?
Your site I guess.
May 31st, 2011 - 10:44 am
Strategic error on Blizzard’s part. Instead of those 1-60, they could have phased everything and gone to 80-140.
May 31st, 2011 - 11:25 am
@ Royers
While your point is valid, it’s rather difficult to laud changes that shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place.
The only people who thought the 4.1 changes to Paladins were fair and balanced for Ret and the spec’s issues can be found at the Special Olympics – and they aren’t the ones cheering from the bleachers.
So given the changes to Ret in 4.2 wouldn’t have been required had Blizz done it right the first time, there really isn’t anything for Slayton to comment on, save….what he did comment on.
I
May 31st, 2011 - 6:52 pm
@ Royers
WoG change isn’t needed because the original change wasn’t needed. All it is is a personal survivability buff, because you’re not going to be using it on anyone else having that long of a cd and ret not having hardly any other way to survive aside from crappy casted heals that are only worth it if you’re holy.
All heals crit harder, and they’ll still be terrible and impractical because they either cost way too much, take too long to cast, don’t heal for enough to matter, or a combination thereof.
5 yds on rep isn’t that big of a deal. It’s still bad considering it’s duration and dispelability for being a non spammable cc.
GoAK is a good change, but it should have been like that from the beginning. It should have been fixed in the beta.
The cleave seal change is really PvE only. Which honestly doesn’t matter because PvE is fine and has been fine since wrath. PvP wise, it really doesn’t help at all unless you’re running some kind of team that doesn’t use cc much, or doesn’t care if it stays on target, which there aren’t any that will do well with that tactic.
June 1st, 2011 - 6:13 am
This was more of an update to a previous story then anything new. The only thing I really could comment on was the change in the loot system. Retribution isn’t really slated for anything new in the future so unless something comes up then it’s time to go back to the drawing board and see… well… you’ll have to wait for my next post on what we go back and look at.
June 2nd, 2011 - 9:38 am
I guess I just expect a site dedicated to Retribution to have posts / posters that are still excited about playing the spec and to write about tips in playing, comps that work, changes if they’re significant (which I feel these are, 5 yards on Repentance means it can be used to pre-empt a charge or DG, and will be easier to snap cast on a healer, plus the WoG change will help a lot, especially considering that it will crit harder. Then there are massive aoe buffs, which is PvE – and I don’t care for it but I didn’t think the blog was strictly about PvP) and anything else involving the play of Retribution.
Seems like each time I come here I’m reading a post by Larry David or Droopy-Dog about why Blizzard sucks.
June 3rd, 2011 - 9:49 am
@Royers
That’s partially why they’re looking for a new poster. None of the current news posters have the time or desire to play a ret paladin in a competitive setting (PvE or PvP) anymore. For myself and quite a few others, retribution isn’t fun anymore, and hasn’t been since at least the start of Cataclysm. Being able to put up the numbers doesn’t mean that the class is fun to play. And although you highlight the positive, there’s a lot of negative that goes along with that. Not just for Ret, but for the game as a whole.
June 5th, 2011 - 8:22 pm
The WoG buff/nerf bs Blizzard pulled is the oldest trick in the book. It’s just sickening reading rets talking like they ‘got what they asked for’ with the ‘fix’ to 10 seconds.
I’m in shock I still see ret paladins at all. There’s a fine line between addiction and enjoying the game for these people I suspect. The unwillingness and total lack of repentence (lol) over the nerfs from Blizz has spelt doom for the spec in pvp.
When the WoG change first came through, it should have soon had a big line through it just like mages who pissed and moaned about spell steal – which was subsequently reverted.
June 6th, 2011 - 9:58 am
WoW is the top MMO in the world. When something happens to it (600,000 subscribers) of course it’s big news…forgetting the other 11.4 million people still playing.
The game isn’t dead, sorry…it isn’t even dying…it just has a cold.
June 6th, 2011 - 4:32 pm
I don’t know about that Brakkyn,
I agree that this is nothing compared to subscribers as a whole, but this is the first time they have reported losing a mass amount of players. Seems like something could go wrong here.
June 6th, 2011 - 11:59 pm
@Royers
Blizzard does suck.
June 7th, 2011 - 9:28 am
“When the WoG change first came through, it should have soon had a big line through it just like mages who pissed and moaned about spell steal – which was subsequently reverted.”
But Mages struggle very badly in PvP. They have almost no representation in arena and no comps that work well with them, and their tools to deal with melee classes are non-existent, so they just get trained down in seconds. If they had lost spell steal, they might as well have just deleted the mage class for good.
For real.
June 7th, 2011 - 10:38 pm
@Kierlak
I see what you did there, bro!
June 7th, 2011 - 10:39 pm
@Kierlak
I see what you did there, bro!
June 9th, 2011 - 11:56 pm
@ Kierlak
Being this is a ret pally page, it begs the question, ever try killin a frost mage with a ret pally?
June 12th, 2011 - 5:13 am
Hello everyone.its not the first timr iam posting here.ive been playing ret for more than 5years.from pvp to pve andd from bg’s to high ratrd arena.i rerolled warrior 2months ago and i plan to play him in the outcoming season.ret is pure fail at this point so much it made me wanna try smthin else.its so sad.i still wanna play my ret but its fukin fail snd boring atm.even in stone age(aka tbc) i was havin more fun than this crap…..
June 14th, 2011 - 2:41 pm
@Royers
You should hit up the forums, there is a still a bit of life left in them.