This has been cross posted on my blog at wordpress.com.

Some people might call this post a troll, but I mean it very seriously. I think by most objective measures World of Warcraft: Cataclysm can be classified as a failure. Not because production value was poor (in fact it was excellent). Not because there was insufficient content. It failed simply because Blizzard has fallen into the trap of trying to please everyone and as a consequence is pleasing almost no one. Since the release...

♦ emptyrepublic

It's time to kick over the ant hill again and revive a topic that I brought up nearly a year go. The state of Warcraft and the trajectory for it's future. Blizzard quietly reported the other day that for the first time ever they experienced a drop in subscriptions.

World of Warcraft’s first subscription drop: are you still playing? | PC Gamer

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♦ emptyrepublic

♦ emptyrepublic

UPDATE (6/30/2011): Also visit my follow up article on the state of Warcraft.

This is a question that gets batted around now and again and the answer usually ends up being “no”; though it might be time to change that to “Maybe” if not “Yes”. Why is this? I’m not sure of the answer, though here are some possibilities that in sum might be the cause.

Competition, Population & Fatigue
There have been several purported “WoW killers” that have come out the past...

♦ emptyrepublic

A particularly clever set of comments from The Queue: The Continuum...

♦ emptyrepublic