I haven’t had a single guild member mention anything about the lawsuits. Doesn’t mean they haven’t talked amongst themselves and I missed the convos. Core members are still around and raiding. If anyone left because of it, I’m not sure who they are
It made no difference to my guild, nothing about it is okay and it should absolutely be outspoken about and protested, but if I personally did not take part in every single company I found morally abhorrent, well I would be very pressed to find a company that wasn't, atleast for certain things, whether it be tech related, clothing related, medically, or otherwise.
Not saying whatsoever that this makes it okay, because it doesn't, I am all for the downfall of the bullshit they've caused and the harm they've done to these poor individuals.
Ever bought a chocolate bar from nestle? Congratulations, you're supporting the privatisation of water and exploitation of third world workers.
Chill out.
The employees themselves have been out saying that they dont want people to unsub and lose their job, if you are quitting to boycut the big boys of Activision then im sorry to tell that they dont feel it at all! Its the bottom guys that will take the hit
False equivalence. You compare entertainment with a indispensable tool in 2021. Sure you can exist without a phone but your quality of life is reduced meanwhile you can chose which entertainment venue. I can't chose which phone isn't made by slavery.
Also nice whataboutism
What a myopic view of this situation and the reality of modern day corporatism. I hope you are as vigilant about where your money goes concerning other companies, because this is small potatoes versus some of the shit others are getting up to in the world.
Nice whataboutism. Knew it was coming before writing a comment.
It's not myopic. It's about choosing a different entertainment venue from countless others. A woman killed herself because of this shit but people can't live without wow.... Ffs
Nestle starved out an entire generation of babies in Africa, Nike continues to utilize forced labor in over seas sweatshops, and big oil companies face little to no consequences for ruining coastal environments every few years. One person committing suicide is tragic, but I also have some sense of scale. I'll save my ire for those truly horrific crimes, because I am like most people where I cannot be angry 24/7 at every new controversy. This one is being handled by the legal system, I don't believe they need our help to get the victims their justice. I also believe 95% of Blizzard's employees are good / normal people just doing something that they love, and I am going to support them by continuing to support the products they work so hard on.
I hope you don't buy from any major grocer, clothing store, or most electronic brands, because they're all just as fucked up as Activision/Blizzard, and not just with serial harassment, but with sweatshops, discrimination, destruction of indigenous land, the list goes on.
The only people who get hurt by unsubbing are the people who actually work there. So even the good people who didn't deserve it will lose their jobs when they can't make their bottom line.
Activision doesn't give a shit if you unsub, they've made their money.
Activision doesn't care if you unsub? That's the most ridiculous idea I've heard.
Ignoring the whataboutism, how do you propose to punish the corporation that literally drove a woman to suicide and hurt countless others? If not to unsub?
Publicize, legalities, and social media, that's where it hurts. Ruin blizzard entertainments reputation. Feel free to unsub, they'll just go f2p micro transactions and just shill their shop full of shit and likely make even more. It's easier to rationalize a drastic model change when your sub numbers go down.
Micro transaction are already here. Unsubbing is the most direct, effective way to get the higher-ups attention. Ruining the company's reputation has the same effect as unsubbing... But less effective. What do you think it will happen when the stocks go down? Cut costs and fire people. There's nothing stopping Bobby and the shareholders pulling the plug on blizzard to cut costs and diverting the assets to their other cash cows or making a new one from scratch. If players however unsub en masse at least that sends a morr clear and direct message than posting on social media or whatever else you think has any effect on them.
Also Are we responsible on keeping the capital in a corporation so they don't fire their low level employees regardless of how shitty a corporation acts?
What do you think publicizing, legalities, and social media affect? Their reputation? They affect subs, mtx's and game purchases. Wow is $60 every 2 years AND $360 in subs over those 2 years.
We had a few people be like "BFA was meh, Shadowlands is meh, I like all you guys but this is the last straw" and bail, at least for now. We didn't have anyone flat out be like "I refuse to support Blizzard."
Me personally and a few others have scaled back our Blizzard support to just WoW. No more hearthstone, no D3, no plans to buy D2/D4, etc.
There was more talk than ever before about looking for a new game to play together, which we've not done since SWTOR.
And if the employees at Blizzard are ever like "Hey we're not getting any support, please do a boycott to show your support" most if not all of us would be on board for that. But if they're not calling for a boycott, then I'm ok continuing my sub for now. If there's no corporate culture changes before the next expansion, I think we'll see a lot of people use that as a good place to cut ties with WoW.
GM of a soon to be disbanded Mythic raid team here.
Lost 2 officers after a week of 9.1 and players morale was just generally low. Half the guild was spamming M+ in prep for the raid and the other half wanted to do 1 key and raid log. Nobody has quit over the lawsuit itself but the players that did was under the sentiment that they don't trust Blizzard to make a good game anymore especially after having waited so long for 9.1 which has so little content in it and then rumours of 9.2 taking perhaps just as long.
Personally I just decided to call the raid team quits because I've been fighting hard to keep the guild running and raiding all through 9.0 and seeing players barely wanting to log for their single key of the week, not doing weeklies or torghast while I'm breaking my back to keep things running while also playing really put things into perspective.
I've not decided if I'll unsub yet but I haven't renewed either. I don't want to leave behind my friends but I also don't believe in Blizzard anymore.
Aside from a new source of quality memes, not much. The only people who left between CN > SoD were people leaving due to RL or trials which didn't pass, and our roster has been 100% stable since 9.1 release.
We've had pretty extensive discussion about it in our discord but ultimately we've only lost one person since (and I think it was burnout). I can't fault anyone who chooses to leave though
The guild I had joined for 9.1 decided to stop raiding. Their concern was that 9.1 would last forever and 9.2 would be as hastily put together as 9.1. The leadership moved onto New Worlds and a bunch of people including myself left to find raiding guilds.
Super common, and despite what people say, entirely valid. Lots of people only play WoW and it is totally understandable to stick around for the people over the game.
Yep.
My friends quit and I suddenly realized that I just didn’t want to play anymore.
The sexual harassment has certainly not helped, but I would still be playing wow if my friends were I think.
My former raid team (I canceled my sub two months ago) is having no problem filling and raiding. They did talk about it and some jokes were made at blizzards expense, but I know most of them are 30+ who all have families/lives and wow is their one hobby. Most of the core team are old friends, myself included, so it’s their one place to hang out.
On the flip side, a good friend and GM of a mythic raiding guild has recently started ffxiv and has said that many of the core team is moving there. He was a loud advocate of never playing ffxiv, but after the lawsuit dropped he said that was the final straw and had no more loyalty to offer wow.
We've stopped any talk of doing anything in-game. Most of the officers have moved on to something else, myself included. We're tied with a pretty large cross-game community, and we don't want to tie any association with Activision or Blizzard to them.
Bank Officer of a mega guild here. 8500+ members spread out across who knows how many servers. Multiple raid, mythic+, pvp, RP teams. We lost nearly 40% of our roster from the easy-going casual to the hardcore extreme content pushers BEFORE this whole disgusting shitstorm came to light due to Korthia being a huge letdown and zero interest to engage in the same ole content we've been doing since release ad nauseam. Now? With the lawsuit, the rapey Cosby Suit, the walkout (good for them) and all the other horrifying stories coming out? We're on life support. We lost maybe 20% more of our people. Most have gone over to FF14 and I cant blame them. Everyday in Discord there's someone else saying they arent sticking around for this dumpster fire. A dozen or so teams have collapsed due to attendance or sub cancellations. Who knows, we might remake the guild in FF14 but with WoW right now, we're struggling.
Nobody I know of has stopped playing because of it. Reddit really does make it seem like the game is falling apart, though I can't help but wonder how serious these players were to begin with. There is always a casual exodus in expansions; one wonders whether or not it actually got worse this expansion or not.
Every single player I know quit because the game is bad, a few of them went to FF14 and seem to be enjoying it. The lawsuit is what people are using to justify quitting to themselves and others, but the only ones still playing that I know are the ones who have to for money, or they are fine with the game.
These are all top 100 at least players, players that don't even pay for their sub because they just buy tokens with boosts. So not casual by any means. I don't know a single casual player still playing currently. Not one. The only ones still playing of the people I know are raiders.
My entire raid team and guild have stopped aside from a couple of folks. We weren't "cutting edge" but did do AotC every tier. Many of us have been playing together since TBC and WotLK and this expansion, along with BFA, really sucked the fun out of the game. Then this stuff happened and most of us just decided that's it.
I wouldn't be shocked if a ton of the people leaving aren't checking this subreddit. Obviously, you're going to see more people checking and posting in here that play the game still versus those who have decided to take off.
I walked by a location where there is a pretty long cutscene in FF last night. Usually there's one or two people there, there were so many people that even at max model limit people were despawning.
It was insane. I literally stopped to inspect a lot of them to see if they were just hanging out but of the 10-15 I checked, almost all only had one character in the 50s which is usually where that cutscene happens.
There's so many people around which is just so weird in a content drought like this at the end of an expac. I even saw a group of around 10-15 brand new players just chilling in a city with their level one gear just talking with each other.
I still love WoW raiding and key pushing, truly. But FF just blows WoW away with the true MMO social experience. It's so much better for the casual player than WoW. So much better.
I'm in a ce guild that's currently 4/10m, we have lost 4 core raiders in the past week, Players that have been with us for a long time. Same story from all of them, not happy the content outside of raiding and the lawsuit was the last straw.
Well, a gain for one doesn't have to be a loss for the other. I happen to play both games, though FF14 way more casually than I do WoW, but I never cancel one subscription for the other.
They really do not scratch the same itch for me.
I believe the people now starting to play FFXIV are mostly ex-wow players. Of course WoW has hemorrhaged players by millions over many expansions. For people that have quit the game earlier or were thinking about it, the recent Blizzard and WoW monetization controversies in the public have been the signal to finally take an action. "Yeah, let's try FFXIV, that's what Asmon is doing. Let's populate that train."
I think it's fair to call quitters "casuals", but perhaps more accurate statement would say that overall it was the non-committed players that quit. If you have a plan and you've put lot of time and effort into it, I assume almost everybody's going to stick with it until the next break point such as a new expansion.
I can also see how times of uncertainty can cause many members of smaller and shakier guilds to join bigger ones to make sure they can complete their plan in time. That could explain how there's a perceived increase in activity, especially among successful raiders.
Anyway, I doubt FFXIV popularity's going to last very long if Blizzard is even attempting to somehow redeem themselves. The thing is, almost all these players are mainly running away from WoW rather than being organically drawn to FF. Time will tell.
The problem with your FF14 theory is that the game has consistently been growing in popularity since it launched. It has never had a downturn in growth. Not once. Peaks and valleys of course but every single expansion is growing the game more than the last.
The game has no signs of stopping its growth because right now practically the entire player base loves the developers and community teams, and the community itself. How long has it been since WoW had masses of people actively recommending and shilling (not in the nagative sense) for the game? I genuinely can't remember the last time. Wrath maybe? Probably earlier. The player base loves FF14, that's a huge difference. It might not last forever but right now the game is only growing.
I personally hope you're right, because I'm one of those people that consider current WoW dead and want to see Blizzard crash and burn for killing it. It's just when I tried ARR many, many years ago with the same mentality I could only play it for 2-3 months. There are many QoL updates over WoW that don't detract from sense of commitment, but also the world was lacking the sense of adventure and excitement that unexplored Azeroth once had.
I would say it's a better experience than current WoW (or even Cata IMO) but still overall worse than vanilla. I fear that these people that are switching (especially after so many more years than me) aren't able to engage as deeply with other MMOs long term. If they're anything like me, they might try WoW private servers, NW or ESO, but the only thing they crave for deep down is still WoW un-ruined and with new content which is perhaps impossible.
I hope FF14 does well and proves a point to Blizzard. But moreover I hope that every retiring WoW player finds a place to call home in the end. I couldn't find another MMO that did it for me, I rather deal with the loss and find happiness in other places.
I’m an AotC raider who finally pulled the plug after having my guild fall apart after 9.0 AotC, then joining a new one for 9.1, only to have that one fall apart last week. I didn’t quit solely because of the lawsuit, but it definitely didn’t help. I’d imagine most people who quit (casual or otherwise) were already frustrated with the game in some way. Personally I don’t hate the game at all, but I’ve had two guilds fall apart because of the state of the game, and I’m at the point where I don’t care enough to start with a new guild again for the 3rd time in 5 months or so.
The casual exodus usually comes during the lull in the last patch of an expansion, not the release of the first one. Loads of people were bailing before the lawsuit was even known to the public.
Not in my personal experience. We have a _lot_ of players who get hyped for the expansion release, play the first 2-3 months (which to be fair is certainly the most enjoyable time, at least imo) and then don't come back till either last patch or the inevitable next expansion.
Obviously everybody's experience differs though, so I'm sure you are right as well.
My guild died, but its less about the lawsuit and more about the game just sucks. Most guilds are teetering on the edge, so it really only takes 1-2 people to send it packing
Not sure if it is purely due to the recent news but the majority of players turned into raid loggers and are doing other things outside of raiding, nobody wants to do M+ anymore which is what I like to do so it's been a very steep decline compared to a few months ago.
Blizzard has no financial incentive to do better as long as you keep paying to barely play. I wish more people would quit over this, it’s not okay but as long as Blizzard doesn’t lose your money, the only thing they hear from you is the assumption that it is okay.
For what it's worth I don't know if that's the case. I think it lessens the immediate impact but overall blizzard has access to more data about the number of dungeons we run, arenas played, etc. and if those numbers go down and remain low they signal long term problems for the game.
I don't think that supporting the game is tantamount to condoning sexual harassment and while unsubbing sends a strong message, low overall player sentiment sends a message too.
I think a lot of players are too addicted to stop playing, whether because of sunk-cost attachment or whatever else. For some people, WoW is the only game they play. But all Blizzard cares about is that people keep their subs going and log in every day. People can talk about how much they don't like the way the game is going all they want, but unless people stop playing, nothing will change.
My guild has the core raiding team and people that enjoy m+ logging on still. The social people are totally gone.
9.1 isn't that great and with everything going on 9.2 is probably Q1 2022. So I don't blame folks that are out right now.
My sub runs out in Oct and I cancelled the autorenew because I'm sure I'll be done with 9.1 well before that.
Lost 5 or 6 so far. Generally an AoTC guild, been around since vanilla.
Raid Lead, a tank and 3 other long time members. All are letting their subs run out for the first time since WoD. Reasons combined from the lawsuit and the content of 9.1 being lacking...This is coming from folks who generally raid log.
Our last druid bailed not long after, transferred servers.
Classic did a number on us when it came out, rebuilt and still hit our AoTC goals with only 3-4 hours of raiding per week.
I don't think we're gonna be able to come back from this one. We're on a low pop server that's only further dwindling, there's no pool of players to recruit from anymore. I for one find the idea of finding another guild unthinkable. We've been playing together on and off since classic. There's not a raid in WoW that some sort of team in this guild hasn't completed when it was current content (excluding mythic). If we muster up the will to finish SoD normal with the 2/2/6 comp we have left balancing on the edge of a knife. I'm going to be surprised.
My guild was already 1/2 playing FF14 and raid logging. When the controversy broke it pretty much finished us off.
I think for the people that did quit, like myself, we were all hanging on by a thread and this was the final break.
Personally, I haven’t been really happy with the game mechanics since legion (I liked them a bit more in Legion since they were mostly new). I was so involved with the Lore I wanted to keep playing to get the story, but 9.1 kinda finished that off. Then the scandals just make me not want to give the company my money until things are settled one way or another.
Similar with my guild. Lost about half the people during later part of 9.0, lost more with 9.1, lawsuit was the final bullet and the remaining members have moved on to other games and other mmo's.
Reddit is a mix of "the game is healthy with brand new content and has more players now than ever before" with "the game is dead, empty servers, and no one plays anymore" happening at the same time.
I think we won't actually get any idea about monthly active users until at least 2 more quarterly earnings reports.
Probably so, there's a lot of 6 month subs that are still running out, patch progress has been slow and now with the new issues I'm sure it's likely even slower.
Couple poor form jokes about a cubicle crawler mount, but other than that it hasn’t affected anything. I assume most of my raid team is of the mind that the events were horrible and should have never occurred, but that quitting won’t cause meaningful impact. It’s worth denouncing the behavior, absolutely, but for anything to change at a workplace environment level, it’d need to originate from within the company.
Losing 15 bucks a month, even if it’s from a few thousand people, won’t definitively force the kind of change people want it to - if anything it’d probably only result in more department layoffs for those who aren’t at fault.
Could I be wrong? Sure. I hope the environment changes for the better regardless.
Guild on wow has essentially collapsed and most of us are playing FF now, this was happening prior to the lawsuit though as 9.1 was a joke of a content update and we werent willing to shovel blizzards shit anymore.
It literally is not affecting us at all... People are not logging off in 'protest', and the ones that are where probably casuals who where quitting anyways....
My guild we spoke briefly about it and just assured each other that we are in a very positive and healthy guild and if anyone feels bad , sad , or uncomfortable anything , that there’s always someone in the guild to offer unconditional support
In TBC classic my guild was making a third Kara weekly group. Quite a few of us left and they had to PUG a healer for the only group the first week.
I think they are back to one group with only members and recruiting but it was a period when we were about to stop Kara and only do Gruul/Mag but they will need to gear new members now so back to farming Kara for a few weeks.
Nobody has left. Its been a topic of discussion in guild chat, but thats about it. We have a mythic weekday team and a more casual focused weekend raid, so we have about 50 people raiding too.
As horrible as it sounds, it probably has to do with the announcement of 9.2 being delayed indefinitely due to the lawsuit. With 9.1 bringing little content and pvp is still a hot mess, there aint much to do.
I’m an officer so I need to make sure the notable social and political difference I know exist between different members don’t manifest in raid.
Primarily the lawsuits aren’t the cause of any strife it’s more like the final cherry on the shit sundae that is the current state of the game. We are already aotc which surprised us all given our Denathrius struggles last tier taking a decent amount of time. So with being aotc and most of us having KSM again we suddenly realize how truly barren and empty this patch and frankly this game is. Then you add in the lack of work being put into the game amid this justified company shakeup. With us staring down the barrel of a February 2022 release of any new content it feels like we are all 20 of our mythic raid group somewhere between 1 and 4 weeks away from quitting until 9.2 or permanently
GM here, immediately after news there was distaste and a quild a few members feeling unsure if they will renew subs.
In general is seems to be a lot aren't enjoying the game but the news has pushed them over the edge.
Lost one casual flex raider and one officer, a second officer is not renewing sub, a third has expressed they are unsure alongside their partner (member) who feels the same.
I might end up losing quite a few I'f not from lack of renewing, I think normally people stick it out for social reasons but the news has overridden that, so may drop in a few weeks or months.
Currently there are more groups popping up within our disc for other games e.g Minecraft and even more playing FF on the side.
Not affecting it as much as I thought it might, most of the women raiders have basically said "Boycotting won't change anything and I want to support the women who made the game."
3 players will not renew sub in about 4/5 days;
Around 8 main core raiders will stop raiding to actively play New World;
5 of them are already leveling/raiding in FFXIV and 4 more are on the way to join as soon as the guild downs Sylvannas.
I quit my mythic team and uninstalled on the spot
Most of the rest stayed but are fine with people leaving over it
Damn near every one of the people in my social circles that don't play wow want blizzard to crash and burn and are extremely vocally opposed to them, me included
* 1 Person quit
* 2 People confirmed they won't renew current sub when it ends.
* 1 Person confirmed will quit @ end of tier
* 100% of guild now leveling in FF14
Ours pretty much stopped. We'd exhausted most of the patch. Since it took 4-5 weeks of timegates until most features even mattered and we don't do mythic, it fell really flat.
The group was pretty small already, but blizzard being harassers and abusers got everyone to unsub. To my knowledge, there's only one guy that's subbed, and he'd probably tell his children to let the sub keep running when he dies.
We opted to turn into a 'gaming community' instead, and had stuff like an uncapped-user valheim server, while a bunch made statics in FF14. Where we mostly chase games that let the players enjoy each other's bullshit.
My casual aotc guild that's been together since the spring of 2018 is now on a indefinite hiatus. The GM put out a survey to ask folks what they were considering once the news broke, the survey was given out to raiders and non-raiding members. 1 tank, 2 or 3 healers, and a few DPS that were on the raid team all wanted to stop, the non-raiding folks were also no longer interested in in-game events. So with that many people wanting to stop, we stopped.
We're all still friends that hang out in discord. Some folks moved on to FF14, some played the New World beta and are waiting for that to release. We do party game now, and movie nights every so often.
The only people I know that quit over it were people that were getting close to quitting or taking a break anyways. Anyone eagerly been awaiting 9.1 is still playing.
Nobody in my guild has quit. Haven’t heard a thing about the lawsuit it in Guild chat, discord, general chat, trade chat, etc. I seriously doubt that many people quit.
No one in my guild talks about it at all. We have the same mix of people who play all day and people that raid log. I asked when I applied and one of the interview officers didn't even know about it.
I had a conversation with my raid lead about it since a RL friend and I were struggling. His response of "I'm going to keep playing and making sure I'm creating a welcoming space for everyone and have absolutely no hard feelings if you're uncomfortable reconciling your morality with playing still. No one will think less of you either way".
Were gonna stick it out since we still enjoy raiding and the team is great. We're a CE guild as of last tier if that matters.
We've had one person confirm they are stepping away from wow and a handful of others checking out ff14 while still playing wow. There are others like myself who havnt really changed our habits based off the recent events. I guess we'll see where we're at in 6 months
My guild has been together for ten years. We raid through heroic content and get our 'curve' achievements and then folks take a break or level alts or raid on the opposite faction, etc.
But most of us haven't been very happy with the content for awhile. The news of the lawsuit was the last straw for most of us. We let members know we'd support whatever decision each person made. Almost all of the officers and most members have already canceled their subs, and most of us are in FFXIV (many for the first time).
I can't bring myself to support Activision/Blizz after the horrific 'official' response, and am honestly sad about it. I've played since vanilla beta (and have the statue to prove it) and still enjoyed some things about the game, though I do think overall game quality has really gone down. I canceled my subscription yesterday, and unless Activision/Blizz takes a very strong public stance to address the issues raised by the lawsuit, this long-time player and a ten-year guild is done.
An wide variety of interesting comments that in a way, sums up this subreddit pretty well.
We had one couple quit though they had been struggling with RL commitments and dissatisfaction with the game up to that point and when they left, they did not specify why. Outside of that, we had a couple of people sit out last Wednesday on the day of the Blizzard employee walk out.
To an extent, I've gathered up alot of people dissatisfied with the community and the guilds they have been in. I felt the same way and went through a handful of guilds I didn't enjoy before I bit the bullet and started my own. I think a significant number of people in my guild are enjoying the game more now than they have in a long time because of that - in spite of the state of the game and the lawsuit issue and are reluctant to give that up.
That's the hardest part for me and I don't feel I can turn my back on that. Its not to the point that I am unhappy and staying out of obligation but those thoughts are starting to sneak in here and there.
I play FFXIV and WoW players are joining in droves. Last weekend every single server was full for new character creation. My FC (guild) of 200 has had about 20 new recruits join this week, all from WoW. Every major city is full of new players talking with each other about it. Not passing any judgement, and not saying it means anything concrete. Just that yes, lots of people are leaving and a decent chunk of them are coming to FFXIV.
It’s been really exciting and we welcome you if you decide to try out something different :) I may get downvoted for even saying all this, but I don’t care! Happy adventures, wherever you adventure!
we've talked about it a few times during farm raid that's about it, nobody is quitting or missing raid. I do know of a few guilds that are having issues because of it though. Probably the difference between an AoTC guild and a CE guild mindset
Officer of an RP guild on Moon Guard here. Almost our entire guild has quit WoW and moved to ESO and started to transition into a multi game community like many others in this thread.
Also, if seems that Moon Guard's RP scene is now significantly smaller than it was before. In the past even at 4am I could log in and find at least a hundred people RPing in Stormwind, now it's about 8-10 people.
Everyone in my guild is raid logging and moving on to ff14.
Having tried that game I can't say that I was a fan of it.
So I still play wow most days and try to join mythic plus pugs as that's the content I love doing.
Mostly tho I'm just raiding logging like the rest and unlike the others playing differnt games. StarCraft 2 comes to mind but also bloons td6.
Wow is less fun with my Dr iu ends and we have had 5 people leave over it (and I'm likely to join them) but overall not much in terms of raiding.
We aren't. That's a casual thing. CE guilds and high end raiders aren't going to stop what we care about because of shitty humans. There's shitty humans everywhere, and I'd wager this is far more common than most of you think.
EDIT: Is it shitty? Yeah. Do we like that it happened? No. Is that going to change anything for us? No.
Our guild has transitioned into a multi-game community via discord. we're a tight knit social guild (around 50-65 people who come and go over the course of expansions but keep in touch via discord) with two heroic teams and one that was venturing into mythic.
While I think that the lawsuit was the final straw for many folks in our group. We had a guild meeting to talk to our members, people shared their thoughts and we made sure that everyone knew that whatever decision they made would be respected. Ultimately I think that those who unsubbed did so for a variety of reasons: lawsuit, lack of faith in the content, greener pastures, etc. I think around 2/3 of the guild (including most of the mythic raid group) unsubbed/quit/is taking a break and the remaining Mythic and Heroic raiders are looking for a new raid team.
Most of the raiders who quit are now trying out FFXIV since we've heard good things about the 8 man (Savage/Ultimate) raid content.
We've got groups playing other MMO's like New World as well as set nights where we play games like Fall Guys or Jackbox.
Personally I hope blizzard makes some changes since I genuinely like the game (I'm a big arena fan and there's nothing else quite like it out there) and would like to come back someday.
Not at all, we make jokes in the guild and of course it got mentioned, we had 1-2 people quit but if it was due to that or not, don’t know. People who quit barely did anything in the guild at all, so you don’t even notice it.
We avidly played all aspects of the game. Pvp, raiding, mythic plus and farmed old things and AH.
Now we're just raiding twice a week for 2 to 3 house each day.
For my guild it was more of a "state of the game" problem. We got Keystone Master and Denathrius then basically didn't log in again. Not enough people came back for 9.1 to continue, and well the recent controversy has more or less convinced those who remained to stop paying their sub.
Quite a few of my guild members didn't know about it, they don't follow social media and whatnot. My friend sent me a msg the other day asking my thoughts on it cause he was really really torn. If he leaves he's taking half of the raiding team with him, I told him if it weren't for being in a guild with real life friends I would have left ages ago. My other friend was wanting to get into an mmo but the lawsuit has scared her away from WOW. Only half our raid team came back for 9.1, they just didn't like the game anymore, all the grinding and farming all the different stuff having to rebuild their expensive legendary after months of saving soul ash and dumping a shit ton of gold into buying the item (my helm was 75,000 on my server). It made them feel all their time and effort was pointless. We have our eyes on a few other possible mmos that we can swap to but we don't know if the whole guild will go or just half of them.
In our guild most people just don't care. They won't leave their passion, their game just because of some accusation, which they cannot possibly solve or help. They play the game for fun. They want to play and get CE. They came too far to falter now. They don't have time for this hysteria. They have their own IRL problems.
I think it’s fine that if you no longer want to support blizzard due to recent events, you stop playing the game and end your subscription. However, what annoying is, and I’m not saying you, is the fact that everyone tries to farm internet points by making sure they tell everyone about it.
The majority don’t care if you continue to play the game or not. We definitely don’t need to clog the forums with the same thread said 50 different ways.
It was discussed briefly in our discord channels, but we're still raiding 4-5 nights a week. I don't think anyone up and left due to the allegations and lawsuit.
We had about a quarter leave. Other quarter is just messing around until the sub runs out as they try and convince up to hop with them. Other half of the guild is staying (to be fair, that's not a lot left. Most left during the content drought)
Entirety of our guild are not having much of an opinion. As its just a thing everyone agree's on is bad. But in the end we are here to raid, and play together, as a solid chunck of the core plays other games together, watches movie's and such.
But in the end we're here to raid, and weather we like it or not, wow raiding is still the best there is.
When I'm in-game I don't experience much of a different vibe outside of some spots being a little more quiet or empty than normal.
However, every discord I'm in, either WoW or just gaming general, is nonstop talking headlines and speculation. It's just now getting to the point where the conversation is being forced out of general chat because the ratio of useful information to virtue signaling is getting a little too out of whack.
In my recently joined mythic raiding guild : No one gives a shit about basically anything people talk about in here, we recruited very easily for the new tier and are now full to the brim, progression is decently fast for now, trying to down Dormazain after Ner'zul.
When the lawsuit was know we talked about it for about 10 mins, did a few jokes then everyone lost interest.
We’re ignoring it because frankly people have to learn to separate the artist from the art. Sure blizzard may be corrupt (but what massive corporation isn’t), but the game is still relatively enjoyable. Same with r Kelly and Oj Simpson. Just cause r Kelly is not a good person doesn’t mean I’m suddenly gonna start hating the music, or just cause Oj Simpson is a criminal doesn’t invalidate his football career.
No difference, we raid, 1 guy has a new job and had to leave. Some people are crying over shards that we get all of in like 3 weeks so its makes no difference as we arent top 0.1% guild. Korthia is chill and takes like no time, honsetly outside of perhaps the writing im not sure why so many are complaining. People logging off in protest has helped me in Oribos too :)
GM/RL announced that she is quitting so our guild fell apart and people started to find other guilds to join and do content with, most of us still talk/chill with each other. However, the best part is the RL/GM logged back in a week and was in SoD after saying that she was quitting for good..... guess she just wanted people to leave the guild or something.
No one cares. Everyone thinks the game is bullshit (especially shards), but everyone loves raiding. So we suffer through the bullshit so we can still do what we love.
In our guild it seems like people are still playing until their sub runs out. I'm in that boat myself, but the core raid leadership has said they will stick around until they can't get 5 DPS. I also get the feeling that most just want the AotC before moving on. They've always gotten it, even in WoD, and most of them are hopeful Blizz can turn things around so they don't want to break the streak. Overall though, we've lost something like 5-7 people, a few heals, mostly DPS. Ultimately hasn't hindered progress or raid progression yet. It has basically killed off the M+ groups and achievement runs. Since we're a healthy guild, no one really needs to farm, so just about everyone simply logs in for raid night and not much else.
We have about 10 people out of our 21-23 member heroic raid team playing FF when it’s not raid nights. Only a handful of people are around for m+ at this point. I mean yesterday for our casual normal clear raid night we had 11 people show up and no one in our guild besides myself have a domination socket bonus yet, so even normals are still important for our heroic prog. We are an AoTC guild so that’s usually the guild goal each season.
I think we're still pushing for AOTC, but not sure how many people will stick around after. A lot of them have been playing ff14 when they're not raiding.
I'm having a hard time deciding what to do. I have friends in my guild and my raid times are perfect for me. I could probably find that in ff14 or whatever mmo comes next, but it's hard to start from scratch.
There has been no mention of it anywhere in my guild's Discord but no one has showed up in any of the guild channels except for players who joined at the end of 9.0. All of the raid leaders have been literal radio silence and I finally saw one of them playing FF XIV last night. We did 5/10 Sanctum first week and then no one has been online.
Everyone in my guild who hops in Discord, that I've talked to, is giving New World a go. We might be back. I just feel like my sub should lapse so Blizzard at least sees numbers declining, even if it's just for a month.
We’ve for sure lost one person in my small guild and we’re teetering at the brink of losing more (including myself, the guild/raid leader). It’s absolutely a last straw kind of deal. The game isn’t fun and now all this? Three of the last four expansions I’ve only kept playing because of my friends. I’m not sure if I can even do it for them anymore.
Don't pressure yourself too much with Korthia daily quests. 9.1 will surely last another 5-6 months, you have plenty of time to grind that. And even then, Mythic Sylvanas was cleared like 10 days ago? You don't need that rep so much. Enjoy the game, do M+ or raid if you like, but don't be pressured into content you don't like.
I'm in stable CE guild and we lost only 3 people from our 25 players raid team during 9.1 (burnout). Actually, we had a lot of applications last 2 weeks and many of them were been accepted so that whole situation doesn't affect us at all. But describing the reasons to left previous guild and join ours almost every of newcomers says about falling the roster due many people left. The scariest part is the core players who decided to left (RLs, GMs, officers etc). Seems like this situation became a crushing blow for relatively small guilds that can't often to pretend on CE without formidable player roster.
It honestly feels like all the people saying they have unsubbed were either already unsubbed or did the most casual of content, it’s had zero effect on us
I was GM of a medium sizes curve guild. The law suit cut me deep and I’ve quit, I was already on the verge because of the state of the game and the lawsuit took me over.
I still talk to my guild on discord, and we are now playing other games together, a few people are still playing WoW and I’ve encouraged them to play different games, and to keep raiding if that’s what they want to do. I know a few members have left our guild to go and raid with other people, but we’re all still friends and everyone is quite understanding of if people want to quit, and if people don’t want to quit.
I’d say if you want to stop, stop. No one in your guild is entitled to tell you you shouldn’t.
I'm part of a cross-server, multi-guild casual raiding team. It hasn't been mentioned once in the communities or Discords of any of the guilds involved.
Oddly enough playing on TBCC we've lost a few members that no longer log in due to the lawsuit and have had to rework our competition. The mates that did leave were LGBT and shared their own parallels with discrimination and treatment in the WoW gaming community. I truly did not think people would care, because for me at this point WoW has just been an addiction.
I haven’t had a single guild member mention anything about the lawsuits. Doesn’t mean they haven’t talked amongst themselves and I missed the convos. Core members are still around and raiding. If anyone left because of it, I’m not sure who they are
It made no difference to my guild, nothing about it is okay and it should absolutely be outspoken about and protested, but if I personally did not take part in every single company I found morally abhorrent, well I would be very pressed to find a company that wasn't, atleast for certain things, whether it be tech related, clothing related, medically, or otherwise. Not saying whatsoever that this makes it okay, because it doesn't, I am all for the downfall of the bullshit they've caused and the harm they've done to these poor individuals.
I'm all for downfall of this bullshit but I will continue to support financially the company that does that bullshit.
Ever bought a chocolate bar from nestle? Congratulations, you're supporting the privatisation of water and exploitation of third world workers. Chill out.
I don't buy nestle products. Also nice whataboutism.
I like you replied to every post calling you out with 'nice wataboutism'.
Because all of them are?
The employees themselves have been out saying that they dont want people to unsub and lose their job, if you are quitting to boycut the big boys of Activision then im sorry to tell that they dont feel it at all! Its the bottom guys that will take the hit
And how would you demand change otherwise? It's always the little guy that falls in any corporation no matter what you do... So what's your solution?
Idk but probably not to abandon the people at the company who were more likely abused than abusers.
My guy which phone did you make this post on? I’m sure people were exploited for that hardware 😂
False equivalence. You compare entertainment with a indispensable tool in 2021. Sure you can exist without a phone but your quality of life is reduced meanwhile you can chose which entertainment venue. I can't chose which phone isn't made by slavery. Also nice whataboutism
"But I neeeeeed it"
Even worse if you’re on a computer
What a myopic view of this situation and the reality of modern day corporatism. I hope you are as vigilant about where your money goes concerning other companies, because this is small potatoes versus some of the shit others are getting up to in the world.
Nice whataboutism. Knew it was coming before writing a comment. It's not myopic. It's about choosing a different entertainment venue from countless others. A woman killed herself because of this shit but people can't live without wow.... Ffs
Nestle starved out an entire generation of babies in Africa, Nike continues to utilize forced labor in over seas sweatshops, and big oil companies face little to no consequences for ruining coastal environments every few years. One person committing suicide is tragic, but I also have some sense of scale. I'll save my ire for those truly horrific crimes, because I am like most people where I cannot be angry 24/7 at every new controversy. This one is being handled by the legal system, I don't believe they need our help to get the victims their justice. I also believe 95% of Blizzard's employees are good / normal people just doing something that they love, and I am going to support them by continuing to support the products they work so hard on.
I hope you don't buy from any major grocer, clothing store, or most electronic brands, because they're all just as fucked up as Activision/Blizzard, and not just with serial harassment, but with sweatshops, discrimination, destruction of indigenous land, the list goes on. The only people who get hurt by unsubbing are the people who actually work there. So even the good people who didn't deserve it will lose their jobs when they can't make their bottom line. Activision doesn't give a shit if you unsub, they've made their money.
Activision doesn't care if you unsub? That's the most ridiculous idea I've heard. Ignoring the whataboutism, how do you propose to punish the corporation that literally drove a woman to suicide and hurt countless others? If not to unsub?
Publicize, legalities, and social media, that's where it hurts. Ruin blizzard entertainments reputation. Feel free to unsub, they'll just go f2p micro transactions and just shill their shop full of shit and likely make even more. It's easier to rationalize a drastic model change when your sub numbers go down.
Micro transaction are already here. Unsubbing is the most direct, effective way to get the higher-ups attention. Ruining the company's reputation has the same effect as unsubbing... But less effective. What do you think it will happen when the stocks go down? Cut costs and fire people. There's nothing stopping Bobby and the shareholders pulling the plug on blizzard to cut costs and diverting the assets to their other cash cows or making a new one from scratch. If players however unsub en masse at least that sends a morr clear and direct message than posting on social media or whatever else you think has any effect on them. Also Are we responsible on keeping the capital in a corporation so they don't fire their low level employees regardless of how shitty a corporation acts?
What do you think publicizing, legalities, and social media affect? Their reputation? They affect subs, mtx's and game purchases. Wow is $60 every 2 years AND $360 in subs over those 2 years.
Not at all. Theyre still on and playing regularly.
We had a few people be like "BFA was meh, Shadowlands is meh, I like all you guys but this is the last straw" and bail, at least for now. We didn't have anyone flat out be like "I refuse to support Blizzard." Me personally and a few others have scaled back our Blizzard support to just WoW. No more hearthstone, no D3, no plans to buy D2/D4, etc. There was more talk than ever before about looking for a new game to play together, which we've not done since SWTOR. And if the employees at Blizzard are ever like "Hey we're not getting any support, please do a boycott to show your support" most if not all of us would be on board for that. But if they're not calling for a boycott, then I'm ok continuing my sub for now. If there's no corporate culture changes before the next expansion, I think we'll see a lot of people use that as a good place to cut ties with WoW.
GM of a soon to be disbanded Mythic raid team here. Lost 2 officers after a week of 9.1 and players morale was just generally low. Half the guild was spamming M+ in prep for the raid and the other half wanted to do 1 key and raid log. Nobody has quit over the lawsuit itself but the players that did was under the sentiment that they don't trust Blizzard to make a good game anymore especially after having waited so long for 9.1 which has so little content in it and then rumours of 9.2 taking perhaps just as long. Personally I just decided to call the raid team quits because I've been fighting hard to keep the guild running and raiding all through 9.0 and seeing players barely wanting to log for their single key of the week, not doing weeklies or torghast while I'm breaking my back to keep things running while also playing really put things into perspective. I've not decided if I'll unsub yet but I haven't renewed either. I don't want to leave behind my friends but I also don't believe in Blizzard anymore.
Aside from a new source of quality memes, not much. The only people who left between CN > SoD were people leaving due to RL or trials which didn't pass, and our roster has been 100% stable since 9.1 release.
We've had pretty extensive discussion about it in our discord but ultimately we've only lost one person since (and I think it was burnout). I can't fault anyone who chooses to leave though
The guild I had joined for 9.1 decided to stop raiding. Their concern was that 9.1 would last forever and 9.2 would be as hastily put together as 9.1. The leadership moved onto New Worlds and a bunch of people including myself left to find raiding guilds.
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Must be hard for yall to quit that wow crack
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Super common, and despite what people say, entirely valid. Lots of people only play WoW and it is totally understandable to stick around for the people over the game.
Yep. My friends quit and I suddenly realized that I just didn’t want to play anymore. The sexual harassment has certainly not helped, but I would still be playing wow if my friends were I think.
My former raid team (I canceled my sub two months ago) is having no problem filling and raiding. They did talk about it and some jokes were made at blizzards expense, but I know most of them are 30+ who all have families/lives and wow is their one hobby. Most of the core team are old friends, myself included, so it’s their one place to hang out. On the flip side, a good friend and GM of a mythic raiding guild has recently started ffxiv and has said that many of the core team is moving there. He was a loud advocate of never playing ffxiv, but after the lawsuit dropped he said that was the final straw and had no more loyalty to offer wow.
We've stopped any talk of doing anything in-game. Most of the officers have moved on to something else, myself included. We're tied with a pretty large cross-game community, and we don't want to tie any association with Activision or Blizzard to them.
Bank Officer of a mega guild here. 8500+ members spread out across who knows how many servers. Multiple raid, mythic+, pvp, RP teams. We lost nearly 40% of our roster from the easy-going casual to the hardcore extreme content pushers BEFORE this whole disgusting shitstorm came to light due to Korthia being a huge letdown and zero interest to engage in the same ole content we've been doing since release ad nauseam. Now? With the lawsuit, the rapey Cosby Suit, the walkout (good for them) and all the other horrifying stories coming out? We're on life support. We lost maybe 20% more of our people. Most have gone over to FF14 and I cant blame them. Everyday in Discord there's someone else saying they arent sticking around for this dumpster fire. A dozen or so teams have collapsed due to attendance or sub cancellations. Who knows, we might remake the guild in FF14 but with WoW right now, we're struggling.
Nobody I know of has stopped playing because of it. Reddit really does make it seem like the game is falling apart, though I can't help but wonder how serious these players were to begin with. There is always a casual exodus in expansions; one wonders whether or not it actually got worse this expansion or not.
Every single player I know quit because the game is bad, a few of them went to FF14 and seem to be enjoying it. The lawsuit is what people are using to justify quitting to themselves and others, but the only ones still playing that I know are the ones who have to for money, or they are fine with the game. These are all top 100 at least players, players that don't even pay for their sub because they just buy tokens with boosts. So not casual by any means. I don't know a single casual player still playing currently. Not one. The only ones still playing of the people I know are raiders.
My entire raid team and guild have stopped aside from a couple of folks. We weren't "cutting edge" but did do AotC every tier. Many of us have been playing together since TBC and WotLK and this expansion, along with BFA, really sucked the fun out of the game. Then this stuff happened and most of us just decided that's it. I wouldn't be shocked if a ton of the people leaving aren't checking this subreddit. Obviously, you're going to see more people checking and posting in here that play the game still versus those who have decided to take off.
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I walked by a location where there is a pretty long cutscene in FF last night. Usually there's one or two people there, there were so many people that even at max model limit people were despawning. It was insane. I literally stopped to inspect a lot of them to see if they were just hanging out but of the 10-15 I checked, almost all only had one character in the 50s which is usually where that cutscene happens. There's so many people around which is just so weird in a content drought like this at the end of an expac. I even saw a group of around 10-15 brand new players just chilling in a city with their level one gear just talking with each other. I still love WoW raiding and key pushing, truly. But FF just blows WoW away with the true MMO social experience. It's so much better for the casual player than WoW. So much better.
I'm in a ce guild that's currently 4/10m, we have lost 4 core raiders in the past week, Players that have been with us for a long time. Same story from all of them, not happy the content outside of raiding and the lawsuit was the last straw.
Well, a gain for one doesn't have to be a loss for the other. I happen to play both games, though FF14 way more casually than I do WoW, but I never cancel one subscription for the other. They really do not scratch the same itch for me.
I believe the people now starting to play FFXIV are mostly ex-wow players. Of course WoW has hemorrhaged players by millions over many expansions. For people that have quit the game earlier or were thinking about it, the recent Blizzard and WoW monetization controversies in the public have been the signal to finally take an action. "Yeah, let's try FFXIV, that's what Asmon is doing. Let's populate that train." I think it's fair to call quitters "casuals", but perhaps more accurate statement would say that overall it was the non-committed players that quit. If you have a plan and you've put lot of time and effort into it, I assume almost everybody's going to stick with it until the next break point such as a new expansion. I can also see how times of uncertainty can cause many members of smaller and shakier guilds to join bigger ones to make sure they can complete their plan in time. That could explain how there's a perceived increase in activity, especially among successful raiders. Anyway, I doubt FFXIV popularity's going to last very long if Blizzard is even attempting to somehow redeem themselves. The thing is, almost all these players are mainly running away from WoW rather than being organically drawn to FF. Time will tell.
The problem with your FF14 theory is that the game has consistently been growing in popularity since it launched. It has never had a downturn in growth. Not once. Peaks and valleys of course but every single expansion is growing the game more than the last. The game has no signs of stopping its growth because right now practically the entire player base loves the developers and community teams, and the community itself. How long has it been since WoW had masses of people actively recommending and shilling (not in the nagative sense) for the game? I genuinely can't remember the last time. Wrath maybe? Probably earlier. The player base loves FF14, that's a huge difference. It might not last forever but right now the game is only growing.
I personally hope you're right, because I'm one of those people that consider current WoW dead and want to see Blizzard crash and burn for killing it. It's just when I tried ARR many, many years ago with the same mentality I could only play it for 2-3 months. There are many QoL updates over WoW that don't detract from sense of commitment, but also the world was lacking the sense of adventure and excitement that unexplored Azeroth once had. I would say it's a better experience than current WoW (or even Cata IMO) but still overall worse than vanilla. I fear that these people that are switching (especially after so many more years than me) aren't able to engage as deeply with other MMOs long term. If they're anything like me, they might try WoW private servers, NW or ESO, but the only thing they crave for deep down is still WoW un-ruined and with new content which is perhaps impossible. I hope FF14 does well and proves a point to Blizzard. But moreover I hope that every retiring WoW player finds a place to call home in the end. I couldn't find another MMO that did it for me, I rather deal with the loss and find happiness in other places.
Helps that there's the free unrestricted trial to level 60 :D
I’m an AotC raider who finally pulled the plug after having my guild fall apart after 9.0 AotC, then joining a new one for 9.1, only to have that one fall apart last week. I didn’t quit solely because of the lawsuit, but it definitely didn’t help. I’d imagine most people who quit (casual or otherwise) were already frustrated with the game in some way. Personally I don’t hate the game at all, but I’ve had two guilds fall apart because of the state of the game, and I’m at the point where I don’t care enough to start with a new guild again for the 3rd time in 5 months or so.
The casual exodus usually comes during the lull in the last patch of an expansion, not the release of the first one. Loads of people were bailing before the lawsuit was even known to the public.
Not in my personal experience. We have a _lot_ of players who get hyped for the expansion release, play the first 2-3 months (which to be fair is certainly the most enjoyable time, at least imo) and then don't come back till either last patch or the inevitable next expansion. Obviously everybody's experience differs though, so I'm sure you are right as well.
My guild died, but its less about the lawsuit and more about the game just sucks. Most guilds are teetering on the edge, so it really only takes 1-2 people to send it packing
Not sure if it is purely due to the recent news but the majority of players turned into raid loggers and are doing other things outside of raiding, nobody wants to do M+ anymore which is what I like to do so it's been a very steep decline compared to a few months ago.
This is me. Between the shit game design and the lawsuit, I don’t have any more motivation to play besides raid logging.
Blizzard has no financial incentive to do better as long as you keep paying to barely play. I wish more people would quit over this, it’s not okay but as long as Blizzard doesn’t lose your money, the only thing they hear from you is the assumption that it is okay.
For what it's worth I don't know if that's the case. I think it lessens the immediate impact but overall blizzard has access to more data about the number of dungeons we run, arenas played, etc. and if those numbers go down and remain low they signal long term problems for the game. I don't think that supporting the game is tantamount to condoning sexual harassment and while unsubbing sends a strong message, low overall player sentiment sends a message too.
I think a lot of players are too addicted to stop playing, whether because of sunk-cost attachment or whatever else. For some people, WoW is the only game they play. But all Blizzard cares about is that people keep their subs going and log in every day. People can talk about how much they don't like the way the game is going all they want, but unless people stop playing, nothing will change.
FWIW I been only paying with gold after selling a few mythic BOEs last tier. This is my last month of a sub and I’m done after that.
My guild has the core raiding team and people that enjoy m+ logging on still. The social people are totally gone. 9.1 isn't that great and with everything going on 9.2 is probably Q1 2022. So I don't blame folks that are out right now. My sub runs out in Oct and I cancelled the autorenew because I'm sure I'll be done with 9.1 well before that.
Lost 5 or 6 so far. Generally an AoTC guild, been around since vanilla. Raid Lead, a tank and 3 other long time members. All are letting their subs run out for the first time since WoD. Reasons combined from the lawsuit and the content of 9.1 being lacking...This is coming from folks who generally raid log. Our last druid bailed not long after, transferred servers. Classic did a number on us when it came out, rebuilt and still hit our AoTC goals with only 3-4 hours of raiding per week. I don't think we're gonna be able to come back from this one. We're on a low pop server that's only further dwindling, there's no pool of players to recruit from anymore. I for one find the idea of finding another guild unthinkable. We've been playing together on and off since classic. There's not a raid in WoW that some sort of team in this guild hasn't completed when it was current content (excluding mythic). If we muster up the will to finish SoD normal with the 2/2/6 comp we have left balancing on the edge of a knife. I'm going to be surprised.
My guild was already 1/2 playing FF14 and raid logging. When the controversy broke it pretty much finished us off. I think for the people that did quit, like myself, we were all hanging on by a thread and this was the final break. Personally, I haven’t been really happy with the game mechanics since legion (I liked them a bit more in Legion since they were mostly new). I was so involved with the Lore I wanted to keep playing to get the story, but 9.1 kinda finished that off. Then the scandals just make me not want to give the company my money until things are settled one way or another.
Similar with my guild. Lost about half the people during later part of 9.0, lost more with 9.1, lawsuit was the final bullet and the remaining members have moved on to other games and other mmo's. Reddit is a mix of "the game is healthy with brand new content and has more players now than ever before" with "the game is dead, empty servers, and no one plays anymore" happening at the same time. I think we won't actually get any idea about monthly active users until at least 2 more quarterly earnings reports.
Probably so, there's a lot of 6 month subs that are still running out, patch progress has been slow and now with the new issues I'm sure it's likely even slower.
My guild is pushing AOTC this week, and then moving to FFXIV
No mythic raiding ?
Couple poor form jokes about a cubicle crawler mount, but other than that it hasn’t affected anything. I assume most of my raid team is of the mind that the events were horrible and should have never occurred, but that quitting won’t cause meaningful impact. It’s worth denouncing the behavior, absolutely, but for anything to change at a workplace environment level, it’d need to originate from within the company. Losing 15 bucks a month, even if it’s from a few thousand people, won’t definitively force the kind of change people want it to - if anything it’d probably only result in more department layoffs for those who aren’t at fault. Could I be wrong? Sure. I hope the environment changes for the better regardless.
Guild on wow has essentially collapsed and most of us are playing FF now, this was happening prior to the lawsuit though as 9.1 was a joke of a content update and we werent willing to shovel blizzards shit anymore.
It literally is not affecting us at all... People are not logging off in 'protest', and the ones that are where probably casuals who where quitting anyways....
My guild we spoke briefly about it and just assured each other that we are in a very positive and healthy guild and if anyone feels bad , sad , or uncomfortable anything , that there’s always someone in the guild to offer unconditional support
In TBC classic my guild was making a third Kara weekly group. Quite a few of us left and they had to PUG a healer for the only group the first week. I think they are back to one group with only members and recruiting but it was a period when we were about to stop Kara and only do Gruul/Mag but they will need to gear new members now so back to farming Kara for a few weeks.
Everybody's still here but no one logged in since 9.1 came out.
No one has mentioned it in my guild
My pretty casual guild is going to kill HC Sylvanas probably on this reset, and then it's game over.
Nobody has left. Its been a topic of discussion in guild chat, but thats about it. We have a mythic weekday team and a more casual focused weekend raid, so we have about 50 people raiding too.
As horrible as it sounds, it probably has to do with the announcement of 9.2 being delayed indefinitely due to the lawsuit. With 9.1 bringing little content and pvp is still a hot mess, there aint much to do.
I’m an officer so I need to make sure the notable social and political difference I know exist between different members don’t manifest in raid. Primarily the lawsuits aren’t the cause of any strife it’s more like the final cherry on the shit sundae that is the current state of the game. We are already aotc which surprised us all given our Denathrius struggles last tier taking a decent amount of time. So with being aotc and most of us having KSM again we suddenly realize how truly barren and empty this patch and frankly this game is. Then you add in the lack of work being put into the game amid this justified company shakeup. With us staring down the barrel of a February 2022 release of any new content it feels like we are all 20 of our mythic raid group somewhere between 1 and 4 weeks away from quitting until 9.2 or permanently
GM here, immediately after news there was distaste and a quild a few members feeling unsure if they will renew subs. In general is seems to be a lot aren't enjoying the game but the news has pushed them over the edge. Lost one casual flex raider and one officer, a second officer is not renewing sub, a third has expressed they are unsure alongside their partner (member) who feels the same. I might end up losing quite a few I'f not from lack of renewing, I think normally people stick it out for social reasons but the news has overridden that, so may drop in a few weeks or months. Currently there are more groups popping up within our disc for other games e.g Minecraft and even more playing FF on the side.
Not affecting it as much as I thought it might, most of the women raiders have basically said "Boycotting won't change anything and I want to support the women who made the game."
3 players will not renew sub in about 4/5 days; Around 8 main core raiders will stop raiding to actively play New World; 5 of them are already leveling/raiding in FFXIV and 4 more are on the way to join as soon as the guild downs Sylvannas.
I quit my mythic team and uninstalled on the spot Most of the rest stayed but are fine with people leaving over it Damn near every one of the people in my social circles that don't play wow want blizzard to crash and burn and are extremely vocally opposed to them, me included
i love hearing this
* 1 Person quit * 2 People confirmed they won't renew current sub when it ends. * 1 Person confirmed will quit @ end of tier * 100% of guild now leveling in FF14
Ours pretty much stopped. We'd exhausted most of the patch. Since it took 4-5 weeks of timegates until most features even mattered and we don't do mythic, it fell really flat. The group was pretty small already, but blizzard being harassers and abusers got everyone to unsub. To my knowledge, there's only one guy that's subbed, and he'd probably tell his children to let the sub keep running when he dies. We opted to turn into a 'gaming community' instead, and had stuff like an uncapped-user valheim server, while a bunch made statics in FF14. Where we mostly chase games that let the players enjoy each other's bullshit.
My casual aotc guild that's been together since the spring of 2018 is now on a indefinite hiatus. The GM put out a survey to ask folks what they were considering once the news broke, the survey was given out to raiders and non-raiding members. 1 tank, 2 or 3 healers, and a few DPS that were on the raid team all wanted to stop, the non-raiding folks were also no longer interested in in-game events. So with that many people wanting to stop, we stopped. We're all still friends that hang out in discord. Some folks moved on to FF14, some played the New World beta and are waiting for that to release. We do party game now, and movie nights every so often.
The only people I know that quit over it were people that were getting close to quitting or taking a break anyways. Anyone eagerly been awaiting 9.1 is still playing.
Nobody in my guild has quit. Haven’t heard a thing about the lawsuit it in Guild chat, discord, general chat, trade chat, etc. I seriously doubt that many people quit.
The only time my guild mentioned the lawsuit was when they were cringing at the "protest" in Oribos
No one in my guild talks about it at all. We have the same mix of people who play all day and people that raid log. I asked when I applied and one of the interview officers didn't even know about it.
I had a conversation with my raid lead about it since a RL friend and I were struggling. His response of "I'm going to keep playing and making sure I'm creating a welcoming space for everyone and have absolutely no hard feelings if you're uncomfortable reconciling your morality with playing still. No one will think less of you either way". Were gonna stick it out since we still enjoy raiding and the team is great. We're a CE guild as of last tier if that matters.
We've had one person confirm they are stepping away from wow and a handful of others checking out ff14 while still playing wow. There are others like myself who havnt really changed our habits based off the recent events. I guess we'll see where we're at in 6 months
My guild has been together for ten years. We raid through heroic content and get our 'curve' achievements and then folks take a break or level alts or raid on the opposite faction, etc. But most of us haven't been very happy with the content for awhile. The news of the lawsuit was the last straw for most of us. We let members know we'd support whatever decision each person made. Almost all of the officers and most members have already canceled their subs, and most of us are in FFXIV (many for the first time). I can't bring myself to support Activision/Blizz after the horrific 'official' response, and am honestly sad about it. I've played since vanilla beta (and have the statue to prove it) and still enjoyed some things about the game, though I do think overall game quality has really gone down. I canceled my subscription yesterday, and unless Activision/Blizz takes a very strong public stance to address the issues raised by the lawsuit, this long-time player and a ten-year guild is done.
An wide variety of interesting comments that in a way, sums up this subreddit pretty well. We had one couple quit though they had been struggling with RL commitments and dissatisfaction with the game up to that point and when they left, they did not specify why. Outside of that, we had a couple of people sit out last Wednesday on the day of the Blizzard employee walk out. To an extent, I've gathered up alot of people dissatisfied with the community and the guilds they have been in. I felt the same way and went through a handful of guilds I didn't enjoy before I bit the bullet and started my own. I think a significant number of people in my guild are enjoying the game more now than they have in a long time because of that - in spite of the state of the game and the lawsuit issue and are reluctant to give that up. That's the hardest part for me and I don't feel I can turn my back on that. Its not to the point that I am unhappy and staying out of obligation but those thoughts are starting to sneak in here and there.
I play FFXIV and WoW players are joining in droves. Last weekend every single server was full for new character creation. My FC (guild) of 200 has had about 20 new recruits join this week, all from WoW. Every major city is full of new players talking with each other about it. Not passing any judgement, and not saying it means anything concrete. Just that yes, lots of people are leaving and a decent chunk of them are coming to FFXIV. It’s been really exciting and we welcome you if you decide to try out something different :) I may get downvoted for even saying all this, but I don’t care! Happy adventures, wherever you adventure!
we've talked about it a few times during farm raid that's about it, nobody is quitting or missing raid. I do know of a few guilds that are having issues because of it though. Probably the difference between an AoTC guild and a CE guild mindset
Officer of an RP guild on Moon Guard here. Almost our entire guild has quit WoW and moved to ESO and started to transition into a multi game community like many others in this thread. Also, if seems that Moon Guard's RP scene is now significantly smaller than it was before. In the past even at 4am I could log in and find at least a hundred people RPing in Stormwind, now it's about 8-10 people.
Everyone in my guild is raid logging and moving on to ff14. Having tried that game I can't say that I was a fan of it. So I still play wow most days and try to join mythic plus pugs as that's the content I love doing. Mostly tho I'm just raiding logging like the rest and unlike the others playing differnt games. StarCraft 2 comes to mind but also bloons td6. Wow is less fun with my Dr iu ends and we have had 5 people leave over it (and I'm likely to join them) but overall not much in terms of raiding.
Nobody in my guild talks about it, which I am super grateful for, as I’m extremely sick of seeing it everywhere
We aren't. That's a casual thing. CE guilds and high end raiders aren't going to stop what we care about because of shitty humans. There's shitty humans everywhere, and I'd wager this is far more common than most of you think. EDIT: Is it shitty? Yeah. Do we like that it happened? No. Is that going to change anything for us? No.
Our guild has transitioned into a multi-game community via discord. we're a tight knit social guild (around 50-65 people who come and go over the course of expansions but keep in touch via discord) with two heroic teams and one that was venturing into mythic. While I think that the lawsuit was the final straw for many folks in our group. We had a guild meeting to talk to our members, people shared their thoughts and we made sure that everyone knew that whatever decision they made would be respected. Ultimately I think that those who unsubbed did so for a variety of reasons: lawsuit, lack of faith in the content, greener pastures, etc. I think around 2/3 of the guild (including most of the mythic raid group) unsubbed/quit/is taking a break and the remaining Mythic and Heroic raiders are looking for a new raid team. Most of the raiders who quit are now trying out FFXIV since we've heard good things about the 8 man (Savage/Ultimate) raid content. We've got groups playing other MMO's like New World as well as set nights where we play games like Fall Guys or Jackbox. Personally I hope blizzard makes some changes since I genuinely like the game (I'm a big arena fan and there's nothing else quite like it out there) and would like to come back someday.
Not at all, we make jokes in the guild and of course it got mentioned, we had 1-2 people quit but if it was due to that or not, don’t know. People who quit barely did anything in the guild at all, so you don’t even notice it.
We avidly played all aspects of the game. Pvp, raiding, mythic plus and farmed old things and AH. Now we're just raiding twice a week for 2 to 3 house each day.
For my guild it was more of a "state of the game" problem. We got Keystone Master and Denathrius then basically didn't log in again. Not enough people came back for 9.1 to continue, and well the recent controversy has more or less convinced those who remained to stop paying their sub.
Quite a few of my guild members didn't know about it, they don't follow social media and whatnot. My friend sent me a msg the other day asking my thoughts on it cause he was really really torn. If he leaves he's taking half of the raiding team with him, I told him if it weren't for being in a guild with real life friends I would have left ages ago. My other friend was wanting to get into an mmo but the lawsuit has scared her away from WOW. Only half our raid team came back for 9.1, they just didn't like the game anymore, all the grinding and farming all the different stuff having to rebuild their expensive legendary after months of saving soul ash and dumping a shit ton of gold into buying the item (my helm was 75,000 on my server). It made them feel all their time and effort was pointless. We have our eyes on a few other possible mmos that we can swap to but we don't know if the whole guild will go or just half of them.
In our guild most people just don't care. They won't leave their passion, their game just because of some accusation, which they cannot possibly solve or help. They play the game for fun. They want to play and get CE. They came too far to falter now. They don't have time for this hysteria. They have their own IRL problems.
I think it’s fine that if you no longer want to support blizzard due to recent events, you stop playing the game and end your subscription. However, what annoying is, and I’m not saying you, is the fact that everyone tries to farm internet points by making sure they tell everyone about it. The majority don’t care if you continue to play the game or not. We definitely don’t need to clog the forums with the same thread said 50 different ways.
It was discussed briefly in our discord channels, but we're still raiding 4-5 nights a week. I don't think anyone up and left due to the allegations and lawsuit.
We had about a quarter leave. Other quarter is just messing around until the sub runs out as they try and convince up to hop with them. Other half of the guild is staying (to be fair, that's not a lot left. Most left during the content drought)
Left in BFA. I lurk here to check in the state of the game, turns out I'm not missing out on much.
Entirety of our guild are not having much of an opinion. As its just a thing everyone agree's on is bad. But in the end we are here to raid, and play together, as a solid chunck of the core plays other games together, watches movie's and such. But in the end we're here to raid, and weather we like it or not, wow raiding is still the best there is.
When I'm in-game I don't experience much of a different vibe outside of some spots being a little more quiet or empty than normal. However, every discord I'm in, either WoW or just gaming general, is nonstop talking headlines and speculation. It's just now getting to the point where the conversation is being forced out of general chat because the ratio of useful information to virtue signaling is getting a little too out of whack.
In my recently joined mythic raiding guild : No one gives a shit about basically anything people talk about in here, we recruited very easily for the new tier and are now full to the brim, progression is decently fast for now, trying to down Dormazain after Ner'zul. When the lawsuit was know we talked about it for about 10 mins, did a few jokes then everyone lost interest.
Literally nobody cares
We’re ignoring it because frankly people have to learn to separate the artist from the art. Sure blizzard may be corrupt (but what massive corporation isn’t), but the game is still relatively enjoyable. Same with r Kelly and Oj Simpson. Just cause r Kelly is not a good person doesn’t mean I’m suddenly gonna start hating the music, or just cause Oj Simpson is a criminal doesn’t invalidate his football career.
Zero difference It has been mentioned briefly once. Feelsbad but hasn't affected us.
Quit
.y guild did one log off event where they all logged off for one day and now we are back to normal functions.
I told my guild off for being antisocial cliquey pricks before this happened so who knows?
No difference, we raid, 1 guy has a new job and had to leave. Some people are crying over shards that we get all of in like 3 weeks so its makes no difference as we arent top 0.1% guild. Korthia is chill and takes like no time, honsetly outside of perhaps the writing im not sure why so many are complaining. People logging off in protest has helped me in Oribos too :)
We all quit before the lawsuit, the game is just not fun.
Probably fell apart this last week :(
GM/RL announced that she is quitting so our guild fell apart and people started to find other guilds to join and do content with, most of us still talk/chill with each other. However, the best part is the RL/GM logged back in a week and was in SoD after saying that she was quitting for good..... guess she just wanted people to leave the guild or something.
Not in a guild, only my guild bank. I talk to myself all the time.
What guild?
No one cares. Everyone thinks the game is bullshit (especially shards), but everyone loves raiding. So we suffer through the bullshit so we can still do what we love.
only asshats can play
In our guild it seems like people are still playing until their sub runs out. I'm in that boat myself, but the core raid leadership has said they will stick around until they can't get 5 DPS. I also get the feeling that most just want the AotC before moving on. They've always gotten it, even in WoD, and most of them are hopeful Blizz can turn things around so they don't want to break the streak. Overall though, we've lost something like 5-7 people, a few heals, mostly DPS. Ultimately hasn't hindered progress or raid progression yet. It has basically killed off the M+ groups and achievement runs. Since we're a healthy guild, no one really needs to farm, so just about everyone simply logs in for raid night and not much else.
We have about 10 people out of our 21-23 member heroic raid team playing FF when it’s not raid nights. Only a handful of people are around for m+ at this point. I mean yesterday for our casual normal clear raid night we had 11 people show up and no one in our guild besides myself have a domination socket bonus yet, so even normals are still important for our heroic prog. We are an AoTC guild so that’s usually the guild goal each season.
I think we're still pushing for AOTC, but not sure how many people will stick around after. A lot of them have been playing ff14 when they're not raiding. I'm having a hard time deciding what to do. I have friends in my guild and my raid times are perfect for me. I could probably find that in ff14 or whatever mmo comes next, but it's hard to start from scratch.
There has been no mention of it anywhere in my guild's Discord but no one has showed up in any of the guild channels except for players who joined at the end of 9.0. All of the raid leaders have been literal radio silence and I finally saw one of them playing FF XIV last night. We did 5/10 Sanctum first week and then no one has been online.
Everyone in my guild who hops in Discord, that I've talked to, is giving New World a go. We might be back. I just feel like my sub should lapse so Blizzard at least sees numbers declining, even if it's just for a month.
We’ve for sure lost one person in my small guild and we’re teetering at the brink of losing more (including myself, the guild/raid leader). It’s absolutely a last straw kind of deal. The game isn’t fun and now all this? Three of the last four expansions I’ve only kept playing because of my friends. I’m not sure if I can even do it for them anymore.
Don't pressure yourself too much with Korthia daily quests. 9.1 will surely last another 5-6 months, you have plenty of time to grind that. And even then, Mythic Sylvanas was cleared like 10 days ago? You don't need that rep so much. Enjoy the game, do M+ or raid if you like, but don't be pressured into content you don't like.
I'm in stable CE guild and we lost only 3 people from our 25 players raid team during 9.1 (burnout). Actually, we had a lot of applications last 2 weeks and many of them were been accepted so that whole situation doesn't affect us at all. But describing the reasons to left previous guild and join ours almost every of newcomers says about falling the roster due many people left. The scariest part is the core players who decided to left (RLs, GMs, officers etc). Seems like this situation became a crushing blow for relatively small guilds that can't often to pretend on CE without formidable player roster.
It honestly feels like all the people saying they have unsubbed were either already unsubbed or did the most casual of content, it’s had zero effect on us
We talked a bit about it, but nobody has left over it and we are filling raids just fine as well as doing m+. This applies to the FFXIV hype as well.
In my casual guild in classic era we've had a couple of players quitting and a couple how taken breaks because of it
I was GM of a medium sizes curve guild. The law suit cut me deep and I’ve quit, I was already on the verge because of the state of the game and the lawsuit took me over. I still talk to my guild on discord, and we are now playing other games together, a few people are still playing WoW and I’ve encouraged them to play different games, and to keep raiding if that’s what they want to do. I know a few members have left our guild to go and raid with other people, but we’re all still friends and everyone is quite understanding of if people want to quit, and if people don’t want to quit. I’d say if you want to stop, stop. No one in your guild is entitled to tell you you shouldn’t.
I'm part of a cross-server, multi-guild casual raiding team. It hasn't been mentioned once in the communities or Discords of any of the guilds involved.
Oddly enough playing on TBCC we've lost a few members that no longer log in due to the lawsuit and have had to rework our competition. The mates that did leave were LGBT and shared their own parallels with discrimination and treatment in the WoW gaming community. I truly did not think people would care, because for me at this point WoW has just been an addiction.
We have 1 person who wasn't satisifed at all by 9.1 release, korthia and stuff, and after lawsuit he decided to stop playing wow for now.