Already, signs are emerging that it is the beginning of the end.
As we discussed last February, the most powerful lore character - in terms of his ability to carry a storyline - was Arthas, aka The Lich King, and he's dead. He was killed and replaced with Bolvar (mostly so that people can keep running the dungeon content if they want and it sort of makes sense), who now resides as eternal ruler over the Scourge, to keep them from running wild.
Posts are starting to show up on the forums from people who were initially concerned about whether the game would remain interesting after the death of Arthas, and they're having a hard time getting into the villany of Deathwing. There's no argument that Deathwing is powerful, but he doesn't have the same grip on players the way Arthas did. Arthas was one of us. In fact, in WarCraft III we played part of the game as Arthas and saw first hand his downfall and weakness and transformation into video gaming's greatest villain.
Deathwing... is a big dragon. He's always operated at a historical level, and when he's been thwarted in the past the playable races had nothing to do with it. It's like fighting El Nino or Terrorism - his scope is beyond the actions of a single player. Of course they'll scale him down, probably as a result of long player-completed questlines that marginalize his power, and with the assistance of a bunch of dragons you'll get to slip in at the last second when everything is in balance and deliver the final blow. Yeah, you can see this coming from a mile away. The guy has over 200 million health, there's no way a party of 10 people is going to spoil his day alone.
Also on the forums we're seeing a lot of people asking outright "does it seem like people are leaving?" The answer is yes, of course, there will always be people who leave after the first two months of an expansion. A lot of people said they would come back to see Cataclysm, and they have, but they never said they'd stay. They wanted to see the world and see the changes and they've seen it. Additionally, another wave of "I've been playing since launch" players are trickling out the door.
It's an expansion based on nostalgia. The old world has been given a massive makeover, with all of the classic instances revamped for ease of play or level changes, territories mutated by the tidal waves and earthquakes that accompanied Deathwing's arrival, and a shift of control over regions by the Alliance and Horde as a result of their renewed war. The war itself is kind of refreshing. We've been trying to obliterate each other for six years because - let's face it, diehard Hordies and Alliance really do hate each other - but after years of things like account bans for griefing NPCs and 'dishonorable kills', it's hard to get the factions to take world PvP seriously anymore. Usually it's a few nere-do-wells ganking people by surprise in the wild, or packs of arena monkeys holding small camps, and nothing more.
Guilds have been given a larger role in the expansion. They now provide purchasable rewards like heirlooms and noncombat pets for guild growth and achievement, so it benefits people to be a member of a larger guild to take advantage of them. This doesn't really solve the problem of people being unwilling to participate in guild events, it just makes guilds bloated and less familiar. It's a double-edged sword, guild leaders need to accommodate players and not burn bridges, and players need to endure the disgusting affectations of their guildmates to continue enjoying benefits. It makes the guild system stronger, but individual guilds weaker and less socially meaningful.
Cataclysm is also the first expansion that launched without the addition of new servers. Being a self-admitted server locust (I enjoy rerolling on new servers to watch the communities grow from stratch), I was a little disappointed to see that no servers were added. Initially, we suspected that they might add one or two because there were dozens of servers 'locked' - meaning they would not accept new accounts rolling characters on them. This weekend in the evening I looked at the server list and there were only a dozen or so that were in the 'full' state and none of them were 'locked'. I haven't heard of any login queues at all for any server. It is undeniable, the active population has dropped dramatically since the launch of Cataclysm, probably by now to the point of pre-launch, and malaise has set in.
Every expansion brings a series of phases:
1. Wow, this is new, I love it
2. Ok, I've seen everything new and I'm running out of exciting things to do
3. Content Patch 1: Some people love it, some wonder if they'll ever play it, some reroll
4. The state of game balance becomes clear, people reroll favored classes on favored factions
5. Content Patch 2: Some people love it, some never see it
6. Pre-expansion game changes implemented
With each phase the active population goes up a little, then declines more than it rose. The high point in population is always at launch of a new expansion, and it declines slowly, somewhat buffered by content patches. It appears at this point that the population was never higher than previous levels, and is declining faster than with previous expansions.
Something happened when the game changed itself to accommodate the more casual player: Players treat their game play more casually. It has become less important to them and they are more willing to walk away and do something else instead. They know that being gone for a couple of months or even a year will result in a very small setback, and in some ways will make their playtime even more enjoyable. Blizzard has made the game easier to pick up for new players, but also easier to put down for veteran players.
And currently, it looks like people are ready to put it down and walk away.
