Yeah, we all know that WoW’s player base has grown and shrunk over the years, usually around expansions, but we also know that, overall, it is in decline.  Blizzard stated, voluntarily, that WoW is unsustainable in the long term – they know the game is dying and instead of fixing it, they’re trying to squeeze every last penny out of it.

Also, if you’ve played WoW, since the beginning, you KNOW the difficulty hasn’t increased, at all.  It’s gotten much easier.  Also, the assertion that it’s impossible to balance the game is, in my experience, hogwash.  It’s a simple equation.  class A deals W damage and is vulnerable to X.  Class B deals Y damage and is vulnerable to Y.  If A*X =/= B*Y, unbalance exists.  Fix numbers.  (yes, it’s a little more complex but algorithms can easily be developed).  They SAY they can’t fix it because they’re busy working on expansions, content, new games, etc…

Maybe they do care but that doesn’t mean they care enough to fix what’s been broken for 7 years. (They were told during beta that the game had serious balance issues but they never fixed them).

Also, DPS races are their biggest failure and is the cancer that’s slowly killing WoW.

And saying that player ideas are usually stupid is offensive.  You seemingly don’t know a lot of MMO players, or have met the ones who still live in their parent’s house and hump socks.  I know a LOT of MMO players and the vast majority of them are far smarter than the average bear.  It’s attitudes like that which allow companies like Blizzard to defend their actions.

WoW’s largest active player-based peaked in 4th Quarter 2010/1st Quarter 2011.  http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/07/world-of-warcraft-reaches-12-million-players/   The reason for that many player was because of the reasons of allowing easier access to the game and end-game content.   While at the same time creating harder difficulties for people who do want a challenge.  It is not their fault not many players utilize these features.  I know and talked with Blizzard Developer at industry events, they are always concerned about these problems, it is impossible to balance a game like World of Warcraft, they watch the data carefully and make the best decisions possible, they are not perfect and a lot of times go on gut instinct over something more reasonable.  Bottom line is they do care, probably more than most companies.

I do give credit to NCSoft for trying to create a subscription-free open world MMO, with Guild Wars 2, if it works can change some of the dynamics of the MMOs.

Finally, player ideas are usually stupid.  Most people don’t understand the complexity of game design, especially MMO design.  However I do agree there is a problem when developers do completely ignore the player base.