Is Blizzard's World of Warcraft Cash Cow in Decline?

Players are, some would say at long last, becoming cheesed off with Blizzard constantly milking them for more money, and it comes at a time when World of Warcraft has been losing large numbers of customers.  Blizzard are facing more and more competition and in harsh economic times people will look to spend their hard earned pennies more frugally.

World of Warcraft's monthly subscription must be the company's biggest income generator by a huge margin and it would seem sensible to start listening to the customers before more people vote with their feet.  One of my biggest gripes with the game is that it is a constant grind to achieve anything.  Why should it be the case that my PvP gear is not good enough for Dungeon raiding at higher levels? And why should people who like PvE Raiding not be able to use the same gear for venturing into World of Warcraft Battlegrounds?

I know the answers already, they were rhetorical, but it's making the point again that Blizzard are far too deliberate in their efforts to maintain those monthly subscriptions.  Blizzard need to concentrate on putting "having fun playing" at the top of their agenda.  I would love to try out a dungeon or two (masochistic tendencies you see ;-) but I'm too busy trying to get the gear so I can compete on a level playing field in Arenas.  By the time I accomplish that we will already be into a new season and I will need to get the new gear so I can...

The point being I haven't got the time to get both sets of gear necessary to enjoy the different aspects of the game, solely because Blizzard keep moving the goal posts so I will spend money to keep on the treadmill.  What Blizzard should be doing instead is creating more real content and tweaking the current content.  For example some of the Battlegrounds are nothing more than PvE rushes rather than PvP competitions.  Now we all know Blizzard are good at producing RTS games and it cannot be beyond them to develop PvP along similar lines.  Although I suppose that they might not want to compete with their Starcraft and Warcraft products, but I don't see that as a credible view point.





   

Wow Nearly 2000 Visitors Already This Month

But this is because of an Adwords campaign and there is very little evidence that the visitors were interested in the site :-(

I decided to only go with two keyword phrases "world of warcraft beginners guide" and "new world of warcraft players" so that I did not attract generalised world of warcraft searches, but I am not sure how successful this particular aim has been.

Because of copyright it is not allowed to use World of Warcraft or WoW in the actual advert text, which makes life difficult in targeting traffic.  However, the title of my website should give the purpose of my site away, shouldn't it?!

Oh well, I soldier on in trying to get my site noticed.

World of Warcraft Battlegrounds; a series: Arathi Basin

You can find my latest World of Warcraft Battleground series here:

Game Guru

This one is about Arathi Basin and like all of my guides is aimed at new World of Warcraft players.

World of Warcraft Battlegrounds

I find participating in them to be very, very frustrating.  It seems that all people want to do is fight in the middle of the battleground.  Now look people that is not the way to win and get good Honour Points (HP).  You win by using tactics and adapting to the game situation.

I find Alterac Valley to be the most frustrating, because people believe, despite the obvious flaw that it rarely works, that all you do is rush to the first boss and then on to the second after holding a few towers or bunkers and win.  The first point to make is that if the opposition do the same all it becomes is a race and there is no element of PvP.  It is a PvP encounter, if you don't like PvP then go on a PvE Raid and let those who do like PvP play compete.  The second point is if the opposition use tactics you will lose.  The most obvious counter is to defend the first Boss with around a dozen or so defenders.  That simple tactic wipes out the attacking force very easily and wins the game from there on in, because the aggressor is immediately pushed back.

I am in the process of writing a series on how to play the World of Warcraft battlegrounds.  The first two in the series can be found here:

Warsong Gulch

Alterac Valley

Have a good read and let me know what you think.

And remember that the New to World of Warcraft website is probably the best free World of Warcraft guide for new players available.

I Don't Understand!

It seems that since I started pointing to my site's movement up in the search visibility stakes that it has suddenly disappeared.  I have used other browsers and other people's PCs to check out my site's visibility and I can now find no trace of it using the search phrase.  I am using Google in all cases so why this baffling result?

Just how can the site be visible one day and invisible the next?

Well Now, Seems Google Have Read my Blog

Either that or I have changed my browser settings somehow, without realising it.  My Firefox browser now shows my keyword phrase showing up on page 3 instead of at rank 3 and 5 on page 1 :-(

Oh well, so my suspicion turned out right, which is a shame.

Hmm... New Player of World of Warcraft

I've tried googling on variations of my target phrase "best free world of warcraft guide" and I find that my site is on the first page in all cases.  But I am now wondering whether this is because Google are using my browser settings (cookies) to show the results I want?

The only way I can know for sure is if other people can also find me using Google search.  Of course if they are already using my site, then they too will not know whether Google is using their cookie settings.

The only way I can know for sure is from feedback from the web community who have never seen the site before.  Can anyone oblige please by leaving a comment.  Cheers!