Solude

WoW killer is defined as...
1. Itself, choices made have impacted sub levels
2. Rift, players leaving to play Rift aren't returning in great number

Group Finder should be a standard feature by now. Pointing right at you SWTOR :p Very much sucks to be standing with tons of people who want the same thing and play the /ooc LFM game when a system could do it and get me playing the instance I want or not stop me from playing while I wait for enough players to it. Good on Turbine for entering this decade. DDO also would be better with this.

Am I the only one who saw "... and they never go into a match" The word match seems to point to instanced space, not open world like PlanetSide.

Sorry but couldn't help but see WoW all over the place. And not the sort of kind of variety but the that zone X zone Y fight Z.

@ed511df3
No, launching horribly broken meant people didn't want to play it and never came back. Those that stayed aren't enough to fund growth so... it's pop dropped. Great game today, but still semi broken and definitely not casual.

@Saintwalker31livecom

True though really should have included that its gold dust... zing!

Hmm I've heard this somewhere before... oh ya CoX /facepalm

On Rift subs dropping... no. Pops are up. We're slowly pulling all our old WoW buddies in as they sit idle in WoW because their pops have dropped and in focused losses. Rift isn't digging away at WoW randomly. Its taking that guild, and that one, and... MMOs are social games and when enough of your guild comes over, you follow or cancel. WoW is hardly alone in getting smashed, but the last poll put Rift pops at 69% exWoW players.

On returning to WoW... Rift isn't WAR, GW2 and SWTOR, fingers crossed, could also not be a train wreck at launch. We're not returning unless Trion gives us a reason to and Bliz gives us a reason to return. WoW typically doesn't launch any casual content between expansions, ie no reason to return other than every 2 years. Thats a long time for Trion, Bioware, ArenaNet... to chop away at WoW.

Now with 11 millions subs, WoW could turn it around but historically Activision and Bliz aren't in the business of content delivery for free at high speed.

Rift is also not a WoW clone, WoW is Rift lite (tm).

Ya Bliz be wrong. Maybe if they er umm logged into Rift they'd get it ;)

We play WoW because its the only real choice and has been for years. Now with Rift, WoW is now Rift Lite (tm). We're not returning to WoW until the next expansion at the earliest and that assumed Rift content slows, GW2 and SW:TOR don't launch and WoW stops taking money from its subs to fund Titan.

My prediction... 10 mill WoW subs by years end.