BFA is the worst expansion by player activity

Community General Discussion
1

Regarding the question of what’s better, BFA or WOD, and for general perspective:

Here are activity graphs taken 3-4 months after launch for the four last expansions.

Look at the right end of each graph and note where the two lines (A and H) approximately are. The absolute values of the numbers are pretty useless (that is, you won’t be able to extrapolate the number of subs from them, they are too separated), but they are good enough to be compared to each other.

  • MoP (i.imgur .com/QF40oRA.png) - 600-800

  • WoD (i.imgur .com/ajH8bEN.png) - 350-500 (a big drop from MoP, yup, as you’d expect)

  • Legion (i.imgur .com/koFIbmX.png) - 300-500 (yes, lower than WoD, it might come as a surprise to some, but Legion did not revert the trend of losing players, it continued to lose them, just less fast than WoD - this is corroborated by all other sources of relevant data as well)

  • BFA (i.imgur .com/rHt8YQV.png) - 300-400 (it’s lower than this, but let’s be generous and increase the upper bound and use the average for the last month)

Returning to the question of what’s better, BFA or WOD - well, as regards player activity, BFA is strictly worse. If you aren’t satisfied with the numbers above, just superimpose the graphs for BFA and WoD and ask yourself what would you rather have if you were a game dev. The answer is - unequivocally - WOD.

Now, yes, yes, sure, WOD continued to decline and who knows what BFA is going to do. Not all of BFA is here yet. Maybe it will go up, who knows, right? But with 8.1 being what it is (pretty much nothing). And with 8.1.5 being six weeks away and not terribly much either. And with 8.2 being who knows when and who knows how good (it will perhaps not be terrible, but I really doubt if it will be all that groundbreaking either)? Well, you can figure it out.

BFA looks quite solidly like the worst expansion to date. Worse than WOD. And this is objective, see graphs and numbers.

38 Likes
2

Im just here waiting for first person who’ll say how “AH numbers dont tell anything” or something similar :joy:

20 Likes
3

I’m just waiting for the first person who’ll post something about the first person making a post about something. :joy:

6 Likes
4

We knew that already, no need for a graph to know that everyone and their grandmother quit already.

4 Likes
6

What a refreshing topic nigh on exactly what you said yesterday in another thread.
In other news atm it is snowing in Finland.

12 Likes
7

If the knowledge that BFA is the worst received, and, speaking bluntly, worst all around expansion, including WoD, becomes as apparent as the fact that it frequently snows in Finland, that’s good. Because that’s true.

It just seemed to me that some contested the point and others were unsure. And I am not kidding here, I posted solely because I saw debates on whether BFA is worse than WOD already or not yet on the forums yesterday. Hopefully the numbers make it clearer where BFA stands.

7 Likes
8

Worse as in less players sure but to me WoD apart from BRF and CMs was just pure awful.
Even though BFA is bad simply put there is more to do imho.
Outside of raids and cms please tell me what else was there to do ?

1 Like
9

I’m just waiting for the point of this post to reveal itself.

5 Likes
10

The purpose of the numbers like the ones in the first post is precisely to move away from “imho” and personal opinions into aggregate reactions.

You say you personally like BFA more than WOD. That’s fine. Others might like WOD more. That’s also fine.

What the numbers show is that BFA is worse than WOD was at keeping the attention of the players. Personal opinions non-withstanding. Maybe part of that is related to the players being more tired with Blizzard now then when WOD was the current expansion. That is, maybe BFA is better than WOD, but not enough better and Blizzard was screwing people up for so long that even a better expansion now evokes a worse reaction. Maybe. But there’s a lesson there in any case.

6 Likes
11

Maybe how you word it comes into it.

BFA doing WORSE then WoD playetwise.
BFA is better gameplay wise then WoD.
Both are awful expacs but couldnt you follow the forum rules and just keep your view to one thread.
Forums is filled with so much negative BS atm.
I feel sorry for the ones who like the game they get slapped down and called shills.

5 Likes
12

I am pretty sure there is no forum rule that I - or you, or anyone - have to keep their views to one thread.

Not that I even post much, my post count is a fraction of that of many other people.

2 Likes
13

I quote

"The new search function is extremely robust. Please be sure to use it to look for similar topics, blog posts, or web pages that may contain the answer before creating your forum topic. Making a new thread on an existing subject will likely result in your thread being locked or deleted. If you continue to repost it you’re likely to have your posting privileges suspended for spamming. "

2 Likes
14

There was no thread on player activity levels with numbers and graphs.

Let’s end this. I didn’t violate any rules. If you have something to post on topic, do so. Otherwise, have a nice day.

7 Likes
15

Its the same stuff you where on about yesterday in another topic just with added graphs maybe read forums rules in future and understand what they mean.
All you are doing is spreading negativity over lots of threads .

3 Likes
16

No. I wrote different things yesterday and today. I get an impression that you cast every negative thing written about BFA as “the same”, but you are wrong to do this. Stop acting like the self-proclaimed forum police.

9 Likes
17

“Wait and see” (but don’t forget to keep paying in the meantime).

4 Likes
18

I would hesitate to say that BFA is worse than WoD based purely on those numbers. The only thing that is objective is that player activity has dropped. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the game is bad, because there are a lot of things that can affect player activity.

Correlation does not equal causation.

9 Likes
19

Oh the ole forum police well maybe if you didnt put your negative spill all over the place i wouldnt need to say to you read the guidelines.
We all know the game is bad but your posts are getting really really boring .
Unsub quit show the power of your money but save us from your endless tripe to justify how bad it is.

1 Like
20

No disagreement. See my post above (post 10, I think).

But in the end, that’s not changing much, it’s just slightly different wording for essentially the same point. BFA is worse than WOD in terms of player interest. Does this sound better? Not really.

5 Likes
21

Numbers don’t lie, agree. But can’t expect player base to be on WotLK lvl in a few months. Maybe not even in a few years. Or never again. Who knows what will happen. Maybe in near future WoW goes in VR tech so it can be bigger in terms of players than WotLK. Maybe they don’t last that long. But ppl come and go, it goes around. As in life. I like it, will play until I find it interesting. What is interesting to me, maybe it’s not for you.

2 Likes