It has come to my attention that Dragonflight is doing poorly. Because we have had:
a discount for those who did not preorder Dragonflight
a deal where you’d get a 30 days free gametime if you bought Dragonflight
a trial to check out the prepatch where they’d give you a free weekend to check out the new talents and one of the dungeons
a 3 days free trial to level up a Drac’thyr to level 63.
In Shadowlands they were so firm that their expansion was selling like hotcakes that they gave away a number for preorder sales. In Dragonflight, it’s suspiciously quiet.
And don’t give me that “it was Corona” because, well, the playerbase of Blizzard kept shrinking during corona if you look at their quarter reports to the investors.
It doesn’'t give me the idea that the game is doing confidently well. Even in Classic the realms were full and packed that there were over 5K people queueing up for a realm. In Dragonflight this didn’t even happen.
It’s just that BFA and Shadowlands screwed WoW’s reputation so much that people don’t even bother anymore. Even if the game has improved, people have moved on and didn’t even bother to check it out or learn about it.
And if we’re talking about PvP players, it’s not just BFA and Shadowlands, but Legion too. 6 years of disappointment.
Dragonflight can’t succeed that easily after so much failure.
I’m a healer, I spend 30 seconds in queue for solo shuffles.
If you PvP, this is the best expansion since WoD.
You can get 37 alts and earn 15,000 honor for a full set of gear before even reaching level 70.
And then straight into arena. Awesome.
these threads are becoming a bit spammy
well one thing i know for sure,
shadowlands failed to keep me around as i quit shortly after launch.
not the case for dragonflight. i’m still here and playing quite a lot.
according to numbers no it didn’t sell well. Yes more people raiding in classic than DF.
majority think this expac is amazing . For me It feels like Shadowlands once a week chance at an upgrade. Feel bored with not much to do but farm legacy content.
A free weekend to allow try before u buy to players as having 2 bad expansions broke alot of trust. I.e players werent eager to preorder or buy on launch day due to past problems.
Dragonflight is not doing poorly. WoW has 8 million subs, 3 million of which play classic by current data on the game.
Not record breaking no, but not poorly either. As the games laid after 6million on sales repeatively excluding SL which did 12 million due to covid helping the gaming industries profits.
Dragonflight hit about expected.
A safe expansion redirecting the games direction. They already said tbey are expecting 11.0 to be the big aeller. Df is just to get the ball rolling.
As we know cross faction guilds etc etc are coming and more to prepare for tbat.
a discount for those who did not preorder Dragonflight
This is a common practice nowadays. AAA-games are being discounted 2-3 weeks after being released.
a deal where you’d get a 30 days free gametime if you bought Dragonflight
Lowering bareer of entry for new/returning players
a trial to check out the prepatch where they’d give you a free weekend to check out the new talents and one of the dungeons
a 3 days free trial to level up a Drac’thyr to level 63.
FFXIV has ~250 hours of content in its free trial. While ARR/Vanilla is pretty meh most of the time, Heavensward is absolutely BANGER. Does it mean the game’s dying?
It doesn’'t give me the idea that the game is doing confidently well. Even in Classic the realms were full and packed that there were over 5K people queueing up for a realm. In Dragonflight this didn’t even happen.
Classic in Europe has like main 4 realms where people actually play, with overwhelming majority of them being on Gehennas/Firemaw. There is no cross-realm on classic, so being on big servers is incentivized, which leads to them being congested.
Blizzard has to regain the trust after 2 somewhat bad expansions. No one will give the game a chance if they have to commit and pay the full price, hoping that this time it is different, better.
My life isn’t just about WoW, but I noticed during earlier expansions that it’s best to commit my entire life to WoW if I want to achieve anything.
But then, if I do so, there is nothing left to do, except some boring grinding. It can be a mission table, it can be a million materials, take your pick.
WLK was fresh, I was busy with that, except for real life woes. WLK wasn’t supposed to come this year. BC was accelerated and now the expansions are competing.
WLK gave me the confirmation that you are expected to play brutal amounts and focus. Expected to play 50-100 hours during the first 2-4 weeks per character, always expected and required to have tip-top gear, if you want to run something trivial like Naxx10. Also, HR HR, that My Precious thread from yesterday resonated
And then DF came, and all I read is rush rush rush rush rush rush rush rush. No thanks.
And that there is the content I play, with a reasonable amount of keybinds, and the next level with 40-60-80 regular keybinds, you need three keyboards: left hand, feet, and one disguised as a mouse with 15+ buttons on the right hand. N-o-p-e.
I’m personally a bit tired of all the woke exposition. Maybe I wouldn’t, but there was sooo much drama around it, here and everywhere. I come here to play a night elf roaming on a saber with a saber on her side, shooting arrows at bad boys and wolves in some magical forest. Leave the rest for HBO.
Dragonkin don’t resonate with me.
I got quite a few nice mounts from promotions, sub, even the shop. And now I can’t use them? I’d rather stay in zones I can, thank you very much.
Trying to lure me to sub for a decade in advance, pl0x, on top of prepurchasing epic-mega-mythic-special edition of the expansion with a fancy (unusable) mount and hearthstone effect for the price of 4 games.
Combining recent experience with expectations from fellow WoWers, I’ve put together that story in the new expansion is minimal and it’s essentially a M+ framework. Chromie time is intentionally crippled, nobody wants to level, nobody wants the story, people just want a daily inflation to their throughput numbers to feel good about themselves. I’m so adept at pressing 123123 now.
Can’t play at my own pace. Can’t take breaks. Must pay and play 30 days in blocks. Bad, bad, bad business model. 13€ is by a margin my most expensive subscription. (Next one is around 5€.)
To sum it up? It’s a lot of money for having less fun.
Overall I feel it’s a game worth 20-40€ yearly, grand total.
That said, I really enjoyed my strolls around Outland Nagrand in retail the last two days. So it’s not all bad. I’d gladly play just a few hours a month, when I feel like it.
I think that the experience of a lot of players since around Legion is that an expansion starts with all sorts of systems, mostly barely working or working in unpleasant ways, such as how slow Anima was in the first few patches or how horrible it was to get your legendary in Legion.
I think a lot of players are waiting for 10.1 or 10.2 maybe even 10.3 until the systems are made less annoying and catch up systems are in place.
Even the bad expansions were usually ok (or at least much better) in their final patches.
Even though DF is lighter on such systems the players are still holding off for now.
There’s 2 versions of WoW currently.
DF and WoTLK.
Naturally the community will be split.
For many years there wasn’t a serious competitor to WoW, now there is: FF online.
For me at least DF has everything I wanted:
The Horde and the Alliance have a ceasefire in place and leaders that will respect it.
Adventures in a new territory, where exploration is in place.
No borrowed power (for the moment).
Sylvanas isn’t present, unlike in the other 3 expansions.
Simple gearing. No Artifact weapons, no Azerite armour, etc.
I don’t have time to play classic as leveling/gearing Alts and transmog collection take all of my available time.
As for FF, I would rather play with what I’m used to. Seem it in YouTube, looks interesting, but I have no time for it.
