Do you think that people are tired of wow? Or maybe two back to back bad expansions permanently damaged the game?
It might also be that the content is just not that exceptional? Personally i think that m+ potential is mostly untapped, along with the issues that m+ had since it’s inception, and the 2 raids, while being good, haven’t really been great. In fact i would say that they are pretty average overall. if not a little below average.
At least the talent system is good, and most specs feel better to play frankly speaking, some have been massively improved by the reintroduction of talents.
Imagine you had a long time girlfriend you loved. One time you had a really nasty fight and she said to you things one doesn’t say. A year later, she’s changed and things are better and stable, but it’s not the same, and probably never will.
That’s how a lot of people feel about Shadowlands. So they don’t want to come back. Although I think they should. I’m all for second chances
Didn’t Blizzard stop reporting numbers way, way back in the day? Like WoD or some such?
Not to say the active player count isn’t lower than it was some years ago (this is almost certainly the case for a variety of reasons), but are there official numbers available?
DF has lost a remarkable amount of players DURING the expansion. This is because at the end of the day the expansion is just bad. The drop in numbers for actitivies like Raids, m+ or PvP have been so massive that anyone arguing about retention or whatever is just on copium. Ignore anything they have to say.
Dungeons: Terrible, I am sorry devs, it is true, DF dungeons are the worst I have ever seen in modern WoW.
PvP: Literally abandoned, has zero devs. Massive waits because no one wants to heal. Disaster.
Raids: No soul, terrible aesthetics, no effort put into it. Mediocre at best. Also it is literally a DRAGON EXPANSION, why do we not just have a one boss mini dragon-raid or something? Just complete lack of creativity on Blizzard with them being on maintenance mode.
Open World: Dead within WEEKS of the newest patch. I could not even find grps for rares in ZC in the 3rd week of the patch. No power progression system in the open world (which is historically why ppl played this game).
Gameplay: More bloated and complex than ever. Even added tier sets in .1 patch which added complexity that requires weak auras just to perform the rotation for some specs. WoW players have historically always been terrible at the game. So this added complexity is just too much, and makes people just wanna quit. Video games are about fun, not going to WoWhead to learn annoying rotations and installing WAs and addons to play the game. Also just look at something like the amount of defensives a class like Mage has. Ridiculous.
Lore / Theme: Terrible. World of Warcraft was grimdark, now the only dark part about the game is listening to characters talk about depression / trauma. Which we apparently have to do because Blizzard does not trust its playerbase of 30 year old dads and mums to understand that genocide and murder is bad. So Blizzard has to be like: murder happened and now Dragon person is sad and depressed… Because… You know murder is bad… Do you understand murder is bad yet? No, okay here is Anduin or Thrall or Baine who is depressed because doing evil stuff is bad and has consequences.
The game is just boring from lore to activities. The game needs something really massive as a new feature for it to flame that spark again.
Its also not just one thing that is wrong its multible F-ups from Blizzard over the years that has caused them to bleed out their player/fanbase from game design to how the whole company is being captained to rocks faster than Costa Concordia.
ABK don’t share numbers any more beyond what they report to shareholders (which is heavily regulated for accuracy in the US) - the TL;DR of which is that Dragon flight has had the best player retention in modern times.
Any numbers scraped from APIs and third party websites are at best limited reflections on narrow groups of players - and I’m pretty confident any website that did get accurate numbers would swiftly receive a visit from ABKs legal team.
I personally don’t doubt numbers are down (the lack of any announcement from ABK at the start of the xpac trumpeting it’s launch numbers, something they did for both BfA and SL, is quite telling) - but all the indications are that the game is doing a better job holding on to players (again the lack of the noisy mass exodus of players to competing MMOs we saw in both 8.1 and 9.1 tells it’s own story).
Different people like different things in Video games and my (or anyone else’s) personal views don’t really tell us much about any video game.
DF is a big change compared to the last 3-4 expansions and it’s inevitable that not everyone will like it - and that’s fine! 2023 is probably the best year for new high quality game releases since 2007 (and potentially will eclipse that year) so there’s no shortage of alternatives for folks not enjoying how the game is evolving.
For me? I’m a playing a lot more of the game that I was during 9.1, and my friends list is a lot busier than it’s been since early BfA.
First of all, there is no official source of low numbers, only speculations over indirect metrics (twitch views, google search mentions, etc). But nonetheless, my assumptions:
The most important IMO. Times of MMORPGs are gone. Now we are in the era of session and mobile games, when people get their fun fast without big effort investments in the game.
Game is disaster for newcomers, it just can’t compete with a modern standards of player fast onboarding. New players need to get through lot of frustration and help of others to start having some fun.
Almost no “casual” long term content. Only M+ and Raids give significant long term progression. If one don’t participate in that - one can freely unsubscribe after finishing the story until next patch.
No huge “parrot” at the face of players for retention. No endless AP grind to become stronger. No dozens of mounts to farm. No endless legendary/titanforged randoms. Seems like lot of tmogs and dragon customizations are not enough to keep players for a long time.
Story of expansion is blunt and boring.
A slow pace of updates. I really envy Genshin Impact in this point of view: some small new event every week, some big event every 2-3 weeks, minor patch every 1-2 month, huge expansion patch every half of the year. WoW in contrast has >6 month season, during which game stays mostly the same. But I understand that WoW and Genshin are completely different games and work differently.
Not all those reasons I found bad. For example, I love that game has no endless grind and now it’s possible to reach “the end” of progression and just chill out during events, farm old stuff, and just relax from the WoW in other games.
Ill tell you why;
*2 previous expansions had such a small amount of content and releasing it lasted so long, majority of playerbase just left and most of it won’t come back because;
DF reveal was worst of all that ever existed. Lore looked boring, caused 0 hype,
nothing happened,
additionally- feature reveal also looked like NOTHING is delivered, just zone and raid+ dungeons while other reveals always had something else…looked like another expansion that will be low in content
world content has a lot of stuff that is only worth doing 1-2 times max
music in zones has 0 climate in it, remember music from classic/wotlk/tbc zones? That enigmatic sound made most tedious and boring questlines bearable cuz music actually adds flavour to zone. If you play wow without music it feels more boring overall too.
for new players having to repeat quest and VERY POOR NAVIGATION to help avoid repeating ot, showing how to continue game etc
DF is geat expansion we got since legion, devs finally realized that delivering more content in shorter time is something that is needed to hold mmorpg alive.
But they did EVERY step to make it look boring and they don’t care about things that are so important these days. MAINLY LORE and hype.
You can make interesting lore about dragons, just not 3+ pegi cartoon fairytale way like it’s done
Does anybody know how WoW compares to other MMOs?
I think that is the issue TBH. MMOs just arent as popular as they once were, attention spans are way shorter to suit mobile games.
So new players are less likely to want to invest the time in an MMO and alot of the older players dont play as much just because of other life commitments. I know I dont play nearly as much as I did in Vanilla, not because I dislike the game…I just have other stuff going on.
My personal experience is, WoW is designed as a treatmill where you have to constantly run out of FOMO
That creates fatigue and exhaustion , much like a job.
I took a break of 5 months and it worked wonders, Im so excited to play it again.
But this is not the solution, the solution is for the devs to create content that doesn`t make you burn out. For example, the rifts are amazing…engaging and rewarding. This is the path Blizzard should take
What? Dragonflight’s music is amazing because it’s so chill! I spent a few hours per week at the start of the expansion farming herbs and ores partly because the music was so pleasant. (I don’t anymore because the prices are so low.) Loud, epic music is super annoying as background music.
Anyway, even if the player numbers are low, I think the expansion is very good. Blizzard seems committed to delivering more content at a pace much higher than in the past, so I’m happy.
Possible reasons for possibly low numbers:
Summer time. People play games less when they spend more time outside.
Late season. Once 10.2 comes out, I’m sure there will be more player activity again.
Season 2 M+ balance got messed up really badly by Augvokers.
I agree it is very good. The music of dragonflight is nice overall, but where is the epic cool stuff? I watched legion content and I saw broxigar try to kill sargeras as the first mortal to ram a sword into this dark titan. That’s cool and epic. Then in dragonflight the most epic content I’ve seen is the sarkareth fight, which is not even that epic actually, the fyrrak assaults, which get old fast, and the Ohnaran plains vibe, which is cool and I like the tribal theme of it, but then all the NPC’s are sterile and just teach me their IRL statutes of their company with voice lines like “be respectful”, or this emotional quest like this one centaur being sad and then we bring taivan to cheer him up. Taivan is a good boy, but the centaur stories are a bit of an emotional soap opera. Yeah, sure, I am respectul, but does it fit to a savage centaur? I don’t think it does. The vibe is off, and it’s not epic. I hope the next expansion or patch will be more metal and cool, and not so disney childlike.
