Dragonflight will be the expansion that killed World of Warcraft

First of all, I don’t want this to sound like another “WoW is dead” cringe doom post. It’s not. I want this to sound like a genuine feedback to Blizzard. I know I’ve been nagging about Dragonflight ever since the beginning, but today I got to reddit (yeah, I know, don’t mention it), and saw the topic on “How do you feel about Dragonflight” and the most liked comments were something like “Dragonflight is the most awesome expansion I have no desire to play”, or “It’s awesome, I log in twice a week, respects my time”, “It’s a good expansion that I left a month ago, have no interest in it”, “Everyone from my guild has said how awesome it is, and than haven’t logged in for months, my guild is empty”…

And all these comments align with everything that’s been happening with the game. The game being emptier than ever, que times for a raid released like a week ago being like 10 mins, Dragonflight being on sale pretty much since it came out, no hype for new patches at all, a new cinematic released barely reaching 100k views on Youtube (during SL times it would be a million easily, not to mention former expansions), Bellular making videos “WoW has never been better, but there’s no hype at all for it”, Asmongold claiming how Dragonflight is awesome while not playing it at all, generally all streamers views being but a fraction of what they’ve been during previous expansions, etc…

Than I thought about why is this? What happened? What makes Dragonflight so good? Yeah… what makes Dragonflight so good? Story? Pretty much non existent after Raszageth, and little story that does exist is let’s say “not that good” (again after Raszageth died). Zones? Huge and empty, can’t hold a candle to SL zones. Even the art has visibly deteriorated from SL. Open world content? Non existent and what does exist is by far the worst it has ever been (that’s why there’s barely any casuals left), plus the zones, encounters, quests and events seem to be designed by people that don’t play the game at all and have no idea what the game needs. Raids? Average, worse than SL. Dungeons? Again, much worse than SL. I don’t do pvp, but I’ve seen people complaining about it all the time. I don’t do Mythic+, but again I’ve seen people complain how it sucks all the time, and considering how good the Dungeons are… On top of all that, the game is easily the buggiest it has ever been, balance is easily the worst it has ever been, performance not to mention…

All in all Dragonflight is a bad expansion that has a good reputation (kinda opposite of what happened to BfA)… and things like these happen to such games. People are gonna go along with the narrative of how good this game is, and then go play the game, not have fun and leave and loose interest in it. Bad reputation damages the game, but a bad game kills it. When someone leaves the comment “good game that I have no interest in playing”, that’s what kills the game for that person, and it seems to be the general narrative for this expansion.

Further more, when you log into the current patch zone, Zaralek Caverns, and see it almost empty you definitely know something is wrong. That didn’t happen in SL, Korthia and Zereth Mortis were always filled, let alone Nazjatar or Uldum/Vale of Eternal Blossoms…

And yes, I know, T&E, MrgM, Hazzelnuttygames, Kelani, etc… and some people online are all gonna claim, as always since the beginning of DF, that it’s because SL was horrible, so it killed the game, DF stood no chance and has a massive weight on it’s shoulders… but I think that after 8 months it’s safe to say that that’s not the case and that SL has always been more popular and had more players than Dragonflight did and does. People lost interest in the game in Dragonflight, despite the good reputation. As simple as that.

Apologies for a long post, but I had to say this.

29 Likes

ok but it’s literally in the title

we are also a few weeks away from a patch so who had to do things is done by now

you should consider this on a financial basis. did this expansion make profit to the company? if yes, it’s a good expansion. story and personal considerations by the players on the lore and stuff matter little in the long run… especially if everyone keeps pre-ordering the next one.

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Except it is.

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You mean same as TBC was?
And Wrath was?
And LFD was?
And Cata was?
And MoP DEFINITELY was?
And most certainly WoD was?
And legion artifacts were?
And Bfa indeed was?
And Shadowland absolutely was?

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Even Vanilla. :rofl:

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It very much is the same.

Oh most certainly not. Nathria we can debate this. Sanctum and especially sepulcher were flat out dogpoop.

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Do you think it would be on sale pretty much since the day it came out if it did? Yeah, I don’t think so.

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I love the game in it’s current state. You shouldn’t have to log in every day to perform chores. I log in every day because I want to do things on my main or my alts. If someone simply wants to raid log they can.

On a subscription based game it should never be about forcing players to log in daily.

However I do appreciate that those that considered World Quests their main form of content are feeling there is less of it. WQs reset twice a week apart from Zara Cavs where you get a couple every day.

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It’s the exact opposite of what I’ve said in the comment.

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the financial model in gaming has long moved from just selling copies.

we are in the era of microtransactions and paid services, that’s where the good bucks are, and that’s what makes games like this profitable beyond any comment we might have about lore, classes, mechanics etc.

So true.Bfa was way better than what we have now.The problem was coming after Legion which was amazing,so people judged it for not being better than its predecessor.

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Is so then it’s only by being too little to late.

In the way that someone savaged by a bear who gets a band-aid an hour later would probably die. Did the band-aid kill them or the bear?

Wow got savaged by the previous 3 expansions and it might well be that DF is only a band-aid applied too late. But DF isn’t over yet so there is time for better.

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The only issue with sanctum was shard. Sepulcher was good. Yes iknow it was “too hard” for the “casuals”. But as we’ve seen with recent threads those that complain arent casuals theyre lazy.

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For someone who didn’t want to make a “wow is ded” cringepost you failed right from the start.

“So I was on reddit…”.

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Except it isn’t.

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Sanctum of Holddps. Nuff said.

Also Sylvanas being the easiest and most boring cutting edge end boss only after Xavius.

The raid was specifically tuned and designed around Echo and Limit. So no, this had nothing to do with the raid simply being hard.

Sure

Im thinking more normal and heroic

Ye on normal and heroic it was less of an issue. But even then the raid was nothing extraordinary. You still held dps on a lot of the bosses if you were progressing these difficulties instead of just zerging them down (and zerging down applies to pretty much every normal and heroic raid. Especially in combination with a lot of loot sources nowadays)

My biggest gripe with Dragonflight is the story and the themes in general… It is just bland. Take some of the zones. Ohn’ahran Plains (Or however that is written) and the centaurs bore me to death. The Azure Span is nicely designed, but Kalec is an anime cringelord.

It’s not like the Razsageth plot was that interesting… She was just like this generic screaming villain that beat the sheet aspects effortlessly every time she was present, that to me doesn’t seem very interesting. Her design was kinda cool. I think the whole cast of characters is incredibly bland, and that Blizzard is playing it way too safe. And, because of them playing it too safe, I doubt we are ever going to see a good plotline again. But the Infinite Dragonflight patch is almost out, let’s see what they do

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The infinite stuff is always interesting wonder if well get an expac based around it in the future, maybe visit more important pieces of wow history