You can see currently from the classic era realms, and from the old expansions with 15 month long patches.
People return en mass to the game when new content is out and there are things to do, the faster people finish with those things, or the faster they get disillusioned, the faster they quit.
The game is a mmo, that means that the more people are online, the more people believe the game is thriving.
Blizzard is trying to keep a patch cadence with extra events, so that they keep the “hardcore” players during the season, and the casuals between them with events. Without seasons or good patch content, you end up with a “stale” world that players return sporadically, just to find a barren game, and leave again.
That is correct and exactly why I think we shouldn’t have seasons. Because as you said, people get hyped, come back, and they shouldn’t burn throught it fast. So I feel like that means it’s better to go back to expansions like wotlk, where the game launches, and we get a massive, slow journey. Frequent new content just makes the hypes very weak, especially if the frequent new content is something people burn fast through with lower quality. I think it’s better to have way slower progression with way more content and way less frequent releases, where Blizzard takes their time to properly cook something.
Back in WotLK you did not have slow journey, you got middle schoolers that were new to the internet. Information was way more restricted than now, we had way less community resources, and people were way less optimal.
Now the middle schoolers are 30 years old living in the digital age. The content that satiated them back then for 1 month, now is over in 3 days. In vanilla players view T2 as the ultimate reward because they had no idea what it meant to raid. Now molten core was released and a group of 20something people not even level 60 managed to clear it first.
The game did not change. We changed, and the game is trying tooth and nail to find a way to keep us playing.
I mean that’s factually not true. The game changed massively. The internet also existed in 2009, where information was available. There are always gonna be people, who optimize the fun out of the game, but the difference is that Blizzard has not designed the game for this type of behavior. In TWW they stopped making the game for the people, who just want to play a slow, long-term progression RPG. Even in BFA, Blizzard primarily designed the game like in wotlk for the type of players, who take the boat to Bolarus and just quest and read the story without any prior knowledge. There was a way smaller emphasis on seasons even then.
But now Blizzard makes the game for people, who just wanna rush everything and don’t care about quality. Blizzard made the game for a type of player, that only wants to rush towards their endgame activity or stare at some completionist addon.
Can’t speak for others, but for me the 11.1.5 and 11.1.7 patches are what made season 2 playable.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that everything in those patches was to my liking, but overal it added activities, systems or elements that got me to play some more again. Because the 11.1 stuff wasn’t doing it for me for the most part: I did not (and still do not) like the Undermine zone. I’m sick and tired of being underground. I always thought goblins were okay, but the heavy focus on them and the crime/politics themes they went for just didn’t appeal to me at all.
So yeah… The 11.1.x patches were making the game better. Imo.
Between 11.1.5 until 11.1.7 I played M+. The implementation of OBR made me stop playing it, and I was generally negative too due to the low quality of the story content, because I was craving for so long to see what happened to the Arathi Highland just to see this vandalism on the wow lore. So 11.1.7 was my season-ending at 2.7k rio roughly
Sorry, what? Did you even play back then? BFA was a failed attempt to replicate the success of legion with systems layered on top of systems. It was the complete opposite to WotLK.
For all intents and purposes, WotLK was the death of classic, and gave way to wow 2, which spawned from cata to wod. Legion until now can be considered wow 3.
They try to make a game for everyone, both the hardcore and the hypercasuals. They know that they have to keep the game deep in order to keep the long term players that want to play the game a lot, but still need the casual game events in order to give something to players that play the game really casually.
In BFA most casual players had a similar experience as in wotlk. It took a long time to level to 110 with a massive amount of good story content. The average joe player is not even bothering with the systems. This is stuff that was only annoying for the hardcore endgame players. Most people likely just enjoyed the vibe, couldn’t fly, and did some random activities like world pvp, world quests, side quests, Raid, etc. Of course for the people who were mainly into endgame, BFA was a different experience, than for the average joe.
Some content creators have created a narrative distortion between how the game is for some random players versus for someone, who wants to play on endgame at high level.
Wow used to feel like and RPG with other people there. Now it’s super gamefied and feels more like a drop in coop live service game. Even the quest design has been gamefied you go here do two tasks within spitting distance then get sent to the next area and repeat over and over.
There’s nothing wrong with it.as many peoplesaythe audience changed. People who play retail don’t want to interact with people. Everyone is solo and no one really cares what other people are doing. I don’t care either anymore. I’m not here to make “friends”. I don’t even know how you find a guild (guild finder is borked.)
Old wow was great in design but it was too good. That’s why people got super addicted and neglected RL. Social aspect replaced real life connections. Now I can treat ithe game as a drop in and out game without any FOMO if I skip seasons because the game is basically the same thing no matter when you start or quit.
I have the slight impression that you started in BFA, you can correct me if i’m wrong.
But to tell you the truth, no. BFA was not slow in any way. It was the same as Legion and SL, we blasted through leveling the night it was released in an 8 hour play session.
We farmed islands just for the grind and to unlock the heart of azeroth powers, and did the same m+ and raids we did in legion and still do now. The differences are small.
I think you vastly overestimate the numbers of those “avarage joes” and just conflate your personal experience with how things were back then.
BFA had massive problems for most of the playerbase, it had the usual hype at the start, with a STRONG FALLOFF. It needed 2 patches in order to actually get good in the last season, and then, it benefitted from the pandemic.
Generally I think you conflate your own limited experience with how the game actually was.
No, I don’t think I am. I think vast majority of people were not in the seasonal endgame grind. Especially in BFA I think the very big war campaign was the main content for a fair number of players. Most wow players are not playing the whole expansion. It’s normal for many to just level to max, do the story, and maybe clear raid once, and quit after. That’s why I think it’s really important to go back to how Blizzard has made expansions in Wotlk or MoP, where the initial experience is massive. I think content droughts are fine and healthy, because it gives them time to cook, and it gives players time to catch up too, especially if we get rid of seasons again, and go back to progressive raid tiers.
You have to be trolling right? you do know that blizzard is wanting to do a expansion every 18 months? so what do you want just 2 patches lasting 9 months each ? You have to be trolling because nobody wants this.
Cataclysm:
Peaked at over 12 million subs
Ended with about 9.1 million subs.
Lost 3 million subs during the expansion — considered a fail.
Legion:
Peaked at an estimated 10 million subs
Ended with an estimated 7.5 million subs
Lost 2.5 million subs during the expansion — considered a success.
Why does Legion get so much favorable bias? Especially when you consider that Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria performed just as well as, or even better than, Legion in subscriber numbers — yet Legion receives rave reviews while the others are often overlooked or even mocked.
If it’s not subscriber count, then what metric defines its success?
Thing is we do not know for sure what numbers Legion had because they stopped reporting after the 1st 1/4 WoD when they lost over 3 million subs due to flying and cut content and people bailed.
Its like saying SL had the fastest selling expansion since WOTLK but we do not know how much it sold or how many it lost and people hated it.
If you have 100% proof that is the numbers and not just hear say about Legion i would love to see the facts on that.
Blizz wished that was true. If things were like you are describing, then all they have to do is take a step back (for them that means massively cutting cost, since they need way less people to design and ship that content), do what they did back in vanilla, and see wow boom again.
And still they do not do that, and throw all the money in the world trying to figure out with their data what works… weird…
It’s like the market changes and they need to respond to the user needs.
I am playing from 2005 and went from all the stages, from super casual, to casual raider, to semi hardcore. I can tell you with confidence that there is no single group that is the “vast majority” in wow. There are people that do 24121 different things and play from 1 day per year, to 20 hours per day.
The game needs the casuals that enjoy the story, just like it needs the hardcore players. It is an ecosystem that if it does not offer something to each group, it kind of falls apart.
Even though tbc brought flying and wotlk lfd, I really enjoyed those expansions. It was still wow to me.
Cata however, left the most sour taste in my mouth. It might as well have been a new game. It changed how the game played fundamentally. All for the worse.
There were some decent expansions but nothing close to the original trilogy. Whoever took over made sure to try to erase as much as possible from the trilogy. Must have been personal or something.
Mainly there is a consensus from the players that played those expansions (but individuals might have different experiences). Problem with population (apart from blizzard not reporting them) is that they are highly dependent on real world events. For reference check SL that blizzard shared that they had the most amount of players.
As for legion, it was considered such a success because most of the people remember it fondly. Reasons might include:
Introduction of the m+ system which actually became a 3rd pillar of the game.
Introduction of artifact weapons, which offered both a system for players to farm, but also rewards for collectors to chase after.
First expansion based on systems, which were novel for the time, and people received them warmly (legendaries, artifact weapons, etc).
On the other hand, for cataclysm people remember:
Hard heroic dungeons which a minority liked, and the vast majority complained for them.
Firelands being the only well received raid.
Introduction of LFR (which was hugely controversial and many people still hate today).