I am not sure anymore personally after the new Skyrim expansion announced for Elder Scrolls online. That game is still improving.
On the side we have a final fantasy mmorpg which is also still improving.
Then we have WoW which is declining. When do we determine that WoW isnt the best anymore?
When it hasnt got the most subscribers anymore? How many does WoW actually have?
I feel the only thing that extended WoW’s life as the best and biggest is WoW classic. The realms on BFA are empty.
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Most subs doesn’t equal being the best, for some WoW will always be the best and for others it never was.
WoW is and will probably remain the most successful MMO though even if the subs right now are lower than they’ve ever been(if that’s the case).
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You are posting this only on WoW forums, right?
Why not ask this on the FF forums, or ESO forums?
I can assure you, ESO has a bunch of problems akin to WoW, such as PvP is really a mess and if you think WoW PvP is bad, go ahead and try ESO PvP. Both aftermentioned MMO forums have the same amount of tunnelvisioned people who are focused on negativity, instead of objectivity.
Such as of the expansion, that is indeed cool.
But you did not notice, that most expansions of WoW bring not just a part of a land, but either an update to an old zone, but instead a land that has been spoken only in the lore and then -bayum- , you see Broken Isles. Oh, you heard there was a mysterious Pandaren race few in numbers on mainland of Azeroth (Kalimdor / Eastern Kingodm’s / Northrend ) -swoosh- Pandaria, finally!
Shadowlands is bringing a full new realm, come on, that is cool.
Shadowlands uprunes classes and tries to improve where devs sadly failed - doing the same in BfA.
Improved character customization, improved levelling experience and more stuff.
Gotta have hope if you really like and love the game.
If you wanna hate - you are free to do the same, just don’t find yourself enjoying ruining the fun for those who really still do have fun.
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Best or worse is purely subjective of course. What is for sure is that WoW used to be the most popular MMO by far in the past and has dominated the genre for several years.
How popular it is today though we don’t know for sure since no subscriber numbers are officially announced. We can do an educated guess and say that the subscriber base has shrunk significantly in BfA but i wouldn’t say that the bfa realms are empty right now, at least not the ones i am playing on at least.
However, after the release of 8.3, i expect this to change in the upcoming months and not for the best. This patch is really empty and shallow, I don’t think it can hold the interest of players for much longer.
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Short answer: ESO is not a good game. Don’t be fooled by it. It’s just an alt game that’s it.
Long answer: I have played ESO at launch to its current state. The story is boring as hell, the content is boring, the game lags alot, classes are unbalanced, server are always having some issues, there are 3 or 4 times maintaince per week or later and that takes about 6 hrs or a whole day to complete.
What sells the game is the combat, skills and PvP. Graphics maybe but I am not a fan of it due to frame rate issues.
Also, the IP as well. ESO is famous solely due to its TES titles.
Greymoor expansion, will be disappointing as usual but I am hyped for the vampire overhaul that’s about it…
Lastly, ESO is a bigger trash than WoW and if ppl say it otherwise thats because they are new to the game.
Edit: minor corrections ( typing on phone and auto correct )
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Thank you, basically that
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At its lowest WoW was estimated to have 2M subs in eu/na alone, while ESO and FF14 barely managed to reach 1.5M worldwide at their best
BFA is in a much better state now than it was back then (8.0.5) and it feels like there’s much more active players too. So yeah we can safely assume that WoW Is still the most popular western MMORPG (dunno if there’s a competitor in the east tbh)
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“Estimated” ← what a flex.
We don’t know the sub numbers thus we cannot use this metric.
BfA is in a much worse state now than it was back then (8.0.5) and it feels like there is much less shards making the illusion there are more players.
(subjective opion tho)
Is wow really still the best mmorpg? No.
It’s just an under-delivering cash grab at this point and I don’t expect shadowlands to change it.
Comparing FF14 and WoW latest expansions, FF14 wipes the floor with WoW in regards how it was received.
WoW is on a constant decline, other IP’s are on a constant rise.
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Lol no… its the buggiesr one maybe, but def. not the best
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There are so many people playing WoW that it kinda runs by itself. Enough players to create your own content even if the current content is bad. I wouldn’t rate WoW as super good, most people probably play it out of habit and because of the lack of competition. Played ESO for a long time and it does some things better than WoW but also has it’s issues (PvP is bad, lack of endgame content, devs had the glorious idea to prune all classes in an attempt to copy WoW, bad performance, lots of bugs).
Can’t comment on Final Fantasy but it doesn’t have any PvP afaik, that’s kinda ewww too. The grass is always greener on the other side I guess. However, Blizzard has 10+ more years of experience and more ressources than the competition. Considering that I’d say that WoW is in a very pity state but I still think that it is the biggest MMO out there (and that by a large margin to be honest).
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Machine learning analysis based on Google search results and trained on all the published sub count from vanilla to wod.
That’s the most accurate way to estimate sub count you could find.
Btw just checked and it’s 8.0, they never released a 8.0.5 patch mb.
My experience may be different than yours but I remember the empty servers, dead AH and much more complains on the forums than we currently have.
It was the worst raid of the expansion, the worst m+ affix, plagued with bugs, with much worse azerite system as you had to grind on a daily basis to be able to use your gear, no flying, and players just left legion and felt weak and deprived of their abilities and lego.
There was no open world content beside WQ and no reason to stay logged beside your weekly chest or raid farm which wasn’t even that rewarding because players were already geared at this point.
No matter how bad the current content is it still is superior to 8.0 in most if not all aspects (maybe TF > Corrupted gear if you dislike how impacting the RNG is ?)
8.1 was a breath of fresh air with the updated azerite gear and good raid/m+ affix as well as the wpvp assaults which were a blast imo.
November=>December 2018 was the worst part of BFA, hands down.
Remind me once they reach the 2M active sub count. Until then, WoW is still the most popular MMORPG on the market.
…yeah ? Maybe. They’ll most likely experience a growth in the long run but they are still far from reaching WoW’s standard.
If they couldn’t take down wow at its lowest point I doubt they’ll outmatch it if Blizzard releases a somewhat decent expansion, let alone a good one.
So far Shadowlands looks like it’ll deal with most of the issues of BFA (well, guess we can hardly trust their words at Blizzcon and have to wait for the alpha but it still sounds nice) so it shouldn’t take much for it to be okay’ish.
If that’s the case then Wow will stay number 1 for two years.
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You should better not check out the other mmos with their extrem and expensive real money shops.
If you think wow is cashgrab, then there is no mmorpg in existence which is not
The best thing is to try them and make up your own mind what you like best.
I will always end up back with WoW even if I try other games. For me they just don’t compare even when the game has done some less popular things.
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ESO was perfect apart from one key thing:
The combat sucks.
You just wanna spew nosense if you say things like that.
Wow have problem and bug yes. But personally, after trying other games of the genre I came back to WoW for a reason.
Of course taste is personal but talking like wow is poop and we are here wasting time when around there are super good MMORPG we are missing is not gonna make you look smart.
Also if wow is so bad, why you here wasting your time instead of going on your way playing those exceptionals MMORPG out there.
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WoW surely has a lot of issues. Other MMOs always have a no-go for me that is too large to ignore. For example:
- FF ban of damage meters / combat logs because it supposedly ruins other people’s experience. Well, it ruins my experience if I can’t avoid underperforming people
- ESO the entire combat system
- GW2 also the combat system, the raid mechanics are also not fun compared to WoW
MMOs are a dying genre. Most people prefer more casual kind of games with a flatter, simpler and shorter progression path. The times where people commit to one game and no-life it are over. In this dying genre, WoW is still doing the best of all.
What WoW really lacks, is:
- media attention (outside of the classic Hype window)
- young, new players
- well-made e-sports that does not collide with immersion and RPG elements
Everything else (grind, gear, classes etc) vary from iteration to iteration and are details. They’re going to be better someday and worse another day. It’s always been like that and isn’t fixable.
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I like your look on the thing altho it makes me sad. But there is truth in it.
ESO does not give gameplay satisfaction with its trash combat system. Have disappointing abilities and animations.
There is no real world pvp and there is no rated pvp at all. Also if you dont like balance in WoW then good luck in ESO 
Game promises freedom of choice but you are more limited than in WoW~ considering playable builds. Stamina users gameplay is basically the same for all classes.
Its better game than I expected but worse than I would hope for and clearly worse than WoW.
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Does it matter? I’m afraid I can’t answer your question, OP, but I know that it doesn’t matter much to me whether WoW is the best or not. It’s fun enough to play, and that’s what matters to me. 
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I do not play and will not other mmorpgs. WoW looks like it is still the best one, but at the same time the next month will be last for me until SL, or maybe I will not even return to the game anymore. I want to try to get BLR and after I will wait until SL, as rn the game is getting old for me really.