Why did MoP sell so little compared to previous expansions?

[McNeil]

So with the new sale figures, I noticed that 3 expansions after WotLK sold just as much during tis first day... with the one exception of MoP, which did far worse. 3.3M first day versus 2.7M first WEEK:

Legion - 3.3 Million Copies Sold
Blizzard published sales numbers for Legion, with the total copies sold on Day 1 matching Warlords of Draenor and Cataclysm:

• The Burning Crusade - 2.4M First Day, 3.5M First Month
• Wrath of the Lich King - 2.8M First Day, 4M First Month
• Cataclysm - 3.3M First Day, 4.7M First Month
• Mists of Pandaria - 2.7M First Week
• Warlords of Draenor - 3.3M First Day
• Legion - 3.3M First Day

What could have halted this expansion from doing as good as the others? Is it just the pandaren theme which people may find ''childish'', or is there more to it? Maybe patch 4.3 performed so bad that people massively lost interest, but then I could say the same thing for patch 6.2, but apparently Legion still managed to perform just as good for its first day.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Flying at release.
Pandas.
Coming out after the worst expac in the history of WOW(yes, worse than WOD).
Coming out after the worst raid in WOW.
LFR.

[Kazgrel]

Cata launched following in the wake of WotLK, so you had somewhere around 11-12 million subscribers at the time.

MoP launched following in the wake of Cata and the destruction it wrought on sub numbers. I don't remember where they were exactly, 7.2-7.3 million, maybe, at that time. MoP launch brought sub numbers back up to 9 million and change during the fiscal quarter of it's release.

- - - Updated - - -

Flying at release.

Uh, what?

You anti-flying folks should join the olympic gymnastics teams for your respective countries with all the stretching you're doing.

[Leyre]

Pandas

/10slowdown

[liquidfear]

Flying at release.
Pandas.
Coming out after the worst expac in the history of WOW(yes, worse than WOD).
Coming out after the worst raid in WOW.
LFR.

you seriously thought cata was worse than wod? i agree that dragon soul was straight up garbage, but the first 2 raid tiers were great, PvP was good in cata, there was no LFR for most of it so you actually had to pug shit. i dunno, i just dont get the hate for cataclysm (apart from dragon soul)

[Traveler Voltin]

panda hate

[Snorri]

If MoP had launched after WOTLK instead it would have sold better. Cataclysm made a lot of people leave.

[Eon Drache]

Cata launched following in the wake of WotLK, so you had somewhere around 11-12 million subscribers at the time.

MoP launched following in the wake of Cata and the destruction it wrought on sub numbers. I don't remember where they were exactly, 7.2-7.3 million, maybe, at that time. MoP launch brought sub numbers back up to 9 million and change during the fiscal quarter of it's release.

- - - Updated - - -



Uh, what?

You anti-flying folks should join the olympic gymnastics teams for your respective countries with all the stretching you're doing.

You mean Cata ended with 9 million and MoP brought it back to 10. Cata wasn't that bad Jeez.

[Huehuecoyotl]

All this tells me is that apparently Blizzard can screw things up as much as they like. Have content droughts as long as they like. Monetize things up the wazzoo. And there are still millions of people willing to give them "one last chance" and throw money at them. At this point I am genuinely starting to wonder if Blizzard are actually conducting a gigantic social experiment here.

"Damn, I was certain that WoD was so shit it was bound to keep some of them away for good. But they keep coming back. What do we want to try next?"

"Hmm. How about selling raid gear in the shop? We haven't tried that yet. Oh, and lets make it look WAY better than the stuff you can get from Mythic raids. Just for lolz"

[RoKPaNda]

Coming out after the worst expac in the history of WOW(yes, worse than WOD).
Coming out after the worst raid in WOW.
LFR.

Was with you for those first two, but LFR is one of the few things that carried WoW forward after the tragedy that was Cata. It allowed casuals who would never have raided and never will raid to see the endgame and have meaningful character progression - AND their participation in LFR which dwarfed that of organized raiding mind you, justified the resources to make large raid tiers again. So actually a lot of what the game has going for it today is a direct result of the introduction of LFR. LFR has been amazing for this game.

[Shiny212]

Take a wild guess.

Pandas, china, the whole theme was uninteresting to a great many of their fans.

There has never been that much division. Heck, at the announcement, at blizzcon, the room filled with diehard fans dressed up as horde and alliance, Chris Metzen had to defend the idea minutes after announcing it, because people thought it was a joke, booed and shouted for the then speculated expansion emerald dream.


and I have no idea where people are pulling the notion that Cataclysm made most people leave from. MoP, not only sold the least copies, it also presided over the largest sub-drop in WoW history. All readily available info if you bother googling it.

[Kazgrel]

You mean Cata ended with 9 million and MoP brought it back to 10. Cata wasn't that bad Jeez.

The numbers may have swelled at the end in anticipation of MoP, perhaps.

I want to think Cata had ended in the 7m range (range being 7-7.9m, not "around" 7m exactly), and MoP ended at 6.8m. I'm not in a spot where I can fact check, currently.

[Deleted]

it was a boring premise for an expansion to many people, pandas were not appealing, monk was not a class people have been wanting for a long time, cata probably put people off for a bit. i think mop was one of the best expansions really, but i can see why a lot of people would be put off by it

[ShiyoKozuki]

you seriously thought cata was worse than wod? i agree that dragon soul was straight up garbage, but the first 2 raid tiers were great, PvP was good in cata, there was no LFR for most of it so you actually had to pug shit. i dunno, i just dont get the hate for cataclysm (apart from dragon soul)

Only because CAT added flying to the entire world. Content/class wise, WOD is the worst expansion/MMO ever created.

[Sesto]

Pandas were a big reason. It didn't really matter how good the actual content is, a lot of people were just immediately put off by Pandas.

See WoD for a counter example: a lot of people bought into it because of the advertising, even if the content was absolute shit.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Was with you for those first two, but LFR is one of the few things that carried WoW forward after the tragedy that was Cata. It allowed casuals who would never have raided and never will raid to see the endgame and have meaningful character progression - AND their participation in LFR which dwarfed that of organized raiding mind you, justified the resources to make large raid tiers again. So actually a lot of what the game has going for it today is a direct result of the introduction of LFR. LFR has been amazing for this game.

It was just how LFR was handled at first. How mythic(heroic at the time) guilds were exploiting it to gear up fast and stuff, it made gearing really awkward and awful. It also made dungeons irrelevant when they were harder than LFR

[Lixo]

Coming out after the worst expac in the history of WOW(yes, worse than WOD).
Coming out after the worst raid in WOW.

Just... no.

[Deleted]

Pandas, that's all. It's all a matter of marketing

[Deleted]

Pandas were a big reason. It didn't really matter how good the actual content is, a lot of people were just immediately put off by Pandas.

See WoD for a counter example: a lot of people bought into it because of the advertising, even if the content was absolute shit.

yep many people just wrote off the entire expansion because "lolpandas", ignoring the fact that they do look quite goofy MoP imo had some of the best content in WoW and i loved the monk class, and it introduced pet battles <3

but so many on these and the official forums just bashed the expansion due to the pandas and how it was the worst thing ever made, catering to children etc

WoDs marketing was much better, and its a lot easier to sell an expansion about orcs, demons, war etc than it is selling an expansion about discovering pandaland

[BigChillin]

Flying at release.
Pandas.
Coming out after the worst expac in the history of WOW(yes, worse than WOD).
Coming out after the worst raid in WOW.
LFR.

Honestly for a very casual fan, the panda theme probably threw a lot of people off. Like the entire expansion was based around fucking pandas. The commercials that were playing on TV at the time showed fucking pandas throwing down karate moves. That type of shit doesn't exactly appeal to most super casual people (a big chunk of the customer base).

I played and raided during that expansion up until the Throne of Thunder, but I absolutely hated that whole expansion because

1. The theme sucked ass
2. There was not one memorable raid in the first tier of MoP. Like, even Highmaul felt much more like a raid than the first tier of MoP (I don't even remember the names of those raids).
3. LFR made the raids feel much less epic whenever you could just plow through the dungeon before you step foot into an actual raid (waters down the epicness of the raid IMO).

Taken at face value, out of every expansion that Blizzard has released, the theme of MoP easily had the least amount of appeal to the average person. BC was the first expansion released, and outlands was a very cool concept. Wrath had the cool snow theme with a badass boss at the end. Cataclysm had this big ass dragon to fight, and changing of all the zones. WoD had a cool, outlands like continent with a big ass war going on. Legion has a demonic army invading from the equivalent of hell. MoP had.... Pandas with a Kung-Fu Panda themed continent...

Every one of those themes is much easier to market to the general masses than fucking pandas.