Why did MoP sell so little compared to previous expansions?

[Shiny212]

Dunno, I loved MoP since day 1. Locations were brilliant, the theme was awesome, and before Hitler garrosh hit the servers with his bad acting and fucking orcs people had enough already, it had actually grim, dark and very interesting story. Certainly much better than Warlords of We're cutting development costs, that's for sure.

Corporate had to cut dev costs after MoP lost them ca. 3 million subs

[Provenance]

Pandas

/10slowdown

Day. made.

[Sansnom]

I would personally put most of the blame on Cata, with some on the Panda theme.


For the life of me, I have NO IDEA why people would be turned off by the Bear-people in a game already invested in Cow-people, Dog-people, and Goat-people from space... but it seemed to matter somehow.

It is the connection with Kung Fu Panda. Some people had trouble disconnecting the two I guess. Personally, I wonder how else Pandarens could be depicted in the game. They are fat, or rather, well rounded. Well, that is pretty much they are in real life. A lean Panda would look ridiculous.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Corporate had to cut dev costs after MoP lost them ca. 3 million subs

Nah they had to train more people because they hired more to help create more content. They also tried to split the team but that backed fired as well and that caused the content shortage. They took a different approach with legion and the amount of content has quadrupled.

[Grumpy Old Man]

The best explanation for that, even if I think it's a silly reason, is panda hate.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Corporate had to cut dev costs after MoP lost them ca. 3 million subs

Really isn't any evidence other then coincidence.

[Deleted]

I thought the panda theme to be extremely boring, probably as bad as the orc burn-out.

[Hexxidecimal]

You mean you don't remember the hundreds upon thousands of posts on various forums from people bitching about being able to fly once they reached level cap and paid 2k gold or whatever it was?

Yeah, neither do I.

No no I DO remember there was this post that capped like 10 times about it...oh wait...that was the lack of flight in WoD...nm.

[Pull My Finger]

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"

Someone here is terribly miserable while everyone else is happy. Guess who's who.

[Shiny212]

Really isn't any evidence other then coincidence.

I said it in jest, I have no idea why warlords had "less content" although I sorta don't feel that way at all. MoP did preside over a huge sub loss, about 3 million.

[Veyne]

A lot of people just weren't feeling the panda theme. It even came down to the marketing of the physical product. Less people probably impulsively bought it because a picture of a panda on the box has a considerably lower "cool" factor than the previous expansions' art such as a badass dragon or a sinister looking dark knight.

[Deleted]

In the wake of Cata's disappointment, having Pandas which were controversial for some people didn't help. People didn't see WARcraft in MoP, they saw Pandacraft which is a shame because outside of a few launch problems and the 14 month SoO, MoP was one of the better expansions that I'd at least put it up against WotlK since people like to forget the many bad design decisions that Wrath had.

[mistahwilshire]

Dragon Soul's length combined with MoP's theme not being as intriguing to the masses as WoD and Legion naturally are. Really all there is to it.

[BigChillin]

It is the connection with Kung Fu Panda. Some people had trouble disconnecting the two I guess. Personally, I wonder how else Pandarens could be depicted in the game. They are fat, or rather, well rounded. Well, that is pretty much they are in real life. A lean Panda would look ridiculous.

As I mentioned earlier, but it's not only that but the fact that the entire expansion was based off of those fat kung-fu pandas. Pandas alone introduced as a race (without the entire expansion themed around them) would have been fine.

Also I personally wasn't a big fan of Pandaland as a continent, but I guess that kind of goes along with the overall theme.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I said it in jest, I have no idea why warlords had "less content" although I sorta don't feel that way at all. MoP did preside over a huge sub loss, about 3 million.

My subjective belief is trying to adhere to yearly expansions. I hope they NEVER do that shit again. I never even liked the idea and I thought Wod was ok. Not better then Mists. Loved the new character models.

[Deleted]

It was a lame, joke expansion I guess. Besides, furries and Asian themed things aren't somethings most people are looking for in WoW.

I thought about starting WoW at the end of Cata but chose not to and instead waited for WoD as I like classic Tolkien style fantasy with elves, orcs, dwarves etc. especially with darker undertones. Lighthearted, childish, comical stuff and most Asian themed things just don't interest me.. at least not the stereotypical stuff.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

My subjective belief is trying to adhere to yearly expansions. I hope they NEVER do that shit again. I never even liked the idea and I thought Wod was ok. Not better then Mists. Loved the new character models.

I think yearly expansion are possible but they need to hire more people and train them. They need to basically set up a team for something like that rather than just turn wow into a social experiment for two years.

[DeltrusDisc]

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.

Last I checked, the largest sub drop was actually in the first 6 months of WoD.

Oh, look at that... just look at that mountain at the beginning of WoD, bringing it back up to MoP's highest numbers, and then look at that STEEEEEEEP fall to below what MoP ever dropped to. Please don't tell people they should "bother" googling it, if you can't even get it right yourself.

[Deleted]

While most of my favorite individual zones in WoW are not in MoP, I actually consider MoP as the best at overall story quality throughout an expansion.

The expansion was kind of duo-toned though, jumping from whimsy to evil incarnate based on location, so I can see that confusing some people.

oh yeah i think mop did the best job of any expansion at story telling and the way they progressed the story was really good, and things like the introduction of treasures and those story scroll things made leveling slightly more interesting than previous expansions. blizzard kept their word when they said that the start of mists was the calm before the storm, the way the story progressed was really good, i really liked the krasarang wilds horde v alliance patch and the destruction of vale of eternal blossoms, some of blizzards best work lately imo

hwoever on the surface of MoP and at release the theme did seem to be whimsy pandas that were hard to take seriously , i think they failed in selling the darker side of the expansion, which is where MoP really shone.

[Ashkiman]

One word: Pandas