Why did MoP sell so little compared to previous expansions?

[Kezotar]

One had a few months pre-purchase/order.
The other had almost a year, in addition to draught of content.

[Kazgrel]

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.

Yup, and unlike Brian Williams, I was there; in fact I think I posted on one of the first couple of pages on that monstrosity (along with another hundred times, probably).

[dd614]

People were skeptical of Pandas and the end of Cataclysm was a reeeeally bad time for the game.

[BigChillin]

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.

This thread isn't about subscriptions though. It's about why MoP didn't sell as many copies as the others. Subscriptions are an entirely different story.

The OP asked why MoP didn't initially sell as many copies as the other 5 most recent expansions. Pandas and the Asian theme (which isn't as inherently easy to market to WoW's consumer base as a badass Lich King or a demonic army) are probably the biggest reasons for the low initial sales.

If I was a more casual WoW player, the Panda theme would probably have turned me off from buying the expansion quite a bit.

[RedNight at MMOC]

Kung Fu Pandas.

[PickleballAce]

Losing people to "well this is just Kung Fu Panda not Warcraft" was the best thing to ever happen to the game. It made the community significantly less insufferable. Shame some of them came back.

[Sansnom]

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.

Would be rather difficult to not have Pandarens almost central to everything given that it is on their land that was mysterious discovered. Besides, there were other races there too.

Personally, I would prefer to left Panderens being unplayable and unaffiliated with either factions. The fact Panderens are available to both faction is one of the thing I hated most about MoP. I can understand why they made that decision. It was either both gets or no one gets it. I prefer the later.

Blizzard could have just introduced the class as playable. I actually though the Hozen were great and would love to have seen them as playable. A Hozen monk. Oh yea.

[Thimagryn]

For me, it was Cata fatigue. The 1yr deadzone was present in Wrath, and Blizzard tried to prevent dropoff in Cata through the Annual Pass. That caused more burnout than intended and I didn't bother coming back for Pandas, even though I liked the concept.

[Zoneseek]

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.

Flying at release and LFR are not reasons people will buy or not buy an xpac.

You did nail the main ACTUAL reasons as well, though. Following CAT which was 100% the worst xpac in the history of the game in my opinion, and the theme was not to be taken seriously. Thinking another possible cataclysm-level expansion disaster mixed with pandas likely turned a ton of people off out of the gate.

[Raetary]

because of the "lulz pandas" crowd obviously.

[Airlick]

As much as I personally loved Pandaria... Yeah, pandas.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

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.

I don't really want yearly expansions, if we get another WoD*in terms of content no ty.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

People who apparently never played the Goblin starting zones complaining about the introduction of a pop culture joke race.

[Hexxidecimal]

People who apparently never played the Goblin starting zones complaining about the introduction of a pop culture joke race.

I think it's complaining about a pop culture joke race that few could identify with in the west.

[Altrec]

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

It took the entire life span of MoP to lose those subs while WoD managed the same thing in its first fiscal quarter and a half. Your hatred of Pandas is almost funny.

[nnelson54]

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.

Except that's not true, and following your suggestion of googling it even says so. WoD was the largest subscription drop, going from 10.5 million to 5.5 million and then who knows, because they stopped reporting numbers with 10 months left in the expansion.

[MyndZero]

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.

Sorry but, Cata is not worse than WOD. WOD literally stole that title forcefully with how shit it was.

[Altrec]

This thread isn't about subscriptions though. It's about why MoP didn't sell as many copies as the others. Subscriptions are an entirely different story.

The OP asked why MoP didn't initially sell as many copies as the other 5 most recent expansions. Pandas and the Asian theme (which isn't as inherently easy to market to WoW's consumer base as a badass Lich King or a demonic army) are probably the biggest reasons for the low initial sales.

If I was a more casual WoW player, the Panda theme would probably have turned me off from buying the expansion quite a bit.

I think the frustration with Cata was the biggest reason by far. That was the first expansion that really caused problems in the community and where we saw a lot of player loss. MoP sold well it just didn't sell particularly well early because there was a lot of wait and see among the players after their experiences with Cata. Sure, there were probably some that were put off by the theme, but I think they were just looking for an excuse not to come back because of all the major titles that came out at the time and the feeling of freedom for the first time in years as they cut the WoW cord. As for the casual WoW player not having interest in the theme I doubt that is the case for a lot of them. I and my group of friends are/were casuals and the theme was pretty great in my opinion.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Cataclysm + Panda. Really, that's all there is to it. Try to sell the idea of Panda land with battle pets to hardcore warcraft fans who are used to spend days with undead.

Yeah, didn't quite work in term of PR.

[Deleted]

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:



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.

Because people have an irrational hate of pandas.

- - - Updated - - -

Flying at release.

You really think that was a reason? You could fly at release in every other expansion before that, and WoD didn't sell that much more. People are still split on no flying to this day.