Why did MoP sell so little compared to previous expansions?

[Deleted]

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

Well, not only that.. goblins are still a classic fantasy race, changed or not. Besides we never got an expansion about them and alliance didnt have to deal with them at all. Tiny bit of optional content vs the whole expansion based on it are two very different things.

[Battlebeard]

MoP was the best expansion they ever released if you ask me. Yes, Throne of Thunder and Timeless Isle sucked, but other then that, it was amazing.

But I was sceptical too, cause I didn't like the riddicilous Panda theme.

[Zuben]

I bet it's mostly the pandas that turned people off, but I don't have any big data behind that assumption. Shame, as MoP stood my second favorite expansion till Legion.

[Battlebeard]

Pandas
All the dungeons were shite

Really? I think they were amazing. Maybe not Nizau or Shadopan, but the rest were top notch.

[rebecca191]

A lot of people quit during Cata and the theme probably wasn't interesting enough to pull them back. WoD was worse than Cata in most people's opinions, but a lot of people came back for it because it looked "cool."

[vitor210]

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.

Cata was WORSE than WoD? XDDDDDDDDD amazing shitpost of the day

[thilicen]

For me personally: Cata sucked hard enough for me to need a break, I dislike the panda theme (though the zone architecture is awesome), and the new class held little to no appeal for me.

[Allenschezar]

I play WoW since the beginning and i was always subbed non stop. Until MoP. In my case i just hated the whole theme. I didn't like any of it and nothing that came with the patches after launch made me come back.

I resubbed during the WoD expansion pre patch. And even now i am so glad i skipped the whole panda thing.

[Flaks]

If we're talking previous expansion affecting new expansion sales numbers legion shouldn't have sold worth crap.

Fact of the matter is that while mop had an incredible overall story it was marketed very much as pandas who do Kung fu. There's not much you can get out of an expansion for which the majority of what was shown to veterans who quit and new comers alike was just pandas in a land named after pandas doing Kung fu panda stuff.

[Faldric]

I was burned by the annual pass which had no content at all while also having the worst raid in wow history for the whole year. Got into the MOP beta, saw how from the amazing first design of the monk class nothing remained but a rogue with a healing specc. Had no desire to play that after the beta. The whole chinese theme wasn't my cup of tea either.

[Tome]

The whole martial art fighting fat pandas, with food obsession, rather cringeworthy voices and animations is just a tiring trope that has existed far long outside of World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft didn't do it any better.

I was hoping for more battleworn samurais with scars and large beards. Instead we got just that annoying, cringeworthy kung fu obese redneck panda trope.

It just wasn't very interesting at all.

[Soxoffender]

Flying at release.

I know some people don't like fying but I don't think a substantial number of people refused to buy MoP because of it.

I actually like the pandas okay enough, but there's no denying there's a very vocal group of people who really, really, really hated the idea.

The endless "Why Blizz has ruined my life with Kung Fu Panda..." threads from that time are testament to this.

[Deleted]

Kung fu. Just doesnt belong in wow.

[Vorkreist]

A larger marketing budget for the digital preorders for wod/legion.

[Tommy T]

Pandas and general Asian theme / plot of expansion.
Not my cuppa.

[Raelbo]

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.

My guess is that the Pandaren theme put a lot of kids off.

[Zenny]

Because Pandaren don't fit WoW, or some other nonsense.

[caervek]

What could have halted this expansion from doing as good as the others?

Lack of hype.

Basically, after Cataclysm everyone expected the game to carry on downwards and from everything seen of MoP prior to release it looked like a comedy expansion, nobody anticipated it being better than Cata so not as many bought it initially.

Compare that to WoD which didn't have anywhere near as good max level content but had load of hype as it started out great (and the start is all the beta testers saw).

[HumbleDuck]

I'd have to say open ( kinda open) beta.

[Xykotic]

Its the theme. People who had quit, and been away from wow for a while, saw Pandaria, and thought the game had devolved into a full on kids game. Nobody I knew was excited about going to pandaria at all, and thus they were not kean on even trying this expansion. Killing the Lich King as a comparison is something that can pull alot of asses to their computers, we all know this guy, even people who played the RTS back in the day might be inclined to play that, purely on its theme and the concept of the expansion.
TBC had this aswell, cata to a lesser extent and now legion has it too. We all remember the burning legion, and going back to fight them is probably more compelling than growing carrots in pandaland (simplified view here, but one alot of people held as i recall)