Do you think subs in Legion are going up or down?

[rda]

We are 4.5 months into the addon. We've seen launch, we've seen 7.1, we've seen Blizzcon, we've seen 7.1.5. We did not yet see 7.2, just heard some plans regarding what it will contain, when 7.2 will come is not really clear. We did not hear much about further patches, there will probably be 7.3 with Argus, but that's about all the info we have and the whole thing is far enough away that it is not even possible to say whether it will be small or big.

Before Legion, we had WoD. WoD was received terribly. In terms of subs, it was an absolute disaster, about half of the players left the game. Most people criticizing WoD say that the biggest issue was lack of content.

Legion is different from WoD in that the complaints have a slightly different tone. Instead of a single issue like lack of content, the complaints concentrate around several issues. Two biggest seem to be, roughly: (a) artifact power / legendaries / endless grind, and (b) class balance / pruning / specs being unpleasant to play or 'unviable'.

Some might think these issues are important. Others might think they are overblown and don't really exist. The post makes no attempt to steer you one direction or the other. Just tell what you think regarding a simple question:

Do you think Legion is making subs go up or down? Or, if you think that whatever Legion does is mostly irrelevant because subs go up or down due to other, bigger factors - do you think subs are going up or down with all the factors combined? Will we have more or less subs after Legion ends than we had after previous expansion (WoD) ended?

In a nutshell: WoD evidently saw subs going way down. Do you think Legion is reversing / will reverse this direction?

[Dracullus]

Where is the option: "I think subs are going down, it's how it works from 7 years, Legion is good regardless"?

[rda]

Where is the option: "I think subs are going down, it's how it works from 7 years, Legion is good regardless"?

It's option 2 - "I think subs are going down, Legion is bad (or maybe it is good, but there are bigger factors)".

[Lillyth]

I literally dont care. I am having fun with the game. Enjoying the raids and the occasional mythic+10.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Subs are designed to go down and come back up again. That's why they have periscopes.

[rda]

I literally dont care. I am having fun with the game. Enjoying the raids and the occasional mythic+10.

It's completely fine, I don't think anyone would have any issues whatsoever with such a point of view.

But allow me a simple illustration why you might want to care (but again, if you aren't persuaded - that's absolutely fine):

When subs go down, at some point that starts to affect even people who wouldn't otherwise care. There's obviously a global "if the number of people gets too small, we will stop getting updates because they will put the devs elsewhere", but it doesn't even have to get to that, various edge effects start to get in the way much faster.

Case in point, Legion has been terrible for PVP so far. And when I say "terrible", I mean it. One would normally expect a new addon to improve upon things or at least generate enough buzz to attract more people than there was at the end of a previous expansion. Well, Legion PVP was so bad that although Legion as a whole perhaps had a sub spike (we can kind of see that in activity graphs), PVP had no spike, the numbers went DOWN compared to WoD, not up. The amount of people who do PVP reduced to about 60% of what it was in the last season of WoD. Yes, really. So, why should anyone care, right? We are still talking about big numbers, right? Well, not exactly. In PVP, they give out titles based on whatever percentage from the top you are in. And in Legion season 1, the numbers went so low that the number of people who should have gotten the top title for RBG was LOWER than a full RBG team. Now, they managed to make a coding mistake in that place which they are going to fix, and after they fix it, the number of people will be somewhat more than one full RBG team, but even then you can see that the edge effect is very real, we are already in the numbers so low that we start seeing idiocies like that.

[Strawberry]

Historically WoW subs always spiked up when new expansion was released, to slowly go down (TBC/WotLK might be exceptions as WoW was still young back then).
What I think is keeping WoW still alive are the new kids. Older WoW players like myself usually outgrow spending a lot of time in a MMORPG. Responsibilities catch up to us...

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I voted the last option, but only because it made me laugh.

[micwini]

I think legion was good. Enough launch content, 7.1 2 months into the expac. But this is where it stopped. A new raid is coming this week, but except that, nothing else for at least a few months. That makes 6 month's without any content except a 10 boss raid which is not enough to keep me into the game. There needs to be a patch every 2 month's and they could rotate patches like 7.1 with the usual big patches(new raid, new zone etc.)
Subs are probably going down atm, like it always has.

[Deleted]

Made me lul , every two months ? That's impossible and delusional . Just don't play the game 24/7 and you will have enough new to do

[ls-]

Ofc they're going down, it's inevitable nowadays. That's just how people play games now.

[Deleted]

Definitely down. And they knew it will happen that's why they don't provide us with statistics anymore.

[rda]

Definitely down. And they knew it will happen that's why they don't provide us with statistics anymore.

If they go down (or up) enough, we won't need official statistics to tell that.

Ie, they are necessarily disclosing the number of people who participate in the PVP ladders, that's in their design of PVP rewards - unless they manage to kill PVP dead, that's going to provide a reasonable estimate. There are other sources of estimates, too. Ie, MMO-C does various graphs based on player base, the number of players is a necessary part of that. Granted, a plain number of subs is more accurate, but estimates are going to be good enough for big questions like "was this expansion a net positive or a net negative".

[Aeula]

I'm hoping down. I don't want this expansion to be seen as a success otherwise blizzard won't change their formula.

[callipygoustp]

I have yet to see anything that suggests, definitively, that Legion sucks. I see the regular random posts by people complaining about the "usual" but nothing substantial. However, I suspect, similar to previous expansions, that as the expansion ages the sub count will decrease. As I said, I haven't seen anything to suggest that Legion has been a failure but I definitely have not seen anything to support the notion that Legion is the new golden age of WoW.

[Darkguyver2020]

Case in point, Legion has been terrible for PVP so far. And when I say "terrible", I mean it. One would normally expect a new addon to improve upon things or at least generate enough buzz to attract more people than there was at the end of a previous expansion. Well, Legion PVP was so bad that although Legion as a whole perhaps had a sub spike (we can kind of see that in activity graphs), PVP had no spike, the numbers went DOWN compared to WoD, not up. The amount of people who do PVP reduced to about 60% of what it was in the last season of WoD. Yes, really. So, why should anyone care, right? We are still talking about big numbers, right? Well, not exactly. In PVP, they give out titles based on whatever percentage from the top you are in. And in Legion season 1, the numbers went so low that the number of people who should have gotten the top title for RBG was LOWER than a full RBG team. Now, they managed to make a coding mistake in that place which they are going to fix, and after they fix it, the number of people will be somewhat more than one full RBG team, but even then you can see that the edge effect is very real, we are already in the numbers so low that we start seeing idiocies like that.

PvP has always been terrible and a major thing that I despised about this game. Especially in the past when PvP balancing also screwed people over in the PvE environment.
My theory as to why there's so little PvP participation is because scrubs can no longer faceroll undergeared players into the ground. Stat templates have put everything on a level playing field which makes them QQ ragequit when they get killed by someone that can play their class better.

Either way, I applaud Holinka's continued efforts to kill PvP. It'll be a joyous day when it is removed from WoW for good.

[rda]

I have yet to see anything that suggests, definitively, that Legion sucks.

PVP?

If you don't PVP and so don't pay much attention to it, that's fine. But they have numbers, videos, hundred-pages-long threads with rationale, everything.

- - - Updated - - -

My theory as to why there's so little PvP participation is because scrubs can no longer faceroll undergeared players into the ground. Stat templates have put everything on a level playing field which makes them QQ ragequit when they get killed by someone that can play their class better.

Just in case, not even close. (I am saying it like that, because it's in the numbers, they deny that theory completely, they are just vastly different. For details, see PVP threads.)

[Blackmist]

Down. Not because it's bad, because it's pretty good right now, but simply because it has been going down for years and will continue to do so. It's old. It feels old. Players drop out, new ones aren't coming in. CRZ is enabled for pretty much all Legion content, and it needs to be. I can't imagine how bad it would be on some realms without it.

[FelPlague]

wow no "subs seem to be stable, i dont think its gone up or down"

horrible

SAD

[callipygoustp]

PVP?

If you don't PVP and so don't pay much attention to it, that's fine. But they have numbers, videos, hundred-pages-long threads with rationale, everything.

I have seen the posts about the drop off in pvp participation but PvP in WoW has always been such a small percentage of the player base that I don't think it supports the notion that "Legion sucks".

Granted, I am of the opinion that ever since Bliz increased the amount of CC involved in PvP, PvP in wow has utterly sucked. Somehow PvP managed to do 'ok' through the last couple expansions.