I'm sorry did you say MoP was awful and admit to never playing it? I don't get this mentality of people being unable to make a self informed decision, My friend said it sucked so by extension it must suck. ...how about making an informed decision at some point, by.. shocking... TRYING IT!!!
Ideally no one has ever hit the level cap of the last expansion, looked at their dungeon blues, and thought "I win."
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...all/chuckabear
Challenging content is there for the people that want it. Challenge mode, heroic raiding, Brawler's Guild at the start of it, even Heroic scenarios bring a nice small challenge to some.
And "lore-relevant" is based on the user's opinion, which mean you're opinion does not equal theirs.
But you could be right, that challenging content might not be enough. People might have quit for that. Some people could think the game is getting worse and quit. But will we know for sure? It's something impossible to know or pinpoint.
I will note that the cost of getting your foot into Cata content from nothing was Vanilla+BC $30, Wrath $50, and Cata $50, then toss on a $30 time card and it cost my friend $160 just to play a worgan. No one is going to pay that much to get in the door of cataclysm unless they just happen to have a lot of free cash burning a hole in their pocket. That kept a lot of new blood out of the game. Now we have better prices to get in the game and bigger starting boxes but in Cata, if the subs were bleeding this cost for entry certainly did not help put new blood in the game.
Anyone who says they know the main reason for sub losses and that reason is the thing they didn't like is just making themselves look ignorant because no one here is silly enough or brainless enough to fall for it.
The trick of selling a FFA-PvP MMO is creating the illusion among gankers that they are respectable fighters while protecting them from respectable fights, as their less skilled half would be massacred and quit instead of “HTFU” as they claim.
WOW really? This is still a valid argument? Age of what game? Vanilla wow? Well then its good thing were not in vanilla wow anymore. Oh wait... that has nothing to do with jack shit because it is an always online mmo that can be changed and updated with a virtually unlimited supply of funds.