How The Hell Could WoD do Worse then Cata!?

[Gsara]

Cata was a far better xpac than WoD ever will be.

[Luxeley]

Every time Blizzard learns from a mistake, they ironically create at least 2 new ones. Wod did not maintain 10 million subs for 6 months. Matter of fact, less than 3 months into WOD, the Subs dropped to 7.5 million. And by 8th or 9th month into the xpac, the sub numbers dipped below 6 million for the 1st time since the end of Vanilla. The numbers do not lie, at least half the player base despised WOD. Yes, the leveling was the best than any other xpac and one can reasonably argue the raiding is a sound return to old form as well. But, both the leveling and raiding proved to get old fast cause the post launch support was the worst ever, even gw2 and Swtor offered more content in the same period of time and neither game charges a sub fee. The bottom line is, WOD is not really terrible content, a lack of value is the underlying issue here. And ability pruning proved to be a disaster to the point Blizzard stripped most of the classes in the game of their identity and decided to revamp the classes again in Legion. Ironically, there will be more ability pruning in Legion. So no, Blizzard doesn't learn nor do they care. A long time ago Blizzard stopped making content and feature choices based on what's fun and engaging and decided to make decisions based on $$$ and nothing else.

[dev'olution]

I think even more concerning is we don't know what the drop off is exactly atm.

With them pulling numbers from quarterly calls - we could already be down to 3-4m.

[Nyoken]

It's cause; " WE WANT FASTER EXPANSIONS! " Blizzard; " Ok, we have to double our efforts, do all the basic stuff for an expansion as fast as possible, then SCREW this expansion and let's start working on the next expansion! HURRY QUICK QUICK! screw all the details and the fun stuff! this is what people demand from us!"

[Hexian]

I think even more concerning is we don't know what the drop off is exactly atm.

With them pulling numbers from quarterly calls - we could already be down to 3-4m.

I am willing to bet it is even lower than that. I actively play toons on 4 different realms, 3 of which there has been a noticeable drop in player activity during all hours, and 2 are practically ghost towns now. The AHs are full of bots and farmers and the few items that are there are set at ridiculous prices because there is no competition to drive them down.

[dev'olution]

I am willing to bet it is even lower than that. I actively play toons on 4 different realms, 3 of which there has been a noticeable drop in player activity during all hours, and 2 are practically ghost towns now. The AHs are full of bots and farmers and the few items that are there are set at ridiculous prices because there is no competition to drive them down.

I'm finding Australian servers are still quite populous, so I doubt we're down to lower than 3million. You can still log on and get a queue pop within 30 minutes and that was the case back in Cata at 7m.

Guess it'll be a wait and see thing. I'm sure if they bump back over 10m, we'll hear about it.

[Hexian]

I'm finding Australian servers are still quite populous, so I doubt we're down to lower than 3million. You can still log on and get a queue pop within 30 minutes and that was the case back in Cata at 7m.

Guess it'll be a wait and see thing. I'm sure if they bump back over 10m, we'll hear about it.

My queues have been longer, not by a crazy amount, but noticeably longer. Also, there are more realms connected now compared to Cata, so you wouldnt "feel" as much of a population drop with queue times.

[shadowmouse]

Like flying or loath it, I think that the no flying part of WoD sums up a major problem. There were plenty of things that could have been used to hinder flying, we got yanked around by chains, attacked by flying Iron Horde and so on. Instead, we saw NPCs fly with no trouble, we had "puzzles" that amounted to finding a goblin to get a glider from, and there were the semi-obligatory grinds for things to help us slow fall or sort of fly.

Here's the failure as I see it ... there was no attempt to make a story for why we can't fly. There were no mantises controlling the wind, nobody blasting us with thunderbolts, no Lich King controlling freezing winds. We were just told that this was the way we'd have to play.

A lot of things in WoD struck me that way, as if jumping us through hoops had taken the place of story in the game. I want the story to play out in the game, not to be told that something would make sense if I'd just buy an extra book or two. Legion is already looking grim for that.

[dev'olution]

My queues have been longer, not by a crazy amount, but noticeably longer. Also, there are more realms connected now compared to Cata, so you wouldnt "feel" as much of a population drop with queue times.

They still run off regions though. So you're not getting paired with an EU (Although to be fair I seem to get a fair few brazilians). I never have a dungeon pop longer than 15 minutes to 20 minutes, and that's a helluva better time than back in the day with 45 minute Q pops!

[Xisa]

They admitted that 1 content patch in WoD wasn't such a good idea.

Whether they will change much in Legion remains to be seen.

They admit a lot of mistakes they continue to repeat ad infinitum.

Self-awareness only matters when you make the corrections. Otherwise, it's just stupid.

[Prokne]

Its pretty hard to do worse than Cata. WoD is like they didn't learn what was good in MoP and decided to make Cata 2.0. The main connection between the two is not enough useful content for max level characters. In Cata, there was no LFR and if you weren't raiding all you had was heroics and then nothing. In WoD, unless you raided you had nothing and they made LFR and heroics worthless after the first few weeks (except of course garrison chores).

[Breccia]

Riiight. And if you move the goal post all the way to the original launch they gained subs with WoD. Use your head for about 2 seconds and stop trying to spin how awful WoD is.

I wasn't trying to move the goalposts. They lost subs, a significant portion. But they didn't really have 10M for very long.


There is absolutely no way to claim WoD was anything other than a sub loss for them, but I'm not ready to say "they lost half their subs" without the clarification that those 10M subs were around for one quarter only.

In fact, that spike makes things worse for us, not better. The amount of money they lose by dropping from 7.5M subs (the quarter before launch) to 5M subs (estimated now) evenly over 2 years is about 420 million dollars. Selling 7.5 million copies of WoD would earn them 375 million. That's a net loss. The problem is, the WoD hype brought in those 2.5 million people who bought the expac and stayed for 3 months, which got them 230 million.

The problem isn't that WoD was awful enough that Blizz took a fiscal hit and learned their lesson. The problem was, they hyped it up enough that they actually came out ahead because of it. The next lesson to be learned, needs to be learned by us.

[Deleted]

There was definitely problems with Cata, but at least it had content that i personally found interesting and "fun" to do. I did like Cata dailies (i still prefer those "traditional" daily quests) and i still think that decently challenging random queue instances with real valor gear vendor is the way to go. 4.3 patch was still the best time in wow for me, believe or not. No LFR, just random dungeons and valor gear.

I don't even try to open tanaan jungle on my alts. I hate the whole crapexis grind and the whole tanaan is like abandoned, artificial/unnatural themepark. That place just does not "live". It's fucking dead, soulless. LFR is both boring and self-torturing. LFR loot and raids themselves were extremely uninteresting. Dungeons are just useless and i simply won't run any mythic dungeons because they are not in LFD. Timewalking is actually nice, but it's only like once in a month, and running one TW instance to get 500 emblem item for buying decent alt-gear is enough for alts. I personally see no reason to run them any more. Only my main will run 5 TW for raid-quality item from quest.

I hope that there's something to do in Legion with those "adventure mode" quests. (?)

[Gephyrophobia]

Because Cata was good and WoD isn't?..

[Niwes]

I wasn't trying to move the goalposts. They lost subs, a significant portion. But they didn't really have 10M for very long.


There is absolutely no way to claim WoD was anything other than a sub loss for them, but I'm not ready to say "they lost half their subs" without the clarification that those 10M subs were around for one quarter only.

In fact, that spike makes things worse for us, not better. The amount of money they lose by dropping from 7.5M subs (the quarter before launch) to 5M subs (estimated now) evenly over 2 years is about 420 million dollars. Selling 7.5 million copies of WoD would earn them 375 million. That's a net loss. The problem is, the WoD hype brought in those 2.5 million people who bought the expac and stayed for 3 months, which got them 230 million.

The problem isn't that WoD was awful enough that Blizz took a fiscal hit and learned their lesson. The problem was, they hyped it up enough that they actually came out ahead because of it. The next lesson to be learned, needs to be learned by us.

there is a lot of truth in that. i am sure as hell, blizz money makers know exactly what they do. their plan is just investing as least effort as possible, and save costs (that you forgot to also add) and milk the cash cow as hard as possible through high priced xpac and marketing hype, for 2-3 months.

i assure you, they are fine with ppl buying the xpac, playing 2-3 months, buy a little store shit, pay for some services and give em 5$ more for every selled token, while blizz hold the investment in wow as low as possible. this is the new way to go.

so yes, i agree that we are the ones that will learn things the hard way, 2-3 months after Legion went live.

[khazmodan]

Confucius say: "Man who walk through airport turnstile backward going to Bangkok." = WoD.

i agree with Caolela

[Daffan]

The start of expac was good because this is the part where they didn't let everyone get free catchup gear or skip content, so people actually had things to do.

[Tart]

Because they refused to go back to what made the game great, instead the stubbornly continued to suck up every single sort of player and style possible to increase subs.

[Deleted]

It's not even the quality (WoD's leveling was ok, location design was fine, it looked nice and shiny enough at start). It's that WoD had no longevity at all.

Compared to MoP and WotLK, which had decent pacing (i.e. new content patches from time to time) WoD was incredibly bare-bones. 6.1 was practically NOTHING (it will be forever ridiculed as the selfie patch), then we waited months and months for 6.2, then another void till prepatch. In the same timeframe, MoP had 5.1 (which had decent storyline quest many ppl enjoyed) and 5.2 (which had something for everyone: cool raid, world content, end-game quests). WotLK had Ulduar and then ToC.

Even Cata wasn't as bad - the first raid tier was very good, the heroics were actually both challenging and rewarding enough to last for a bit (WoD heroics were irrelevant after 2 weeks, and that's being generous) and even the revamped troll dungeons, while not exactly loved by most, were *something*. Then we got 4.2, which again had something for everyone - raid, quests that actually mattered and were semi-interesting etc.

On another note, MMO-C has a very strong tendency to overestimate sub loss, in the past people here were "sure" the subs went 2-3 millions down when they went down less than a mil. So now I'd say guesses like 3-4 mil and "betting it's even lower than that" are stretching it, but I'm sure the sub loss is real. I would also agree that if they fail to deliver fresh valid content (so, raids and dungeons and solo world content) in a timely fashion in Legion, the losses might start to become irrecoverable.

[Kuntantee]

You can't compare WoD with Cata in any imaginable sense.