This is how you can tell subs aren't where they'd like it...

[Cthulhu fhtagn]

People will see what they want to see

[Deleted]

oh yes sure, they came up with this overnight, then time travelled months back to make the artwork for it so we could datamine it in the past...

some people....

[xpose]

This was planned beforehand, but I doubt they meant to ship this 1 month into the expansion. Panic mode. Fiscal quarter ends soon. Gotta make it look like BfA was a success that went further than how many boxes it sold.

Or yeah know the first month return subs are starting to come to an end and they are promoting an incentive to get people to reup. Anyone with half a brain can tell this was planned well before the expansion release and is targeted towards those subscriptions that expired within the first 30-45 days of an expansion.

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And you think a healthy game requires this kind of promotion literally 1 month after its release.... yeah, sure buddy
I'm sure it was planned... months into the expansion

Oh look, someone who has never done any real business. Do you think restaurants who offer promotions on food are also going out of business? There's these papers called "reports" that people can view that give good and meaningful data and they can use this data to run various promotions to drive in or target certain demographics. The fact I have to explain this means you probably work overnights at the local walgreens and have little if any impact on where you work.

[OMGTwitchTV]

Or a sign that they'd like to retain the tourists that normally tend to drop off right about now.
In fact, it's not at all obvious what kind of sign it is.

This, and it was perfectly timed with Pirate Day in a pirate expansion

[lollerlaban]

Or, you know, the game is not up to par with what it used to be.

That has fuck all to do with the promotion though, which is what these doomsayers have a direct connection to.

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The cash grab is pretty unbearable at this point. An influx of money should be a reward for a good product, not a gimmick to keep people around for your shit product.

How is it a cash grab if you save money? fucking lul

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Anyone actually doing this should be ashamed of themselves. It is our job as a community to let Blizzard know when they are slipping and going along with this is just rewarding them for this crap shoot of an Xpac. Just stop it please.

People like what you don’t oh the indignity!

[Nyel]

Coincidental and completely irrelevant.

But sure, make things up to fit your narrative. That's cool too.

Coincidental? Yes because Blizzard does these things without any further planning.

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The biggest issue with Island Expeditions is that the drop rates on rewards is far too low - an issue that they are going to fix.

Also the warfront achieved massive participation. You're quite right that Horde have suddenly stopped doing them...because the feature is only available for a week at a time.

Gameplay is the biggest problem, rewards is just on top of that. They're just not good and Blizzard knows it. They seem willing to improve but they didn't care about feedback during beta, why care now?

Massive participation? Yeah because of the freeloot. How often do you need to do that? Once or twice? What an expansion spanning feature this is!

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IE abandoned even though you can queue and get into a heroic within 1m30s any given day.

Oh wow you need 1.5min to queue for 3 man content that's devoid of any specific role compositions.

[unbound]

To be fair, this stuff was already datamined in Alpha if I am not mistaken.

And WoD didn't have a Promotion like that.

To be fair, the mount was datamined to be offered as part of a 6 month subscription?

/facepalm

[Coombs]

I think Blizzard is just using their player base as subjects in a marketing experiment. Look at Hearthstone. Every expansion the details are different. They are fine tuning the formula for promotion, free packs, gifts and other ways to maximize profits. The same is happening in WoW and Overwatch. How many people will by items that aren't exclusive but they get to have them early (the ship and Demon Hunter Sombra)?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Pirates are also a theme in the game, with Freehold.

I'm leaning towards the mount being re-purposed, from being something earned in-game, to this promotion.

You think that when they were adding all of the models to the beta they went out of there way to leave this one out because they thought they needed something to boost subs?

[Araya]

If I was to warrant a guess, which has already been said, this was planned from the start to try and keep people that only play for the first 30 days or so after a new content patch. Mounts don't just spring up out of nowhere, especially when they've been mined ages ago.

[klepp0906]

That mount promotion for the 6 month sub is an obvious sign that they are losing more subs then they like. The last time they had to pull this off was in WoD.

Legion (my favorite expansion) was actually good and kept people subbed, so they didn't need to do it once for its entire 2 year run. But BfA needed it less than 2 months after release.

kept people subbed due to the insane grind.

first expansion ive ever flat out quit. since, ever.

actually burned me out entirely on wow and ruined the game for me. Even now im back with one foot out the door in legion-casualedition. err bfa.

Yea too much rpg gone from this mmorpg. too much random everything under the sun. too many arbirtrary caps, limits, and time gates.

ya'll have fun. ive put my ~15 years in so perhaps that has something to do w/ it as well. Watching the game go from an amazing mmorpg to the action/moba it is today slowly but steadily with every patch.

But more on point, of course subs are low. Partially due to people feeling similar to me. Partially due to people being sick of relearning their class OVER and OVER and OVEr and OVER for no other reason other than to do so. (or a screw up on blizz side). And much due to the fact the game is old as balls. Its audience that started as kids are now grown men with families to feed, real responsibilities, and other interests.

-1 more sub in the near future.

BUt yea. They stopped disclosing subs for a reason. You see the state BFA launched in? holy cow. THis is from a company that turned 7 BILLION DOLLARS last year lol. Talking about cutting corners to save a penny.

The interesting part is i enjoyed WoD quite thoroughly especially relative to legion.

now... back to..... world quests ;p

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Doesn't matter the reason, imo. This is precisely why nobody cares about mounts any more; you can get some of the craziest, coolest mounts from doing the stupidest shit - like spending $25.

When did people stop caring about mounts? Tons of people still run old raids every week to try and get them.

[Baracuda]

People sure are angry nowadays, no wait... it was always like that.

We've known for quite a while that they were going to release a 180 day promotion, maybe people who are subscribed 1 month at a time for 6 months will get it too.

[RobertMugabe]

To be fair, the mount was datamined to be offered as part of a 6 month subscription?

/facepalm

I don't know what you're trying to say and neither does you "/facepalm" make any sense.

Either way, both the mount and the shop Background were datamined months ago and wowhead was already expecting These to be related to each other.

Pretty sure that People were also making threads about this when it was datamined.

/facepalm

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Game needs to die. Simple as that.

It's clear WoW is no longer a passion project for the devs. It's clear it's just in maintenance mode. It's clear they are completely failing to reinvent the wheel enough. If it wasn't for the M+ fluke, this game would be completely in the gutter by now. That feature is entirely carrying the last 2 expansions.

Once WoW truly dies (becomes irrelevant), then we can finally start seeing significant new projects within the Warcraft universe.

You need to get some new classes yours seem to have been so foggy for so long you don’t even know what clear is any more.

[Khaza-R]

Oh wow you need 1.5min to queue for 3 man content that's devoid of any specific role compositions.

Yeah for the heroic version. Which one would naturally assume has a smaller pool than normals. So yeah, I don’t think it’s making the point you believe it is. Of course I welcome to some objective evidence that WF/IE are dead. Something that doesn’t revolve around your perception of the forums/reddit

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Great. And for many, even the YouTube streamers that usually pander to Blizzard, it's the worst experience since WoD. And with all the emergency mode stuff going on with Blizzard I'm pretty sure this is just another move to save what it's there to save when it comes to BfA (and it's not much).

This is so so so similar to WoD back in 2014 that it's beyond me how anybody can deny the similarities.

Can you give any examples of similarity’s other then you just not liking it? Because wod didn’t have a lot to do out side of raiding where bfa does, wod gave you every thing you needed in your garrison so you never had to leave bfa doesn’t. Wod first patch had no content bfa’s will have a raid and more open world content. So what are theses similarity’s other then you don’t like it and youtubers make stupid videos for views?

[Banard]

That mount promotion for the 6 month sub is an obvious sign that they are losing more subs then they like. The last time they had to pull this off was in WoD.

Legion (my favorite expansion) was actually good and kept people subbed, so they didn't need to do it once for its entire 2 year run. But BfA needed it less than 2 months after release.

(1) Sub always falls off around this time of the xpac. First 30 days if over + another month. Yes, this drop gets worst every xpac.

(2) This is the life cycle of the game and has no indication on the health of the game. The game is profitable from sales alone. And from the media it seem sales are fine and even been growing.

(3) This is an attempt to target those that cancel every xpac to stay a little bit more while rewarding those that play the full xpac anyway.

The only time to do this properly is now. 3-4 months from now those that quit aint coming back until next xpac or end of this one.

[Mafic]

It seems to have worked for now as there is an upward spike in player activity along with Alliance warfronts. But the true test will be patch 8.1 if it can carry momentum into jan/feb of 2019.