Wrath and then Legion. Top 2 expansions.
Your knowledge of subs, makes us all very sad. More people played WoW during Wrath than any other expansion, from a numbers stand point it wins.
Otherwise we're talking "best" as subjective, in which case, I still chose Wrath.
Anyone who didn't unlock BT when gating was an actual thing, simply can't understand.
I don't think we can really use numbers to determine which is the best. All products like WoW have a life cycle. It hits it's peak and then declines. It's not going to be possible for WoW to hit 12 million again, no matter how good the expansion is.
WoW is old as fuck, and any new expansion will just do the same; temporarily raise the subs, until it goes down to "lowest amount of subs to date", on and on until Blizzard pulls the plug. If Legion had happened instead of Wotlk, it would absolutely have the most subs. I'd imagine the same would have been true for WoD as well, if we'd have went to Draenor instead of Northrend.
I feel like people put too much emphasis on the number of subs as an indication of quality. The biggest reason subs were higher wasn't that the expansion was better but because WoW was still fairly new and fresh and the hype train was going forward full steam ahead. It was new, people were talking about it everywhere and people played it like crazy. Now the game is 15 years old and it's not a game that works for everyone. Some people played it intensely for a period of time in their lives but then school or work, or friends quitting had an impact. Hype dies out and it's only natural. If there's anyone out there who is actually surprised about the numbers going down After Wrath (which ended a good 6 years after the game released) then they're crazy.
Wrath is definitely the best expansion. There can be no doubts about that. Opinions? Sure.
Nothing they said was wrong as far as I'm concerned.
The rate of old players quitting finally reached parity with the fresh blood coming in during the days of Wrath, and this is what marks it as the beginning of WoW's decline -- with the expansion only seeing a noticable gain in players (a modest 500k) when ICC launched. For reference, WoW's sub gain during the 1.75 years of TBC was over five times that. Even the graphs you've supplied show this to be true.
There's a good reason for this trend too, and one that many seem to have forgotten: Wrath was a fairly average expansion, and one that was relentlessly criticised when it was current content. In my mind, it is only looked upon nostalgically because it was held up by having one of Warcraft's most popular characters as its drawcard, and because almost everything that has come since has been even worse.
"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint." - Alexander Hamilton
Popularity=/=how good the game is
unless you think fortnite is the best game ever?
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^^^^^^^^^
No matter what they do, even if they make a perfect expansion we will NEVER EVER have another "Subs keep growing!"
perfect example is classic, it released and EVERYONE came, but now its slowly bleeding, the server i moderate we see guilds leaving every week, its gotten to the point weve lost alot of mods, but dont really need more. I try to moderate it, but there is so few people interacting now that there is no need.
no matter what, an "old game" will never hit a point where there is growing subs, at this point, yes there is always a massive boost at the start, but after a few months it drops.
the only good expansion is the one you can relate to, WoD was my favorite expansion.
All I see is that now that BFA is a rubber-stamped failure that regularly polls as either the worst or second worst expansion of WoW ever (never mind probably the least popular, too), the Blizzard defenders have reverted to the age-honoured method of deflection by attacking what is commonly considered (for right or wrong) the best and most popular expansion of the game. "You think you had a good time but you didn't!" boyz and girlz, so don't complain that BFA is dogshite because that's what the best expansion was too!1!1!!!