If MOP was so good, then why did the population drop so much?

[Doffen]

It wasn't so good overall and was saved by a decent 5.2 patch. So much potential because pandaria is beautiful.

[deenman]

I dont rly think the number of subs is always a great metric for quality,if that was true,justin bieber would be a great artist

[Kokolums]

MoP wasn't good. It was terrible. I think I played it for 3 weeks and was unsubbed.

Blizzard destroyed the in-game communities in late BC, and the damage was still eating away at the game through MoP. Introverted players that hate people LOVED MoP. But the game was hemorrhaging all of the extroverted players that actually liked talking to people and participating in group play.

In modern times, players FALSELY appear to look back at MoP as a great xpac. But that's only because the modern playerbase is a small fraction of the old one and its mostly comprised of introverts.

MoP was actually garbage.

WoW can get back up over 10 million subs, hell it could go over 20 million, but to get there they have to draw in the extroverts that left. And that means rebuilding the old in-game communities that existed in vanilla. And you are NOT going to bring back extroverts with antisocial gameplay like arenas, horrific visions, or torghast.

[WowIsDead64]

If we'll throw all subjective things, like "It's not Wow" and "I hate pandas" and look at gameplay reasons only, then it will be:
1) Daily grind was terrible at the beginning of xpack. All Valor rewards and recipes were gated behind rep grinds and therefore were 100% mandatory.
2) First attempts to remove flying. All that claustrophobic no-flying isles from Korean MMOs were just big mistake.

For me it is the least played xpack in Wow's history. I was resubbing to see new patch content only and then unsubbing again. At that point it was about going further towards wrong direction after Cata, instead of returning back to WotLK. If only I would know, what would wain me in WOD... Too much damage had been done to game. Game has never recovered after that.

[lionofwar87]

I wasn't into the style or lightheartness. The week or two leading up to WoD release had me clearing MoP for the first time. I got my farm and the general gist of what was going on storywise and omg I realized I had missed out on a solid xpac. I'm really looking forward to the next xpac leveling system where I can spend all my time in MoP and really absorb the content. Same with WotLK.

[Doffen]

I dont rly think the number of subs is always a great metric for quality,if that was true,justin bieber would be a great artist

For many he is. And those who think he is are part of the gaming future.

Food for thoughts.

[melodramocracy]

It wasn't all that great of an expansion, especially at the start.

I get that that's an unpopular opinion, but the levelling was semi-atrocious (about as bad as BfA), and the dungeons were completely forgettable. The high points of MoP were IoT itself (ToT raid is way overrated), and TI. And as good as TI and SoO may have been, that drought was absurd. Rating all the WoW expansions, this one sits right in the middle. Better than Cata and Wod, worse than everything else.

[Nathreim]

Because most people saw pandas and checked out before giving it a shot.

MoP had some of the best class balance and playstyle in the history of the game. The raids well all good to excellent.

Honestly the only negative aspect was 5.3.

[Doffen]

I get that that's an unpopular opinion, but the levelling was semi-atrocious (about as bad as BfA), and the dungeons were completely forgettable.

Agree with the dungeon part. I don't do TW for instance when MoP is up. It had the worst set of dungeons and probably raids(okay maybe Cata with DS but I didn't play that patch and tier11 was very good) as well and seeing how those two are the things I do the most it was kinda disheartening to try to start playing a bit more regularly, but I just couldn't get myself to play it more. Wasn't only that but then was the time I thought my WoW days were over.

Then came Illidan...

[Smash Adams]

There were a good chunk of people who saw pandas and said no. I know my guild had multiple. Personally, I hated the questing. The zones were great for the most part, but holy shit did the quests suck. Even going back today, it’s really an awful place to level.

Also burnout. DS was fucking miserable. By the time MoP rolled around, people were just burnt. Leveling through to max level and the endgame at launch were awful experiences initially. Being burnt out and trying to plow through anyway just wasn’t a good experience.

[kaminaris]

Because most people saw pandas and checked out before giving it a shot.

MoP had some of the best class balance and playstyle in the history of the game. The raids well all good to excellent.

Honestly the only negative aspect was 5.3.

Best class balance? Compared to super mario brothers maybe. But in terms of WoW it was absolute garbage.
In MoP difference between worst and best DPS in raids was around 100% so best spec did twice the damage of the worst one. Now it is around 10-20%.

Not to mention in arenas BM hunter used to delete people accounts.

The only thing that was good about classes in mop was that casters had their filler castable while moving.

[Rixarius]

Because most people saw pandas and checked out before giving it a shot.

MoP had some of the best class balance and playstyle in the history of the game. The raids well all good to excellent.

Honestly the only negative aspect was 5.3.

This is true. The game had a very edgy, dark theme until the point of MoP. Illidan and Arthas are both the kings of edge. Deathwing was metal af. Pandaria was very light-hearted at the start, faction war or not. This was a turn off for a lot of people, even before they even gave it a shot. Also, the dailies were really bad at the start.

MoP is my personal favorite expansion, and I went into it kind of skeptical. The raids were stellar, Throne of Thunder being my favorite raid of all time, and Lei Shen being my favorite end boss in a raid of all time. The Monk class was super fun. The story was actually very good as well. I had a blast on the timeless isle. It was also the end of 10 man difficult content, which was my favorite style of raiding.

[Omedon]

Myself and my friends took a hiatus from WoW in late Cataclysm that lasted until Late WoD (at legion's announcement) in part because MoP had been unveiled as the future expansion. I personally regret skipping MoP (the only expansion I've skipped completely) because my interest in the "kung fu movie aesthetic" didn't really start until mid-legion, and now leveling through MoP is something I look forward to on every alt.

The reason we left, at the time, was twofold: 1) we were not interested in what appeared to be a swing into the extremely whimsical with the "bouncy panda race duh-huh-yuck," and 2) Because this is when the MMO boom was in full swing, and we took the opportunity to sample pretty much every competitor blooming all over the place at the time. Some were duds, some were very good, but all in all we enjoyed our hiatus as it gave us the perspective with which to judge WoW when we came back, and we greatly enjoyed Legion... and knew we had options when BFA crapped itself. As of shortly after Blizzcon 2019, we're currently enjoying a palette-cleansing hiatus in FFXIV, and expect to return recharged for shadowlands after burning out hard in BFA's depressing story... which I personally find highly ironic given the last time we left this soundly was because it was getting too whimsical, but as customers we're not beholden to "stay because last time you left for the opposite." If we are unhappy, we reserve the right to leave, and that's that.

Edit: I should also add, after looking at the decline that began in cataclysm, that Cata totally killed my gang's Wow buzz in going from "everyone can do 5-mans now, even you!" to "are you good enough to do 5-mans?" in the transition from WOTLK to cataclysm. The swerve from "apply time and win" to "every day is a skill test" was a total buzzkill in an environment where other games were popping up all over with "worlds to live in" as opposed to "racetracks to measure your epeen." My personal opinion is that the MMORPG genre doesn't have the right to ask me "are you good enough to go any further" in the main thoroughfare of casual content when I'm paying a sub... a fault I'm also pointing at FFXIV at the same time right now, but after WOTLK, Cata was a huge offender on this front. That's why we already had one foot out the door when pandas bounced into the picture.

[Enan1981]

MoP wasn't good. It was terrible. I think I played it for 3 weeks and was unsubbed.

Blizzard destroyed the in-game communities in late BC, and the damage was still eating away at the game through MoP. Introverted players that hate people LOVED MoP. But the game was hemorrhaging all of the extroverted players that actually liked talking to people and participating in group play.

In modern times, players FALSELY appear to look back at MoP as a great xpac. But that's only because the modern playerbase is a small fraction of the old one and its mostly comprised of introverts.

MoP was actually garbage.

WoW can get back up over 10 million subs, hell it could go over 20 million, but to get there they have to draw in the extroverts that left. And that means rebuilding the old in-game communities that existed in vanilla. And you are NOT going to bring back extroverts with antisocial gameplay like arenas, horrific visions, or torghast.

What in the crack pipe are you smoking? You for real in this assessment? Also if you didnt actually experience all of MoP, what makes you think your view on it is even valid? <_<

[yani9841]

Honestly.. i don't get the hate MoP gets. It's the only expansion that didn't try to shove a recycled big hero down our throats as a major villain or try roping us in with Nostalgia and actually tried to set up new story (it still forgot about it's storylines as we moved on into other expansions but that's their issues). Had some of the most readily available activities outside typical instance raid/pvp of any expansion (i think this was the time where they said F' it and let us loose on dailies and even made the dailies contribute to weekly currency caps). Only major nagative things I recall were typical balance issues (that are always present regardless of what the devs do)... "kung fu pandas" and "asia theme"... and then too much rep gating early on.

I mean "Asia theme" and "Kung Fu Panda" are pretty ok things if there was so little to complain about for THOSE to be high on most people's list...

[Omedon]

People who didnt give MoP a chance cause of "whimsical pandas" are just silly, spacecows cute gnomes and cowpeople are fine but oh lord pandas? no!

I mean, you're of course allowed to have that opinion, but it doesn't make anyone making a decision at that time, for any reason, have to stay, play and pay, particularly when there were so many competitors arriving at that time.

I think everyone should read the wheel of time, but I'd be a fool to think that means everyone is obligated to sit through such a long series of books!

[Jester Joe]

MoP wasn't good. It was terrible. I think I played it for 3 weeks and was unsubbed.

Blizzard destroyed the in-game communities in late BC, and the damage was still eating away at the game through MoP. Introverted players that hate people LOVED MoP. But the game was hemorrhaging all of the extroverted players that actually liked talking to people and participating in group play.

In modern times, players FALSELY appear to look back at MoP as a great xpac. But that's only because the modern playerbase is a small fraction of the old one and its mostly comprised of introverts.

MoP was actually garbage.

WoW can get back up over 10 million subs, hell it could go over 20 million, but to get there they have to draw in the extroverts that left. And that means rebuilding the old in-game communities that existed in vanilla. And you are NOT going to bring back extroverts with antisocial gameplay like arenas, horrific visions, or torghast.

You have a strange fixation on "introverts vs extroverts".


Also I don't see what people are even trying to get at with the chart. MoP, according to the chart, lost a decent chunk at the start but retained a decent amount past that.

Compared to Cataclysms constant decline, and WoD's instantaneous drop off...

[Omedon]

WoW can get back up over 1 million subs, hell it could go over 20 million, but to get there they have to draw in the extroverts that left. And that means rebuilding the old in-game communities that existed in vanilla. And you are NOT going to bring back extroverts with antisocial gameplay like arenas, horrific visions, or torghast.

WoW can, and should no longer risk the idea of community interdependence driving the game. The internet is no longer novel enough for you and I to be trusted with being large factors in another player's experience. WoW needs to continue to refine its already well developed set of tools to protect us from the worst of each other while still leaving things for us to optionally do with friends and communities established within or beyond the game. WoW can no longer be built to "hope you have friends or make some here." The game is bought and subbed to one account at a time, and the modern gamer knows that more keenly than ever, and more with every passing day.

If you really need to need your neighbor and to need your neighbor to need you, classic is there for you.

[Rixarius]

I mean, you're of course allowed to have that opinion, but it doesn't make anyone making a decision at that time, for any reason, have to stay, play and pay, particularly when there were so many competitors arriving at that time.

I think everyone should read the wheel of time, but I'd be a fool to think that means everyone is obligated to sit through such a long series of books!

tbf Wheel of Time kinda drops in quality about half way through then gets better again towards the end of the series.

[Kalisandra]

If you look at your nice graph, you will note that it actually didn't, until the long, long wait for WoD set in. Extend Cata's slide in population, which stated very shortly after it went live, paused for a little in Firelands, and then resumed and only revered for a bit in the MoP pre-patch and you'll see that if Cata's trend continued WoW would've had much worse numbers during MoP. Compared to Cata, MoP's numbers are a screaming success. Sure, after the initial surge, the numbers dropped back, but then the slide stopped and the numbers are flat until SoO. For an ageing product that's losing numbers, that's a really good result.

Also see how that spike for WoD dropped back pretty much immediately? You can bet the numbers of subs didn't get any better from there, and that's one reason they stopped reporting them.

In conclusion, you're looking at the wrong statistic.