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

[Malikath]

A reminder, MoP circa ToT to SoO was the ONLY TIME SINCE WRATH TO NOT LOSE SUBS.

[anubisdark]

I left during MOP because of scenarios. I misunderstood what they would be. I thought they would be an end game path for people who prefer to solo. They were not, dungeons and raids remained the only path and I cant stand people.

[Draenox]

Because by the time MoP came around the game was already old. The lifecycle of a product simulates that subscriber curve very closely, with WoD being an anomaly that was adjusted shortly.

People seem to forget that this game is 16 years old at this stage, and even during MoP it was 8 years and running - performing way beyond what anyone could expect.

[Mardux]

You cannot compare 7.3 to 8.3 because corruption did not exist at the start of expansion while legiondaries did.

Waking essences did not exist for mains. Literally it did not exist. You could not buy anything for your class because you have been already done with that shit rng because it lasted over a year of farming.

Nuts? tell that to max https://www.twitch.tv/videos/553171289?t=1h21m59s

I'm sorry. Are we supposed to let streamers decide our viewpoints like you apparently do? What's next? A link to some bullshit clickbait by asmongold? Lol

[Autoriot]

My take, as a player who has played every expansion considerably. The graph almost tells it all, terrible start, good middle, terrible stagnant end.

MoP started out horribly
Reasons:
-Cata sucked for the most part and you can see the decline in subs throughout that expansion, so leading up to it was already rough.
-End of Cata also introduced LFR which MoP continued on with. This hurt a lot raiding guilds (the more casual ones) and also added another raid tier that *some* felt was necessary to do.
-The theme turned a lot of people off or away from the expansion. You can say just get over it, what's wrong with the Asian theme and pandas, but it was true for many. I was one that still decently liked the expansion but really disliked the terrible over-the-top Asian accents for the Mogu and Pandaren. Particularly Mogu'shan palace voice lines were super cringe.
-Expansion release was a shit show. Super laggy, can't click on NPC's (it was prior to them adding the shield so you can't mount on top of them), the intro quest with lag was almost impossible to complete (as Alliance I remember shooting the ship in my Gyrocopter for 10+ minutes before it registering I had helped sink it). Everyone then funneled into one zone, more lag and over-camped everything.
-The amount of dailies. The cap was 25 and you could hit without even doing all the dailies available, and yes, they were required if you wanted to unlock profession and valor gear for raiding. Not to mention, there was a rep locked behind another rep. So it would be like having to do Uldum to Revered before you could even start the Vale rep these days, which you also needed way up.
-First raids were meh. Vaults was okay, HoF was meh, Terrace was meh.

Middle to Early end of MoP was good:
They fixed a lot of things, added plenty of content, Isle of Thunder was a good daily hub. Later Timeless Isle was also added and a good daily hub. Raids improved, ToT was good. SoO was good overall, but there were some negatives (will get to in the section below). Challenge modes were awesome, even the solo trial (gold/silver/bronze rating) was good and is still available to date and functional.

End of MoP was bleh and only got worse with content drought:
-The story was pretty crappy (and a lot of it told in books only), but it took a terrible turn when Garrosh went from honorable Horde leader (see Stonetalon cata quest revamps, the Gilneas stuff where he tries to stop/warn Sylvanas, etc) to crazy and racist. Of course they used the "old god corrupted him angle" which we JUST had with Deathwing, which ticked a lot of people off that they ruined such a good character.
-No new content for a year, despite SoO being a good raid, nothing can last that long, not even ICC.


Probably a lot, both pros and cons, that I am forgetting, but that was what I could come up with off the top of my head.
Lately a lot of people say the class skills and feeling were amazing, I don't remember that, but I don't also remember it being awful, so maybe it was good?
Lots of people also saying MoP was one of the best expansions, not sure about that, but everyone has their opinion. Unfortunately a couple popular streamers have said this as well, so some people just parrot it as their own opinion.

I would still rank it worse than Legion (and Legion lower than some of the very early expansions). It was similar to Legion's tough start, but that they salvaged it by the middle. BfA on the other hand, I'm not sure they ever saved the expansion, they just added more things (essences, corruption) that were agonizing.

[Laqweeta]

Then again, WOTLK was the first expansion launched under "THE IRON FIST OF THE ACTIVISION SLAVERS!"

By the time Activision got it's hands on WoW, WotLK was nearly fully completed. They joined during the END of WotLK, hence the RDF in 3.3

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Judging by the fact that "9 million people" are watching it, it's probably just because you have different tastes.

Borat has a 91% on rotten tomatoes. I watched 10 minutes of it and shut it off, it was the worst movie I've ever tried to watch.

This is the equivalent of people not trying MoP because of "kung-fu pandaz"

[Kehego]

MoP had 1 good raid and fully fleshed out LFR

Of course people on the forums loved it.

More people quit during mop for me than in any other expansion. *shrug*

[Onikaroshi]

By the time Activision got it's hands on WoW, WotLK was nearly fully completed. They joined during the END of WotLK, hence the RDF in 3.3

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This is the equivalent of people not trying MoP because of "kung-fu pandaz"

Well, not 10 minutes, more like 30 or something, got to the point when he went to shit in a bush and was just done with it.

[Laqweeta]

Well, not 10 minutes, more like 30 or something, got to the point when he went to shit in a bush and was just done with it.

You should really try to sit through the movie. It’s got some hilarious as fuck parts. Like when he turns his blinker on to turn right, but turns left.

It’s one of those “so stupid it’s funny” movies.

[kaminaris]

I'm sorry. Are we supposed to let streamers decide our viewpoints like you apparently do? What's next? A link to some bullshit clickbait by asmongold? Lol

You seems to be mistaken about a lot of things. I showed example of one pretty famous person in wow raiding guild that pretty much agrees we me on this point.
Not the other way around, I had a solid opinion about corruption and gearing systems in general before he even mentioned this on his stream.

And there are couple of things I don't agree with him and it's not going to change. And yes it should influence you to learn common sense.

IF legiondaries were introduced in 8.3 alongside with waking essences, they would have been great. Unfortunately you had to deal with this RNG bullshit for over a year.
Damage has already been done.
Corruption is for about a month? And I already got like 10 corrupted items. Doing raid and ~3 M+ dungeons a week.
While I had 10 leggos a year after legion launched. Not to mention I had to farm all the shit to even get one of them each month?
Just for them to be disabled next expansion.

That is the fundamental difference between those systems.

And about asmongold, I did watch couple of his videos, he is pretty delusional and very often wrong but he is correct on at least couple of things.
People seem to disagree on everything when they don't like/hate specific person. Being polar opposite of someone is just as bad as being a sheep.

[Kalisandra]

Also the zones were fixed, unlike MoP.
Frostfire -> Gorgrond -> Talador -> Spires -> Nagrand
If you were lucky you could go straight to Nagrand from Talador.

Alliance you went Shadowmoon and then either Talador or Gorgrond, and then the other for a bit, then Spires, and finally Nagrand, which you didn't need to complete. Later on for alts with the x3 XP pots and simply doing bonus XP events and treasures/rares you didn't actually have to do any of the quests to level past the Garrison ones. Then you'd find half Gorgrond and Talador phased wrong. *sigh*

Cata was open at the start with two zones to choose from but after that you went Deepholm -> Uldum -> Twilight Highlands.

You could often skip Uldum, especially if you did all Hyjal and then some of Vashj'ir before moving to Deepholm.

I never understood the praise people gave the leveling in WoD as for someone like me who has several alts and likes to do different things each time I found WoD enormously linear and static with little choice to where and what I wanted to do.
But maybe that is just me.

I found it fun for the first few times, which is better than usual for me - I hate levelling once I've done the content once, as a rule. I also found Shadowmoon Valley much nicer to level in than Frostfire, and thus as a primarily Alliance player found it nicer than I would otherwise have done.

Legion leveling if fine, I just wished there was more zones. Same goes for BfA, 3 zones per faction is just too little imo and makes it very repetitive.

Agreed.

Due to all this I really look forward to the level squish so that I can level my alts through one expansion at a time and ignore the ones I do not like, like Cata and WoD.

It's one of the features I'm looking forward to.

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

Pandas and 16 months of Siege of Orgrimmar, while being a good raid, yeah 16 months.

[Coffer]

The theme didn't appeal to a lot of people, mostly due to the west's lack of interest in Chinese culture and the fact that Pandaren, at the time, clashed with many people's view of what the Warcraft universe should look and feel like. It also didn't have a solid antagonist in its early stages, unlike BC, Wrath and Cata.

The early patches were also not good. Few games can recover from a poor launch. While MoP got much better later on, the early parts of the expansion, particularly the burnout associated with the dailies and the overall grindy feeling of the game, likely made a lot of people wonder why they were still bothering anymore. WoW was already getting quite old by that point, and many of those that had joined in Vanilla, BC or Wrath were bound to transition to other things in life, if they hadn't already done so in Cata. They probably just saw the early patches as a good enough excuse to bow out.

SoO lasting as long as it did also didn't help matters, despite being a good raid.

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-The story was pretty crappy (and a lot of it told in books only), but it took a terrible turn when Garrosh went from honorable Horde leader (see Stonetalon cata quest revamps, the Gilneas stuff where he tries to stop/warn Sylvanas, etc) to crazy and racist. Of course they used the "old god corrupted him angle" which we JUST had with Deathwing, which ticked a lot of people off that they ruined such a good character.

Keep in mind that this was mostly because of the players.

Blizzard themselves didn't fully know in which direction to take Garrosh, and in spite of their occasional attempts to paint him in a good light (his response to accidentally killing Cairne, the events in Stonetalon and so on), people endlessly protested his role as warchief as he was a massive step down from Thrall. It ultimately just got to a point where Blizzard said "fuck it" and decided on killing Garrosh off... until things were further complicated by the people who were more or less okay with Garrosh and hated Thrall complaining as well.

[Kalisandra]

I had quit my long time main, ele shaman, in WoD after they removed mastery and gave Multistrike to all

That change really blew, and when they took away the graphic of the bonus spells casting initially it was just awful. It at least they listened to the extent of giving the graphic back.

MoP class design was fun (because everything was bursty, instant, everyone had everything) - but that doesn't make it perfect. Speaking about burst, i highly suspect people have forgotten about it in PvP, or they only remember themselves being on the ''bursty'' side, but PvP in MoP was a nightmare of CC and burst, often with cases of a spec or class having both. Also, i would bet warlocks are complaining the most, but would never admit to how op all lock specs were.

Oh, I remember it alright. I remember my Ret getting nerfed because they'd given our CC to Holy as well, and it was completely op in a healer's hands. Rather than take it off Holy, they just nerfed it overall. And nerfed it again in WoD. And in Legion they started on the other utility as well.

The thing is, when they started trimming they didn't just trim the annoying random 'free' CC and stuns (and lots of those were still there in WoD), but tons of other stuff as well. Honestly, I'll take really annoying random CC and burst just to get the rest back.

And to even mention some other stuff...BoS spamming rogues? Every caster not ever casting? They should have been called ''proccers''. The race arm between melees and casters has reached a pinnacle, a problem that Blizzard has slowly been pushing aside for years prior to that (that is why in Cata, they had made first steps on making casters having something on the move).

And guess what? Casters now have to cast and lots of melee is still very mobile and unlike Vanilla, BC, and LK, all melee have kicks now. Again, MoP felt better.

[Darkguyver2020]

Because all the dumbasses brushed it off as "Lawl, Kung Fu Panda" and didn't bother with it. Bunch of short-sighted dickheads.

[Rixarius]

Yeah, the demonic monsters that fed on your emotions and turned you into raging lunatics, paranoid maniacs, or depressed husks who just laid down and died; monster swarms of insects that slaughtered hundreds like clockwork every generation; entire species enslaved and put to labor to death; all backed up by the manipulations of a dead Old God. Totally rainbows and butterflies.

jesus this forum gets defensive lmao. Literally none of that information, the story of the Sha, or anything close to it was revealed in the cinematic or the first patch of the game, sans one dungeon. It wasn't until about 1/3 through the expac that the story started to get dark, with the Sha of Fear and more so the entire SoO patch.

[Dhrizzle]

The Daily system was no different than any other expansion before it you cant honestly blame MoP for the same system that had been in the game since BC.

The rep system was more of a gate than it was in WotLK and Cata, it went from something that gave you little extras (head and shoulder enchants) and possibly a nice item to blocking all the dungeon token gear and (more annoyingly to me personally) you needed to grind rep just to complete the Loremaster achievement.

[Ielenia]

How does this corruption system have less rng than legendaries and titanforging? It clearly doubled down on existing rng systems!

Not really.

For BIS corruption effects, you had this, in order:
• Did the item drop?
• Did the item corrupt?
• Did the item roll the right corruption?
• Did the item roll the right rank of corruption?

For BIS titanforging, you had this, in order:
• Did the item drop?
• Did the item warforge?
• If so, did the item warforge again?
• If so, did the item titanforge?
• If so, did the item titanforge again?
• If so, did the item titanforge again?
• If so, did the item titanforge again?
• If so, did the item titanforge again?
• If so, did the item titanforge again?
• Etc....

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

jesus this forum gets defensive lmao. Literally none of that information, the story of the Sha, or anything close to it was revealed in the cinematic or the first patch of the game, sans one dungeon. It wasn't until about 1/3 through the expac that the story started to get dark, with the Sha of Fear and more so the entire SoO patch.

Everything that poster said is things we learned when the expansion opened. What are you saying? He didn't even mention the short stories that went with MoP, with dead kids to boot.

[Absintheminded]

Didn't more people leave during Cata? Also, MoP didn't really get that good until Throne of Thunder.