Shadowlands lost almost half of its playerbase?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

To be fair, quarterly reports are discussing what happened last quarter and doesn’t reflect the current state of things. It reflects things as they were 3 months ago

- signed a professional investor

the super data is from November to January and google trends are a worthless metric, the quarterly report is only a month off.

[dacoolist]

Ding ding ding, IQ detected.

Dont say logical stuff bro, this is mmo-champion.

WoW has 2 players left in total,rest are communist bots to make the game look alive.

The 2 players had me laughing, It's true - all of us commi players sadly are the only REAL players left <3

[Lahis]

I stopped watching his stuff because he was putting way too much out lol. I don't find he is clickbaity but the amount of content he produces is needless. A news show once or twice a week is fine, but not the amount he does.

Video once or twice per week is a hobby. Not an enterprise that supports multiple people.

[Nightstalker]

Bellular in Smartass mode again. Making suggestions and observations with less than 5 secs of thought behind it. There is always going to be grind. The playerbase partially demands and in other parts hates it. Show me a concept of "regular content" that isn't repetitive or being approached as repetitive.

[Kaver]

There are still A LOT of people playing the game, which is the most important thing.

[Berethos08]

Sure, but we're talking a factor of decades here. EverQuest is over 20 years old and still gets new expansions and content on a regular basis, and there is no indication I'm aware of that the developers have plans to put EverQuest into maintenance mode.

EQ also uses a different approach to expansions (smaller in scope, not all of them have included level cap increases) that allows them to add new expansions almost 22 years into its life.

I don't know how sustainable WoW's "level increase every expansion, major world threat every expansion" actually is over decades...it's already wearing a bit thin as it is from the major world threat angle, and having a level cap increase every expansion has already been broken once (at the expense of the flow of the narrative) but won't prevent them from reaching the same issue that led to the level squish in the first place in just a few more expansions.

Also, their "must have a major new feature to showcase in each expansion" isn't exactly sustainable either, and is another thing Everquest doesn't have holding them back when it comes to continuing to make expansions.

[Hynch]

I got super into SL when it launched. Hit max level, blasted through all the content I could. Geared up and raided a bit. I didn't play BFA very much so the various daily and weekly activities to grind out seemed fun. That fun ended after about a month. Sometime in mid January I finished my covenant story and found myself logging into retail less and less. I've been playing Classic since its launch and just went back to that. I have a guild that feels like a community in Classic. We do stuff all the time. In SL I felt like I was always on a treadmill by myself, with the occasional M+ and raid. I haven't been on retail in about 3 weeks now and don't really miss it. I really hope everyone else is having fun with it though!

[Thage]

that's an optimistic point of view, maybe, but we've seen that companies can be ruthless and can decide to stop caring about new content (extreme cases being licence termination and server shutdown and conversion by the community to private servers)
I don't know how many IP the EQ team has, but blizzard has many, and if one day 1h of work on another IP is more profitable than 1h of work on wow, I don't see any reasons for them to work on new content for wow, especially since classic games are popular, and new content can potentially lead to revenue loss (bad content, bad press, players realization that it's not like before, etc)

Well, that's patently untrue now. Hearthstone almost definitely makes more money than WoW does, but WoW is still getting development. We don't even need to hypothesize about a potential future, WoW is not their one flagship title anymore--they have three, and there's no reason to shoot yourself in the foot when all three remain highly profitable.

I don't want to sound negative but I think there's chances that 10.0 is the last expansion
we need to see what new games they're working on

There's almost no chance 10.0 is the last expansion unless it is not profitable. Every time people start Chicken Little'ing about the game's future, the team has repeated the same thing: "So long as World of Warcraft is profitable, we will develop expansions for it." Shadowlands would have to nosedive the global playerbase to below 50,000 during its lifetime for expansion development after 10.0 to be cancelled.

- - - Updated - - -

EQ also uses a different approach to expansions (smaller in scope, not all of them have included level cap increases) that allows them to add new expansions almost 22 years into its life.

I mean, yeah, the scope of expansion development is going to change at some point, but the person I was talking to seems to think we're looking at the end of major content development in the form of expansions full-stop, which is ridiculous considering WoW maintains its status as top dog in the MMORPG market. So long as WoW's earnings outpace its costs we're going to see dedicated content development, and that's nowhere near a point where they need to significantly scale down their development scope.

[Aleksej89]

imho blizzard has delayed the 9.1 patch a bit too long.
there are quite a few aspects of the game that need big improvement (covenant abilities, some class/specs, Maw, PvP etc.).

Overall SL is an improvement to BFA but so far its notably inferior to Legion, especially when it comes to the story/characters (particularly the villains).
Its not a terrible expansion but atm it does not feel worth a subscription.

[slender]

Doesn't this happen every expansion release? Feels like regular growth.

People show up for the new content, play with it for a while and move on until the next patch/release.

[Puri]

Great metrics, very new, unique result, wow...

Cataclysm
MoP
WoD
Legion
BfA
SL

[willtron]

Has it ever occurred to you that in a MMO, people want to play with huge numbers of other people?

Why does the player count affect your enjoyment?

[Unholyground]

I'm one of them, $40 a month is way too much to spend for two people in your household to play a single game, there's just no value there now at least not for me when I have game pass and tons of other way better options that don't suck my life away lol. They would be better off making all games in the blizzard launcher available for that fee at least it would give more value to their horrible pricing standards or even allow us to maybe buy the fucking expansion and have unlimited game time like other MMOs do it. Worked really good for Guild Wars 2 and they just created a huge cosmetic store and it worked just fine.

[justandulas]

the super data is from November to January and google trends are a worthless metric, the quarterly report is only a month off.

I do think there is some truth to it, but the google trends as a metric is definitely a worthless metric for judging a games population. It can be used to judge a games "hype" for sure, but it is not reflective of in game population. On the other hand, superdata IS a very good company for metrics..

that said, i have personally noticed roughly the same rate of friends/guildies/mythic raiders leaving as the video suggests so who knows.

I like bellular, but the dude puts out WAY too many videos. multiple videos every day is exhausting to watch. Less is more to me imo.

[sam86]

i expect drop and it will increase with next patch, as always the usual
i'd be worried if a major patch/exp is launched and playerbase drops

[Lucetia]

I know this might be another ''SL is bad'' thread or whatever you can make it out to be, but this seems concerning. While the game remains to be very profitable its apparent that players are leaving at a rapid pace. According to Superdata, revenue is down by 61% and user decline (not included China) is down with 41%. The Bellular video below could be more insightful (I know he's known as the clickbait guy etc etc):

While I have my issues with the direction they have taken the game, this must be the first time that I legit start to worry for its future. Am I overreacting or is this indeeed worrisome?

Yet, Blizzard posted the exact opposite in their quarterly statements to investors. So who are we to believe, Blizzard who has to inform shareholders if it was underperforming or random searches and data that only has a fraction of the amount. Pretty sure Blizzard is the one to believe here. So yes, you are overreacting.

[Osmeric]

Yet, Blizzard posted the exact opposite in their quarterly statements to investors. So who are we to believe, Blizzard who has to inform shareholders if it was underperforming or random searches and data that only has a fraction of the amount. Pretty sure Blizzard is the one to believe here. So yes, you are overreacting.

Their quarterly numbers are trailing indicators. Quarterly MAUs average over the three months of a quarter, so the Q4 2020 MAU was mostly prerelease of SL.

[unbound]

While I have my issues with the direction they have taken the game, this must be the first time that I legit start to worry for its future. Am I overreacting or is this indeeed worrisome?

This has been the trend since WoD now. I think Legion held up a bit better overall, but WoD, BfA, and now SL are all doing the same thing.

The problem is that people get sucked in by the hype, play the game which seems interesting at first, but then figure out that the game has no legs because Blizz put so little effort into it. People then leave.

As a consumer, what you should be worried about it is the small effort Blizz puts into the product anymore. WoW is very profitable, but, like eating a McDonalds hamburger, you shouldn't be satisfied one way or another.

On the other hand, if you like McDonalds hamburgers, you can keep enjoying them. You just won't see quite as crowded of a store.

As an investor, you should be worried since, if Blizz keeps reducing costs, they will eventually lose too many customers to maintain profit margins in the long-run. With nothing great on the horizon, I wouldn't recommend investing in Blizz. Cutting costs is a short-term winner only.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I do think there is some truth to it, but the google trends as a metric is definitely a worthless metric for judging a games population. It can be used to judge a games "hype" for sure, but it is not reflective of in game population. On the other hand, superdata IS a very good company for metrics..

that said, i have personally noticed roughly the same rate of friends/guildies/mythic raiders leaving as the video suggests so who knows.

I like bellular, but the dude puts out WAY too many videos. multiple videos every day is exhausting to watch. Less is more to me imo.

Unless there releasing sources/metrics being a “good company” means nil. The investors report is legally binding so it’s not like blizzard can just fudge the numbers and super data is sharing secret insider info.

As to bellular him self he’s just a click bait artist like any one else, he makes up story’s he knows will sell because people love to hate. It was the same fabricated nonsense when he said the the QA team was cut when in reality it like not even a 10th of the team that was laid off.

[sam86]

imho blizzard has delayed the 9.1 patch a bit too long.

we in pandemic, most projects are getting scrapped