Shadowlands lost almost half of its playerbase?

[Biggles Worth]

Why do people complain about content? do you people play the game to just consume content and move on to the next?

Oppose tooooo what exactly, not consuming content?

[justandulas]

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.

As a professional investor, if WoW and blizzard were in their own bubble as an independent studio/stock i'd 100% agree with you.... but don't forget they are part of ATVI and ATVI owns the COD franchise. Their stock is safe as long as CoD and warzone continue to print billions in pure profits. I mean, CoD Cold War (it's a lot better now) was half complete at launch and it only ended up as one of the most sold games of all time. CoD microtransaction profits alone in a given month can keep the lights on for WoW servers, and all ATVI games, for years.

When you should be worried about Blizz is when ATVI is willing to part ways, or sell their individual IP's to companies like Tencent. OR If tencent buys a majority share of ATVI, as it's rumored they want one of the two big fish (ATVI or EA), then cut and run. Their profits will be high, but tencent is legit one of the slimiest studios in creation. Bobby Kotick himself would be seen as too caring and generous to customers to work at Tencent lol.

[Adam Jensen]

Just like with every expansion in past 10 years, honeymoon phase is over and only dedicated playerbase stays to play

Why is it news to anyone?

Because some people have to go on the forums and shout with glee about how WoW is dead, because I guess they don't like other people enjoying something they don't like.

[hulkgor]

Just like every other expansion, just like every other major patch.

A new resurgence of the active playerbase will happen in 9.1... then down again until 9.2.... then 9.3.... then a huge boom for the next expansion.

But keep in mind player numbers were highly inflated due to the pandemic and world wide lockdowns.

And here we are, making a big fuss about a common occurrence over the past couple decades. Thanks MMOC posters

[justandulas]

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.

bellular would make far better content with a less is more approach. His clickbait titles (and pictures of videos) are legit kinda eye rolling. I like the guy, but he did better content when he made 1 video a week than he does with a bigger team and 1 video a day. it's too much.

example: i like angry joe reviews, but i wouldn't watch them every day ya know?

[GKLeatherCraft]

That 50% of playerbase are not just faceless mooks. SL resulted in 90% of my longtime friends quitting WoW.

But that's anecdotal, my friends list has never been more active, *Shrug*

[topitopi]

The fact that many places are still in quarantine makes the drop off a bit worse but, anyway, I'm not surprised. I have never been bored faster than in SL. They really, really made a boring endgame experience because it's the 3rd rehash of same concepts introduced in Legion but somehow their most time-sink iteration if that can be believed. The pace of sending out glaring fixes that should have been taken care of asap is also appallingly slow, with only some of these NOW being addressed months after launch. I noticed that 9.1 tease barely had any substantive work to share...that thing is months away. Player dropoff from SL is only going to get worse. I've been saying this since the writing was on the wall in BfA but the problem is Ion. Just compare the excitement, love of the game, and discussion the BC (and previously Classic team) devs had at Blizzcon to Ion's deadpan, players are dumb, wishy-washy delivery. It was just classic Ion nonsense. People used to hate on Ghostcrawler, who probably wanted too hard of a game for modern players, and who full disclosure I thought did a horrible job with Cata, but the fact that Ion remains unchallenged in shocking

[BetrayedOf52]

Google trends is not a way to guess sub numbers, I do think its down. But what the hell, who uses google trends like this lol

[LordVargK]

population of a game is a hint that your product is bad and should be revised

So, since WoW has probably still more active users than competing MMOs (in EU and NA at least), it's by your definition perfect.

[justandulas]

The fact that many places are still in quarantine makes the drop off a bit worse but, anyway, I'm not surprised. I have never been bored faster than in SL. They really, really made a boring endgame experience because it's the 3rd rehash of same concepts introduced in Legion but somehow their most time-sink iteration if that can be believed. The pace of sending out glaring fixes that should have been taken care of asap is also appallingly slow, with only some of these NOW being addressed months after launch. I noticed that 9.1 tease barely had any substantive work to share...that thing is months away. Player dropoff from SL is only going to get worse. I've been saying this since the writing was on the wall in BfA but the problem is Ion. Just compare the excitement, love of the game, and discussion the BC (and previously Classic team) devs had at Blizzcon to Ion's deadpan, players are dumb, wishy-washy delivery. It was just classic Ion nonsense. People used to hate on Ghostcrawler, who probably wanted too hard of a game for modern players, and who full disclosure I thought did a horrible job with Cata, but the fact that Ion remains unchallenged in shocking

Ion is challenged constantly my dude. He isn't alone either as the writing staff is constantly attacked too. About the only team who doesn't eat flak from fans is the art team.

I do think sometimes it's time for a new voice and direction, and it's beyond time for Ion to step aside and let someone else take a swing at 10.0.

As for Ghostcrawler, he is designing a league of legends MMORPG so we'll see what he can do soon.

[Argorwal]

How often do you think people need to Google about a game they played for 16 years??

[LordVargK]

But that's anecdotal, my friends list has never been more active, *Shrug*

same for me. SL feels fresh after BfA and Legion and tons of new people joined our guild. Anecdotes are anecdotes.

[Wangming]

I remember how BfA apparently lost "more players than WoD" after the first months according to X people with zero insight.

Yet that was never in any shape or form confirmed by official reports, on the contrary in fact.

Another day, another clickbait by Bellular. He used to be good. The "sources" are laughable at best.

Well it might as well be true. MMO subscriptions are rarely constant. Hell I'm not subbed to anything at the moment. Low on money. We are four months after the launch and the first actual content patch doesn't even have a release month so if the numbers are low it is hardly surprising. Just the usual shit we've had for a decade now. People just pretend it is new.

[LordVargK]

How often do you think people need to Google about a game they played for 16 years??

Who hasn't wowhead bookmarked by now? would not show in google search.

[Wangming]

About the only team who doesn't eat flak from fans is the art team.

Maybe because they really ARE the only team that constantly performs well.

[cparle87]

The motivation to play lately has been fully killed.

They said that mythic+ loot obtained before 9.0.5 will not be eligible for valor upgrades. So why waste any time?

It's also still going to be a few months until 9.1, so for most of us who have no interest in Mythic raiding, its pointless to play until at least 9.0.5.

If only there was stuff to do besides keys and mythic raiding. If only. /s

I get that the players who are engaged enough in the game to actually peruse forums lay on the more hardcore side of things, but let's be real here. Back in MoP I honestly wondered whether people forgot the rest of Pandaria between Shrine, SoO, and the distance between even existed. Same thing in WoD.

[dayne87]

I could believe it. I played "hardcore" up to around renown level 32 and I had kept up with 7+ alts at level 60, etc. but it just got too repetitive for me. I am still subbed but just not logging in much until 9.1 is near. At that point I'll go back for 2-3 weeks and get 1 character up to renown 40 quick so that I'm ready for 9.1, then I'll probably follow the campaign of 9.1 along until I unlock flying. That's all I really want to see, the ability to fly, even if it's in the covenant zones only. After that I might try out the new Torghast wings and the new zones in the maw, but I'm certainly not going to push all my alts like I did before.

[shise]

Do people still fal lfor this crap?

I Mean, it is not 2012 anymore... the "wow is dying, players are quitting derp" stuff is quite old now.

Expansion just came out, and after 3 months or 4 population drops, specially before the first patch comes out. Nothing new.

[kamuimac]

40 % were gone back in january .

by now its between 50-60 %

all should praise great game director Ion who made another expansion aimed literaly only at hardcore raiders. such a great job there Ion

[inafume]

Its getting lower because WoW lvling is so bad that people powerlevel through it not giving a damn about the story, this was different in WotLK. Blizzard has ignored lvling and made sure that the only content are its raids and dungouns and even these are becoming tiresome. Ofcourse you have some diehard WoW players who would never even try a different mmorpg and if they would they would compare it with WoW boring mainquest system, looking at those who think FF14 is too much on the story.

The difference between WoW and FF14 is however that one ignores the RPG element and the other goes heavily into it, which some dont like. Because of this heavy RPG element most want to rush through the story of FF14, while its meant to take it easy and enjoy the story. Just by doing this most people would stay subbed longer, since main quest or side quests are quite intruiging. Furthermore some would love to get a certain gear or mount and farm it, why? because the mounts, gear etc look awesome. Which also make people subbed longer.

True, FF14 would benefit with the hard mode dungouns to get almost raid gear like at the end of the dungoun instead after each boss. WoW has done it perfectly in legion, it was something new but then didnt come up with nice new affixes. They could have mirrored the dungoun or something.

However it seems blizzard just want a quick cashgrab and profit from previous expansions while they could in fact make WoW better. A shame really. But WoW will stay the biggest mmorpg since most will stay subbed and argue why blizzard isnt doing something new. Unsubscribe and hit them in their wallets.

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make. You go through MSQ in FF14 on your first job, but I don't know of people redoing MSQ as the primary option for later jobs. Just a lot of PotD/Dungeon/FATE spam. I feel that's similar to how people play WOW. The only difference is that in WOW you have multiple characters to level classes, but FF14 can all be done on the same character. You're forced to repeat quests/storyline in WOW (a little less now with Chromie Time) whereas it's optional in FF14 (with New Game+).