Shadowlands: Rapidly Climbing the Ladder in Popularity

[Nerovar]

And my point stands: class design in wod was superior to that of BfA absolutely zero contest, no selfie cam patch will change this fact, you guys care too much about unimportant fluff - only class design is important, it makes you wanna play this game in the first place.

A bit hyperbolic but I tend to agree. Legion was a pretty good expansion in terms of content with some very fresh ideas but I basically enjoyed none of it because their class revamps ruined the specs I previously liked to play.

[D3athsting]

Basically, the only good thing I can say about SL is that...
It isn't BfA. While it's true, it isn't really exciting news, especially when loot simply doesn't drop in PvE, outside of the vault, that is.

Yeah i quit after having 15 altimor kills split between n and hc without getting weapon token to drop.

[kranur]

While I don't think it's a particularly bad expansion, it is the first expansion after MoP where I just don't feel like logging in so soon ... and I haven't even played it a lot in the first place.
I can't say why but just nothing feels like worth doing. Would have maybe played to increase anima at least but damn the SL world quests are annoying.

[shise]

So far it is right behind Legion for me, but we didnt even get a patch yet, thing just came out, so that is promising.

BC > Classic = WotLK > MoP > Legion = Shadowlands > WoD > The rest.

[Flurryfang]

As with all expansions, we can only really judge its quality when X.3 comes out.

That said, it is clear, that they have not managed to find a way to keep the game interesting after the launch month. We are rapidly losing stuff to do and many of the games systems are already hitting an end point in the next couple of weeks.

So yeah, same old same old.

Edit: The new age look of Legion is really running low and we are back to conservative game design.

[erifwodahs]

It rapidly drops popularity as expected.

I mean drop is always expected after launch, look at other games or wow classic. Any proof that it is dropping faster than usual?

[Gasparde]

I'd still take WoD over SL any day of the week.

I was fine with having nothing to do in WoD. I just wanted to raid and play a bunch of characters at a somewhat competitive level. I could do both of these with relatively little effort and not once did I have any thoughts about unsubbing going through my mind. Cap a character, drag them through a raid once or twice, grats, they're fully geared now, go ahead and enjoy all of mythic raiding and god knows what else now.

I'm not fine with having to do 500 things to be able to effectively raid. 'Effectively raid' meaning wanting to clear the damn place in less than 4 months worth of time. Do m+, do PvP, do Maw dailies, do weekly Torghasts, progress through your shitty Covenant campaign, all of that with a weekly gate to make sure that you just can't get done with it at your own pace. For any one of those you're not doing you will absolutely feel a significant decrease in character power - and since I'm sadly not a Limit player, like many other players as well, I need all the numbers help I can get to get past stupid bullshit bosses like SLG as without this help I'd be entirely reliant on Blizzard stepping in and nerfing shit for me. Not to mention that I'd have to do that on every single character if I ever wanted to do anything more than heroic raiding, some random ass +15 keys or random whatever BGs - and if I was foolish enough to not do all of this shit on 12 characters from day one.. fuck me, because now those characters will be behind forever with no real way of ever catching up in many cases.

Fuck Shadowlands. Worst expansion for me. By a fucking huge margin. BFA might have been shit, but this is a whole nother level of shit.

[Nobleshield]

I'd take WoD over SL just because it felt like WoW not a Diablo game. Fuck M+, fuck borrowed power, fuck modern WoW. The current dev team need to learn what makes a MMORPG and stick to that formula not try to "innovate" where they don't have to.

[Wilfire]

Yes, SL is climbing in popularity so hard that even the new friends I made a month ago stopped logging in

[BarosanuNr1]

SL lasted 2.5 months until I stopped feeling like logging in. For comparison, the personal retention for other expansions that I was able to play after launch without IRL interruptions lasted: 3 weeks (BFA), 7 months (Legion), 6 months (WoD), permanently (TBC, WotLK), 7 months (newClassic). Thank god for BFA setting such a low bar.

[Raisei]

not people

raiders and streamers

Please. Every second thread on this forum was about how much these things were hated.

thats what mythic raiders and streamers wanted

and blizzard made a mistake catering only to them

Hardly. There is still stuff to do. I mean what did BFA or Legion offer in terms of Solo Content that SLs doesn't? Torghast is very easily superior to islands and apart from that, BFA had nothing more or less then SLs.
Warfronts, Invasions and such all came later in 8.1 or even 8.2. so it's not fair to judge 9.0 by that, when stuff could still be added.

it already costed them >50% of subs

Stop listening to Bellulars click-bait videos. Shadowlands is just living through the normal live-cycle that every expansion has gone through. The numbers are always inflated at launch because people come to check new stuff, the story and such, many of those never intended to stay long-term and that is what causes the drops in numbers once the story is finished and the first raid tier done.
It has been this way every time and everytime some drama queen tries to make the point that it's "this time the expansion I don't like will kill WoW! Look numbers are dropping already!!!"

who could have guessed that catering only to 5% of your playerbase will make 95% eventually quit. such a shocking unpredicatble twist there.

It is cute that you assume those casual non-Raiders and non-Mythic runners are actually this far in the majority, but they are not. This game has always been about raids and dungeons. That has been and will be it's strongest content by far. The rest is simply flavour. Not that this is new either. WoW has never added a ton of casual solo content, because that is not the stuff it's playerbase cares about.

i mean they didnt even bother to put in legacy buff into Legion raids to at least keep transmog farming crowd in game - how lazy is that. who could have though it was a good idea to do that ? jezus.

So? You could solo Antorus in BFA already apart from 2 bosses that have a mechanical problem for soloing (Shivara and Aggramar), but I just ran it with a guildie and it was easy as pie.

can you imagine any other company openly saying to 95% of your customers "well f...... you " (said in Cartman voice) ?

anyone responsible for such fiasco would be long fired.

how is Ion still game director ?

I can and have seen it. Well, not them openly saying it of course and Blizzard hasn't done so either, that is just in your head.

But a few years back SWTOR, which I used to play simply stopped making raiding or worthwhile dungeon content. They just did not do it anymore. Now not that they informed the playerbase of that decision of course, they kept stringing us along with vague promises of group content, but when after 3 years the only content coming was a 1-boss raid we gave up. Bioware had clearly decided to tell it's raiding community to fuck off.

The thing is, nothing of that sort has happened with WoW yet. You still have all the content you had in the early months of the last expansions, you just aren't forced to grind it anymore.

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I'd take WoD over SL just because it felt like WoW not a Diablo game. Fuck M+, fuck borrowed power, fuck modern WoW. The current dev team need to learn what makes a MMORPG and stick to that formula not try to "innovate" where they don't have to.

Soooo, since you obviously know better then the multi-million dollar company making the game succesful for 16 years, what does make a MMORPG then? I can't help but notice that you are heavy on hating but quite light on concrete points about that "formula" you seem to have.

WoW since it's first days has been about group content, dungeons, raids and in the end getting gear to improve your character. None of this has changed. In fact the introduction of Mythic Plus created a way for dungeons to remain useful over the course of the entire expansion and not become pointless once you cleared them on Mythic once.

While sticking to this core WoW has added some decent casual daily content that you can do or leave as you wish, with WQs and Dailies mainly existing to give you something to do while you are not in raids and dungeons. There is nothing bad about that. Especially now where they are completely optional.

Your comparison to WoD is truely laughable. In that expansion you had nothing to do at all. You raided, then you logged out for a week and the content draught at the end was ridiculous. I know the grass is always greener, but come oooon.

[Tyrannica]

Just would like to see Wow get back to being fun again. Everything feels so calculated, formulaic and hollow. .

Yeah, looking at my once beloved warlock class i played since TBC 2007, with some breaks maining rogue, mage, shadowpriest, dk/dh, i am quite disgusted. Warlock is especially the best example how class design got worse over the years. Devs made a once fun class into trash with regards to demology(almost fun, if not for hard gcd capped casts and low numbers to accompany it) and affliction, merely. Does not even matter that affliction is S tier in raids and rbgs, the gameplay(MRing dots) is awkward and makes one cringe.

Class design since BfA feels like a reversed King Midas, turning gold into BS.

I am shocked that a multibillion company like blizzard is allowing this shit to happen to their main game.

Again, WoD had no content and is regarded easily the worst expansion in history of wow - still, it had FAR better class design than the last 2 expansions.

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This is purely the fault of the PvPers who wanted to quickly finish their weekly quest and thus camped in the Maw or at other choke points in groups to kill solo players.

"If you don't want to be killed, opt out of warmode!"? Well, guess what, that is what people did and they aren't coming back.

Thats not what i meant. Play horde and you will see there is nothing to do and that kill quest for alliance is very quickly done in the maw like in 10 minutes. 10 minutes for a weekly, playing both sides and it feels underwhelming, the pvp dailies give absolutely ridiuculous rewards like 50 honor and just eats your time without beeing any fun.

As horde you have not even those 10 minutes you just turn warmode off, there is no incentive, cp capping is easy enough anyways.

What i mean with warmode in SL is empty, is, that there are no rewards that could drag you into it, no good cosmetic rewards, grind not even a pvp reputation faction(we had one in legion).

There is not even a minium of an incentive to turn warmode on as horde. The only reasion would be to have 3 pvp abilities more to play with and thats it. Thats not content.

Again i have to bring up the worst expansion up to date WoD - look at the gladiator sanctum and its quests, they are done in away to keep you busy for the entirety of the expansion, we had the falcosaur stuff in legion with a mount reward that was just a useless recolour of a strider, its still incentive to do WM nonetheless.

In BfA we had faction aussaults and 2 kill quests in different zones.

Now, i don't expect any kind of warmode content at the start of an expansion, but with 9.1. we wil still get no incentive to play it, unlike BfA/Legion.

Why put dev resources in warmode back in BfA and then just abandon it?

Is it that blizz don't want to showcase how bad their class desgin is in unorganized and ungrouped pvp? Only a few classes are good in warmode? Wwhen i did turn on warmode with my lock i was the only lock in warmode everyone was firemage, druid, rogue, ret.

I guess, devs want to sweep that one under the carpet, silently?

What is the reasion to have less open pvp content in SL than entirely pve driven legion and bfa?

Its like removing duels, its not an important thing, but it wipes the fun out of this game, step by step.

[Soon-TM]

@Tyrannica you must be a brave soul to go solo with WM on as a warlock. Any decently geared rogue can kill you in a stunlock, or a ret during Blinding Light, or mages/boomkins if you are caught without felhunter out... And the list goes on.

[hulkgor]

BfA didnt loose 50% of playerbase on month 2 of expansion

which makes you factually completly incoreect

How can you even be taken seriously when you don't even seem to know what 'facts' mean.

You can't take numbers out of your ass, or extrapolate them from random information and call them facts.

It's like me going : "Shit, my friends list have never been more full of online people, 2-3x as much! That means that population increased 100-200%! That's a FACT!", and that would be -wrong-.

But yea man, keep fighting the good fight spewing nonsense on the internet.

[Demithio]

SL lasted 2.5 months until I stopped feeling like logging in. For comparison, the personal retention for other expansions that I was able to play after launch without IRL interruptions lasted: 3 weeks (BFA), 7 months (Legion), 6 months (WoD), permanently (TBC, WotLK), 7 months (newClassic). Thank god for BFA setting such a low bar.

Based on your numbers, it really is telling about the status of old WoW vs new WoW. There hasn't been a single expansion past Cataclysm that held my attention for the entirety of its life cycle. Most of them had been one to two month wonders. Sad.

[OMGTwitchTV]

It's like me going : "Shit, my friends list have never been more full of online people, 2-3x as much! That means that population increased 100-200%! That's a FACT!", and that would be -wrong-.

Unless, of course, this is your same friends list since Vanilla and instead of 5 or 6 people online you see 15-20. The only thing this would really prove is, for the first time in a long time, the people on this list are logging into the game. It is a very small, and localized sample, but in relative respect to several hundred players just like this person on different realms, if they were experiencing the same phenomenon, it would absolutely be a trend. There isn't much in the way of solid number from Blizz, and all of the attacks by players over the years made damn sure Blizz would not be as forth coming about their subs. If Shadowlands did creep back up and tap 10M players at launch, there is no way Blizz will ever show those numbers considering the mud most haters have dragged them through.

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Based on your numbers, it really is telling about the status of old WoW vs new WoW. There hasn't been a single expansion past Cataclysm that held my attention for the entirety of its life cycle. Most of them had been one to two month wonders. Sad.

Where as a player like me logs in every single day and has continued to do so and will continue to do so at least through the 9.1 campaign to ensure I am still seeing the perpetual enjoyment I have been experiencing. One person who is either burned out or disinterested is hardly a sample size of popularity or longevity. To assume any tiny sample size for either side is definitive is foolish.

[NordWitcher]

Shadowlands is moving in the right direction... it has a lot of potential and its a really good start of an expansion. (you can see how much Classic made its mark on the dev team)

Now that they are gonna work on the Classic Burning Crusade... I think that the 10.0 Expansion will be super amazing, since in Burning crusade, the World yet again was the content, with so many dungeons and extra reputaions and factions that you did not have to do, but could do if you wanted to.

We will see what the future bring.

PS:
Me personaliy I really love Shadowlands, it feels like a great great start.... and it seems like the Developer team has finally told the Money people to shut up with those stupid "one year expanion ideas.... and make WoW... like a mobile game".... it feels like an mmorpg again... the Future is very bright and seems like its a great time to be a world of warcraft fan ^^

PPS:
I am a veteran from vanilla and I have played since the very start, with a shaman that has over 700 days played ^^
I have always had huge Faith in the Blizzard team and the World of Warcraft team, what ever people say, and it seems like we are on the right track again... since
Warlords of dreanor and Cataclysm.... kinda took world of warcraft on a spin... that made the very essence of the game change alot, the Future is bright and we are back on track... lets enjoy this guys ^^

Haha...Funny you say that. Cause that is exactly what Shadowlands is. It feels like a mobile game. Mission tables, slow grind, everything time gated and locked behind more walls.

[TJ]

I thought Shadowlands was initially received very well and had a lot of praise? Why is everyone suddenly hating it like WoD?

[Demithio]

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Where as a player like me logs in every single day and has continued to do so and will continue to do so at least through the 9.1 campaign to ensure I am still seeing the perpetual enjoyment I have been experiencing. One person who is either burned out or disinterested is hardly a sample size of popularity or longevity. To assume any tiny sample size for either side is definitive is foolish.

Not foolish at all, I've watched the slow but sure mass exodus of players and heard their reasons as to why. WoW isn't WoW anymore. It's simple, not complicated with a plethora of excuses as to why, that some people like to perpetuate (burnt out, real life etc). With the corresponding depletion of subscriptions to back up the data. You're completely wrong, it's not even remotely only a tiny sample size. If you enjoy the game, great. However, the fact remains the game has taken a major swan dive in popularity for a specific reason.

[T-34]

I thought Shadowlands was initially received very well and had a lot of praise? Why is everyone suddenly hating it like WoD?

Another possibility is that the population of MMO-champion has changed.
My personal theory is that the proportion of "professional haters of WoW" has risen dramatically here in the last years, not because more have begun to hate wow, but because those that came here before to discuss how to get better - class forums especially - now have left for various discords and only the bitter, slighted lovers remain...