When is a good time to buy WoW SL and play?

[Dystemper]

I have played Warcraft before but a long long time ago.

I have fund memories, but recently heard you can play high elves and that SL is a very fantastical place to experience.

This will happen from patch 9.1.5 so I’m thinking of purchasing the game.


I’m not sure it is worth the price tag though plus a monthly subscription. Does this game ver go on sale?

Is it worth trying this out even if for a month or two? I couldn’t find anywhere that sold
It cheaply but here maybe in winter?

I don’t think I’m attracted enough to pay for game +sub, but maybe a half price or 75% discount.

Is it worth it?

Not worth it. Most garbage expansion ever

[arkanon]

Why should he listen to people who don't play the game, when he needs advices about said game? It's not about silencing people, everyone has the right to find current WoW shit and it's their opinion, but I wouldn't ask my plumber to give me medical advices.

Would you ask a plumber with 20 years experience as a plumber for advice on a plumbing issue even if he recently retired? I would.

[sensei]

Would you ask a plumber with 20 years experience as a plumber for advice on a plumbing issue even if he recently retired? I would.

Would you listen to a plumber that was never very good, hated the last few years of his job and was fired 10 years ago and yet continues to lurk on the company's Facebook page making disparaging posts because he's a sad pathetic sociopath that can't move on?

[Tirale]

Is the wow community as toxic as this?

I remember this site from way back and it comes up quickly on searches for hardcore wow communities. But I don’t remember it being this nasty and toxic.

If it’s like this right now in wow. Then regardless of how the game is. I’m taking my money elsewhere.

All I wanted to know was when was going to go on discount so I could try it out at a cheaper price and if people felt it was worth buying for someone who hadn’t played for any of the recent expansions

How does this make me a troll. ?

Thank you everyone who tried to genuinely answer the question without insulting or calling me names.

[Relapses]

Is the wow community as toxic as this?

I remember this site from way back and it comes up quickly on searches for hardcore wow communities. But I don’t remember it being this nasty and toxic.

If it’s like this right now in wow. Then regardless of how the game is. I’m taking my money elsewhere.

All I wanted to know was when was going to go on discount so I could try it out at a cheaper price and if people felt it was worth buying for someone who hadn’t played for any of the recent expansions

How does this make me a troll. ?

Thank you everyone who tried to genuinely answer the question without insulting or calling me names.

There are people so invested in shitting on this game at every opportunity that they simply cannot accept the fact that anybody might genuinely be interested in playing the game. This website isn't a reflection of the general populace though.

[schwarzkopf]

A year ago to be honest, or a few months before the next expansion.

Either way - so many people have gone for now that you will have trouble doing half the content available.

- - - Updated - - -

Is the wow community as toxic as this?

In game - no, not at all. The trolls on forums like this are out to pull as many people out of the game as possible - but don't play the game.

To a large extent they have succeeded, but in game things are ok.

[Swnem]

incredible how people still believe SL is the worst period in the game's history. really off the mark imo.
after 9.1.5 will be a good time, and so will final patch launch. game is fine. these forums, reddit, and twitch just believe their overlords that SL is doomed and dead forever.

If you think it's fine, you are part of the problem.

I understand some people not caring or playing so casual that the design issues don't affect them. But, saying the game is "fine" is profoundly disonest.

If you don't care about end-game at higher difficulties, the game can be "fine" for you.

For people that do care and hate being carried/like carrying their weight, the game is a collection of unrewarding, grindy and frustrating tasks. You have no control over your loot/progression aside from some extra rolls on the vault from all the loot in the game. So, a gigantic pool. RNG all over the systems.
Also, alts are prohibitly grindy too. Catch up gear is a random box. The grinds from the main have to be repeated in regards to covenant.
Did i mention torghast? Yeah... everyone loves that place. Required for legendary crafting. Oh better have a bag of gold for those too!
Oh and PvP... always terribly unbalanced and 1 shotty. Hasn't been worth playing after Legion.

So, no. "Fine" is definitly not the description.

[Nerph-]

Is the wow community as toxic as this?

I remember this site from way back and it comes up quickly on searches for hardcore wow communities. But I don’t remember it being this nasty and toxic.

If it’s like this right now in wow. Then regardless of how the game is. I’m taking my money elsewhere.

All I wanted to know was when was going to go on discount so I could try it out at a cheaper price and if people felt it was worth buying for someone who hadn’t played for any of the recent expansions

How does this make me a troll. ?

Thank you everyone who tried to genuinely answer the question without insulting or calling me names.

Don't let this site give you the impression this is what the WoW community is like, because it's not. As Relapses pointed out, nowadays, sadly enough, this site is filled with people unable to let go and just sit on these forums with the sole purpose to shit on the game at every possible moment.

There were some decent points made though. Firstly no one can really tell you if you're going to like the expansion or not, that is purely personal preference. Secondly, Black Friday is not too far off so there is a decent chance the expansion might go on sale then.

[shadowmatrix]

Is the wow community as toxic as this?

The actual game community is fine with the usual amount of toxic players, nothing has really changed on that front. A crowd can be nice and peaceful but you will remember the loud people the most.

The message boards however are usually filled with people who want to complain no matter what. They yelled for years that Ghostcrawler should be fired then treated him like a gaming genius when he left.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Is it though? I mean, even if most people quit post-launch they're routinely hitting 10M subs shortly thereafter then "most" people leaving after a month or two is still insanely profitable. (Much more so than a traditional video game business model, for sure.) WoW doesn't exist in the same gaming climate as it did back when it reached market saturation in 2010; it's doubtful it'll ever do that again. You can use that measuring stick to constantly browbeat the developers of the current game (like most people on forums tend to do) or you can understand that WoW's business model has changed over time and that people leaving post-expansion launch aren't always indicative of the worst case scenario.

WoW having successful launches was never in question. The number of players leaving is unprecedented in WoW's history. The time frame for which they leave has been unprecedented. And on top of the numbers and short amount of time, other games have displayed success during a time when a huge number of people are stuck at home.

My point stands. This is not measuring WoW against its past success, it's measuring against everything going on right now and its current state. The reference to WoW's past was merely to demonstrate a point, not use it as a measuring stick. "2010 was a different time" yes it was, WoW is getting old and its age is showing. And yet somehow, other MMOs are able to attract and maintain a healthy growing population without huge dips. What's so different about WoW that causes people to leave en masse?

"People quit because they discover they do not have time" and yet this did not happen on large scales for nearly 8 years. I will admit, a lot of that probably was that even as people were quitting, even more would join than would quit. But that still meant WoW was a good enough game to demonstrate GROWTH. All elements considered, Shadowlands makes a halfway decent game (it got a metacritic score of 83 from the critics who play for 20 hours then move on to play the next review game) and a shit MMO. MMOs should keep you engaged at least for a little while. Not permanently, but they should make you excited to play for longer periods of time than normal games.

Let me ask you a question, and be honest with me. Close your eyes and think on this for a moment rather than just typing your knee jerk reaction to it. Really try to consider the answer to this. If WoW released today as a brand new MMO, without the brand loyalty and without the Warcraft IP, do you honestly think it would last? Would people stay for the grind fest and the numerous issues the game has had?

People are willing to give WoW chances. The more devoted they are to the game, the more "chances" they're willing to give. At a certain point, people get fed up and leave. WoW delivered an amazing gaming experience for years for me. So for the 6ish years of amazing content I got out of it, I stuck with WoW for 6 more years since I wanted to trust them to deliver quality gaming experience in the future. After 6 years of decline, that trust was gone, and so was I. With hindsight, I would have quit in Cataclysm, but I was loyal to the game for all the good times, and I didn't want to leave my account behind with all of its server firsts, super rare mounts, achievements no longer obtainable, gladiator, etc. And yet, despite all that pile of work, at a certain point I realized it wasn't worth hanging onto that any longer.

You can't explain away the massive drop with "people just got busy" when the massive drop was in the middle of everyone being stuck at home.

[muto]

Don’t waste your time or money. You’ll be very disappointed.

[arkanon]

Would you listen to a plumber that was never very good, hated the last few years of his job and was fired 10 years ago and yet continues to lurk on the company's Facebook page making disparaging posts because he's a sad pathetic sociopath that can't move on?

Hahaha, see how many additions you had to make? See how many completely unrealistic changes you had to make to the original example given to try and salvage things. Many of the people in question played since early in wows life - and many of us played at least mythic raiding, even if not competing for world first or anything like that. Many had glad, or multi glad in various expansions. Many have proven this more than once, and yet negative opinions of wow are totally unacceptable and handwaved away as people who havnt played in 10 years or hate the game.

It was an absolutely terrible example, I showed why, and suddenly the goal posts are moved so godamn far we are not even on the same field anymore, and it's now an entirely different sport.

- - - Updated - - -

The actual game community is fine with the usual amount of toxic players, nothing has really changed on that front. A crowd can be nice and peaceful but you will remember the loud people the most.

The message boards however are usually filled with people who want to complain no matter what. They yelled for years that Ghostcrawler should be fired then treated him like a gaming genius when he left.

Tell me, what is the "usual" or acceptable level of toxicity in game?

[pahbi]

Shadowlands is the first expansion since vanilla that I've given up on.

I didn't make it 5 months before I unsubbed, and I haven't seen anything that makes me want to sign up again.

SL is a engineering marvel, but you can't engineer fun, and to me, SL was greatly lacking in fun.

[arkanon]

Shadowlands is the first expansion since vanilla that I've given up on.

I didn't make it 5 months before I unsubbed, and I haven't seen anything that makes me want to sign up again.

SL is a engineering marvel, but you can't engineer fun, and to me, SL was greatly lacking in fun.

I did stop playing for short periods of time in the past, but this is the first time I genuinely don't see myself going back. I hold out hope, and follow developments, but nothing I have seen interests me even in the slightest.

[Iheartnathanos]

SL is a really, really bad expansion and wow is in the worst state it has ever been.
That being said, if you just play everything that is not SL or BfA, you will have a great time with thousands of hours of fun.
Just don't touch the last 2 expansions.

BFA leveling/exploration was great.

[SinR]

Short Answer: No

Longer answer: MAYBE the next expansion pre-patch

[Relapses]

Would you listen to a plumber that was never very good, hated the last few years of his job and was fired 10 years ago and yet continues to lurk on the company's Facebook page making disparaging posts because he's a sad pathetic sociopath that can't move on?

I love everything about this post. Thank you.

- - - Updated - - -

You can't explain away the massive drop with "people just got busy" when the massive drop was in the middle of everyone being stuck at home.

I'm not trying to explain away the losses or hand-wave the poor state of the current game; I'm simply asking for you to be realistic with your comparisons. When a video game is five to six times more popular than its closest competition it seems pretty unfair to shit all over the former because the latter is just now starting to become a more legitimate competitor.

As an aside, I do concede that that Shadowlands seems uniquely disliked on discussion forums like this but I firmly believe that has more to do with social media programming and propagating negativity about the game. Keep in mind that this not a defense of the game. The game has flaws and a lot of those flaws are the reasons the game is less popular now. My issue is with the hyperbolic "WoW's dead, {x game} is the savior," takes. (There are people who non-ironically refer to themselves as "WoW refugees" which I find frankly hilarious.) Imo, these kinds of takes do little to move the discussion along and often waste the time of people who are simply trying to discuss ways to improve the game. (Yeah, I know it's not my job to police the boards and this often nets me sweet three week vacations but I'm not going to censor my opinion even if I know it's an unpopular voice.)

Another thing to consider is the fact that subscription business models have two very important factors and online discussions only ever seem to care about one of them: Attrition and new player generation. People talking about the game are naturally going to focus on the former but I think the latter is just as important (if not, more important) to think about when talking about the state of the game. People move on from WoW all the time but it's still a massively popular game which means that there are new people just starting their WoW adventures (or old players returning to experience it again, like the OP). A lot of changes that are unpopular with veteran players may have been at the behest of new players who felt overwhelmed by the old systems. Is it fair for Blizzard to listen to one group or the other? We can debate that endlessly but I doubt this community will ever reach a consensus on that front. Further, Blizzard has never released either of these figures so when the topic of subscriber levels comes up we're really just looking at numbers and guessing the context of them.

This is all to say that while you're correct in your condemnation of WoW in its current state, I think some of the points your argument relies on are overly critical and fail to consider all of the factors impacting it.

[shadowmatrix]

tell me, what is the "usual" or acceptable level of toxicity in game?

Acceptable? 0%.
Usual? No idea, probably about 10% of the playerbase depending on the game. The more PvP focused games likely have a higher percentage.

[Kauko]

As a basically fresh player you will have hundreds of hours of content. And I am not even counting Raiding, M+, rated PVP...

There are very few entertainment options where you get so much for so little, so its worth it.

And in a week or two there will probably be a discount...

[Toby451]

I have played Warcraft before but a long long time ago.

I have fund memories, but recently heard you can play high elves and that SL is a very fantastical place to experience.

This will happen from patch 9.1.5 so I’m thinking of purchasing the game.


I’m not sure it is worth the price tag though plus a monthly subscription. Does this game ver go on sale?

Is it worth trying this out even if for a month or two? I couldn’t find anywhere that sold
It cheaply but here maybe in winter?

I don’t think I’m attracted enough to pay for game +sub, but maybe a half price or 75% discount.

Is it worth it?

Don't listen to the clown show of negativity.

SL is fantastic, especially if your playing through it casually and experiencing the content for the first time.


Most of the issues with SL are the irregularly slow pace of new content release due to covid and the end game systems being annoying/generally bad ideas for the min/maxing mindset of the community. But the actual content that is there is really fun imo. 9.1.5 is coming out soon and is fixing the majority of issues with the systems. Hopefully 9.2 and beyond will be back to the normal content pacing.



If you only plan on playing for a month or two especially, it is 100% worth it. Experiencing the zones the first time is really fun. I would wait for a bit though if I were in your position. There will definitely be a sale either when 9.1.5 releases or during black friday and by that point 9.1.5 will be out.