I suspect SL's hiatus will have the lowest subs in history and it will trigger events

[Deneios]

BFA and Shadowlands were waste of potential where last season of GoT is a candle compared to a supernova what SL was.

Jainitor was a disgrace to the story and Arthas was done dirty.

[Mendzia]

Probably yes.
Even during BFA i've seen my friends on BN playing retail in the last few months of this xpack... and we've just got new content patch and have not seen anyone online in the game past few weeks... and probably +12 more months of SL incoming.

[Jester Joe]

Except, that's not what Osmeric said, which makes this quote an actual strawman. Val said nothing will change until Ion is replaced, you reduced his comment into "blame the dev", Osmeric then replied that you were right and nothing will change until a significant fraction of them are replaced, you then re-arranged that into "they're all trash". Who's being dishonest here?

How can you honestly say this with a straight face lol
I never said anything about another poster saying those words, it was an example, that wasn't even said to, or directed at Osmeric. Meanwhile you're trying to say straight up "you said this"

And when Val straight up says across multiple threads that Ion needs to go, that isn't "reduction".

The rest isn't really worth addressing if you're honestly going to ignore the overwhelming amount of hate on these forums does not give any thoughts behind it. It should be crystal clear that there's a problem when there's so much hate and false claims about an expansion that we know very little of.

[Norskygrrl]

Let's face it; most people still around from the early days of the game are 40+ year olds who start not even gaming anymore; the younglings aren't few but they don't tend to stay especially since WoW is nothing too special in the context of new games.

An expansion that just has "dragons and Alex the hot!" is not going to cut it; it might have a small peak at launch but even that may be underwhelming; the new producers will likely pull the plug entirely and possibly try something extremely new.

The nature of "extremely new" is up in the air but I have some predictions; perhaps they will delete all technical notions of 'expansion' and release it only as 'Warcraft'; what do you think they might do?

Every person I know over 40 who gamed back in the day is still gaming. Do they do it for hours and hours at a time? No because they have more responsibilities now. Are they as good at gaming as they were in their teens and 20s? Often not because their reaction time has slowed down, but they are often much nicer to play games with because they don't take a game so seriously.

I'm in my 60s. I play PC games and have my older game systems and LOVE the Switch. I would still be playing WoW if they made content like they did prior to WoD. They chased off many casual players with their flat-out stupid game design.

[Aggressive]

I mean, that's a take.
It's a bad take, an uninformed take, a dare I say "moronic" take. A take so malformed that it should have been rethought before it left your keyboard...

But that's a take.

I think he summed it up rather well. Nothing else to say honestly. But the truth is in plain sight for all to see. The thing is do you WANT to see it.

[Luxeley]

More than likely it's probably going to be par for the course: huge influx of returning subs in the 1st 2-3 months then a steep and steady taper off over the next year or so. If Blizzard does what they've always done, which is precisely what they will be doing, they will net very similar results. Legion is the one and only exception, but Legion happened to be stacked with a ton of new features and each new feature hit with success on all cylinders. Dragonflight is NOT Legion 2.0 but also not Shadowlands or BFA 2.0. If anything Dragonflight seems to be more in line MOP and/or Cata than any other xpac. Both xpacs showcased new talent trees and focused mightily on Class gameplay.

It all comes down to why a player logs into WOW in the 1st place, what is their #1 reason for playing? The Lore? Lots of reconned lore in Dragonflight. Lore nerds NOT are going to love it. The raids? Raiding is what Blizzard does better than everyone else, the problem is - they don't produce enough raids. Do you enjoy the challenge of competitive M+ or Pvp? That can't possibly be assessed as of yet and is highly contingient on how the classes play. Are you a player who loves pressing satisfying buttons? Then, the whole talent revamp thing could be just what the doctor ordered. It all depends.

[Steelangel]

I think he summed it up rather well. Nothing else to say honestly. But the truth is in plain sight for all to see. The thing is do you WANT to see it.

Wow is not pay to win. You cannot go to the shop and buy raid gear. You cannot go to the shop and buy unobtainable potions. You cannot go to the shop and purchase upgrades that you cannot get in game.

Cosmetics are not pay to win. Neither is paying some schlep from WeCarryYou.gg for your glad mount---the latter is an emergent property of social games, not basic game design.

People on this forum don't understand what "Pay To Win" is, because they'll go through any mental contortions to "prove" wow is p2w to justify their sunk cost fallacy.

[Aggressive]

Wow is not pay to win. You cannot go to the shop and buy raid gear. You cannot go to the shop and buy unobtainable potions. You cannot go to the shop and purchase upgrades that you cannot get in game.

Cosmetics are not pay to win. Neither is paying some schlep from WeCarryYou.gg for your glad mount---the latter is an emergent property of social games, not basic game design.

People on this forum don't understand what "Pay To Win" is, because they'll go through any mental contortions to "prove" wow is p2w to justify their sunk cost fallacy.

I like how you so blatantly forgot the token you can buy that gives you gold. So my original statement still stands and will continue to stand for as long as WoW has it.

[The Stormbringer]

There isn't enough competition. Not even outside of other MMOs. What else is there to play this year until Q4?

Other games. Indie games, other MMOs, different genres, anything.

[wombinator04]

There's not even a reason to play NOW let alone months from now. Still same garbage expansion, all of it is bad.

Shadowlands being WoD 2.0 just gonna keep becoming more and more true. 1 million subs or less, for sure.

[ro9ue]

I hope sometime in the near future the server technology and cost of developing an MMO becomes affordable and feasible for smaller indie studios. I really don't think we're going to get anything good until that happens. Or Riot might pull it off?

[Swnem]

Ff is amazing, but replayability is so low imho..once you beat the MSQ and do all the new raids what is there to even do? .lost ark is way more P2W than wow is how can anybody really even enjoy that game for any extended period of time?

That is by design though. FF gives you a big chunk of content and then you can either invest on leveling all your jobs and collecting stuff or stop until the next patch. The devs actually tell you they are ok with that and it is healthy for players to do that. Also, cause squeenix sells other games too.
For some reason, WoW players seem to want new content every day and i find that unreasonable and when they tried to do it, it came in the form of some horrid gatekeeping or daily power grind. Content running out is not a bad thing. It's healthy. It's about how often the content comes. In FF it comes every 3 months. In WoW it comes every 6 months. That there is the issue.

[Vorkreist]

Compare Elden Ring to Cyberpunk to SL and we can clearly see how day 1 sells means nothing about the quality of a product

In wow's case it means even less since its a mmo and most of the buyers quit after the first months of the expansion when the husk of horrible systems is exposed in all its glory.
There were quite a few factors that boosted the SL sales like most people sitting inside the house because of covid and a general illusion that Blizzard surely got the message loud and clear and would deliver after the fiasco of Battle for Azerite.

[Violent]

Ah yes, the good ol' "It can't possibly be because they actually enjoy the game, no, it must be some flaw of their mentality!" argument. Never fails to show up.

Neither does your pointing out of it.
"MODs Disagree, because Fanboys/girls, so they MUST be correct!". These people are like a PR firm for a company, and they don't even gat paid for it.
Wouldn't catch one of them saying 1 bad word about a game they've devoted their ENTIRE lives to, as far as becoming 24/7/365 MODs of a Website, that isn't even Officially aligned with.

It's like being so hardcore fans of a Mustang, you are literally ecstatic just to put the tires on a wheel that someone MIGHT buy for their Mustang.

(Inb4 my infraction - Eat me)

[rpdrichard]

That's a strawman.

There's nothing wrong with discussing opinions.

But "FIRE THE ENTIRE DEV TEAM BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL TRASH" isn't discussing an opinion. It's not even giving any support or logic to the opinion. Sure, it's technically still in the realm of opinions, but it starts to cross over into ignorance at that point if you have no logic or reasoning behind it. And it's most certainly not worth discussing if you have no actual sustenance behind such an "opinion".

Like, it's fine to say "I dislike WoW" and that's the end of your opinion. You don't need to justify something simple like that. But if you're calling for punishment of others, yeah, you should have some sort of reasoning and not just a "I don't like what they've done".

The lore team should have been let go as soon as they proposed Shadowlands, the other teams have Made mistakes but they can be corrected. The damage to lore Is almost unforgivable.

OT: With Dragonflight coming no sooner than Q1 2023 Is extremely unlikely people will stick more than a month after 9.2.5. Even with some 6 month goodies. The wait Is just too long and people will leave to return with the prepatch like previous expansions.

[Doffen]

The lore team should have been let go as soon as they proposed Shadowlands, the other teams have Made mistakes but they can be corrected. The damage to lore Is almost unforgivable.

OT: With Dragonflight coming no sooner than Q1 2023 Is extremely unlikely people will stick more than a month after 9.2.5. Even with some 6 month goodies. The wait Is just too long and people will leave to return with the prepatch like previous expansions.

9.2.5 brings cross faction play to life. Its going to be buzzin a bit. Me myself will come back for that.

[Steelangel]

Literally not a Pay to Win mechanic as you can buy subscription time for in-game gold and this is a way to make the system work using the in-game economy.

When I sell a wow token, I'm buying some dude's game time and getting compensation. I'm not getting BiS gear directly from the shop. I am not buying acheivements or bypassing in-game timegating.

You can consider it P2W, but you're wrong and will be wrong for as long as WoW exists.

[VenatorUnum]

Literally not a Pay to Win mechanic as you can buy subscription time for in-game gold and this is a way to make the system work using the in-game economy.

When I sell a wow token, I'm buying some dude's game time and getting compensation. I'm not getting BiS gear directly from the shop. I am not buying acheivements or bypassing in-game timegating.

You can consider it P2W, but you're wrong and will be wrong for as long as WoW exists.

Buy a token.
Sell for gold.
Gold buys gear.
Pay to win.

You buying someone else sub time doesn't negate that. You not DIRECTLY buying the gear from the blizzard store does not negate you are buying resources to do so.
If a mobile game offers you some resource to purchase stuff, that's pay to win. For example if you buy "crystals" to open some card pack or loot box that contains items that give you an advantage over other players that did not purchase said crystals because they have to spend time obtaining them through other means, that's pay to win. The WoW token literally does this. You can earn gold normally in game, but you can also just de-facto buy it by buying a token for money and selling it on the AH for gold.

You're fully entitled to not consider this P2W, but you're wrong and will be wrong for as long as microtransactions exist.

[Jester Joe]

Neither does your pointing out of it.
"MODs Disagree, because Fanboys/girls, so they MUST be correct!". These people are like a PR firm for a company, and they don't even gat paid for it.
Wouldn't catch one of them saying 1 bad word about a game they've devoted their ENTIRE lives to, as far as becoming 24/7/365 MODs of a Website, that isn't even Officially aligned with.

It's like being so hardcore fans of a Mustang, you are literally ecstatic just to put the tires on a wheel that someone MIGHT buy for their Mustang.

(Inb4 my infraction - Eat me)

It's not really impressive to brag that you don't pay attention or understand nuances.

There's a difference between criticizing the game, and criticizing the workers.

There's a difference between saying "this could do with being fixed", and saying "everyone needs to be fired".

I didn't think I'd have to explain that. Although the rest is clearly just raging for the sake of raging. Especially when I spend so little time on the forums lately but you just see a word and apparently see red.

[rpdrichard]

9.2.5 brings cross faction play to life. Its going to be buzzin a bit. Me myself will come back for that.

Maybe coupling that with a 6 month mount they can trick some people into subbing during the second half of the draught.

Wonder how long the pre patch will last. I'm betting two months.