Is Dragonflight WoW's last chance?

[Sanguinerd]

It will be for me, if DF disappoints like SL then I'll be quitting for good.

Id Diablo 4 also disappoints it'll be the last time I'll give Blizzard any money.

But so far DF is looking fine and the beta is fun so I'm optimistic.

[Schwert]

MoP was a garbage expansion to many, me included. Still my least favorite of all time. It actually amazes me how people seem to have forgotten how much it was hated when it was current, no different than Cata, WoD, BfA, and now SL.

I played the most in MoP and Throne of Thunder was loved out the gate, Timeless Isle was adored for it's PvP aspects, PvP in general had issues but S15 was mostly balanced and is still revered to this day, the story was actually liked by people who looked past the ew furry brainless hate dribble.

It was liked by people actually playing it.
The majority of the hate was "ew dailies, SoO lasted way too long, and "ew pandas."
Which, it's an MMO, this tends to always happen at the end and people don't need to play 24/7 and didn't back then, and man-children are annoying.

[epigramx]

The OG players are now between 40 and 50 years old (for the largest part). That means most of them are either completely bored of the game genre at this point or they have no time anymore (if they're alive and healthy).

That means the main problem of the game is that it doesn't have its main player base anymore; I suggest it should drop the expansion themes and go by just 'Warcraft'; new gamers are scared of their number.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Definitely their sixth last chance.

[Jastall]

I've seen every expansion since WoD at least be WoW's "last chance". Meanwhile every expansion sells by the millions with clogged up servers and between box sales averaged over two years, sub fees, and services the game likely still rakes in a couple hundred millions of dollar per year, before expenses obviously.

What people say on forums doesn't matter. Unless a real catastrophe hits it, this game still has a good ten, likely fifteen, perhaps twenty years of content to release. There's MMOs with less than a tenth of WoW's population that still release content. It won't ever be as popular as Wrath-Cata were but it's not going to die anytime soon. Plus Classic is there to pad the numbers further for a good long while.

[Lolites]

last chance?! even with less players, with microtransactions wow is probably now more profitable than during MOP or later...
as for people whining on forums, they do that and are leaving the game since vanila, yet wow is still there... now are we at wrath playercount (which was inflated due to chinese numbers but lets not ding into that)? almost certainly not, but is the game so low on playercount to not be HIGHLY profitable? DEFINITELY not...
facts are we have no clue about playercount and how mane of the whiners actualy left and why, but we do know legion and then bfa and then sl were fastest selling expansions... actualy SL was briefly even fastest selling pc game in history...

[Nymrohd]

I think WoW can definitely survive if Dragonflight is received poorly. The senior devs though will likely be replaced by MS if this is a dud. MS bought ATVI for a reason and imo that is a) the many IPs b) King's mobile expertise and c) Battle.net. Warcraft is one of the biggest IPs in that package and they are not going to flush that investment without giving it a go. But imo everything the current team heads are doing at ATVI before the acquisition is finalized is their audition for keeping their jobs.

[McNeil]

Last chance in what exactly? Even with half the playerbase it had compared to WotLK, it can still generate way more income due to MTX. WoW can survive by just becoming more into a mobile game where the whales are enough to keep the game afloat. If we're talking about personal interest in the game should DF be bad, then I would not play it as much. I already barely played Shadowlands and have been mostly playing Classic WoW and some other games and hobbies.

[LedZeppelin]

this will be wows last expansion

until the next one

[MoanaLisa]

That's an overly dramatic question. The game is doing fine as far as whether or not it's 'safe' from being shut down. It still makes huge amounts of money for Blizzard.

SL will be remembered eventually as a middling-average expansion. Current expansions are always a catastrophe is you believe what you read here.

Is DragonFlight the last chance for some individual players? Sure, every expansion from BC on has been that. WoW isn't going anywhere but I wouldn't be surprised to see it change fairly dramatically over the next few years to better accommodate gaming cultural preferences of the 2020's instead of the early 2000's.

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The OG players are now between 40 and 50 years old (for the largest part). That means most of them are either completely bored of the game genre at this point or they have no time anymore (if they're alive and healthy).

Yeah, perhaps. On the flip side of that the longer the game lasts the more people age out of work, retire and have more time on their hands than they know what to do with. Even with fixed incomes and whatnot, WoW is a bargain. I've known about a raiding guild that is centered in a retirement center that has been going along successfully for a number of years now.

[MoFalcon]

what a silly question. WoW will be here until the ISNT millions of payers paying them TENS or MILLIONS of dollars a month to play.

Not silly, Stupid I think !

[Snufflupagus]

WotLK was the “last chance” expansion for my older brother. Or I guess Cataclysm: it came out, hadn’t changed substantially since Wrath, he quit.

WoW is still here.

Playerbases change, games evolve.

[Lochton]

Doubt it'll be the last, or second last, even Shadowlands had satisfactory numbers for the deployment of future content and development. And with a new owner, not sure they'll let go of it that fast after buying it.

[Relapses]

Ah yes, the annual "WoW's dead if the next expansion isn't God tier" thread.

I remember when we had this thread for Shadowlands:

• https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-WoW-expansion

...and BfA:

• https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...history-of-WoW

...and then we had five of them for Legion:

• https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-chance-for-me
• https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...Legion-The-End
• https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...n-with-sub-fee
• https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ion-Last-Expac
• https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ld-of-Warcraft

...and here's a couple for WoD:

• https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ur-last-hurrah
• https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ging-landscape

...hell, there's even one for MoP:

• https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...bout-Cataclysm

So no. I don't think DF is "WoW's last chance."

[Polybius]

Dragonflight is a 'safe' expansion. Not breathtaking like Legion or BFA (except maybe flying and Dracthyr, kind of) in terms of content or environment, and no side progression systems to overwhelm new or returning players.

[wushootaki]

MoP was a garbage expansion to many, me included. Still my least favorite of all time. It actually amazes me how people seem to have forgotten how much it was hated when it was current, no different than Cata, WoD, BfA, and now SL.

On topic, no. As stated above, the majority of expansions were widely criticized, with several of them being predicted to be the so called last chance for WoW before it dies. Yet, it never dies. Nothing will change whether DF is good or not.

MoP is largely considered the best class design of all the expansions, both for PvE and PvP. The final patch of MoP pvp is considered among one of the best patches for PvP Balance. Mostly because everything was ridiculously overpowered, and that made the game fun.

And the only criticisms MoP received at the time ( aside from the Kung Fu Panda theme) were the dailies, which the Timeless Isle fixed in the final patch.

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I'm not saying it isn't a great expansion just that at the time people were shitting on MoP

People shit on everything at the time. People shit on vanilla when it was out.

There will always be whiners.

Hindsight is the only way to truly see how good or bad something was.

[Nymrohd]

MoP is largely considered the best class design of all the expansions, both for PvE and PvP. The final patch of MoP pvp is considered among one of the best patches for PvP Balance. Mostly because everything was ridiculously overpowered, and that made the game fun.

What I cannot understand is people who enjoy MoP class design then rail against homogenization or "Bring the player, not the class" design.

[Richardbro]

There is no "last chance" for wow. There are probably over a million neckbeards including myself, that will play the game no matter how bad or good it is, for the foreseeable future. Call it routine, loyalty, comfiness, joy, sunk cost fallacy, etc. doesn't matter.

[wushootaki]

What I cannot understand is people who enjoy MoP class design then rail against homogenization or "Bring the player, not the class" design.

I agree with you on that. I feel that there was definitely a push for too much homogenization, but at the same time --- it is nice when multiple things are covered by multiple classes.

The problem we have now though, is that certain utility is only brought by certain classes.

Whereas dps and buffs are still largely covered by multiple classes (look how many people have bloodlust), how many classes provide healthstones? Or gateway? Why bring a shaman for bloodlust, when you can have a mage/hunter who also have an immunity to soak mechanics?

I don't know what the exact solution is --- but I do agree with you.

I do feel like MoP is more highly regarded for its PvP though.

[WowIsDead64]

I'm not sure about xpack, that is based on major misconception. That players want flying to be challenging. Players want flying, because they don't want game to be challenging. So, making flying challenging is counter-productive. At the end Wow isn't souls-like. It's not about challenge just for sake of challenge. There are many other motivations to play this game.

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What shitty personal touches?
The quest helper and dungeon thing are garbage, but sadly it is what a lot of the community wants, because they want classic not retail, and those 2 choices are literally the only bad decisions I can think of for wotlk classic

LFD was major xpacks' feature. Without LFD WotLK will turn into TBC 2.0 pretty quickly. And, despite of all myths, that TBC was the best xpack ever made and that it was casual WotLk and LFD, that ruined Wow, it has turned out, that nobody actually needed TBC, because Blizzard don't even leave any TBC servers running.