No Dragonflight numbers from Blizzard means??

[Kralljin]

Yes because I wasn't inundated for weeks with promotional material for DF. For the record I remember the ads for WoD and was shocked that they advertised new quests as a feature.. yea.. happens every expansion... it wasnt that great marketing..

It's obviously subjective but as i said, both the animated series (Lords of war) and the WoD Cinematic were done quite well.

I think people underestimate how much that stuff can have an impact on the initial subgrowth, it's arguably one of the reasons why MoP had barely any growth, because Pandas and stuff just didn't resonate with people as much as the themes of WoD did.

And as a reminder, WoD was literally the first expansion they marketed with an animated series, Legion, BfA and SL only continued that.

[Glorious Leader]

It's obviously subjective

Anything but the actual product failure. Did it ever occur to any of you the DF has been received poorly because its simple poorly made?

[sam86]

People flocked to MoP after the carfire of Cata and to WoD after the carfire of MoP and to Legion after the carfire of WoD and while we didn't get the same sorts of numbers reported by all accounts Shadowlands did pretty well after the carfire of BfA, so I'm not convinced that the sins of previous expansions make that much of a difference.

there is big difference here
1) this isn't first time they burn bridge, this is now the 4th
2) this is however first time they make an agreed shit exp 2 times in row, cata followed mop, wod followed legion, bfa followed SL which compete for shit exp
its ironic how cata no more compete for worst exp now...

[Kralljin]

Anything but the actual product failure. Did it ever occur to any of you the DF has been received poorly because its simple poorly made?

You're moving the goalpost here, i didn't talk about the actual quality of the expansion at all, which i think should obvious when i wrote

You can say a lot of bad things about WoD, but the promo (comics, trailer and animated series) for WoD were absolute top notch.

Those aren't mutually exclusive, an expansion can be bad *and* have a bad marketing campaign or its themes not really resonating with the audience interested in WoW.

I didn't defend DF in any fashion, my reply was in regards to "Expansion X had bad perception, people still came back".

Personally, i believe that the themes of DF are likely a factor why people haven't flocked to this expansion, while on the surface level it may seem a bit more "light hearted warcraft", i think that overall the expansion simply doesn't mesh as well with what people see as Warcraft, because the execution is simply off.

Just to give some example, i think a saw a tweet from Talisien and Evitel that describes Evokers as "androgynous dragon dorks" (in a positive way), i personally do not believe that a race / class of "androgynous dragon dorks" is what brings people back to WoW.

[Gimlix]

Yes, of course. The positive reviews are always 100% thoughtful and legit. The negative reviews are always dastardly and illegitimate. You're rationalizing dismissal of the parts of the evidence you don't like.

Dragonflight might be the most positive expansion since ever, but hey haters gonna hate

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Multiple things can be true. Like review site aggregators are often loaded with incredible stupid reviews or whatever. But overall, the score does usually end up correlating reasonably well with how it was received with a target audience.

Like any movie with a massive difference in critic vs fans is probably going to be considered bad or at least forgettable to most viewers.

Anyway WoWs issue is the same as some other IPs like Marvel or Star Wars. They had an audience but have changed (some) of the product, and alienated fans become the most vocal because they feel betrayed. And it's absolutely their right as consumers to feel that way!

It is, of course, also Blizzard's right to ignore them, especially if the financials are good

[JustaRandomReindeer]

there is big difference here
1) this isn't first time they burn bridge, this is now the 4th
2) this is however first time they make an agreed shit exp 2 times in row, cata followed mop, wod followed legion, bfa followed SL which compete for shit exp
its ironic how cata no more compete for worst exp now...

MoP is only considered good in hindsight. At the time of its release, and for a while after, a lot of people deemed it the worst WoW expansion to date, and the significant drop in sub numbers reflected the playerbase's general opinion of the expansion. That was to be expected, of course, as it didn't introduce anything new to the game and was primarily a repetition of the same old gear treadmill. People's fond memories of MoP are a product of nostalgia. You will see the same happening to BfA in due time.

Legion did not come out after one bad expansion. It came out after 3 mediocre to bad expansions when the playerbase's burnout from the game was at it highest. And still it managed to pull new people in and rekindle interest in the game. It was innovative, it was a step in a direction away from the "same old", it gave you a reason to engage in activities outside of raiding.

What we needed after SL was something just as good and innovative as Legion, not a return to WoD.

[BrokenRavens]

So the metacritic site is either overly negative, or overly positive, or possibly both at the same time. Ok then, great, whatever.

I have not played wow in 8-10 years. I am still playing other mmos though, if Dragonflight is so great, pitch it to me. Give me reasons why I should come back.

Because to me, as an outsider, it still seems to have the same old problems. Endless gear grind progressions in a raid or die wrapper, gated by both the players and Blizzard themselves.

Am I wrong in that assessment?

So why is WoW/Dragonflight deserving of a second look?

[Lolites]

Because to me, as an outsider, it still seems to have the same old problems. Endless gear grind progressions in a raid or die wrapper, gated by both the players and Blizzard themselves.

Am I wrong in that assessment?

well, wouldnt call it endless, and other than raid you can gear via m+, pvp, or to certain degree via open world and profesions, but thats about it when you go to the very core as you did...
but that very core is the same since vanila, so you are kinda right, its still WoW, it didnt magicaly change into completely different game or even genre as some seems to hope...

as for metacritic its useless, if you are able to read (some here cant get past the number) the reviews you will see it yourself - half the negative reviews are "its racist bcs there are factions, 0/10" or "havent played but 0/10" or similar nonsense...
not saying 10/10 are fine and deserved, but tbh negative ones are mostly not even commenting on dragonflight itself, hell there was one who gave DF low score bcs how Darkshore zone looks, seems completely insane to me...

[sam86]

MoP is only considered good in hindsight. At the time of its release, and for a while after, a lot of people deemed it the worst WoW expansion to date

and they aren't wrong, MoP is one of worst launch patch exp, prior to 5.1 MoP was basically u log to do 1502 daily to get tiny amount of rep u need to progress, heck some raid guilds struggled to get players to raid in first place
MoP improved a LOT when rep became far easier for ur main (and got even better for alts), and ToT and SoO are great raids in comparison to shit 1st raid tier
WoD is solid competitor for one of worst exp even now, so legion did come after bad exp, and back then was easily the worst exp in wow history, some ppl can hate legion or like wod, but overwhelming majority (and u can test that and create a poll urself i u want, in admins allowed it since there are 1502 poll about that topic already) view WoD as crap and legion as best modern exp so far
All wow players were expecting that after BFA crap we get a Legion/MoP quality of exp, no one view SL will end that bad, yeah theme was crap but so was MoP and it is best class gameplay in entire wow history so far, MoP classes were so solid that just login was fun even if u see 1502 different shade of green and walk forever zones

DF is still subjective, no one knows how it will continue, MoP is best example for me of a shit exp that grew excellent, DF is good but honestly boring and while i love it i just don't find a good reason to spend that money to sub to it, i'll mostly return with every major patch but i can't find a big oomph that makes me want to stay and play
I don't hate DF, i just too poor to stay subbed to it, a major different from WoD were i stayed subbed 3 months and didn't login, or BFA where i didn't even continue play my 1 lonely month sub in first place

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So the metacritic site is either overly negative, or overly positive, or possibly both at the same time. Ok then, great, whatever.

I have not played wow in 8-10 years. I am still playing other mmos though, if Dragonflight is so great, pitch it to me. Give me reasons why I should come back.

Because to me, as an outsider, it still seems to have the same old problems. Endless gear grind progressions in a raid or die wrapper, gated by both the players and Blizzard themselves.

Am I wrong in that assessment?

So why is WoW/Dragonflight deserving of a second look?

no, but that's the entire genre? this is like complain that fighting games require frame by frame reflexes?
if u hate grinding then surely mmoRPG not for u, maybe small rpg elements in other games that has small finite loop but wow has no end
I don't like click and point adventure games myself while my wife loves them, to each their taste?
my friend if u hate grind don't give wow 2nd look honestly, go play different game, maybe u'll love fighting or fps or 3rd person adventure, or maybe a finite rpg were u know u can max ur char and logout one day (which tbh applies now to almost every game) like octopath
but hopefully visit us every major patch or exp, who knows maybe u'll find ur big oomph that makes u stay in wow like us?

[Ashana Darkmoon]

So the metacritic site is either overly negative, or overly positive, or possibly both at the same time. Ok then, great, whatever.

I have not played wow in 8-10 years. I am still playing other mmos though, if Dragonflight is so great, pitch it to me. Give me reasons why I should come back.

Because to me, as an outsider, it still seems to have the same old problems. Endless gear grind progressions in a raid or die wrapper, gated by both the players and Blizzard themselves.

Am I wrong in that assessment?

So why is WoW/Dragonflight deserving of a second look?

If you don't like gear progression and group content you definitely shouldn't play the game.

The same reason that someone who likes challenging group content probably shouldn't play most MMOs.

Not sure why this is so weird to people lol., not every game/product can or should be everything to everyone.

[voidox]

This way he never has to admit he's wrong.

lol, I've noticed that user does that a lot on this forum, constantly defending Blizzard and acting like his opinion = fact then ignoring whenever he's called out

as for aggregate review sites, there are both positive and negative review bombs/brigading that happen, most of the time you need to just ignore all the 10/10 and 0/10 scores and look at the middle score reviews.

[Relapses]

Wrath and Legion appear to be the highest-rated expansions on Metacritic, which is consistent with the general consensus. Do I agree with you that these websites are not perfectly accurate? Sure, in hindsight, I believe BfA deserves a higher score. Do I blame people for rating it so low? Not at all; it was an obvious downgrade compared to Legion.

Is Dragonflight suffering because it comes right after Shadowlands? Not any more than Legion suffered when it came out right after WoD. And yet, Legion was an overwhelming success and Dragonflight is a flop.

You are having a blast in DF because all the meaningful progression and rewards have been cut from content outside of raiding and M+ and you can finally log in to raid once or twice per week and then spend the rest of your time playing other games. And you are wondering why this expansion is the first one to flop on release since MoP and is getting bad reviews when it's THE BEST EXPANSION EVER?

Do you not see where the problem is? It doesn't matter how good an expansion is for hardcore raiders, because hardcore raiders are still just ~2% of the playerbase. For the rest, it's just a return to WoD.

When did I say DF is the greatest?

My criticism of metacritic has nothing to do with my personal views of this expansion. The website attracts -- as most review aggregate websites have a tendency -- an extremely vocal minority of the game's population who are not interested in providing a reasonable critical take of something and instead just want to have their negative (or positive) opinion validated by the people who also use review aggregate websites. As an example, TLoU2 was absolutely skewered on metacritic and it's one of the best games released in the last decade. People weren't negative review bombing the game because it was meritless, though, they were negative review bombing it because of narrative choices which the fanbase largely disagreed with. To play the first hour of the game then give the entire fucking game a 0 is not a fair assessment by any metric. (metacritic doesn't verify whether you've actually, y'know, played the fucking game either. We see this same dumb shit happening to audience episode review scores on imdb with HBO's TLoU TV show, too.)

These types of takes aren't serious attempts to assess a video game, they're pathetic, empty validation.

[HansOlo]

Hmm, there's yet another sale on Dragonflight right now. How many sales or promotions is that now?

Revenue is down. No one is buying or starting new.

You know what I hate about Blizzard? They don't make you shut up, by showing reasoning for thier actions.

I played since 2005. But I stopped for commitments and I consider trying DF. It's me they are targeting and people like me, who quit for whatever reason. It's very attractive with sales, if you consider to start playing again.

Sales might be up or down - but they also done this before, with better sales and during every expansion.
What you are saying is clearly BS and trolling. This community really did end up getting the wierdest people in gaming.

[Glorious Leader]

You're moving the goalpost here, i didn't talk about the actual quality of the expansion at all, which i think should obvious when i wrote
.

You suggested that people shouldn't overlook the marketing aspect of a particular expansions release and offered this as a factor influencing initial.subgrowth. I'm not moving the goal post, I'm suggesting your excuse is bullshit. Which it is. DF had a massive campaign, even after I bought the expansion I was still being inundated with ads. Again every thing to deflect away from a poor product.

[Relapses]

Yes, of course. The positive reviews are always 100% thoughtful and legit. The negative reviews are always dastardly and illegitimate. You're rationalizing dismissal of the parts of the evidence you don't like.

(I have not played DF, so as a result I have not posted a review of it to Metacritic.)

...you can have a thoughtful, legit negative score. But when your rating of "0" for WoW is because it's no longer Wrath of the Lich King or because humans can now have pink hair and that review is counted with the same amount of weight as somebody who actually played the fucking game, you cannot reasonably infer that the information on that website is a remotely fair representation of the playerbase's actual thoughts.

[Lolites]

Wrath and Legion appear to be the highest-rated expansions on Metacritic

and yet at release legion was bitched about more than DF...
also, by metacritic rating TBC classic and Wrath classic are THE WORST iterations of wow by far (0,7 and 0,8 ratings), im not fan of classic but thats hardly consistent with "general consensus"...

Legion was an overwhelming success and Dragonflight is a flop.

ah yes, the good old "i dont like it so its flop"...
its not a flop in any meaning of that word, its not the best expansion for sure, and its not worst by far (thats still WOD by miles), its average, and if you actualy check what those reviews on metacritic say you might find out most of those negative dont even mention anything about DF itself, just general complaints about wow, most of which were complained about since at least BC...

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, of course. The positive reviews are always 100% thoughtful and legit. The negative reviews are always dastardly and illegitimate. You're rationalizing dismissal of the parts of the evidence you don't like.

(I have not played DF, so as a result I have not posted a review of it to Metacritic.)

not saying the 10/10 are deserved, but have you read any of the bad reviews?
bcs only imbecile would consider "its racist bcs there are factions, 0/10" anything more than trolling, and such is most of the negative reviews, complaining about wow in general, outright claiming the review was done without even playing the expansion, and other such pointless "reviews" are majority of the bad ones...

[Osmeric]

...you can have a thoughtful, legit negative score. But when your rating of "0" for WoW is because it's no longer Wrath of the Lich King or because humans can now have pink hair and that review is counted with the same amount of weight as somebody who actually played the fucking game, you cannot reasonably infer that the information on that website is a remotely fair representation of the playerbase's actual thoughts.

I gave SL a 0 vote. That's because it maximally negatively affected me: I quit SL, WoW, and all Blizzard products. What was it going to do to be worse for me, kill my dog?

[HansOlo]

Yes, of course. The positive reviews are always 100% thoughtful and legit. The negative reviews are always dastardly and illegitimate. You're rationalizing dismissal of the parts of the evidence you don't like.

(I have not played DF, so as a result I have not posted a review of it to Metacritic.)

I really enjoy my Trump example. Nobody saw him winning, including bookmakers with 100x money back.

Point is - even if they showed how many subs they got, how the sales are - you would NOT be qualified to analyze it. This is NOT a topic for the average Joe with the tinfoil hat(yet alone school dropouts calling themselfs streamers).

Compare it to the Trump example, they had data, interviews, reviews backed up with billions of dollars - still, the forecast failed.

This whole speculation is utterly nonesense. But I also blame Blizzard for not being in this conversation(BTW each time you hate - you actually generate PR. They might like that at the HQ).

[Relapses]

I gave SL a 0 vote. That's because it maximally negatively affected me: I quit SL, WoW, and all Blizzard products. What was it going to do to be worse for me, kill my dog?

Again, at least you had the decency to play the fucking game before you gave it a zero. There are people on metacritic giving "reviews" of expansions who haven't played the game since Cataclysm. That fact alone should be enough to dismiss the aggregate entirely.