Influencers got their will, Bliz listened to their feedback, yet noone plays game

[Ihazpaws]

DF is actually awesome expansion. It feels great and has alot good things and changes, however it's core is still same old crap. And with that I mean gear chasing. It's not MMORPG anymore, it's mostly solo/friends grinder for meaningless loot to feel more powerful in game even tho you won't be more powerful. Basically it's just looter shooter game nowadays and after a while those games become very boring when you realize that gameplay loop is to just be lucky enough to get upgrade to get more upgrades that mean nothing. RPG elements in the game are just side collectibles and to use them you need to find actual RP community instead of them being something that happens naturally in the game world. And MMO aspect in WoW is basically just the pool of random (near bot like) players who do not talk, they just run the content as fast as possible and leave. You most likely never see them again because of how the servers work.

Atleast that is why I don't play it. Just making addons and learning LUA or leveling some random alts to pass time once a while. Dunno why I even keep sub up anymore since I play like max 20h per month.

[DarkAmbient]

You mean raiders and M+ people got their will, screwing the game for anyone who likes having worthwhile stuff to do outside of instances. Blizz seem incapable of striking a good balance.

[Kilpi]

I really agree. The game hasn't felt this barebones since WoD. There's pretty much nothing to do, and people are acting like that's a positive thing.

Blizzard flat out released Dragonflight with way too little content. From what I can tell the subscriber numbers seem to steadily be going down. People just don't want to play anymore. Or maybe they do want to play, but they can't find any content to enjoy. Great job, really.

I would really like to know as a real statistic of the reasons people actually stop playing WoW. Like, the game is 20 years old and MMO's isn't a hot thing in gaming anymore. So it makes perfect sense, that WoW would've been slowly dying the past 10 years, no matter what Blizzard does with the game. More and more people have used a decade or more on the game and getting new players isn't as straight forward, because we are talking about an old MMO that (even if looks real good, relatively speaking) doesn't look like a game a that a 15-20 year-old would start playing for the first time ever, no matter how good the new expansion is.

[Loveliest]

You mean raiders and M+ people got their will, screwing the game for anyone who likes having worthwhile stuff to do outside of instances. Blizz seem incapable of striking a good balance.

Like what? Tell me a couple things you used to do.
Tbh I'm pretty unhappy with M+ as it us now, but guess what, I still have fluff content to do: questing, leveling up, collecting mounts and pets, the vault (tower), the elem events. I don't even know what you used to have that you can't do how? You had like one feature per expansion in later years, like vision and torghast and man were 'casuals' complaining to the hell and back about them...

[potis]

I would really like to know as a real statistic of the reasons people actually stop playing WoW. Like, the game is 20 years old and MMO's isn't a hot thing in gaming anymore. So it makes perfect sense, that WoW would've been slowly dying the past 10 years, no matter what Blizzard does with the game. More and more people have used a decade or more on the game and getting new players isn't as straight forward, because we are talking about an old MMO that (even if looks real good, relatively speaking) doesn't look like a game a that a 15-20 year-old would start playing for the first time ever, no matter how good the new expansion is.

Its what people dont seem to understand at how massive WoW was/is.

This has been repeated before, it hit something like 140m unique accounts back in MoP, by now you can guess its much more, its been 8 years.

Blizzard changed the game to please both sides, the few million that play this long term, and the expansion hoppers.

Everyone is acting like people follow this game and everyone subs day one and then everyone unsubs and thats it.

Man, people come and go during the course of an expansion in the thousands if not hundred thousands, i cant even tell how many times i see people on my friend list that have "quit wow and will never play it again", simply sub in the middle of nowhere for a month or two.

Game is old, but its also a very good casual game to play to catch up cause you used to play it more back in the day.

[Cynical Asshole]

What do you mean? The end game hasn't changed since WOD. Raids, M+, PVP. It's always the same shit.

I honestly don't see any difference between expansions.

[Shadowferal]

I would really like to know as a real statistic of the reasons people actually stop playing WoW. .

I can't speak for statistics, but for me it was when the game just wasn't fun. To elaborate, the game was fun for me when I could explore on my own the stories within the game, and enjoy the aesthetics that come with it. Add my toon's class that I also enjoyed playing with, and I'm late for work because I can't stop playing... "another 5 mins won't make a difference, right? Oh crap! That was 20mins ago"
Then WoD hit..and I quickly realized the stories had to make a coherent consistent cohesive sense. And that didn't. (I loathe retcons...and after a bit they called it an "alternate universe" shit.) And then later the "Chronicles"....holy shit Batman!
I admit some things about the game in vanilla didn't make sense to me, but I was willing to make some concessions then. But the game still had that new car smell, so maybe the writing would change things later. And it did /facepalm

[Kilpi]

I can't speak for statistics, but for me it was when the game just wasn't fun. To elaborate, the game was fun for me when I could explore on my own the stories within the game, and enjoy the aesthetics that come with it. Add my toon's class that I also enjoyed playing with, and I'm late for work because I can't stop playing... "another 5 mins won't make a difference, right? Oh crap! That was 20mins ago"
Then WoD hit..and I quickly realized the stories had to make a coherent consistent cohesive sense. And that didn't. (I loathe retcons...and after a bit they called it an "alternate universe" shit.) And then later the "Chronicles"....holy shit Batman!
I admit some things about the game in vanilla didn't make sense to me, but I was willing to make some concessions then. But the game still had that new car smell, so maybe the writing would change things later. And it did /facepalm

Sure, enjoyability is one of the reasons. And one thing that really feeds to the "not enjoying the game anymore" is the fact that some people have been playing this game for 10-20 years, it's a WONDER there are still people from 2004-2010 playing this. The story/lore reasons you mentioned is the exact reason why I think WoW should've kept using the original continents after WotLK. Kul Tiras, Zandalari trolls, all of those could've been added as single zones in expansions still (kinda like how Cata added new zones to old continents). Also WoW could've really been fine without alternative universes, timetraveling (outside of Caverns of Time) and space ships and other sci-fi stuff. Naaru were already bordering how sci-fi WoW can handle...

[Shadowferal]

The story/lore reasons you mentioned is the exact reason why I think WoW should've kept using the original continents after WotLK. Kul Tiras, Zandalari trolls, all of those could've been added as single zones in expansions still (kinda like how Cata added new zones to old continents). Also WoW could've really been fine without alternative universes, timetraveling (outside of Caverns of Time) and space ships and other sci-fi stuff. Naaru were already bordering how sci-fi WoW can handle...

As others know of, I've long posted about making revisions to lore. Ideas that would keep the ground game going. It's something that's turned into a hobby of sorts. Some people rewrite things in their head, I however write stuff in my notebook. A notebook that's my version of WoW 2.0. A catharsis to deal with my frustration over the stupidity of WoW writing. My notes stop in the middle of MoP. Faction leadership, widening the scope of the earlier class structure, and racial abilities are typically what I'm looking at when I'm not looking at the overall storyline as well as stories involved in-zone. All of which needs to be told and expressed well...

[Jessicka]

I'll forever maintain that the slide happened in Cataclysm when a game that needed people needed to make friends to play together and stay together, suddenly had the tools where that was no longer the case. Introducing those, after "Heroics are hard" tore guilds and realms apart and the game has just drifted since with rare highs like later MoP, and even early Shadowlands showed a lot of promise. But, the slide has been inexorable.

People don't play because their friends don't play, stuff changed in ways they don't like or recognise which makes it difficult to come back (especially if your main character changed a lot), and it's a lot of time and energy to try to build those things back up, relearn, and find new friends, without any promise of success.

[Shadowferal]

I admit Cataclysm was hard to like. If it weren't for Vashj'ir and Uldum, two zones that I loved exploring (yes, even Harrison Jones), I might have given some thought of temporarily canceling my subscription then.

[enigma77]

Most people quit the game during the first tier of expansions because that's when they realize that the work that they put in gearing their character is about to be completely invalidated by the next patch. If the gear you collected during the first tier actually lasted a while and gave you a lasting advantage in the second tier more people would care, a handful of pieces could even be made so good that you wouldn't replace them until the third tier.

It's really hard to care about vertical progression when months of work gets completely wiped out in a week.

Agreed I'm literally already not interested in 10.1 because all my current gear is gonna get invalidated.

[ulululu]

Agreed I'm literally already not interested in 10.1 because all my current gear is gonna get invalidated.

Just like every major content patch. In the history of World of Warcraft. Why even bother then? Imagine having one season at the start of an expansion to gear yourself and for every season following over a time span of ~1.5-2years you wouldn't have to swap a single new gear piece. No need to do any content that drops gear because.. you already geared yourself in season 1 and gear just grades up on the fly.

Good game, that's how progression should feel like.

[prwraith]

It's okay to not feel forced to play WoW non-stop.

Preach

FF14 doesn't do the mandatory logins every single day and i vastly prefer it. Feels good to see WoW go this direction

[Shadowferal]

I should wonder at this "forced to play" ideal. When did this sort of thing start?

[czarek]

Most people quit the game during the first tier of expansions because that's when they realize that the work that they put in gearing their character is about to be completely invalidated by the next patch. If the gear you collected during the first tier actually lasted a while and gave you a lasting advantage in the second tier more people would care, a handful of pieces could even be made so good that you wouldn't replace them until the third tier.

It's really hard to care about vertical progression when months of work gets completely wiped out in a week.

Maybe not completly but in general yes. In top gear from season1 you can easy complete M+ 15 thats the only advantage. Anyway whole gear gonna be replaced in next few weeks. Is that a painful ? Imo not. You easy catch up gear. No need to hard farm. Better gear just achive you to compete in higher diff in same content. New content show up = new gear is required thats the base line of every season.

[Dioporco]

For years influencers have complained about all the "main stream" issues about the game. Like "REMOVE BORROWED POWERS" and "REMOVE MANDATORY CONTENT".

Just to be specific, I am talking about people in this sphere:
- Asmongold
- Preachgaming
- Belluar
- T&E

Just to be clear, those influencers are just echoing how they see their communities talk, so it's more of a community thing. I am not trying to hate on the influencers.

Influencers have made video after video complaining about the same things and tunnelvisioned on certain things like

- no more borrowed power
- no more required content that force you to log in every day
- no more infinite AP grinds
- no more Sylvanas
- more focus on permanent systems like
* talent system
* battlepass system
* crafting system
* flying system
- more communication about the future patches and plans

We all know the list they dreamed of is kinda accomplished in Dragonflight.

Influencers no longer have anything specific to complain about. Great, I guess the game is so fun now?

Because to me it seems they all have never played the game as little as they do in this expansion.

And the influencers have just conveniently moved on to other games, while simutatiously have nothing to complain about. "I'm just not that into the game right now".

I seriously worry that Blizzard took the influencers feedback way too seriously to heart, but the reality is that following them does not make a game that people want to play.

What do you think?

Preach has done more Mythic / High end content than all the rest of the "influencers" and 99% of this entire site.

[Alroxas]

The game is actually great currently better than in years.
The problem isn’t garbage system missing, it’s the lack of actual content. We need dungeons/raids/quests.

I mean you do have 8 dungeons in M+ and 1 raid open plus a whole new zone for quests (added in 10.0.7).

We pay ~15$ every month, that’s more than microsoft game pass FFS !!! Players just expect more in 2023, and blizzard should definitely release more content.

Game pass Ultimate is no longer doing that $1/month deal. Additionally, reporting is saying that the price might actually increase down the line.

But the game just feels a little too small for everything offered outside wow (I didn’t log for the last 3 weeks, playing a lot of other great game). I love the feeling of not fallong behind while not playing tho. I just wish we had more to do to keep me playing.

Honestly, that's fine. There are plenty of other games coming out in the next few months so taking a break from WoW is ok. I don't understand the motivation of some players when they say they want WoW to be their all-encompassing game.

[Kaos Sverige]

World of Warcraft: How to train your Dragonflight

[erifwodahs]

It is great to login into WoW and not feel like you are somewhat behind when you played this other game for a week. I currently play 3-4 days a week at high end m+ and it's awesome.
I loved WoW in Legion and I love DF almost as much, both have great environment, but in terms of systems they are completely different.

Legion was getting stale by the end of expansion, DF could face same problem if nothing has changed in between the patches besides dungeon pool and the raid, so far they seem to have a good content flow tbh, but we shall see.

For all we know by the end of expansion people might have had enough of this "nothing is mandatory" like they had enough of Legion AP grind by the end of it (yes, I know that some hated if from the day 1). Maybe even saying that they want to play every day and ask for some systems which allow them to progress every day too even if slightly. We shall see.