Why are people in denial about the state of the game?

[De Lupe]

Let's look at Metacritic scores:

TBC - 8.0 user score - generally favorable reviews - subs rise
WotLK - 7.7 user score - generally favorable reviews - subs rise
Cataclysm - 5.6 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs decline
MoP - 5.0 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs stagnate
WoD - 5.9 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs decline
Legion - 7.3 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs rise
BfA - 3.1 user score - generally unfavorable reviews - subs decline

You could make an argument that Legion does not fit the pattern since it had mixed or average reviews, but 7.3 is a lot closer to TBC's 8.0 and WotLK's 7.7 than any other expansion.

The fact is that these reviews are broadly representative of the state of the game. Thousands of people can't all be wrong about something. MoP had good gameplay but unappealing story / design direction so subs stagnated. Cataclysm, WoD and BfA were all badly received and coincided with a rapid drop in sub numbers. Legion was generally seen as a return to form for the game and although we didn't get exact sub numbers, it was pretty evident that they were on the rise just judging by increased activity across all endgame content.

All of these people can't be wrong.

The true crime here is MoP at 5. That expansion was easily an 8.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Trying to point to a poll and claim it is fact because you share the opinion.

And no I don;'t care who votes in the stupid poll because they are meaningless due to the fact they can easily be manipulated.

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Except you are also a part of the problem. By buying WoW tokens, you ensure that people continue to buy them and put them on the AH, which makes Blizzard money.

So? I didn't say I was trying to destroy the company or quit the game. But it is obvious a lot of people talk a LOT of shit about this game but continue to play while they cash in on trying to destroy it socially. Which is where the line is. Am I happy? Not really, as in, I know the game can be better and I think it was better. But I am still having fun playing with my guild and friends. Granted if they were to go away I would be gone in a heart beat.

Not to mention the whole argument of "every grain of sand on the beach counts" is very logical but not very practical. If I quit Blizzard will still continue. Even if WoW dies. They will drop some phone app in China and triple there profits either way.

Give me a choice that I win in? I just don't see one. So why bitch about it. That is the point I am trying to make.

[Soon-TM]

People people like to be wrapped soft warm fabric with a texture similar to sheep's wool. Cherry picking a line sucks and can be taken out of context. I hope you see that now.

Rofl so triggered. It was a comment about the general state of the gaming industry, not anything to do with you.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

The true crime here is MoP at 5. That expansion was easily an 8.

Agreed. I mean half the people that hate it were just like "I hate China theme" or quit in the first month or two when admittedly they went a little daily crazy. MoP was a VERY good expansion that had a rocky start and pretty outright racist reaction to it.

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Rofl so triggered. It was a comment about the general state of the gaming industry, not anything to do with you.

I wasn't addressing you at all either. I just happened to directly quote you for some reason.

"So triggered" indeed.

[Ryzek]

Man I really want a title for this. So far you all describe someone like me who is still playing "denial, whale, low standards, addictive tendencies, stockholm syndrome, sunk cost fallacy" What else do you all got.

Look BfA does suck compared to a lot of the other xpacs we've had, I have no problem with all the criticism you all throw at Blizzard. Keep up the good work and hopefully you all will get through to them.

I still enjoy raiding with the same people I met back in TBC and I'm gonna continue raiding with them (the whales that we are) until we stop.

[Silversorrow]

Not in denial here, I just genuinely like playing the game including this expansion. I see the issues but none of them are a big deal to me. Just because some other people don't like this expac does not change my viewpoint in the slightest. Those that don't like it will stop playing and I really couldn't care less, I will still play.

[Seranthor]

Let's look at Metacritic scores:

TBC - 8.0 user score - generally favorable reviews - subs rise
WotLK - 7.7 user score - generally favorable reviews - subs rise
Cataclysm - 5.6 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs decline
MoP - 5.0 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs stagnate
WoD - 5.9 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs decline
Legion - 7.3 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs rise
BfA - 3.1 user score - generally unfavorable reviews - subs decline

You could make an argument that Legion does not fit the pattern since it had mixed or average reviews, but 7.3 is a lot closer to TBC's 8.0 and WotLK's 7.7 than any other expansion.

The fact is that these reviews are broadly representative of the state of the game. Thousands of people can't all be wrong about something. MoP had good gameplay but unappealing story / design direction so subs stagnated. Cataclysm, WoD and BfA were all badly received and coincided with a rapid drop in sub numbers. Legion was generally seen as a return to form for the game and although we didn't get exact sub numbers, it was pretty evident that they were on the rise just judging by increased activity across all endgame content.

All of these people can't be wrong.

Because different people like different things. Opinions are opinions. They are only that. You might like something and I might hate the same thing? Who is right? Neither and both, because they are opinions. Metacritic records the opinions of people, no more, no less.

[rrayy]

So? I didn't say I was trying to destroy the company or quit the game. But it is obvious a lot of people talk a LOT of shit about this game but continue to play while they cash in on trying to destroy it socially. Which is where the line is. Am I happy? Not really, as in, I know the game can be better and I think it was better. But I am still having fun playing with my guild and friends. Granted if they were to go away I would be gone in a heart beat.

Not to mention the whole argument of "every grain of sand on the beach counts" is very logical but not very practical. If I quit Blizzard will still continue. Even if WoW dies. They will drop some phone app in China and triple there profits either way.

Give me a choice that I win in? I just don't see one. So why bitch about it. That is the point I am trying to make.

Fair enough. I wasn't saying you were trying to destroy the company. Ther is one group of FFXIV fanboys that are polluting the forums by denigrating anyone who dares like WoW right now and it''s making it too easy to lump others in with them.

[Casthiel]

Many people can't accept the fact that there is a bunch of us who don't like this expansion even if those people are still having fun.

Personally i think they made so many poor decisions and that made me stop having fun. It's not about the game's age, it's not about my age, it's about the way they made everything in the game feel like an endless grind with rng on top of rng. It wasnt like this on previous expansions.

It feels like they want me to play more (spend more time logged in) by time gating, travelling all around, crazy low drop rates and layer after layer of rng (while grounded) instead of making me actually want to do the actual content.

It had the opposite effect on me: i play less each day and i started abandoning 'goals', such as the 500 honor level because the amount of grind is not reasonable in my opinion. When the carrot is so far out of reach, you just stop caring about it altogether.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Fair enough. I wasn't saying you were trying to destroy the company. Ther is one group of FFXIV fanboys that are polluting the forums by denigrating anyone who dares like WoW right now and it''s making it too easy to lump others in with them.

It is all good. Real discussion is great and trust me I get that trolls are pretty much the norm anymore. People seem very concerned to the point of attacking others for merely having a different opinion even if it doesn't change their world at all. Which is why I feel people are more just trying to "cash in" on the situation instead of actually having much of a point or even really wanting it to be fixed. Not trying to lump you in with that one way or the other. Just my perspective.

[Soon-TM]

Agreed. I mean half the people that hate it were just like "I hate China theme" or quit in the first month or two when admittedly they went a little daily crazy. MoP was a VERY good expansion that had a rocky start and pretty outright racist reaction to it.

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I wasn't addressing you at all either. I just happened to directly quote you for some reason.

"So triggered" indeed.

Looks like someone is angry about having said that AAA gaming is in a dire spot (integrity-wise) these days. Oh well, some people just cannot deal with different opinions

[Eleccybubb]

Looks like someone is angry about having said that AAA gaming is in a dire spot (integrity-wise) these days. Oh well, some people just cannot deal with different opinions

To be fair there's still loads of good companies out there. Square Enix, CDPR, Capcom and others. Sure they've made mistakes or bad games but no company should have a perfect track record.

EA, Bethesda, Blizzard and Activision. Those are some of the companies that are a disappointment to the industry.

And of course anyone daring to be critical of these companies is just "hating for the sake of it". It's pathetic really.

[Jerot]

You can't really review a WoW expansion fully and fairly before it's at its end. It's not a 50-100 hour independent game, like Fallout 4 vs Fallout 3. Generally people are getting tired of the game, and they need bigger and bigger dose to get high, Legion was huge, Bfa can't compete and at this stage of the game, so the fall is really high.

You definitely can, and while its not totally fair to review an "unfinished" product against a finished one, you can still make comparisons and learn from them. Unless you're skipping content patches, you're usually done previous content by the time a new one launches, so it's not like the end of an expansion has so much more to do for someone who's kept up with content. The only thing people care about is the current gameplay loop, and that changes throughout an expansion.

A number is just a number with context, you have to look at why people rate one thing higher than another. For example, I would say WotLK was at its worst by the end of the expansion because there was a very long content drought. I also disliked the shift from having unique rewards in higher difficulty content to putting some green text under the name in ToC. The reason for the higher rating was the core systems, back when you had to worry about gearing resistance, hit rating, etc.

I'm not going to argue those were fun mechanics, but they overlooked what they added to the game. You had reasons as a pure DPS to have multiple sets/items to manage. To gear for a specific fight. In removing all the "restrictive" stats you needed to manage, it became about stacking DPS numbers. People needed less gear, so they moved to a system to make that gear harder to obtain. Titan forging, personal loot, in an attempt to keep people playing.

Gearing was more complex, but items were easier to obtain. You knew the steps that needed to be taken to get the gear you were targeting, you had a clear goal to work towards, and things felt good to accomplish. That cycle kept people logging in daily and doing content. By removing that complexity, they were drawn to systems that artificially increased the amount of time people would spend in game. Artifact power/azerite, more daily resets, expanded rewards and lottery systems like titan forging, the game started to feel like less of a journey, and more of a treadmill.

Now you can't really clearly target upgrades, its a weird balance between this piece is better IF it titanforges, but this other piece doesn't need to titanforge as much to be an upgrade. You're never "done" gearing a character, and the uncertainty hurts the sense of accomplishment that you used to get from finishing a set/tier of content. Back then the catch-up mechanic was having friends carry you through content, now its just handed out through higher daily/weekly rewards. You start a new character and you're caught up with your main in no time, and it feels bad to have put all the time into the main and have nothing to really show for it.

I had a single max level character from Vanilla up until WoD, my Mage, but DPS rotations became so absolutely mindnumbing to me by that point, I rolled a Paladin so I could heal/tank and have something to react to other than a semi-random "push your dps button now!" proc. As well as more gearing opportunities than finding the same piece of gear for the 3rd time with 4% better numbers.

Back on-topic, its all ultimately subjective. People aren't in denial, they enjoy the game how it is, and they just see people attacking things that they like. Its feelings VS feelings, its messy and nobody "wins". I'm not personally a fan of the direction they've taken the game, I enjoyed early legion despite disagreeing with most of its core mechanics. And I decided against buying BFA because I feel like they've continued further down a path I didn't like, both from a systems and lore standpoint. But I've played the game in every expansion up until now, I've been to blizzcon, a lot of time and money invested, so I still partake in the community and keep up to date on the news.

The people saying "lol metacritic" are missing the point, the public opinion on the game has shifted dramatically. Even the tone of people I know who still play has been very negative overall. The real root of the problem is how garbage their expansion system is, everything is thrown out/broken/devalued every time they launch a new one, and people are just tired of spending hundreds of hours on something and having it thrown out. The only rewards people care about these days are cosmetic because they hold the best value. The gameplay design feels wishy-washy when systems are replaced or kept despite feedback, they care too much about metrics and not the factors behind those metrics. "Our data shows people farm more content because of titan forging" doesn't mean its a popular system people enjoy, they need to be more mindful of player motivation and sentiment.

[Zandalariprelate]

I see more people attacking the current state of the game than defending it, to the point they even link videos of streamers and as their opinions like Asmongold. I love the game and lots of people still do but the class mechanics, lack of new talents since WoD, the storyline being shit, welfare items and scaling that actually desmotivate the gearing with raids or pushing high mythic dungeons, this kind of things aren't helping either

[Lurker1]

ITT: Stop having fun!!

But i love BFA dam me for enjoying it right!

[Cyram]

Let's look at Metacritic scores:

TBC - 8.0 user score - generally favorable reviews - subs rise
WotLK - 7.7 user score - generally favorable reviews - subs rise
Cataclysm - 5.6 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs decline
MoP - 5.0 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs stagnate
WoD - 5.9 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs decline
Legion - 7.3 user score - mixed or average reviews - subs rise
BfA - 3.1 user score - generally unfavorable reviews - subs decline

You could make an argument that Legion does not fit the pattern since it had mixed or average reviews, but 7.3 is a lot closer to TBC's 8.0 and WotLK's 7.7 than any other expansion.

The fact is that these reviews are broadly representative of the state of the game. Thousands of people can't all be wrong about something. MoP had good gameplay but unappealing story / design direction so subs stagnated. Cataclysm, WoD and BfA were all badly received and coincided with a rapid drop in sub numbers. Legion was generally seen as a return to form for the game and although we didn't get exact sub numbers, it was pretty evident that they were on the rise just judging by increased activity across all endgame content.

All of these people can't be wrong.

... you can't understand why people have a different opinion than the one you agree with? Mate, that must be a rough life you have, being shook by a variety of points of view.
And, about the scores... some people just enjoy something without caring what score the thing they like has on some shite site. Or did you just loved La La Land because it has a 91/81% on RT?

[Lurker1]

... you can't understand why people have a different opinion than the one you agree with? Mate, that must be a rough life you have, being shook by a variety of points of view.
And, about the scores... some people just enjoy something without caring what score the thing they like has on some shite site. Or did you just loved La La Land because it has a 91/81% on RT?

True!could careless about that site i give BFA a 10 out of 10 score!

[Brewhan]

can confirm game is dead.

OP is right

I base my answer on twitch viewership for wow is in decline

[Lurker1]

Not in denial here, I just genuinely like playing the game including this expansion. I see the issues but none of them are a big deal to me. Just because some other people don't like this expac does not change my viewpoint in the slightest. Those that don't like it will stop playing and I really couldn't care less, I will still play.

Well said same here man love BFA has all the stuff i loved about legion and removed all of the stuff i hated about it at same time!

[De Lupe]

Agreed. I mean half the people that hate it were just like "I hate China theme" or quit in the first month or two when admittedly they went a little daily crazy. MoP was a VERY good expansion that had a rocky start and pretty outright racist reaction to it.

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I wasn't addressing you at all either. I just happened to directly quote you for some reason.

"So triggered" indeed.

It's the reason I don't do user-controlled review sites.