could it be that WoW is failing because the expansions are way too small?

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Yes, thats exactly what the game needs. Instead 6 zones with WQ I give zero fucks about being in we could have 20. Sadly they have made anything really worth while outside of the expansions "number grind item" instance based. The wow world has almost no point. Sadly. Power progression just has it utterly smashed a few hours after you hit max level. Even mobs that adapt to item level games stand no chance. It is just sad.

[potis]

YES.

The badge, emblem and point system is better than this stupid rng fiesta.

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Not really. You are using Steamcharts to proclaim unreliable metrics on games that have huge install bases outside of Steam.

Rift has about 2-3k players max and most of those are non Steam.

And again making huge profits/money does not equal a good product. Star Citizen being a very well known case in point of that.

200m isnt huge profits in 7 years, do you know basic economy and math?

Again, blind rage is silly, it just makes you lose all credibility.

Steamcharts is perfectly accurate to use for a game thats practically famous because of Steam.

Claiming Monster Hunter World and Warframe has more players than WoW is just silly, money excluded.

[Eleccybubb]

200m isnt huge profits in 7 years, do you know basic economy and math?

Again, blind rage is silly, it just makes you lose all credibility.

Steamcharts is perfectly accurate to use for a game thats practically famous because of Steam.

Claiming Monster Hunter World and Warframe has more players than WoW is just silly, money excluded.

And claiming a game only has 30k players because "lul steamcharts said so" is just dumping on other games to make WoW appear better.

No point continuing with you any further since you want to post unreliable metrics to make one game appear in a better light. Laters.

[unbound]

I don't think that the current expansion model is working well. The 10 levels and 4-5 extra areas worked in tbc and wotlk but there were other things that saved WoW back then. Each expansion should be as large and fundamental as vanilla. There should be way more levels, areas and things to do, They are trying to make up for this with terrible mechanics like azerite but I don't think that's enough. Each expansion right now feels as a patch equal to the size of argus, this is extremely cheap work by blizzard.

The devs have to remember why people loved rpg games in the first place and that was for getting rewarded by doing more grind. Right now you don't get any reward by doing more grind. The grind doesn't have to be spamming world quests and mythics only.

Give more areas, more exploration, more levels, harder gear up, flying on the max level with lots of gold. Remove titanforge and rng mechanics.

10 levels and 4-5 extra areas isn't exactly what happened in BC and Wrath...there was a good deal more to those expansions, and that is the primary issue with more recent expansions (yes, Legion was much better than WoD or BfA, but it wasn't as good as either BC or Wrath...Legion was better than the 3 expansions before it and the expansion after it is all).

To understand more fully the difference, you have to look at more than just levels and areas.

In BC:
- 16 dungeons (normal and heroic)...heroic dungeons were something completely new
- 8 raids...10 man raids were something completely new
- 2 new races with 2 zones for each of them...something that was completely new
- 8 new top end zones...something that was completely new
- Flying...something that was completely new (and integrated into the expansion)
- Jewelcrafting...new profession added for the first time
- 1 new BG added for the first time
- Arenas...something that was completely new for PvP
- Additional abilities / talents for each class...something that was completely new

Compare this to BfA:
- 10 dungeons (normal, heroic, mythic, mythic+)...nothing new (mythic / M+ added in previous expansion)
- 3.5 raids most likely (variable sizes and difficulties as introduced in previous expansions)...nothing new
- 8 allied races...only reskins, no new zones (only very brief cut scenes)...nothing new
- 6 new top end zones...nothing new
- Reintroduction of scenarios (from MoP)...nothing new
- Tables (aka World of Clickcraft from WoD)...nothing new
- Classes / specs - almost entirely unaltered from prior expansion...technically this is new because every previous expansion put a *lot* more effort into this (so new in laziness)

So, in BfA, we have fewer dungeons and few raids, a lazy attempt at new races, pretty much no attempt at class changes, and the same old same old. But it isn't that they need more levels...they need more content (no, doing the same dungeons and raids over and over again with a difficulty slider is not new content), and they really need to add something that is new.

Wrath added yet another profession (Inscription), and a new class. They added other things for the first time (e.g. heirloom items, world PvP zone). These were, like many of the things in BC, completely new innovations.

What real innovation have we seen in the past several expansions? The appropriately maligned table and scenarios...and the half-***ed garrison (aka the lazy developers approach to housing). Artifacts were amusing in Legion, but ultimately just a lazy talent tree where you ended up getting all of the talents anyways.

BC and Wrath were great because they innovated and expanded on what the game had to offer. The last several expansions mostly offer the same thing over and over again...new art, new lore, but little else. Fewer dungeons, fewer raids, and more excuses from Blizz leadership.

[apples]

Congratulations. You can use Steamcharts to get a completely unreliable metric as those games have console ports and non steam versions.

Care to share any other metrics you spent 2 seconds googling and clicking the steamcharts link?

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Making money does not = a good product. ActiBlizz have been throwing out MTX quicker than usual with this expansion not to mention that stupid 6 month promo sub.

Star Citizen made 200 million in crowdfunding and has only an Alpha to show for it after 6-7 years of work.

who said anything about good product? you were talking about success

[Eleccybubb]

who said anything about good product? you were talking about success

And success isn't just about a financial aspect.

And success can mean a myriad of definitions.

The poster you were quoting was more than likely not just referring to financially.

Again Star Citizen is the prime example of financials don't mean squat. It's a mediocre scam of a game still in Alpha after 6 years and blowing 200-250 million dollars on it.

[Aeula]

WoW's expansions are massive compared to other games and even other MMO's. That's not the problem.

[Soimu]

I don't think that the current expansion model is working well. The 10 levels and 4-5 extra areas worked in tbc and wotlk but there were other things that saved WoW back then. Each expansion should be as large and fundamental as vanilla. There should be way more levels, areas and things to do, They are trying to make up for this with terrible mechanics like azerite but I don't think that's enough. Each expansion right now feels as a patch equal to the size of argus, this is extremely cheap work by blizzard.

The devs have to remember why people loved rpg games in the first place and that was for getting rewarded by doing more grind. Right now you don't get any reward by doing more grind. The grind doesn't have to be spamming world quests and mythics only.

Give more areas, more exploration, more levels, harder gear up, flying on the max level with lots of gold. Remove titanforge and rng mechanics.

yes and in order for an expansion to be larger it needs more time to develop and players will start bitching again.
even the content you say is small gets released unfinished.

[PedroloGeo]

Give more areas, more exploration, more levels, harder gear up, flying on the max level with lots of gold. Remove titanforge and rng mechanics.

Give exploration. Give flying.

How exactly do you explore the world if you can just fly over it from wq to dungeon portal to city hub to raid? When you fly there is no need for exploration. A cool mountain pass? Nop, I fly. A beautiful road in the jungle? Nop, I fly. A unused way in the swamp with shallow lakes? Nop, I fly.

[lolpve]

The issue with the "theme-park" design philosophy is that players will have nothing to do if they either exhaust the forced content or lose interest in it.

[Wyrt]

No, the size is mostly fine. BfA has issues because each faction only gets 3 leveling zones and the Alliance ones are painfully boring.

The biggest problem, to me at least, is that BfA has a lot of grindy content that just isn't fun to do. Islands, Warfronts, and World Quests are all super boring. And if you're raiding you kind of need to do them to keep your shitty necklace's level up. Before I quit I was only logging in on raid days because nothing else was fun to do and my necklace ended up lagging behind significantly compared to the rest of the raid group.

Second biggest problem for me is the constant class pruning and the GCD change really took the fun out of classes. Popping a cooldown and then having to wait 1.5 seconds before you can even start casting felt fucking awful.

And a minor point that probably few people care about is that I absolutely fucking hate BfA's story. It's irredeemably bad. It's so bad that if I were to start playing again I wouldn't know which faction to play on because I dislike both so much.

Oh, and why in the bloody fuck are is flying still not available?

I like WoW, and I'd like to go back to playing it someday. BfA is just clearly not the expansion for me. So I'm keeping an eye on WoW in hopes that Blizzard will change things, but that doesn't seem likely.

[justandulas]

It’s true that wow is a shell of its former self in quality and population, but time will do that. What’s really hurt wow more than anything is how influential it was. Now we see WoW mechanics in nearly every genre of game. Even sports and FPS have leveling up mechanics, etc.

Even mobas and BR have character progression (if you wanna call it that..) now.

Wow is no longer unique, and as such, needs to have content multiple times better than the competition. It does not

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WoW's expansions are massive compared to other games and even other MMO's. That's not the problem.

Depends which expac and which mmo competitor we are talking about. Wow has had expacs that are top of the field, and others that I wouldn’t take over the competition

[SirBeef]

you mean after let-down after let-down of expansion ranging back all the way to fucking wrath where promoted content ON THE BOX was cut prior to release?

Well for me, The letdown after letdown came with TBC and WotLK. WoW picked it's game back up with Cata.

[justandulas]

Well for me, The letdown after letdown came with TBC and WotLK. WoW picked it's game back up with Cata.

Other than the infamous guild poaching in TBC, I disagree. Thought both TBC and wotlk were better than cata, but that could be personal preference. We can agree to disagree.

I think a big thing that hurt cata to me was I don’t mess with alts. So the biggest change, to the world, meant very little to me

[Volitar]

Well retail failed for me because I didn't like logging in everyday and doing the same daily quests I've done every single day of the expansion just to keep my character relevant for mythic raiding. No item is an upgrade unless it also titanforged and to top it all off everything essentially fresh resets every 4 months meaning you start from scratch again.

I still think the content in WoW is great but the systems are so cancerous that I can't do it anymore.

[Weallscream]

Wow isn't failing you silly. Something that already failed can't fail again.

[Barkloud]

I don't think that the current expansion model is working well. The 10 levels and 4-5 extra areas worked in tbc and wotlk but there were other things that saved WoW back then. Each expansion should be as large and fundamental as vanilla. There should be way more levels, areas and things to do, They are trying to make up for this with terrible mechanics like azerite but I don't think that's enough. Each expansion right now feels as a patch equal to the size of argus, this is extremely cheap work by blizzard.

The devs have to remember why people loved rpg games in the first place and that was for getting rewarded by doing more grind. Right now you don't get any reward by doing more grind. The grind doesn't have to be spamming world quests and mythics only.

Give more areas, more exploration, more levels, harder gear up, flying on the max level with lots of gold. Remove titanforge and rng mechanics.

It is two things in my opinion

1. Less content

2. Time gating

If I want to grind Zandalari rep 24/7 why can't I? Why do I need to wait for things to reset only to get a few quests that provide Zandalari rep the next day. So frustrating.

I liked Vanilla and TBC and Wrath because no one dictated how I had to play the game. There wasn't any of the "log in for 10 days straight to do the same exact set of quests to unlock another set of quests that has to be done once a day for 10 days to unlock something else" style of gameplay.

I have no problem grinding rep, I do have a problem with only being able to grind one hour a day of it.

[horbindr]

expansions themselves are (mostly) fine. even BFA tried to innovate with warfronts and islands.

but post expansion content patches vary greatly in both quality and quantity of new content they add. more consistency there would fix a lot of problems.

[Theed]

For me BFA failed for these reasons:

- It feels like a filler expansion. No class based sets, boring azerite system, no new class abilities/talents etc.
- The refused to listen to feedback during alpha / beta regarding the azerite system
- They refuse to listen to feedback regarding class design most of the time. There is little or no dialog.
- Very subjective but I hate the theme and atmosphere of this expansion

I think the next expansion is going to be much more successful, continuing the pattern since wotlk:

Great: BC, WotLK
Good: MoP, Legion
Filler or bad: Cataclysm, WoD, BfA

[TheVaryag]

I don't think that the current expansion model is working well. The 10 levels and 4-5 extra areas worked in tbc and wotlk but there were other things that saved WoW back then. Each expansion should be as large and fundamental as vanilla. There should be way more levels, areas and things to do, They are trying to make up for this with terrible mechanics like azerite but I don't think that's enough. Each expansion right now feels as a patch equal to the size of argus, this is extremely cheap work by blizzard.

The devs have to remember why people loved rpg games in the first place and that was for getting rewarded by doing more grind. Right now you don't get any reward by doing more grind. The grind doesn't have to be spamming world quests and mythics only.

Give more areas, more exploration, more levels, harder gear up, flying on the max level with lots of gold. Remove titanforge and rng mechanics.

I agree with the Idea that they should make large expansive zones like Vanilla had, two giant continents to explore. And all they did until that were 5-7 zones per expansion. But that's not the problem here, they've succeded In making amazing expansions with faults of course but no expansion Is perfect. The game was widely popular despite It's smaller size than vanilla.

And even then, some assets and ideas used in Vanilla were put into TBC. Only from Wrath did they really make new areas, zones and armor pieces etc.

The zones and areas they make are amazing for the most part, even though since WoD they seem to make them to be filled every meter with a World Quest, an Area Quest (Like those quests from WoD Garrisons, aka World Quests 0.5), and mostly making the zones boring gameplay and content wise while still making them visually appealing and striking.

The problem Isn't the expansion sizes being small, they're not small. It's the content, the systems and the game's direction that Is the big problem. Don't try looking for problems where there are none, people right now will try to jump onto the hate bandwagon to change things in WoW they shouldn't be changed but Blizz will change them cause they'll feel the pressure mounting from all aspects of the game, PvP, PvE, RP etc.

Blizzard have to focus on nailing the systems and their content, and on a smaller but important subject, the Lore. Their characters are bland, Sylvanas Is a joke. Jaina Is -ok- but that's about It. There are no major characters for most of the races to look upon. I'm a Roleplaying, right. Give me a day and I will make you complex characters with backgrounds, unique personalities and quirks to suit the game and have potential for growth. These kind of characters I like to call "Nazgrims", although that only was relevant until he got rezzed as a Death Knight, so poo on you Blizz.

LIke Nazgrim, he started off as a Sergeant in Wrath when you deal with a forgotten orc character of high rank Gorgonna, sister of Conqueror Krenna who we helped Gorgonna overthrow due to her mostly Garrosh-like brutal ways of dishonor (Later on her). He was then Legionnaire in Cataclysm, helping us in Vash'jir despite the zones unpopularity, and up to a General and a Raid Boss in Mists of Pandaria, in Siege of Orgrimmar.

Now If they just let him fudging DIE and didn't rez him I'd have liked his story more, but oh well I guess It has some potential regardless. My point Is, he was a character spanning a few expansions that we knew and liked for the most part, or at least -noticed- and then he died. And that's good. Now, do 100x characters like that, newly created each expansion to have a lifespan of a few expansions or more, hell any of those characters could be the next Warchief for all we know In 10 years, the next Thrall or the next Grom or Garrosh. But Blizzard aren't even making characters like that, they focus down on the few chars they have and kill off the few sidecharacters they ALSO HAVE. Like, a certain Tidesage character we met in BfA and has now died a few patches later. Although he could've lasted a few more expansions, no, he just dies and that would be ok, IF WE HAD 99 MORE CHARACTERS TO FOLLOW, but we don't.

Same goes for great characters like Lillian Voss, whose return from her "Death" In Scholomance just confused everybody when she casually shows up in your Garrison in WoD and Is now somehow a Forsaken Loyalst in BfA two expansions later. That to me Is their desparate cry for more characters, they HAVE to reuse old characters, like Illidan, like Nazgrim, like Lillian Voss because they aren't making new characters. Their problem Is their own Incompetance to make new characters, characters that any Experienced Roleplayer whose played this game for at least 5 years can make for you, Blizzard.

And on the subject of Gorgonna, she's also a fun little character we quested with 10 years ago and haven't seen since. She could've had some nice growth, perhaps could've been a counterpart to Nazgrim, a more Thrall-centric character as opposed to Nazgrim's loyalty to the Warchief Garrosh. But no, she wasn't there at all. At this point, she could've been a Warlord, replacing Saurfang as leader of the Orcs In his absence. Instead we have Eitigg who we also have little info on, what is his rank anyway? I don't think It's ever been established, how much can he command anyone, Is he a Warlord? An Overlord at this point? He seems to lead attacks in Arathi so he has to be high up there but they don't go Into any of that.

Anyway that's my lore rant, to finallize my words, the problem Isn't the expansion size, as In the area we quest upon, Zandalar and Kul'tiras in this case. It's what's IN the zones, and what is there right now Is the worst shiz I've seen since Legion. The last three expansions are a pale shadow of what WoW used to be. And even worse, the last five expansions are an even even more paler shadow of what WoW used to be.

For me BFA failed for these reasons:

- It feels like a filler expansion. No class based sets, boring azerite system, no new class abilities/talents etc.
- The refused to listen to feedback during alpha / beta regarding the azerite system
- They refuse to listen to feedback regarding class design most of the time. There is little or no dialog.
- Very subjective but I hate the theme and atmosphere of this expansion

I think the next expansion is going to be much more successful, continuing the pattern since wotlk:

Great: BC, WotLK
Good: MoP, Legion
Filler or bad: Cataclysm, WoD, BfA

Nice made up pattern. But the game's been shiz since Cataclysm, don't be In denial and just look at It. It's been going doooown hill since Cataclysm, and it's been going dooooooooooooooooooown hill since WoD. You know I'm serious cause I use lots of "o" In my down.