Because it isnt
It has issues. They admitted as such, however it is a cash making powerhouse.
The answer is simply, BFA is not failing in the business concept, they are making an absurd amount of money.
BFA is making the same or even more income than previous expansions but not because they have more players, but because the smaller amount of players they have are willing to be money milked by cash shop and paid services.
BFA main feature is allied races that endorses heavily race change services.
So unless people start talking with their wallets this game is doom, they will just keep pushing cosmetics and "new expansion" that are the same renamed shit until eventually everybody just give up.
"... And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers, and you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee." - Ezekiel 25:17
"My name is Legion: for we are many." - Mark 5:9
My characters :3
Not to mention that BfA lacks any meaningful content and the class design is horrible. WoD didn't have content but at least they didn't create a bunch of meaningless crap and try to pawn it off as "content".
They made everything worse from legion.... M+ is worse then legion, AP is worse than legion, classes are worse than legion. Legion wasn't some amazing expansion, it was just good, but it's light years better then BfA. Unless 8.2 is the holy messiah of wow patches, BfA will go down as the worst expansion so far for me.
8.2 is not going to be the saviour of BFA. Blizzard doesn't have time to completely rework boring systems (see warfronts, island expeditions, azerite armour, unfun classes aka everything that makes BFA the expansion it is). All they can do is make bandaid tweaks and push the content out as it has been planned for months. Everyone seems to ignore when they said that they would make changes to shamans for 8.1 and it turned out they lied and had 'no time' to make changes.
Players are really getting their hopes up thinking that 8.2 could be the expansion's saving grace. This hype is developing from Blizzard trying not to show anything for 8.2. Players are going to be disappointed but they'll still reassure themselves when it's live because stockholm syndrome. Classes aren't suddenly going to be fun again in 8.2, and neither are islands, warfronts or anything else players find unfun.
Players are expecting so much because they're passionate about the game and want it to succeed, but Blizzard are in the state where they're trying to stretch the carrot on a stick that they do have, in the hopes that it retains players.
Blizzard are being deliberately hush hush about 8.2 and they are showing the content in a controlled environment (dev stream tomorrow). They've even put an encrypted build on PTR so we can't see anything until after the stream. They weren't so quiet during Legion when 7.2 was soon to come up on the PTR because the game wasn't in a dire state.
The last time they were this quiet and distant from communicating with the community was during WoD before 6.2 came up. They behaved the exact same: almost vanished from the forums and restricted their communication with the community to a dev stream where they said they weren't going to introduce flying. Now look how that turned out lol.
It's ok to like BFA, it's ok to say it's a successful expac and financially successful.
But to call it a cash making powerhouse is just not true. FIFA is a cash making powerhouse. Madden is a cash making powerhouse.
WoW is just a profitable game, but not nearly as profitable as it's been in the past. TBH, Activision-blizz doesn't really have a cash making juggernaut in it's portfolio atm since losing Destiny.
BFA is at least successul for them though regardless of our feelings pro/against it, so that guarantees more expacs.
- - - Updated - - -
It isn't making as much money as you think tbh. You could argue that it's probably their least profitable expac ever honestly, and the shareholders would agree.
Is it doom and gloom? Not even close as it is successful and one of ATVI's few profitable games currently, and with WoW classic soon approaching the WoW gravy train isn't stopping any time soon... but BFA is definitely not their most successful in terms of finances.
I sold my ATVI stocks back in October for unrelated reasons (buy wife new car) but i keep a close eye on it, but let's not pretend WOW is over here making WOTLK or FIFA money
Personally, i liked the older progression systems and professions a lot better back in Vanilla-WOTLK. Current WoW has more in common with Diablo 3 than Everquest in terms of its loot and reward structures, and while that's awesome for some people; i prefer more MMO RPG and less MMO ARPG. More Everquest, less D3.
That said, i have classic coming soon and feel like there's enough WoW for us all so i don't root against BFA. a lot of players love it, and i hope the best is yet to come.
I honestly hope both Classic and BFA have an amazing 2nd half of 2019. Regardless of if players are on classic or BFA; more players on wow means a better future for WoW for all of us.
They are still probably around 2 mil subs, which puts them ahead of other MMO's in terms of active subs (not active players, though)
The financial argument is simple to dismantle... you just have to talk to a shareholder who listened into the last quarterly report. It didn't paint a pretty picture
In fact, ATVI as a whole is in a lot of trouble for 2019 and WoW is probably their shining light in a dark collection of meh titles they own. They don't have that FIFA money like EA does.
ATVI lost half it's value from blizzcon until now. 'nuff said
In the past they gave you REASONS to do something without negating things.
You ran daily heroics to get badges to buy/upgrade gear depending on the expansion, or you got a chance of legendaries like in Legion. You didn't negate something harder by doing something easier either, now you can completely ignore most of LFR, Normal and Heroic raiding, and to some extent mythic.
They sucked the life out of M+ to make it "more interesting" for the MDI.
WF/TF and things like heroic gear from a damn AFKfront are killing the game.
And all that could be mostly forgiven if class design wasn't a boring shitshow.
Milking the remaining players is a result of having less players, and not their original intention. So yes, it does hold water. They didn't release 3 store mounts within the first patch for no reason. That didn't happen at the start of Legion. Legion was much more successful in its subscriber count.