Why did WoD fail so hard even though Siege of Orgrimmar lasted for 2 years?

[Zentail]

Didn't ICC also last roughly a year?

I went and looked into each expansion. Here's how long each was from last raid to launch of next expansion.

Classic -> BC: Naxxramas for ~7 months.
BC -> WotLK: Sunwell for ~8 months.
WotLK -> Cata: Icecrown Citadel for ~12 months. Ruby Sanctum for ~6 months, but I wouldn't count that as a tier.
Cata -> MoP: Dragon Soul for ~10 months.
MoP -> WoD: Siege of Orgrimmar for ~14 months.
WoD -> Legion: Hellfire Citadel for ~14 months.
Legion -> BFA: Antorus for ~9 months. (patch came out earlier, but raid wasn't open until later)

If you're more interested in the length of things, I made a google sheet a little bit ago that shows number of days between raids/expansions/tiers/final tier-xpac launch. Whenever I get curious about stuff, I add more tabs to the bottom and add more data to it.

[Nerovar]

WoD was a great expansion if you liked PvP. There were some balance issues here and there but overall I enjoyed it more than Legion and BfA.

[Relapses]

Sure. How can you not see that a time travel/infinite universes storyline causes massive consistency issues that don't exist in a storyline that basically says, "primitive civilization discovers new continent." I'm not saying it was amazing, but it wasn't silly. Wod's storyline was silly, and Legion doubled down by adding in tons of spaceships with a planet sized big bad.

Surprised that you can't see how the two are totally different.

...I don't. The issue I have is that WoW's story has always been second string to the content itself so disliking WoD for "jumping the shark" when the story up to that point wasn't exactly anything to write home about seems a bit disingenuous. But, like, that's just my opinion man.

[Tyrannica]

WoD didn't fail, merely its patch cycles did fail. WoD could have been great, if not for content cut. There are detailed vids about this on Youtube.

1 thing was done right in WoD that perhaps many players did miss, its called PvP. WoD was totally a PvP addon. I do not think Ashran was great, but the classes played fluently in PvP, there was meaningful pvp gear and vendors, stuff died, too - unlike in MoP everything, but s12 rogues were immortal.

Whats not so cool, besides time shenigan time traveller lore, and lack of content patches, and gutted content from the get go, was the pruning.

It certainly wasn't the best addon, but its not the worst for me all things considered. If i would only do PvE WoD would be the worst addon, ofc.

It could have been much better, if blizz decided to bring cross realms sooner into endgame zones, because that way, Draenor was empty, it wasn't just a garission issue. You never met a player of the opposing faction in Draenor.(unlike cross realm mirror planet outland,still huge battles between faction armies at the dark portal at the time)

Actually, if done right without the huge content cuts, WoD could have been one of the best addons. The potential was there, but blizzard wasted it.

Also i want add those graphs how many subs an addon had during its lifecycle won't really give much good information.

MoP started out rather weak, the best thing here were the class changes that were done rather well in most cases(not rogues, but druid, lock, spriest)

But the content was rather uninteresting, ToT and SoO certainly changed that, that was high quality content and very enjoyable on par with what we saw with ulduar and ICC in wrath.(ofc garrosh cannot replace arthas, tho, but SoO was fun)

So, ultimately, the question is fully answered here, why wod failed hard:





Its a pity, really, but thats how it is.

[Oxford Kama]

Cool how some people can answer with 10 lines to something incomprehensible as:

"Why did WoD fail so hard even though Siege of Orgrimmar lasted for 2 years?
Like how does that work? "

This is nonsensical. What does that even mean?

Reading comprehension.

If SoO lasted for over a year, why did WoD feel so rushed and content-dry? They had plenty of time to make more content by stretching the end of MoP out as long as they did.

That isn't hard to understand imo.

[Varitok]

Because WoD had absolutely zero things to do in the world other than the worthless Apexis dailies, even Taanan offered nothing of value past a week. (Other than a few mount drops)

[wombinator04]

Wish Blizzard would just admit what went wrong during WoD's development.......stop being so secretive(or just proud of that shit). Like all they have to do is confirm the development was a mess.....not reveal anything else.

Any ex employees who worked on WoD......spill the beans.

[daliric]

Like how does that work?

It had a different feeling. with garnision everyone was sitting alone in garnision instead of main city.
Far to many World Quest and then they announced it as no fly addon

[Soon-TM]

Blizzard also opened WoD by lying about what zones were going to be included, then lying about lying about it, so it didn't exactly get off to a great start.

Add the whole flying drama to that, and you have a recipe for disaster.

[Eosia]

SoO only lasted 1 year 1 month, not 2 years. In WoD, HFC also lasted 1 year 1 month, but there was no content before HFC for about a year also. 6.1's "Content Patch" was Twitter Integration and no content.

Point of fact though, we the players expect the minor version (1.x) patches to be "content" patches even though in Vanilla a few patches had no content like we expect (Patch 1.4 had a few class-specific quests and 1.10 was "weather"). Blizzard happens to have lined up with that for the most part though with minor patches usually containing a raid at minimum. So we have come to expect it.

Blizzard follows semantic versioning though which means the things they added in Patch 6.1 are correctly part of a minor version as they " functionality in a backwards compatible manner". This also explains why Azerite would not be scrapped until 9.0 regardless because major versions are where one makes "incompatible API changes".

It was not until Legion they started to break with Sem Ver with things zone scaling being added in Patch 7.3.5 because x.y.z patches are for backwards compatible bug fixed

[Kayze]

WoD is one of my favorites merely because leveling content (huge jump in quality), beautiful zones/music, interesting initial garriAshran (fun with a premade), and Tanaan. It recaptured that Warcraft vibe that I wanted back and instantly fell in love.

It's also one of my least favorite because of the massive amount of scrapped content (Shattrath raid, southern ogre area, faction capitals, etc), thrown away story, garrison madness, and shit patches. It's such a weird spot to both like and dislike this expansion.

Also, the scrapping of content and lackluster patches was due to them wanting to move to yearly expansions, not the drop (there's always been a drop). But they found out they still couldn't do that and finally stopped saying that's their goal.

"A delayed game can be good, but a rushed game will always be bad." - Shigeru Myamoto

That isn't the quote, it's "A delayed game is eventually good. A bad game is bad forever." Further, this doesn't apply to a online PC game, which Miyamoto gave clarity in a Star Fox Zero interview. WoD had high review ratings and was universally liked. It was the end game and announced patches that created the drop off. It's similar to BFA except BFA had terrible systems and a focus on story without proper story progression.

[Eninya]

WoD "failed" because there was no incentive to run dungeons, ever, after your initial gear runs.

PvP was killed halfway through the expansion with the forced introduction of PvP stat templates; this killed twinking AND max level PvP instantly. Your gear, and all of the effort put into getting it, was nullified utterly.

Mythic raids were amazing, but the class balance was so absurdly unbalanced it was literally impossible to progress against certain bosses if you did not have a certain quota of class/specs. Blackrock Foundry was a perfect example of this, where Aspect of the Fox wasn't just encouraged, it was completely MANDATORY for some bosses. Not just one, but two at the absolute minimum, with 3 as an ideal. We lost 2 hunters to real life the first night of Kromog progression and got stuck for over a month until one more could come back. Imagine trying to do Blackhand with just 1. (Even dumber so was that Aspect of the Fox was removed, and encounters were not rebalanced around this.)

I actually really liked Warlords of Draenor's dungeons and raids, but the reward for investing yourself to anything but your mission table was practically nothing.

[Nnyco]

Because it had nothin other than raiding as content.

[Zig Zug]

wotlk runecrafting, ariel pvp combat, which literally made it onto the box, i have mine right here, always laugh, that even to this day we don't have aerial pvp

Don't forget about new dance moves.

[Inukashi]

Why is the sky blue even though fire is hot?

Those actually make sense, not like ops post.
if the sun was cold we wouldn’t have a blue sky.

[Mferna]

there was nothing to do after HFC released except loging in once per day for garrisons and for raids, same reason why i canceled my sub last week till 8.3, theres nothing to do except login once a day for dailies and for raids

There’s a lot more to do then there was in WoD besides raiding. Mythic plus are actually enjoyable content, and PvP is lit too. The rest of the features are pretty pointless. But I feel like most people who bash the game for having nothing to do, don’t do mythic + content and it’s a huge part of endgame for a lot of ppl.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

stuff got cut out,happens everytime,if im not mistaken vanila had by far the most cut content and no1 complains,wrath had some,cata had a bunch etc

no they didnt lie.
they spoke their implications
and sadly that didnt make it.

I clarified this in a later post. I was talking here about Tanaan, which was included on the map at the Blizzcon announcement when they were covering Draenor, which is also where they said Farahlon would be coming in a later patch. Months later it was announced that Tanaan would not make it into launch. The issue is they then turned around and said this was always the plan, Tanaan was always going to be coming in a later patch though at the announcement they made no such statement.

If that was the case, when they had the world map up and were talking about Farahlon coming later why didn't they ALSO mention Tanaan? Either A) Tanaan was never planned to be playable at launch and they just didn't tell us despite talking about another zone on the world map also not planned for launch, which was misleading, then feigned surprise when nobody knew the thing they didn't tell us and got upset about it. Or B) Tanaan was planned for launch, had to be delayed, and instead of adding one more thing to the list of things being scrapped/altered they lied about the delay saying it was always the plan.

As I said, in the grand scheme of the expansion this is minor, but this sort of either misleading or false communication to your playerbase does not win you any fans.

[FelPlague]

Don't forget about new dance moves.

That too! forgot that. start of the dance studio meme

- - - Updated - - -

I clarified this in a later post. I was talking here about Tanaan, which was included on the map at the Blizzcon announcement when they were covering Draenor, which is also where they said Farahlon would be coming in a later patch. Months later it was announced that Tanaan would not make it into launch. The issue is they then turned around and said this was always the plan, Tanaan was always going to be coming in a later patch though at the announcement they made no such statement.

If that was the case, when they had the world map up and were talking about Farahlon coming later why didn't they ALSO mention Tanaan? Either A) Tanaan was never planned to be playable at launch and they just didn't tell us despite talking about another zone on the world map also not planned for launch, which was misleading, then feigned surprise when nobody knew the thing they didn't tell us and got upset about it. Or B) Tanaan was planned for launch, had to be delayed, and instead of adding one more thing to the list of things being scrapped/altered they lied about the delay saying it was always the plan.

As I said, in the grand scheme of the expansion this is minor, but this sort of either misleading or false communication to your playerbase does not win you any fans.

OOOOR
like they did with farahlon, they took off more ten they could chew, they planned for tannan to be in at launch, but it didnt make it, as it didnt get made in time.

[Relapses]

I clarified this in a later post. I was talking here about Tanaan, which was included on the map at the Blizzcon announcement when they were covering Draenor, which is also where they said Farahlon would be coming in a later patch. Months later it was announced that Tanaan would not make it into launch. The issue is they then turned around and said this was always the plan, Tanaan was always going to be coming in a later patch though at the announcement they made no such statement.

If that was the case, when they had the world map up and were talking about Farahlon coming later why didn't they ALSO mention Tanaan? Either A) Tanaan was never planned to be playable at launch and they just didn't tell us despite talking about another zone on the world map also not planned for launch, which was misleading, then feigned surprise when nobody knew the thing they didn't tell us and got upset about it. Or B) Tanaan was planned for launch, had to be delayed, and instead of adding one more thing to the list of things being scrapped/altered they lied about the delay saying it was always the plan.

As I said, in the grand scheme of the expansion this is minor, but this sort of either misleading or false communication to your playerbase does not win you any fans.

You were promised a pony!

Blizzard frequently changes plans like this (see also: Thal'dranath). Getting attached to content that was never released is not a Blizzard problem. It's a you problem.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

OOOOR
like they did with farahlon, they took off more ten they could chew, they planned for tannan to be in at launch, but it didnt make it, as it didnt get made in time.

Except if this was the case then they lied. When it was later announced Tanaan would not make it into launch they stated this had always been the plan. So if like what you're saying is correct, they planned for launch and it just didn't make it, then they outright lied when they said it had always been planned to come later. So your own explanation makes Blizzard liars, so you're just supporting my argument here.

You were promised a pony!

Blizzard frequently changes plans like this (see also: Thal'dranath). Getting attached to content that was never released is not a Blizzard problem. It's a you problem.

Again, my problem on this particular issue isn't THAT Tanaan was delayed, yes that happens, it was the COMMUNICATION surrounding it. Blizzard either mislead us originally or lied about it later. THAT is my problem, not Tanaan being delayed.