Did people expect WoW to keep growing forever or something?

[LemonDemonGirl]

I'm actually surprised Blizzard hasn't stopped development on WoW and made WoW 2. I do remember reading a thing somewhere about Ion or another dev saying that WoW has at least 20 years left until no one will think it's 'cool' anymore (imho)

[Kendros]

Every time there's talk of WoW's massive playerbase decline since Cataclysm days, people pop up with:

- THE reason wow lost players
- THIS is the main reason wow lost players
- IF BLIZZARD HADN'T DONE THIS...

Are people really that oblivious to the amount of MMOs from late 2000s onward which do some or many things better than WoW, and even if they don't gather 12 million players at any one time, all these games combined will chip away at WoW's stagnant gameplay model? For free?

Were you really expecting 24 million players active by the time WoD dropped, doing the same exhausted formula of level -> grind gear -> raid or PVP, in an ever-breaking array of PVP balance patches and a story that's all over the place?

All this for a sub fee to top it all off, when ESO and TOR offer 20x better stories and writing for free?

WoW is pretty much a Korean MMO, all you do is collect shit, and do nothing with it. This has been WoW's formula since pre-BC, when people would just stand in the middle of Stormwind or IF in their epic gear having everyone marvel at their dedication to farm gold and pots every night of the week to afford raiding.

How were people expecting this formula to retain and keep gathering millions of players? WoW's losing players because it gets boring after every expansion release, the writing after Warcraft 3 remains sub-par and the gameplay is either too repetitive or too frustrating, and other games offer much better alternatives, and chip away at its playerbase little by little. Mostly for free or a small one time purchase.

Actualy vanilla was more like a soft korean mmo. BC and onward started to be more casual friendly and nothing like a korean mmo rpg. Todays wow you can log in 4 hrs a fews days a week and have everything on teh current tier. You cant do that on korean mmos.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Nobody would be citing the sub count if they were happy with the game. They'd just be playing and enjoying. People acting like they never expected WoW to drop in subs is an indication that they aren't having fun.

[Spiffums]

Meh even if there was only 1 million active subs that's still 15 million dollars a month. Most likely higher than that since tokens are $20 vs $15 for a sub. Blizz makes more if the people do use gold for play time. Even if it's just 500,000 subs that's still a hunk of dough ya know.

[Powerogue]

Yes, and somehow paradoxically constantly improve while making no changes to its sheer unparalleled perfection since [insert expansion where I started playing here].