What will you do if Shadowlands sucks?

[jazen]

Likely continue playing, as I still find it enjoyable. I've got a few thousand older achievement points I can chase if listening to the naysayers is too unbearable.

[makls]

To endure the virus Cataclysm and WoD i had to train in a 100x gravity mental training chamber and even BFA look golden after that.My standards are so low that SL cant surprise me even if it fails.

[Zantera]

The bigger question is where do you draw the line in the sand timewise? Considering the game is constantly evolving and issues that are there 1 week are gone the next due to patches and such. Because I know some people seem to play the first 2-3 weeks of an expansion and then say "nothing to do, expac sucks" and it's like a joke.

[Zyky]

Badmouthing to their face is ofc lack of professionalism... behind closed doors tho. Eh, wouldn't care that much... considering how much hate developers get from players It only stands to reason that some vent behind closed doors. Human way to cope with things. I would say it's actually healthy.

The problem is they're badmouthing people who aren't giving them hate. So ya, I'm not going to waste my money if they're not going to provide a quality experience.

[erifwodahs]

No, because all of your listed points are subjectiv and not objective. I personally would disagree with most of your statements and that's fine, taste is different.
Not once in the post you quoted I talked about something subjective tho.
Lets try it this way:

Benthic Gear: Could you imagine that somebody else would have the opinion, that it was a complete failure, because you could get a lot of BiS pieces before you entered the raid and the most effective way of gearing was to funnel gear from alts to your main?
You do not need to share this opinion. Do you agree however, that this would be a valid opinion to have?

Now compare this with the WF bug that existed for over a month: Can you honestly say, without trolling, that someone would say "yeah,I really like concept of 50% of the players having to potentially restart the warfront multiple times before they can finish"?
Hopefully no, because this clearly was not intended behavior and no design decision. It was a big bug, there is no opinion to have here.

So three weeks out of 104 weeks were broken so that counts as objectively bad expansion? It was not that all content was broken. One feature was. For me that sounds like objectionably good performance as it was broken only for a half population for 3 weeks. And it was not broken broken, but not working as intended sometimes which puts it really under a small % affected player time.
Anything you list is subjective to what standard do you measure it against? Other expansions? Other MMORPGs? Against what? Imaginary standards set by yourself?

[MeTaL GuArD]

For me, it kind of depends on my guild - if the expansion turns out to be BfA-tier shit, I'll tough it out to get the curve achievements on raids if my guild continues on, since it'll still be fun to do with friends. If things fall apart though, chances are very high that I'll run my sub out and leave the game, then wait for the next big patch to hit to decide whether I'll come back or do what I did in WoD and return in the final patch.

[Tesshin83]

Sometimes "nothing" is better than "something".

It feels surreal to say this, but my own personal opinion is that I actually had a lot more fun and had more meaningful engagement with the game during WoD. Classes played better. Combat felt better. No convoluted forced systems you had to participate in. I wished for more content to do since the little content there were in WoD, actually held pretty high standard. BfA however? Well, opinions regarding fun is subjective. But I honestly feel it is way shittier than WoD, sure there's a lot to do, but most of that is low quality stuff. Having classes and the combat feeling butchered after Legion didn't exactly help either. I genuinely thought WoD were just a massive failure, and a fluke. That that was the worst we'd ever get. Jokes on me.

Anyways, I do got Beta myself, and while not thinking SL will necessarily be as bad as BfA (it's honestly too early to tell tho) I wont be surprised if a lot of people will get very disappointed, and maybe even feel a little cheated once it's out. The devs really did bite off way more than what they can chew with all these complicated systems.

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Mate. It didn't increase due to BfA. It increased due to Classic, which you need an active sub to play.

It increased before the release of classic and has maintained player involvement in retail over the expansion.

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No, because all of your listed points are subjectiv and not objective. I personally would disagree with most of your statements and that's fine, taste is different.
Not once in the post you quoted I talked about something subjective tho.
Lets try it this way:

Benthic Gear: Could you imagine that somebody else would have the opinion, that it was a complete failure, because you could get a lot of BiS pieces before you entered the raid and the most effective way of gearing was to funnel gear from alts to your main?
You do not need to share this opinion. Do you agree however, that this would be a valid opinion to have?

Now compare this with the WF bug that existed for over a month: Can you honestly say, without trolling, that someone would say "yeah,I really like concept of 50% of the players having to potentially restart the warfront multiple times before they can finish"?
Hopefully no, because this clearly was not intended behavior and no design decision. It was a big bug, there is no opinion to have here.

If that is the only objective bad things to say about BFA. And it mostly is, then its quite obvious that the reason why the majority enjoyed BFA was because its the better expansion.

[Accendor]

It increased before the release of classic and has maintained player involvement in retail over the expansion.

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If that is the only objective bad things to say about BFA. And it mostly is, then its quite obvious that the reason why the majority enjoyed BFA was because its the better expansion.

Feel free to check out my pksts before, I can go on days abozt this.
You know well enough yourself however that I am right and BfA goes down as WoWs worst or second worst expansion in history.

[Capultro]

i didnt buy shadowlands but if i buy it,if i dont like i quit wow 100% sure-easy.

people,i cant wait 20 years for see all hero classes in wow.and you?it is necessary that things go faster blizzard, give us the remaining hero classes once and for all.stop bfa-shit expansions.

[Toybox]

I'm jealous of everyone who said "play FF14." I've tried several times since the release of 2.0, from as early as launch to as recently as spring this year... I just can't get into it. I know a few people from other games who raid at a pretty damn high level & have always offered to help me out, but it just doesn't work for me.

But yeah, still depends on what my guild would do for me. They're the biggest reason I'm playing right now, even though the game is in a pretty poor state.

[Swnem]

I'm jealous of everyone who said "play FF14." I've tried several times since the release of 2.0, from as early as launch to as recently as spring this year... I just can't get into it. I know a few people from other games who raid at a pretty damn high level & have always offered to help me out, but it just doesn't work for me.

But yeah, still depends on what my guild would do for me. They're the biggest reason I'm playing right now, even though the game is in a pretty poor state.

That is because we have been conditioned by the WoW gameplay loop.
Despite what people try to say, FFXIV is acompletely different type of mmo.
Where WoW is about imediacy and a constant power grind, FF is slower paced but finite and offering a wider variety of activities.

The mindset to enjoy either game is completely different. I tell you, it took me a long time to "get" FFXIV. I also played ARR and left after getting two jobs to 50 intent in never returning, until last year where some of my guild decided to give it a go. I hated it and was on the verge of quitting until mid-way Stormblood when i reach the Azim Steppes. There, the game finally came together for me. The class design started to kick in into a satisfying flow, the story involved helping some tribes in a wide plains zone and concluded in a major all out war scenario. From there story and combat got much better for me.

But, yeah, the thing about FF is that it's not about rushing, but about slowly achieving your goal. Also that combat is just a part of the game and not the only focus.

[CylomDashti]

Pick a random expansion and play that private server. I only care about pvp so content being stale isn't much of an issue, just hope the bugs aren't too gamebreaking.

[Incarnia]

It increased before the release of classic and has maintained player involvement in retail over the expansion.

The bean counters at Activision HQ's would disagree with you. I did listen into the quarters call on that one. The increase in revenue is tied to the release of Classic, and the interest in Classic remained strong for several months afterwards. It still is fairly strong.

Anecdotes are typically bad as examples, but, they can despite this provide a bit of insight.
My B.net friends list completely exploded with returning friends at Classic release. STILL to this day the absolute majority of the guys and gals on my friends list is playing Classic, NOT BfA. I'm one of the very few that does, and I only returned to BfA to sort out characters in preparation for SL a bit after 8.3 were out. Before that I too played mostly Classic, or didn't play at all in fact. BfA is the first expansion ever where I've felt I can't justify paying the sub fee. Which is a very annoying situation to be in when you in fact do want to play WoW.
I'm in a decent Mythic raiding guild on one of the biggest EU servers, the activity in the guild is pretty much dead most days. People are playing other games in wait for SL, even Beta activity has gone down. It has looked like this for, well I've lost track of time now, but definitely more than 2 months. Activity only spikes on the day of selling Mythic raid carry. Can't remember ever experiencing something quite like this before. BfA is in my mind, without a doubt, the worst flop of an expansion to this date. I'm glad you liked it though, but don't kid yourself into thinking it was a success.

[Toybox]

That is because we have been conditioned by the WoW gameplay loop.
Despite what people try to say, FFXIV is acompletely different type of mmo.
Where WoW is about imediacy and a constant power grind, FF is slower paced but finite and offering a wider variety of activities.

The mindset to enjoy either game is completely different. I tell you, it took me a long time to "get" FFXIV. I also played ARR and left after getting two jobs to 50 intent in never returning, until last year where some of my guild decided to give it a go. I hated it and was on the verge of quitting until mid-way Stormblood when i reach the Azim Steppes. There, the game finally came together for me. The class design started to kick in into a satisfying flow, the story involved helping some tribes in a wide plains zone and concluded in a major all out war scenario. From there story and combat got much better for me.

But, yeah, the thing about FF is that it's not about rushing, but about slowly achieving your goal. Also that combat is just a part of the game and not the only focus.

That's the thing. For me, MMOs are pretty much only about playing with other people & doing challenging stuff together. If I wanted a story driven RPG, I'd not be playing an MMO, I'd be playing a CRPG/JRPG. The story of 14 just made me cringe & I wanted nothing more than to get it out of the way so I could do the fun stuff - playing with other people.

FF14 certainly isn't all bad, though! The crafting is a lot better, and the approach to flying makes a lot more sense. I did have some fun with it, but eh.

If Shadowlands sucks, I know we'll play other things, but it won't be the same.

[Anakso]

I'd quit but not until the next expansion, would probably come back in 9.2 or 9.3 by then the expansion has probably become more playable and might be okay

[Swnem]

That's the thing. For me, MMOs are pretty much only about playing with other people & doing challenging stuff together. If I wanted a story driven RPG, I'd not be playing an MMO, I'd be playing a CRPG/JRPG. The story of 14 just made me cringe & I wanted nothing more than to get it out of the way so I could do the fun stuff - playing with other people.

FF14 certainly isn't all bad, though! The crafting is a lot better, and the approach to flying makes a lot more sense. I did have some fun with it, but eh.

If Shadowlands sucks, I know we'll play other things, but it won't be the same.

That is fair enough. You are not the only one thinking that way. If one can't enjoy the story, i really can't recommend FF. It is essentially a single player JRPG, which has many deep systems and activities and an mmo on top. If you dont enjoy the single player stuff, the game will be fighting you all the time.
It's not like it's impossible to enjoy it if you have the patience to skip everything, but i think you just won't get the most out of it. So, yeah i totally understand skipping it. It's not for all.

[melodramocracy]

Drop out till the next expansion. There's lots of other fun stuff to do.

[Razorice]

Same as what you do with other products - not use it.

[chrisisvacant]

"The game hasn't been the same since WOD."

Girl please. I love dramatic posts like this. WoW has only ever been wholly and completely WoW with some slight variating and iterating on systems and their complexity. Classic and Retail are not at all different games and very much play like games at different stages of development but retaining the exact same structural and creative integrity.

[Tesshin83]

The bean counters at Activision HQ's would disagree with you. I did listen into the quarters call on that one. The increase in revenue is tied to the release of Classic, and the interest in Classic remained strong for several months afterwards. It still is fairly strong.

Anecdotes are typically bad as examples, but, they can despite this provide a bit of insight.
My B.net friends list completely exploded with returning friends at Classic release. STILL to this day the absolute majority of the guys and gals on my friends list is playing Classic, NOT BfA. I'm one of the very few that does, and I only returned to BfA to sort out characters in preparation for SL a bit after 8.3 were out. Before that I too played mostly Classic, or didn't play at all in fact. BfA is the first expansion ever where I've felt I can't justify paying the sub fee. Which is a very annoying situation to be in when you in fact do want to play WoW.
I'm in a decent Mythic raiding guild on one of the biggest EU servers, the activity in the guild is pretty much dead most days. People are playing other games in wait for SL, even Beta activity has gone down. It has looked like this for, well I've lost track of time now, but definitely more than 2 months. Activity only spikes on the day of selling Mythic raid carry. Can't remember ever experiencing something quite like this before. BfA is in my mind, without a doubt, the worst flop of an expansion to this date. I'm glad you liked it though, but don't kid yourself into thinking it was a success.

No really. The revenue for wow (bfa and classic) combined increased in spite of launch of classic, not because of it.

Amount of people that played BFA has increased over the expansion. Mostly because of 8.2 and 8.3

I don't know a single person that plays classic and when people ask these days if classic is game to start now, the answer you get is that its a dead game in the leveling process and people log on to speedrun raids once a week mostly.

I do like classic and play it alone from time to time. But the 200 people guild I joined at launch has no active players in it any longer.

Point is, this notion that BFA was a failed expansion in any shape or form is just wrong. It doesn't hold any water.