Originally Posted by
Niwes
agree to all of it.
but in my opinion, in the end of the day, ppl unsub because of treadmill shit.
if we would know the sub numbers, we could proof it, by simply looking at cata and mob (tbc and wotlk is not a good example since at this time wow was on its highest point of the „wow goes viral“ effect). cata and mop not had all that treadmill shit, existing since Legion (wod is out of the comparisson, cause of „lack of content“). therefore we could simply say: cata and mop had no treadmill, ppl stay subbed. Legion, BfA, SL have treadmill, ppl unsubbed. IF this is true and IF we would know the sub numbers.
let me explain the treadmill thing with a few words:
there are ppl (like me) playing that game since 15 years and are a type of ppl playing a mmorpg the classical way. these ppl do not want that treadmill shit, because they wanna play the „whole game“. for ppl like me, this means i wanna have time to play lots of alts, play pvp, collect stuff, do achievements, talk with guildies, play the AH game, do pet battles, etc. but with all that treadmill shit i no longer have time for all of this. i am so main character pve focused and have to do my daily or weekly shit, i not have enough time for all that other aspects. this makes the game unsub-able for me. even after 15 years.
there are also ppl, that play at a specific point excessively and play not at all for a while. like playing wow a complete weekend 3 days full hardcore and not even login for 2 weeks (or just do 1-2 raid evenings with login-raid-logout). these ppl also do not like treadmill and timegating, because they can not play WHEN they wanna play. dailies here, weeklies there. this is not a good game design for such persons and they unsub.
the third type of players are ppl that just wanna login, go competitive raiding, logout. these ppl do not wanna run dungeons that much, after 2-3 a week. these ppl do not wanna keep up with additional powers from covenant or azerite or whatever. these ppl are raid or die players. they wanna login, play competitive a raid with guldies and logout. 2-3 evenings a week, without any additional tasks. these ppl do not like treadmill game design.
the only audience the treadmill concept targets to, are players that play solely 1 main character, do no or not much pvp (or any other various additional wow content besides PvE), login every day and play every day a lot. these ppl like the current design, cause they „have always something to do“. sadly this means that every „hop in hop out here and then“ casual player and the above 3 types of players are slowely driven away by that treadmill shit.
and thats, just my personal opinion, whats driving a lot of ppl (even when hardcore or 15 years die hard players) away from the game and make them unsub.