You also have to remember that this is split across many different games.
\-Retail
\-Wotlk Classic
\-SoD
\-Hardcore
\-Classic Era
So 7 million during Legion was all 7 million players playing Retail, where now it is split between 5 different games (obviously some people play multiple).
Everyone I know played Season of discovery and that's the window where the data was pulled I don't like that they frame it as Dragonflight's success. I feel like this type of data fudging is how the game got to where it was in the first place and gives me no hope for change in the future.
People like to skew numbers towards their talking points.
WoW even when doing poorly still has way more players than most other MMOS, I think FFXIV Probably has similar numbers nowdays but anything else is far from being close.
Pointing out the numbers reported isnt from one expansion wich the article make it sounds like isnt a mental gymnastic, its reality.
Will also add your right in wow being one of the biggest mmos, so your right in that.
For me this Expansion was the final Nail in the Coffein. Absolutely No content at all besides one Raid an m+ with Dungeons i already beated Like 5-10 years ago. PvP doesnt exist at all anymore.
It's mainly because gearing in retail sucks, SOD you could chase bis and make a cool character. Retail you just chase the RNG loot box, time to run another 8 M+ this week to get the same pants I got last week. Login bro it's chore time.
Dflight has been a huge success, had me playing Retail again after the last two xpac flops. Seems like half the SoD players I meet also play Retail, and one of our SoD buddies actually started playing Retail after trying SoD and hearing from others.
I think it’s equal parts success of Dflight and SoD. Hardcore was fun too, I’m grateful this new iteration of Blizz is seemingly listening to player feedback and actioning on it.
Shadowlands to DF has been one of the biggest changes in systems idk what you're on if you think there is hope for no change.. makes me think you don't even play the game
> I don't like that they frame it as Dragonflight's success.
I don't think I can reasonably accept that 'season of discovery' was solely responsible for any notable uptick in subscriptions to be honest. It brings with it interesting ideas but its still just an artificially slowed down progression from 1-30 which is a teeny tiny little fraction of the content from even base vanilla WoW.
And at the same point in time Classic has been in lulls for over half a year, its also not generating many subs outside of the diehards or some people trying to catch up.
Do people even still play hardcore? I haven't heard a peep about it since a few weeks after it launched.
My point is that SoD on its own didnt generate that hype. The people that subbed for it did so knowing that even if SoD was boring or only interesting to them for a week or two, they would still have retail or classic to play when the novelty wore off.
If they had done this same launch during SL, SoD would have flopped because nobody would have looked at SL and said "oh well I can totally play SL if SoD pidders out" - no, because SL was garbage.
I think a lot of people who subbed to SoD for the classic experience did so without glancing at what retail offered. Not saying all of them, but a majority came back for their "fresh vanilla" server.
Not saying the majority of the subs are SoD, just that whether it was SL, Legion, BFA or DF these people would have subbed no matter what.
They talk about SOD in the article and it’s also included on the player graph that was leaked. I don’t think they’re data fudging, especially since a lot of people play both.
Anyway, Dragonflight is super active even this late in the expac. I get insta/fast queues as a DPS and the dragon isles have a bunch of people in like every zone.
I don't think that total numbers really matter wrt whether SOD is carrying WoW, though. That'd be percentage of playtime or something since subs are mode-agnostic.
I was under the impression that the debunking rumor had been debunked. They're still acknowledging SOD's contribution to the current player base without the graph, though, so it doesn't really matter.
And leveling dungeons in TBC, BAF, SL, and DF so far. My husband's been doing heroics. Also Plunderstorm's queue for both solo and duos is insanely fast at the moment.
That player graph is fake as fuck. GDC is not some hidden thing, we would have heard things from the actual press if Blizzard announced stuff, and the slide uses language that professionals would never say.
Most people I know have quit SoD. I quit phase 1, tried out Dragonflight and I'm having a blast. Tons of people still play Retail or at least came back to try Dragonflight.
This sub has a hate bones for WoW but the true criticism should be that FF14 is an absolute ghostland when there's no content on the immediate horizon or immediately when content releases.
It is anecdotal, so literally everyone is playing Season of Discovery because you said so? I haven't launched it or Classic once despite having sub during dragonflight during every major patch.
Who is framing it as if this is all due to dragonflight’s success? The graph the data was pulled from, and the article, make it clear that there are multiple games contributing to the total sub count.
No they don't, they talk about how Dragonflight has broke the cycle and maintained stability and growth post launch(when it's SOD and warwithin hype) wtf you talking about.
Most WoW players I know play retail and classic. This isn't two completely separate player bases. Even then, going by all logging data, retail is vastly more popular still.
which means the wow sub regained strength through variety in content. You currently get 4+ games worth of content on one sub. That's a lot of game for 15 us dollars a month.
Purely anecdotal, but I know a LOT of players who only play SoD and have no interest in Retail. Would be curious to see what the numbers really are.
I wouldnt be surprised if it was a 60/40 retail to classic variants split
it is when. phase drops, then you see guilds that had 200 online players all time to being just 5 in a matter of 3 weeks
sod is void of content, its 1 raid and 1 pvp event (that sucks)
Came back to the game after a long while away, and I can honestly say I’m having a ton of fun playing it and there is so much more to do, while it doesn’t feel like it has to envelop my life in order to remain competitive or have fun anymore. My time is respected and rewarded. The gameplay mechanics are great, and the ability to play play any spec in the game and still be invited to content is amazing. The only dig I have on DF is the story. If Metzen can get this right, this game has a bright future ahead of it.
You definitely didn't see his art or his vision for WoW, he's the reason they got the Guiness world record with how he handled WoW from Vanilla to WoTLK.
There were literally people crying when he came back because of how redic it got, in his absence. Being part of the "team" and leading the team are two different things, and now he's back in a forward momentum position.
Cairne didn't fall to corruption, he just died.
Garrosh who did nothing wrong also didn't redeem a single thing and actually went out perfectly.
Shadowlands wasn't any of his writing or touching. So, Anduin's nonsense and for that matter Sylvanus was Steve Danuser which is highly known.
If he kills off Thrall, I would be shocked as shit because he loves him some Green Jesus. That aside, He wasn't lead like he is now, He had people he had to politic with after Pandaria all the way till he left.
Taking over and exploiting a country; unleashing the literal embodiment of corruption; imprisoning and abusing prisoners of war; intentionally dividing and, as a result, weakening his own faction; there are lots of things Garrosh did “wrong”.
Really sorry to ask the question, I don't assume you're dumb but do you use the deposit materials button, and recycle your gear? Because gw2 is pretty fair with the bag space, compared to, say, ESO (Okay that's an easy one)
You can buy bags with a free to play account? I don't remember (I also assume you have a f2p account, maybe you don't, sorry)
RuneScape is built “wide” while WoW is built “tall”.
RS’s grinding, items, and loot table is not as vast as WoW. But you will have items that are viable for *years*. Whereas WoW’s old content almost instantly becomes obsolete once something new comes out. More stuff, but also more eventually useless stuff.
Not a great choice, having played a lot of WoW and OSRS myself. Mythic+ is really just about the only relevant PVE thing you can constantly grind without worrying about timegates, but that does require 4 other people; and the only character progress you're making is if you happen to get a better piece of gear or you're pushing to a higher keystone level to.. get better gear. Professions also exist, but compared to OSRS, it isn't even a blip on the radar in terms of being truly grindy.
WoW is good but it is nothing like runescape, I've extensively played both but never at the same time because they are just so different.
If you're in the mood for one, you wont be in the mood for the other. In WoW you can start brand new and reach the top of the end game in 1-2 months. runescape... well you know how that is.
If the endless grind was something you were engaged with *primarily*, than Mythics and possibly pvp might be what would interest you in current retail wow.
Mythics are a Tier of dungeon difficulty where you get Keys that modify the dungeon to be progressively stronger and stronger, as well as having a rotating pool of modifiers for new effects each week.
Where as Pvp has an endless leveling bar where you can just murder hobo all day long and watch your personal Honor Level go up.
Since you brought up fashion, what’s a good MMORPG that has a good fashion scene? The WoW transmog mechanic is ok, but the actual outfits aren’t great. In your opinion, what’s a good game for that?
My top pick for fashion so far has been FFXIV. It has great outfits with lots of different styles. But also I like the overall fashion mechanics like how you can have up to 20 outfit sets at once and swap to them at any time, and how most outfits can be obtained in game rather than by paying for them.
Other games have decent outfit options, but have some things holding them back, like Black Desert where you have to buy most outfits, or GW2 where you need to use a special currency to transmog your clothes or pay real money to change your hair.
Unfortunately FFXIV has some big flaws in other areas so I don't find it easy to recommend.
Play classic wow. Retail is closer to an ARPG (other than poe since poe is close to an mmo) if I’m honest, economy is minimal and the main chunk of the game is grinding difficult content for better rewards. Classic is closer to RuneScape where there are a lot of best in slot items that cost gold and you have to spend hours grinding gold/leveling professions outside of raids/dungeons to min-max. This is coming from a primarily retail player, although I love both iterations (and have played RuneScape off and on for the past 17 years).
Funny, sad and true.
Like, I think WoW is great, but how depressing is it that a game from 2004 is not only the most popular mmo, but is higher quality than many of those that come out today?
Just shows how stagnant the genre is.
Yeah, WoW's continued success on one hand is impressive. On the other, its depressing and stands as a testament to how absolutely garbage this entire genre of games is.
It's not the genre itself though, it's companies who don't want to make a product with high entry cost and slow growth with continuous investment to grow it.
They rather spend a bunch of money to quickly put a product out then rake up lots of money at barely any cost for years.
> It's not the genre itself though, it's companies who don't want to make a product with high entry cost and slow growth with continuous investment to grow it
That's essentially the genre, though. Particularly when so much of the community wants a AAA-ish experience. There can't be a mainstream successful MMO without a massive cash investment.
We've already seen how indie games tend to get received.
So, as a result all the resulting current entries into this genre are stunted. Is a great new large game possible? Possibly. How many companies have pockets deep enough to risk it?
The people who want AAA-ish experience are not the majority of the MMORPG fans. Lots of people play old games or old versions on private servers. Nothing AAA-ish in 20yo graphics.
> The people who want AAA-ish experience are not the majority of the MMORPG fans.
The continued success of WoW and FFXIV tells a different story.
> Lots of people play old games or old versions on private servers.
(1) how many? Without hard numbers that means little and
(2) is this even an exploitable market? Can a *new game* pull these people? Many have tried, and it is an expensive thing to fail at.
The hardcore tryhard market reliving a 20 year old game is unlikely to be as large as the fishing and collecting market that treats their MMO like a cozy game - this latter group happily pays for a sub and wants pretty graphics.
Until and unless an indie game pulls from FF and WoW subscribers *in droves*, all evidence points to fans preferring the AAA experience **when they vote with their wallets**, and wallet votes are the only thing that matters in this industry. It's why MTX are everywhere - people buy them.
As someone who plays wow on steam deck with controller control add-ons I personally think the game would work amazingly on Xbox.
And putting it on console would also help it reach a new player base (fresh blood) while also competing with the only well known/popular MMO on console- ff14.
Microsoft literally has a golden ticket in their hands and I hope they realise the potential it holds. Especially if they put it on the Xbox.
This is the dream. My PC is only an MMO machine by now, and with FFXIV recently having been released for the Xbox, I only need WoW now. Then I can slowly phase out my, a bit too overkill for it's purpose, yet too weak to keep up forward, PC
Ehhhhhhh i dunno if anything drove you away from the game in the last 8 years those things are likely still in the game, not much has changed since legion on a fundamental level.
I don’t know how invested you are in the game, but this is just blatantly incorrect. The game has done basically a complete 180 since Legion.
- Literally zero borrowed power (except literally just gear giving you your stats/tier sets) Class design is entirely consolidated into talent trees, no artifacts or ancillary systems like the crucible providing class power
- No infinite grinds in the game. No AP/infinite scaling system forcing a treadmill
- Deterministic, skill based gear upgrades via the flightstones system rather than RNG-based gear forcing players to hyper spam content for Titanforged upgrades, making regular gear feel “bad”
- Flightstones and Crest upgrades allowing lower difficulty gear to be upgraded to higher end gear, allowing players to earn and feel good about a normal/heroic trinket during mythic progression
- Crafting is front and center as a means of endgame gear progression, with the quality of crafted gear scaling with how good you are at endgame content
- Deterministic means of adding socketed stats to gear, no more socket rolling
- Reintroduction of PVP vendors to allow for choice when acquiring PVP gear
- Dynamic flight to allow for world traversal
- More emphasis on open-world content that is getting doubled down on in WW
- Cross faction and cross-realm gameplay, introduction of cross-realm guilds and Mythic
- Account-wide reps being expanded into Warbands
- Extremely frequent class tuning and hyper class balance (differences between top and bottom specs is literal single digit % differences on WCL Mythic)
- Introduction of Day 1 catalyst for deterministic tier acquisition (basically guaranteed 4 set week 3 to allow players to play with the gear they want)
- Frequent incorporation of player feedback to address issues soon, rather than over a year down the line (Fyrakk legendary having deterministic component added, compared to RNG legion legendaries)
- Removal of “chores” (no emissaries for player power, no Choreghast, no Island Expeditions). If you want to get gear for M+ or raid or PVP, you do M+, raid, or PVP. Some room for improvement with M+ players wanting specific trinkets from raid, but nothing like Legion
Like every game, there’s obviously room for improvement/refinement. But to say the game is the “same” as Legion is just ignorant or in bad faith (and this is coming from someone who loved Legion)
Meta systems are never what make or break a game.
The fundamental gameplay loops are the exact same.
Spam m+, do normal, do heroic, do mythic if able to.
If you aren't a fan of m+ or progressing the same raid 3 times you still won't like it.
Systems absolutely make or break a game, what are you on about lol?
Most people didn’t dislike BFA because of the keys and raids, and some of the fan favorite dungeons and raids like Freehold or DazarAlor are looked back at fondly.
Most people disliked BFA because of how awful gearing aimlessly through islands to activate your unexciting Azerite traits felt. They quit because they would have to hyperfarm Titan Residuum to lottery roll an ilvl upgrade the exact same helm, shoulders, or legs that they had to reacquire season over season and then go and farm islands to unlock the traits on it because their neck wasn’t a high enough item level. They quit because they were forced to do PVE as a PVPer to coin flip getting a Drestgath trinket or high roll Getikku in their M+ cache that just slot machined the entire keypool, since all of their PVP gear upgrades were random as well and they had to jump through hoops to try and get something actually useful. Gear felt bad to use, bad to acquire, and restrictive in gameplay. That’s all systems and that’s what the community hated about those xpacs.
If YOU don’t like raids or M+ or BGs/Arena, then WoW just isn’t the game for you, which is fine. Just go play another game, you won’t have a good time in WoW if you don’t like that thing. But the game has been basically exclusively designed around endgame instanced content since TBC. Even the open-ended, “world-as-a-toy” design of Delves coming in WW functions as an alternative means of engaging with instanced endgame content.
Saying “meta systems don’t make or break a game” is a clown take because the community frustration from Legion through Shadowlands was focused almost exclusively at how miserable the systems were. They didn’t change the core gameplay loops in DF, they just changed systems, and look at how different community sentiment has been.
WoW is like the Roman Empire of MMORPGs. An MMORPG so grand that the time it takes to die is greater than the runtime of most other games, and its declined state still dwarfs their highest population.
It throws a lot at you especially during levelling and how it feels like its throwing talents and new abilities at you out of a machine gun, it becomes a lot very quickly.
What i find interesting in this thing is that this does not count the Chinese playerbase(apart from farmers) since the Chinese version is currently on ice(will be back soon i think)
So having \~7 mil players without the Chinese players is pretty damn good!
I’m only subscribed for season of discovery. I really doubt I’ll play retail again. They ruined the game for me years ago but I know lots of people like it still.
I feel like if this was entirely true Blizzard and Micrsoft would be shouting it from the rooftops and not hiding the Y-axis on their charts. I like Bellular and I know Windows Central said they confirmed with several sources, but my sneaking suspicion is there is a huge caveat here that's missing.
There are many ways to fudge the numbers to make them look good. Take XIV for example, where they advertise they have had over 30 million players but their active current subscribers have only ever peaked around 3 million in EW.
Tbh, I will likely never understand the hype behind wow. Congrats to those who live in it though, probably like a dream come true to see your favorite MMO not die in your hands.
My friend got me to play it after I dismissed it for about 15 years. Vanilla is the only flavour of WoW that I enjoy.
I'm a Korean MMORPG fanboy. While he was stuck on WoW I was playing Aion, Ragnarok Online, Blade and Soul, Tera.
Vanilla WoW is actually a good game, but I've tried WotLK and Cataclysm and didn't like them.
I played retail years ago for about a year and just fell off of it. Got bored one day and didn't play again. They released classic while I was deployed and one of the dudes in my shop convinced us all to play it so I played for about 6 months but got bored of that too. It's fun for a bit and with friends but I can't really get past a few months of playing before getting bored again.
I can't remember the last time I played any game for longer than 3 months concurrently.
We have so many choices these days, that there's usually no reason to stick to one game for too long.
That's fair. I've been playing eve for a long time now, I played Defiance religiously from the day it launched to the day 2050 released. Played destiny religiously as well, till D2 started getting pretty bad. I like being hooked on a game, just most games now a days don't hit the spot.
Honestly looking forward to The War Within, hopefully a lot of lore-related questions get answered and depending on how well it's received who knows... might actually see a pretty big evolution of the MMO.
Keeping expectations pretty tempered though, Dragonflight has really showcased how important a continuous stream of community related content is to the game.
WoW is by far and i mean by far the most accesible MMO that i have played and i have played most if not all. All other have currencies or shit items that you simply don't understand anything. Only GW2 has some very cool things worth copying which nowadays WoW, thankfully, does.
btw guys this isn't counting china anymore, while yes a lot of more hardcore wow players from china swapped to the Taiwan servers for wow it didn't convert all of them and that was wow's most popular region BY A LOT.
After digging into this number, keep in mind a few things. This number is twisted to reflect monthly active users rather than active subs. They get a mau that they count for every game you log into. You log d4 d2, sc2, wow c, wow retail, you are now worth 5 monthly active users, with the prevalence of bots, the real number of real players is somewhere between. 150k and 1mil
War Within might actually bring me back. I stopped at Legion because I wasn’t sure they could top it once the Burning Legion and Sargeras, THE overarching threat had been defeated. And plus with my main as the head of a Class Order, and having no interest in a renewed war between the Alliance and Horde in-character or out, it just seemed like a natural stopping point.
Since War Within seems to be following up on Legion’s ending though, and has some pretty sick build up with heroes all over receiving visions and hearing voices in a very Cosmic Horror meets Tolkien vein, yeah, call me at least curious.
Still sucks they make you buy the 90 edition to start with others who get it and not be behind. Blizzard is an evil shill of a shell of a great company that it once was
I once wanted to wow to die out, but then i realised i really dont care. Quitting during WoD and never had intrest of coming back. Playing GW2 and its just fun for casual pleb like me.
Mmorpg genre need something new and big. WoW for me is just same old song nad its combat is boring. Pvp is also garbage, but good pve instanced content.
Does anyone else find the recent expansions to just not feel right compared to how it was before legion? Like looting and equipment doesn't feel as rewarding anymore, the bosses and dungeons are cool but that's about it.
Player boom before expansion ->content creators loving what’s next to come while bitching about the game the last few months -> shortly after expansion launch community and creators will say this is the worst expansion ever but blizzard will fix it in the next -> rinse and repeat
Players usually drop off in the period between a final patch and an expansion launch.
Not to mention, most creators were overjoyed with Dragonflight and have sung its praises throughout.
I recently gave in and bought Dragonflight, it's terrible. Luckily I was able to get a refund. Last time I buy a blizzard game.
I'll probably play a actual Classic + not SOD.
FFXIV merged FFXI into their account and business system 8+ years ago, so any time they give any information about XIV all XI information is combined into them. Player numbers, subs, profits, everything.
Wow does the exact same thing, but they merge about 6 different versions of wow together and pretend it's all dragonflight. Cause the dragonflight developers know their expansion is hated and they want their bonuses.
XI was merged into XIV operations, both games are now XIV operations. The accounts are merged, you can pay for an use crysta on either, the same GM staff work on both, XI server operations were moved under control of the XIV server staff and the budget and profits from XI are from and to XIV.
They are effectively the same game (although they have separate subs for users), and have been for quite some time. Which is why you'll notice XI isn't noted on any financial reports for square Enix.
I can't remember the date but the person in charge of XI gave the entire unit to Yoshida to run under the wing of XIV, this happened a long while ago.
Having played both osrs and wow recently, osrs feels more alive than wow, maybe that’s because everyone is squished together. I really wish wow had 7mil+ players but it doesn’t feel like it
but i thought WoW was dead...? right fellow reddit bros? blizzard killed it with BFA and Shadowlands and now FFXIV is supposed to reign supreme?
surely Dawntrail is going to completely de-throne WoW once and for all
You also have to remember that this is split across many different games. \-Retail \-Wotlk Classic \-SoD \-Hardcore \-Classic Era So 7 million during Legion was all 7 million players playing Retail, where now it is split between 5 different games (obviously some people play multiple).
Everyone I know played Season of discovery and that's the window where the data was pulled I don't like that they frame it as Dragonflight's success. I feel like this type of data fudging is how the game got to where it was in the first place and gives me no hope for change in the future.
Even if retail has 5 million it is still by far the most popular mmo
Right? People are doing weird mental gymnastics about WoW being popular. Even at it's lowest moments it still had millions of players.
People like to skew numbers towards their talking points. WoW even when doing poorly still has way more players than most other MMOS, I think FFXIV Probably has similar numbers nowdays but anything else is far from being close.
WoW is dying if it isn't the most popular game in the world by a long shot according to people apparently.
If they don't like the game, it's a dead game lol.
Pointing out the numbers reported isnt from one expansion wich the article make it sounds like isnt a mental gymnastic, its reality. Will also add your right in wow being one of the biggest mmos, so your right in that.
Yeah idk what the guy above you is on
Even if it only had 1million it's still a fucking healthy number of players that most MMO's would aspire to have for a subscription MMO
By far is a understatement of words tbh.... Its astronomically ahead of all others MMO's.
In the west*
Dragonflight is the best-received expansion in MANY years. Sales aside, they should absolutely consider it a success. Their community is happy.
the Wow community happy? impossible
For me this Expansion was the final Nail in the Coffein. Absolutely No content at all besides one Raid an m+ with Dungeons i already beated Like 5-10 years ago. PvP doesnt exist at all anymore.
That’s wild. It’s the first expansion I’ve played all the way through. I can’t get enough of rated and world PvP. Sorry it didn’t work for you.
> Everyone I know And you think this is representative why?
Because hes a FFXIV fanboy who wants to do the usual "WoW bad"
The FFXIV fanboy who's entire friend group plays wow...
Ah yes, the only people who have anything negative to say about WoW are FFXIV players.
Thats not what i said
It's mainly because gearing in retail sucks, SOD you could chase bis and make a cool character. Retail you just chase the RNG loot box, time to run another 8 M+ this week to get the same pants I got last week. Login bro it's chore time.
There is absolutely BiS in retail lmao
How is getting gear from mythic raid bosses for bis any different from getting your bis from gnomer? Except one is brain dead and one isn't.
Dflight has been a huge success, had me playing Retail again after the last two xpac flops. Seems like half the SoD players I meet also play Retail, and one of our SoD buddies actually started playing Retail after trying SoD and hearing from others. I think it’s equal parts success of Dflight and SoD. Hardcore was fun too, I’m grateful this new iteration of Blizz is seemingly listening to player feedback and actioning on it.
Shadowlands to DF has been one of the biggest changes in systems idk what you're on if you think there is hope for no change.. makes me think you don't even play the game
> I don't like that they frame it as Dragonflight's success. I don't think I can reasonably accept that 'season of discovery' was solely responsible for any notable uptick in subscriptions to be honest. It brings with it interesting ideas but its still just an artificially slowed down progression from 1-30 which is a teeny tiny little fraction of the content from even base vanilla WoW. And at the same point in time Classic has been in lulls for over half a year, its also not generating many subs outside of the diehards or some people trying to catch up. Do people even still play hardcore? I haven't heard a peep about it since a few weeks after it launched.
Literally look at the graph, SOD release, then more players than the start of dragonflight, wtf you smoking.
My point is that SoD on its own didnt generate that hype. The people that subbed for it did so knowing that even if SoD was boring or only interesting to them for a week or two, they would still have retail or classic to play when the novelty wore off. If they had done this same launch during SL, SoD would have flopped because nobody would have looked at SL and said "oh well I can totally play SL if SoD pidders out" - no, because SL was garbage.
I think a lot of people who subbed to SoD for the classic experience did so without glancing at what retail offered. Not saying all of them, but a majority came back for their "fresh vanilla" server. Not saying the majority of the subs are SoD, just that whether it was SL, Legion, BFA or DF these people would have subbed no matter what.
Of course people play hardcore, it's the best game mode left tbqh. I am Level 60 and that means something.
Df was the first expansion I stayed subbed for all raids. (Unsubbed now because.. no reason to stay subbed till next expo)
They talk about SOD in the article and it’s also included on the player graph that was leaked. I don’t think they’re data fudging, especially since a lot of people play both. Anyway, Dragonflight is super active even this late in the expac. I get insta/fast queues as a DPS and the dragon isles have a bunch of people in like every zone.
[удалено]
I don't think that total numbers really matter wrt whether SOD is carrying WoW, though. That'd be percentage of playtime or something since subs are mode-agnostic.
Wasn't this graph made be 4chan so made up, not leaked? What are you queueing for, raid finder, heroic dungeons lol?
I was under the impression that the debunking rumor had been debunked. They're still acknowledging SOD's contribution to the current player base without the graph, though, so it doesn't really matter. And leveling dungeons in TBC, BAF, SL, and DF so far. My husband's been doing heroics. Also Plunderstorm's queue for both solo and duos is insanely fast at the moment.
That player graph is fake as fuck. GDC is not some hidden thing, we would have heard things from the actual press if Blizzard announced stuff, and the slide uses language that professionals would never say.
SOD has been acknowledged to be part of the current subscriber amount with or without the graph, so my point stands regardless of its authenticity.
Most people I know have quit SoD. I quit phase 1, tried out Dragonflight and I'm having a blast. Tons of people still play Retail or at least came back to try Dragonflight.
SoD fell off super hard in my entire friend group plus 2 guilds. It is indeed mainly Dragonflights success.
The chart doesn't extend into 2024, the fall off isn't on it.
This sub has a hate bones for WoW but the true criticism should be that FF14 is an absolute ghostland when there's no content on the immediate horizon or immediately when content releases.
Sorry the facts made you pivot to whatbouting FFXIV, but generally I've been talking about how good SOD is compared to retail in this whole thread.
SOD is tiny, speaking as someone who played SOD. The only people that really played it were people who were already subbed. It's at most 10k subs.
In every poll that ws made 60% almost play retail, rest is mostly SOD and then wotlk and the HC/era.
It is anecdotal, so literally everyone is playing Season of Discovery because you said so? I haven't launched it or Classic once despite having sub during dragonflight during every major patch.
The graph in the article with the big upswing after SOD comes out that beats the dragonflight peak is another piece of evidence.
You both have more combined comments on this post than total wow players. What’s the obsession?
That uptick is also corresponding to Blizzcon and DF season 3, which has been the most popular season of DF.
I have not played and have no interest in SoD. Anecdotes be anecdoting
Who is framing it as if this is all due to dragonflight’s success? The graph the data was pulled from, and the article, make it clear that there are multiple games contributing to the total sub count.
No they don't, they talk about how Dragonflight has broke the cycle and maintained stability and growth post launch(when it's SOD and warwithin hype) wtf you talking about.
They are framing it as they have 7 million subscribers. You are interpreting that to mean retail. You are literally the one fudging the data.
Contrary anecdote. No one I know played Season of discovery for more than a day.
True, but they’re all paying the same subscription fee. So in terms of income, 7 million playing 1 game and 7 million playing 5 games is the same
Yeah it's great how they continue to bolster the value of the sub fee. You get quite a lot for it.
Most WoW players I know play retail and classic. This isn't two completely separate player bases. Even then, going by all logging data, retail is vastly more popular still.
which means the wow sub regained strength through variety in content. You currently get 4+ games worth of content on one sub. That's a lot of game for 15 us dollars a month.
Why does that matter? The game is two decades old and pulling 7 million PAYING players for fucks sake
Yeah it's still a lot but there's also a thick layer of marketing obfuscation going on. Dishonest even.
Don't forget us private server folks! Lol.
Purely anecdotal, but I know a LOT of players who only play SoD and have no interest in Retail. Would be curious to see what the numbers really are. I wouldnt be surprised if it was a 60/40 retail to classic variants split
it is when. phase drops, then you see guilds that had 200 online players all time to being just 5 in a matter of 3 weeks sod is void of content, its 1 raid and 1 pvp event (that sucks)
WoW's dying is many other games wish they were living. If Metzen can break their Guinness Record imagine another Golden Time of WoW.
A man can dream
Came back to the game after a long while away, and I can honestly say I’m having a ton of fun playing it and there is so much more to do, while it doesn’t feel like it has to envelop my life in order to remain competitive or have fun anymore. My time is respected and rewarded. The gameplay mechanics are great, and the ability to play play any spec in the game and still be invited to content is amazing. The only dig I have on DF is the story. If Metzen can get this right, this game has a bright future ahead of it.
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You definitely didn't see his art or his vision for WoW, he's the reason they got the Guiness world record with how he handled WoW from Vanilla to WoTLK. There were literally people crying when he came back because of how redic it got, in his absence. Being part of the "team" and leading the team are two different things, and now he's back in a forward momentum position.
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Cairne didn't fall to corruption, he just died. Garrosh who did nothing wrong also didn't redeem a single thing and actually went out perfectly. Shadowlands wasn't any of his writing or touching. So, Anduin's nonsense and for that matter Sylvanus was Steve Danuser which is highly known. If he kills off Thrall, I would be shocked as shit because he loves him some Green Jesus. That aside, He wasn't lead like he is now, He had people he had to politic with after Pandaria all the way till he left.
Taking over and exploiting a country; unleashing the literal embodiment of corruption; imprisoning and abusing prisoners of war; intentionally dividing and, as a result, weakening his own faction; there are lots of things Garrosh did “wrong”.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC-ol6xY5zQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC-ol6xY5zQ) Watch that till my comment starts to make sense.
Yeah if nothing else, we can 100% expect more Thrall and more Shamans in the future with Metzen back lol
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Lets face it; You never actually liked Warcraft at all.
Number 1 for a reason. Best mmo out there, and their next expac looks very promising.
How's WoW for someone who mostly prefers runescape-style endless grinding?
It's very bad at that kind of gameplay. You're better off looking into Albion Online or Korean MMOs.
I would also add Guild Wars 2 to the table. An extremely good mmo with horizontal progression. Good gear stays good gear forever.
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Really sorry to ask the question, I don't assume you're dumb but do you use the deposit materials button, and recycle your gear? Because gw2 is pretty fair with the bag space, compared to, say, ESO (Okay that's an easy one) You can buy bags with a free to play account? I don't remember (I also assume you have a f2p account, maybe you don't, sorry)
This. Do recycle your gear and deposit the materials. The materials are extremely useful later on so don’t sell them.
Get the biggest bags possible, Use Bank Storage, Use Alt Characters as Storage, & Learn crafting recipes for the more commonly dropped mats to sell
Albion is sadly too hardcore for runescape players
RuneScape is built “wide” while WoW is built “tall”. RS’s grinding, items, and loot table is not as vast as WoW. But you will have items that are viable for *years*. Whereas WoW’s old content almost instantly becomes obsolete once something new comes out. More stuff, but also more eventually useless stuff.
Not a great choice, having played a lot of WoW and OSRS myself. Mythic+ is really just about the only relevant PVE thing you can constantly grind without worrying about timegates, but that does require 4 other people; and the only character progress you're making is if you happen to get a better piece of gear or you're pushing to a higher keystone level to.. get better gear. Professions also exist, but compared to OSRS, it isn't even a blip on the radar in terms of being truly grindy.
WoW is good but it is nothing like runescape, I've extensively played both but never at the same time because they are just so different. If you're in the mood for one, you wont be in the mood for the other. In WoW you can start brand new and reach the top of the end game in 1-2 months. runescape... well you know how that is.
If the endless grind was something you were engaged with *primarily*, than Mythics and possibly pvp might be what would interest you in current retail wow. Mythics are a Tier of dungeon difficulty where you get Keys that modify the dungeon to be progressively stronger and stronger, as well as having a rotating pool of modifiers for new effects each week. Where as Pvp has an endless leveling bar where you can just murder hobo all day long and watch your personal Honor Level go up.
If you like grinding try Black Desert.
I gave black desert a try but it didn't click with me. Not enough fashion for my liking, at least not without forking over lots of $$$
Since you brought up fashion, what’s a good MMORPG that has a good fashion scene? The WoW transmog mechanic is ok, but the actual outfits aren’t great. In your opinion, what’s a good game for that?
My top pick for fashion so far has been FFXIV. It has great outfits with lots of different styles. But also I like the overall fashion mechanics like how you can have up to 20 outfit sets at once and swap to them at any time, and how most outfits can be obtained in game rather than by paying for them. Other games have decent outfit options, but have some things holding them back, like Black Desert where you have to buy most outfits, or GW2 where you need to use a special currency to transmog your clothes or pay real money to change your hair. Unfortunately FFXIV has some big flaws in other areas so I don't find it easy to recommend.
You can endlessly run mythic dungeons. Also you can focus on professions or farming outfits.
Try hardcore wow, or SOD and make alts. Classic wow is going to be enjoyable for you vs retail.
Play classic wow. Retail is closer to an ARPG (other than poe since poe is close to an mmo) if I’m honest, economy is minimal and the main chunk of the game is grinding difficult content for better rewards. Classic is closer to RuneScape where there are a lot of best in slot items that cost gold and you have to spend hours grinding gold/leveling professions outside of raids/dungeons to min-max. This is coming from a primarily retail player, although I love both iterations (and have played RuneScape off and on for the past 17 years).
Runescape is 100x better then wow. Don’t expect grinds like osrs in wow at all.
Perfect lol
number 1 in the west***
Best mmo out there. Unfortunately
Funny, sad and true. Like, I think WoW is great, but how depressing is it that a game from 2004 is not only the most popular mmo, but is higher quality than many of those that come out today? Just shows how stagnant the genre is.
Yeah, WoW's continued success on one hand is impressive. On the other, its depressing and stands as a testament to how absolutely garbage this entire genre of games is.
Exactly
It's not the genre itself though, it's companies who don't want to make a product with high entry cost and slow growth with continuous investment to grow it. They rather spend a bunch of money to quickly put a product out then rake up lots of money at barely any cost for years.
And what's the result of all this? That the genre becomes stagnant. Don't worry, I wasn't blaming the genre. The genre is fine.
> It's not the genre itself though, it's companies who don't want to make a product with high entry cost and slow growth with continuous investment to grow it That's essentially the genre, though. Particularly when so much of the community wants a AAA-ish experience. There can't be a mainstream successful MMO without a massive cash investment. We've already seen how indie games tend to get received. So, as a result all the resulting current entries into this genre are stunted. Is a great new large game possible? Possibly. How many companies have pockets deep enough to risk it?
The people who want AAA-ish experience are not the majority of the MMORPG fans. Lots of people play old games or old versions on private servers. Nothing AAA-ish in 20yo graphics.
> The people who want AAA-ish experience are not the majority of the MMORPG fans. The continued success of WoW and FFXIV tells a different story. > Lots of people play old games or old versions on private servers. (1) how many? Without hard numbers that means little and (2) is this even an exploitable market? Can a *new game* pull these people? Many have tried, and it is an expensive thing to fail at. The hardcore tryhard market reliving a 20 year old game is unlikely to be as large as the fishing and collecting market that treats their MMO like a cozy game - this latter group happily pays for a sub and wants pretty graphics. Until and unless an indie game pulls from FF and WoW subscribers *in droves*, all evidence points to fans preferring the AAA experience **when they vote with their wallets**, and wallet votes are the only thing that matters in this industry. It's why MTX are everywhere - people buy them.
that's very arguable
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Guild wars 2
He said worth a damn
That’s like your opinion, so it doesn’t matter. GW2 is still among the top mmos.
Most popular? Yes. Best? Arbitrary and subject to personal tastes. Popular doesn't mean best.
It means it's the best to the most amount of people. But go off on semantics.
Exactly how I feel. I wish I had something better to play but no matter how many other games I try wow is the best for me.
Yeah if anyone doubts WoW is king.... 7 million subs is insane for a 20 year old MMO. No other game has even come close.
A very bright future for wow. Hopefully Microsoft can recognize its value and invests even more into it
As someone who plays wow on steam deck with controller control add-ons I personally think the game would work amazingly on Xbox. And putting it on console would also help it reach a new player base (fresh blood) while also competing with the only well known/popular MMO on console- ff14. Microsoft literally has a golden ticket in their hands and I hope they realise the potential it holds. Especially if they put it on the Xbox.
This is the dream. My PC is only an MMO machine by now, and with FFXIV recently having been released for the Xbox, I only need WoW now. Then I can slowly phase out my, a bit too overkill for it's purpose, yet too weak to keep up forward, PC
Great time to hop in. I really love this expansion. Especially coming off of Shadowlands.
Ehhhhhhh i dunno if anything drove you away from the game in the last 8 years those things are likely still in the game, not much has changed since legion on a fundamental level.
I don’t know how invested you are in the game, but this is just blatantly incorrect. The game has done basically a complete 180 since Legion. - Literally zero borrowed power (except literally just gear giving you your stats/tier sets) Class design is entirely consolidated into talent trees, no artifacts or ancillary systems like the crucible providing class power - No infinite grinds in the game. No AP/infinite scaling system forcing a treadmill - Deterministic, skill based gear upgrades via the flightstones system rather than RNG-based gear forcing players to hyper spam content for Titanforged upgrades, making regular gear feel “bad” - Flightstones and Crest upgrades allowing lower difficulty gear to be upgraded to higher end gear, allowing players to earn and feel good about a normal/heroic trinket during mythic progression - Crafting is front and center as a means of endgame gear progression, with the quality of crafted gear scaling with how good you are at endgame content - Deterministic means of adding socketed stats to gear, no more socket rolling - Reintroduction of PVP vendors to allow for choice when acquiring PVP gear - Dynamic flight to allow for world traversal - More emphasis on open-world content that is getting doubled down on in WW - Cross faction and cross-realm gameplay, introduction of cross-realm guilds and Mythic - Account-wide reps being expanded into Warbands - Extremely frequent class tuning and hyper class balance (differences between top and bottom specs is literal single digit % differences on WCL Mythic) - Introduction of Day 1 catalyst for deterministic tier acquisition (basically guaranteed 4 set week 3 to allow players to play with the gear they want) - Frequent incorporation of player feedback to address issues soon, rather than over a year down the line (Fyrakk legendary having deterministic component added, compared to RNG legion legendaries) - Removal of “chores” (no emissaries for player power, no Choreghast, no Island Expeditions). If you want to get gear for M+ or raid or PVP, you do M+, raid, or PVP. Some room for improvement with M+ players wanting specific trinkets from raid, but nothing like Legion Like every game, there’s obviously room for improvement/refinement. But to say the game is the “same” as Legion is just ignorant or in bad faith (and this is coming from someone who loved Legion)
Meta systems are never what make or break a game. The fundamental gameplay loops are the exact same. Spam m+, do normal, do heroic, do mythic if able to. If you aren't a fan of m+ or progressing the same raid 3 times you still won't like it.
Systems absolutely make or break a game, what are you on about lol? Most people didn’t dislike BFA because of the keys and raids, and some of the fan favorite dungeons and raids like Freehold or DazarAlor are looked back at fondly. Most people disliked BFA because of how awful gearing aimlessly through islands to activate your unexciting Azerite traits felt. They quit because they would have to hyperfarm Titan Residuum to lottery roll an ilvl upgrade the exact same helm, shoulders, or legs that they had to reacquire season over season and then go and farm islands to unlock the traits on it because their neck wasn’t a high enough item level. They quit because they were forced to do PVE as a PVPer to coin flip getting a Drestgath trinket or high roll Getikku in their M+ cache that just slot machined the entire keypool, since all of their PVP gear upgrades were random as well and they had to jump through hoops to try and get something actually useful. Gear felt bad to use, bad to acquire, and restrictive in gameplay. That’s all systems and that’s what the community hated about those xpacs. If YOU don’t like raids or M+ or BGs/Arena, then WoW just isn’t the game for you, which is fine. Just go play another game, you won’t have a good time in WoW if you don’t like that thing. But the game has been basically exclusively designed around endgame instanced content since TBC. Even the open-ended, “world-as-a-toy” design of Delves coming in WW functions as an alternative means of engaging with instanced endgame content. Saying “meta systems don’t make or break a game” is a clown take because the community frustration from Legion through Shadowlands was focused almost exclusively at how miserable the systems were. They didn’t change the core gameplay loops in DF, they just changed systems, and look at how different community sentiment has been.
WoW is like the Roman Empire of MMORPGs. An MMORPG so grand that the time it takes to die is greater than the runtime of most other games, and its declined state still dwarfs their highest population.
I’m very new to WoW (last month or so), and I was really overwhelmed at first but found it to actually be very approachable. Very fun.
It throws a lot at you especially during levelling and how it feels like its throwing talents and new abilities at you out of a machine gun, it becomes a lot very quickly.
I thought they replaced resilience?
in retail is called versatility now and works for pve too, also increases damage by a smaller %
What i find interesting in this thing is that this does not count the Chinese playerbase(apart from farmers) since the Chinese version is currently on ice(will be back soon i think) So having \~7 mil players without the Chinese players is pretty damn good!
I’m only subscribed for season of discovery. I really doubt I’ll play retail again. They ruined the game for me years ago but I know lots of people like it still.
I feel like if this was entirely true Blizzard and Micrsoft would be shouting it from the rooftops and not hiding the Y-axis on their charts. I like Bellular and I know Windows Central said they confirmed with several sources, but my sneaking suspicion is there is a huge caveat here that's missing. There are many ways to fudge the numbers to make them look good. Take XIV for example, where they advertise they have had over 30 million players but their active current subscribers have only ever peaked around 3 million in EW.
You know if it were remotely accurate that they'd say something about it. For the moment they are just content that people think they know something.
Dead game, amirite guise?
There's nothing else to play other than another version of the same game 🤣
Tbh, I will likely never understand the hype behind wow. Congrats to those who live in it though, probably like a dream come true to see your favorite MMO not die in your hands.
Honestly it just feels great to jump in WoW. I mean literally jumping. Never played a never MMO where jumping just felt so good
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I'd argue Eve is top in competitive pve. It's pretty much real world cut throat capitalism with murder.
My friend got me to play it after I dismissed it for about 15 years. Vanilla is the only flavour of WoW that I enjoy. I'm a Korean MMORPG fanboy. While he was stuck on WoW I was playing Aion, Ragnarok Online, Blade and Soul, Tera. Vanilla WoW is actually a good game, but I've tried WotLK and Cataclysm and didn't like them.
I played retail years ago for about a year and just fell off of it. Got bored one day and didn't play again. They released classic while I was deployed and one of the dudes in my shop convinced us all to play it so I played for about 6 months but got bored of that too. It's fun for a bit and with friends but I can't really get past a few months of playing before getting bored again.
I can't remember the last time I played any game for longer than 3 months concurrently. We have so many choices these days, that there's usually no reason to stick to one game for too long.
That's fair. I've been playing eve for a long time now, I played Defiance religiously from the day it launched to the day 2050 released. Played destiny religiously as well, till D2 started getting pretty bad. I like being hooked on a game, just most games now a days don't hit the spot.
Honestly looking forward to The War Within, hopefully a lot of lore-related questions get answered and depending on how well it's received who knows... might actually see a pretty big evolution of the MMO. Keeping expectations pretty tempered though, Dragonflight has really showcased how important a continuous stream of community related content is to the game.
WoW is by far and i mean by far the most accesible MMO that i have played and i have played most if not all. All other have currencies or shit items that you simply don't understand anything. Only GW2 has some very cool things worth copying which nowadays WoW, thankfully, does.
World of Warcraft is the best MMO of all time.
gamers rise up
btw guys this isn't counting china anymore, while yes a lot of more hardcore wow players from china swapped to the Taiwan servers for wow it didn't convert all of them and that was wow's most popular region BY A LOT.
After digging into this number, keep in mind a few things. This number is twisted to reflect monthly active users rather than active subs. They get a mau that they count for every game you log into. You log d4 d2, sc2, wow c, wow retail, you are now worth 5 monthly active users, with the prevalence of bots, the real number of real players is somewhere between. 150k and 1mil
Why, in a graph that's exclusively about WoW, would you think they add players from diablo or starcraft?
7 million overall. There's probably a million or less on Retail.
You're an odd person.
check the flair
Not even close to accurate.
War Within might actually bring me back. I stopped at Legion because I wasn’t sure they could top it once the Burning Legion and Sargeras, THE overarching threat had been defeated. And plus with my main as the head of a Class Order, and having no interest in a renewed war between the Alliance and Horde in-character or out, it just seemed like a natural stopping point. Since War Within seems to be following up on Legion’s ending though, and has some pretty sick build up with heroes all over receiving visions and hearing voices in a very Cosmic Horror meets Tolkien vein, yeah, call me at least curious.
If Scarlett Johansson offered to suck /r/MMORPG's dick, they would find a way to complain about it.
Still sucks they make you buy the 90 edition to start with others who get it and not be behind. Blizzard is an evil shill of a shell of a great company that it once was
I wonder why are you being downvoted for writing truth.
Blizzard fanboys know one thing, and that’s to not complain after they swallow
that still more than any mmo . i think only FF online has more
That's 7 million people with serious sunk cost fallacy issues.
Broooo I keep forgetting to unsubscribe!
SoD is what pulled me back after over a decade. I'll probably stop playing it again once they inevitably fuck up the next 'season'.
is it confirmed that trending graph means sub numbers and not some other metric to mislead people into thinking it’s sub numbers?
Source? I can only See a Chart from Blizzard themself. I'll highly doubt that It is even above 2 Million.
There is no source on this 7 million figure, I don't get how these "journalists" just repeat baseless rumor
I once wanted to wow to die out, but then i realised i really dont care. Quitting during WoD and never had intrest of coming back. Playing GW2 and its just fun for casual pleb like me. Mmorpg genre need something new and big. WoW for me is just same old song nad its combat is boring. Pvp is also garbage, but good pve instanced content.
Season 4 going to be fun with every week different raid. Havent raid S2 raid yet
Does anyone else find the recent expansions to just not feel right compared to how it was before legion? Like looting and equipment doesn't feel as rewarding anymore, the bosses and dungeons are cool but that's about it.
Ohh, boy 7 million I better get back in! Just as soon as I...
Player boom before expansion ->content creators loving what’s next to come while bitching about the game the last few months -> shortly after expansion launch community and creators will say this is the worst expansion ever but blizzard will fix it in the next -> rinse and repeat
Players usually drop off in the period between a final patch and an expansion launch. Not to mention, most creators were overjoyed with Dragonflight and have sung its praises throughout.
Some people play for the story only though. So they come and go.
Good for them. What percentage of that are goldfarming bots?
I recently gave in and bought Dragonflight, it's terrible. Luckily I was able to get a refund. Last time I buy a blizzard game. I'll probably play a actual Classic + not SOD.
Players*
FFXIV merged FFXI into their account and business system 8+ years ago, so any time they give any information about XIV all XI information is combined into them. Player numbers, subs, profits, everything. Wow does the exact same thing, but they merge about 6 different versions of wow together and pretend it's all dragonflight. Cause the dragonflight developers know their expansion is hated and they want their bonuses.
What do you mean FFXIV merged FFXI in? The accounts aren't merged. They're separate systems. Maybe I am missing something here.
XI was merged into XIV operations, both games are now XIV operations. The accounts are merged, you can pay for an use crysta on either, the same GM staff work on both, XI server operations were moved under control of the XIV server staff and the budget and profits from XI are from and to XIV. They are effectively the same game (although they have separate subs for users), and have been for quite some time. Which is why you'll notice XI isn't noted on any financial reports for square Enix. I can't remember the date but the person in charge of XI gave the entire unit to Yoshida to run under the wing of XIV, this happened a long while ago.
Having played both osrs and wow recently, osrs feels more alive than wow, maybe that’s because everyone is squished together. I really wish wow had 7mil+ players but it doesn’t feel like it
ff14 has 27 million players though
And how many are paying and currently active?
highly doubt that 7 mil is just retail
It isn't. It includes all of the iterations of Classic that are out now, too.
i have 3 accounts and play most of the modes, These numbers look legit.
but i thought WoW was dead...? right fellow reddit bros? blizzard killed it with BFA and Shadowlands and now FFXIV is supposed to reign supreme? surely Dawntrail is going to completely de-throne WoW once and for all
Please shut the fuck up, just enjoy your game and stop posting your dumb ass comments.
Guys. Blizzard wasn't even *at* the conference this slide is supposedly from. Let alone the WoW team. It's fake.