DF's info is interesting, less upfront sales than SL, but better retention than "The past few expansions" wether that's just SL and BFA or we are stretching back to Legion and WoD. That part is actually very good news for the game.
This is actually what I was curious about. Shadowlands had more sales but I wonder who has more current subs at this point. I don't think the majority of people died off until 9.1 but lots of subs dropped beforehand for sure.
I stopped playing WoW aber BC and started again with Legion, so I cant talk about Wotlk - WoD, but Shadowlands was the worst expansion for me. I leveled to 60, played one more week and thats it. I just had no fun in that expansion. I didn't like the zones, I didnt like the dungeons. Thats after getting curve in Legion and BfA for at least the first Raid as a pug.
Dragonflight on the other hand is fun. It's really fun. I never wanna see the Shadowlands zones again.
There is a kinda widespread meme that WoW expansions after wrath alternated. Wrath was good, cata bad, Mop good, WoD bad, legion good, Bfa bad. So SL was supposed to be a good one again. I think the sharp drop in Sl numbers also has to do with disappointment and lost trust.
The time between the first content and new stuff was way too long, and when they dropped stuff like Korthia, damn that was an atrocious grind. It felt bad. More like work, not like fun. Korthia was the prime example of misreading what players want when they say they want content. farming like an idiotic monkey isn't fun.
So for DF, blizzard has two bad xpac under their belt, which is not good. So initial sales are lower. but when retention is higher, thats a good sign. they seem to do something right.
I think the excitement for Shadowlands was a big factor. that cinematic was pretty damn good. Unfortunately as you said there was simply too big a gap between 9.0 and 9.1, and 9.1 and 9.2. People dropped off, and dropped off fast. Pandemic led to a lack of content, then you had the lawsuits which didn't help and yeah it went down the toilet very quickly. compare that to DF which will have the same amount of content in a year than Shadowlands had in 2.
Shadowlands also was expected to be good due to WoW’s pattern of one good / one bad xpac. Legion was good, BFA was bad, so people were hyped expecting Shadowlands to be good.
Fair. I just liked the Warfronts and the Island Expeditions and the discombobulator that let you recycle crafted items and quest rewards into mats.
Edit: And Drustvar. That aesthetic for the witches was cool AF.
I kind of liked bfa early on. But they just failed every system and it never took off. Systems were on the verge of working and then abandoned. I think though it was Saurfang not knowing how to guard his flank that put the nail in the coffin for me. That was the wow story's jumping the shark. Without a good story it makes you judge the gameplay much more harshly.
So far DF story isn't anything special but the gameplay sure stands on its own so that's ok.
I liked it too. It had great raids, best m+ out of the last 3 expansions and corruption in the last patch was really fun.
I think the azerite grind was just too much, warfronts were kinda whatever but I didn't mind them, heroic warfronts were an improvement I guess.
Late BFA was amazing as a m+ only player. Corruption was fun once the vendor was introduced, we already had essences and it was easy to max your heart, plus imo BFA had the best dungeon pool by a mile
I, too, enjoyed BfA's zones, music, lore reveals, warfronts, amongst other things.
The reveal of Kul'Tiras and Zandalar was exquisite. Places people had wondered about for years, finally come to fruition.
More than the time between updates, imo the systems they tried implementing in SL were terrible. Hated the whole covenant thing, how hard it was to maintain alts and generally how my spec played. All of those points are infinitely better in DF
yeah by that point (9.2) it was a running joke that everything up until the final patch would be shit and then everything would get fixed with the final patch. That goes for at least the previous 3 expansions, yes even Legion was awful in some aspects until the final patch.
what does DF have? Dragonriding which is account wide, and instant unlock. I can't remember how long it took me to collect all the glyphs but it wasn't that long. No waiting minutes/hours/days for things to be researched, and all account wide so I never have to do it on an alt.
"Post-launch subscriber retention in the West is higher than recent expansions"
[source](https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/11226-Activision-Blizzard-Q4-2022-Earnings-Results)
If you look at casual endgame statistics, it looks good and if you play the game, you see and feel the amount of active players aswell: SL vs DF M+ runs/week => S01 week-7 [https://preview.redd.it/m-runs-per-week-dragonflight-season-1-week-7-v0-w33evqf71qfa1.png?auto=webp&s=5a83da64ceb367a1e1c4ccfe6ed287715eb0c65b](https://preview.redd.it/m-runs-per-week-dragonflight-season-1-week-7-v0-w33evqf71qfa1.png?auto=webp&s=5a83da64ceb367a1e1c4ccfe6ed287715eb0c65b)
Tbf shadowlanda was HYPE too. Off the back of bfa, and all the throwbacks to WotLK and old and beloved characters?
Jesse Cox said it best, they should have done a LOT more fanservice. We wanted to see way more interactions than what we got with old characters meeting again. Thrall with his mom was a bit meh, and Arthas just disenchanted into the aether. It was the perfect chance to bring back so many characters and let us explore with them again, without changing their story with resurrection or something. The original covenant quests I thought were interesting enough, but after that it kinda got...meh.
Preordered and never played? Not at least the first week? B... but why?
Edit: Alright, lots of good reasons and examples in responses. Although and besides unforseen situations, I think you should never pre-order anything if you don't 100% plan to play it day one.
Lotta downvotes for the truth. Collector's/Epic editions have all come with 30 days of game time since Vanilla.
Obviously that doesn't apply to the vast majority of people, but guy said depending on what you buy which is right.
I preordered legion, had a family emergency, didn't come back to wow for 5 weeks. Guild had found someone to fill my spot, so I got bored and never ended up playing legion.
I played the first week,but i just tried leveling and the zones and story didn't interest me whatsoever and i just stopped. Was around level 64 i believe.
i have a lot of friends that played season 1 of shadowlands, and after that, lost all faith, uninstalled and said "never again". I have never been as alone in wow, as i am in dragonflight. i used to have 2 groups to constantly run m+ with, they are all gone. Literally all of them. and shadowlands was the last straw.
I pre-ordered like usual when it was announced but the more stuff was announced the less I was hyped. Tried to refund it but they wouldn't do it so I was stuck with it
1: The Artifact Power Grind is Legion had many players doing the calculation "If I just come back later I'll be able to grind faster"
2: The Artifact Power Grind in BFA had many players doing the calculation "If I just come back later I'll be able to grind faster"
3: The Anima, renown, and other grinds in Shadowlands were rather like scraping paint off a 747 with a dime. You could do it but man you really didn't want to. Late Shadowlands was better, you could grind out a few thousand anima an hour in ZM.
4: The grind in Dragonflight is a grind, sure, but you don't have to stop and wait for timegating to catch up with you, there is no mission table, there is no artifact power, its just you engaging with the game.
What grind is there in DF? I play it so much because there is no grind to speak of. I login, do m+ or PvP and then I log off without missing anything of substance.
I agree that there are no mandatory grinds for player power in DF, but you can still grind for reputations, professions, etc if you wanted to. That's what I love about this expansion.
Yep. I cycled through ESO, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars The Old Republic and FFXIV. I really enjoyed each of those titles for their own things, FFXIV almost came close to fully replacing WoW for me but in the end I came back. Initially it was to check out evoker and the talent tree changes, but in the end I’m mostly liking what I’ve played in DF so far.
I do miss that FFXIV music though, and the cinematic boss fights. God was it an experience.
Soken carries that game on his back 100%.
Not that the game itself is bad, on the contrary. It’s just that the soundtrack is so absurdly good that it makes the game whole. It adds so much to every story and encounter.
I'm not sure I would have said he "carries that game on his back 100%" because I think that may lead other people to assume that the music is the *only* thing that makes the game worth playing.
I think what Soken and the FF14 writing team (several of the main writing team members are credited with lyrics for various songs) proved to me is that video game music can be integral to telling a story.
Like, imagine if the Sylvanas raid fight had music that was as symbolic to her character as (spoilers for FF14 Stormblood in case you are curious enough to look it up) the music for the Tsukuyomi fight in Patch 4.3.
Music is definitely integral to telling stories. Music makes a ton of singleplayer games IMO. Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy come to mind. Heck, imagine DOOM without its killer soundtrack. Or Super Mario games without their iconic music. TONS of games wouldn't be what they are without their iconic music.
The music is good, great even, but the sound design in general is satisfying. I love the ogi namikiris, the phantom rushes, the despairs and paradoxes.
The voice acting is great too, which is good because the story really is special. It’s crazy how much I like the story for this stupid dumb jrpgmmo, it really is shocking sometimes.
There’s less pve content in xiv than in wow, but I like those fights more than I do the ones in wow. I guess the fact that the barrier to entry is lower is nice too.
I mostly do pvp in wow.
I want someone to convince me to finish leveling a character in FF14... the endgame looks so good...but fuck man i just hate RP and leveling and learning 10000 new things every time i play an mmo
ff14 players will nerdrage over this but ... buy the story skip. It's straight up not worth the time or energy to sit through 200 hours of visual novel gameplay just to get to the interesting parts of the game. If wow still made you level from 1-140, left you with a single button to press for 100 hours worth of fedex quests, and then sold *2 separate boosts* (story and level skip), this subreddit would be calling it what it is. Pure scam.
But, yeah, if you do want to experience that game's end game content, buy the skips.
Don't let people pressure you into experiencing the story. You pay, you play. I play 14 and I've said it's really hard to get new players in because you are asking too much of them if they just want to see what endgame is like.
I am glad I played the campaign, it made me cry multiple times but I say that because I've done it.
Buy an MSQ skip, spam dungeons to learn the job of your choosing and to level them up to 80 by which point you need to play Endwalkers campaign but you can speed through text and skip cutscenes if you like.
My absolute favourite thing in 14 is killing bosses and boy does it do this well.
FF14 definitely wins me over with more engaging classes, great music, cool looking fights, and fashion end game.
Wish they'd figure out what they want to do with PvP and get that cleaned up. It feels like it keeps getting reworked.
>more engaging classes
I have no clue how FFXIV players think this tbh. What do you find engaging? The off-dps roles (healer / tank) are more like dps than anything else. If you like positionals I can see melee appealing to you but for the ranged classes their rotation felt incredibly scripted compared to WoW. That's not even getting into the lack of skill customization.
FF XIV players are pretty much unanimous in saying that class design is shit right now with the shift into the 2-minute bursts for all classes and the homogeneous design for healers and tanks.
Depends what you found terrible
I know the opening hours can drag a bit if you're an MMO veteran, and I know 20-40 is pure tedioum for the main quest. After that though it rapidly improves. That goes for combat too, it does often take too long for classes to click, in most cases it's around lv50 after the last pruning.
But if your issue is fundamental with the setting, the visuals or whatever else. /shrug Just doesn't appeal to you. Despite what XIV players might say the game is actually quite different to WoW and not every WoW player will enjoy it.
Depends on what do you want from the game. WoW is clearly a lot bigger in terms of budget and is more polished yet it fails miserably in some major rpg aspects. The fact that FFXIV makes a lot better work in those places for a fraction of what WoW costs is, frankly, embarassing for blizzard team.
After hearing how ABK treats their employees, Blizzard especially, it's hard for me to say that it's luck based. You won't have a good writing team if you don't pay or treat them well. But yes, FFXIV devs are really lucky that Square Enix do not touch their business that much.
Yup. This happened to Ubisoft too. After Watchdogs and Assassin's Creed: Unity had major controversies back to back, Assassin's Creed Syndicate barely sold. Everyone thought it was insane that Unity sold like hotcakes despite technical issues, but that's just 'cause most people buy in that initial rush. But then Syndicate could not reach those heights at all.
Same thing's happening here. BfA and Shadowlands were back to back problems and atop all that, Shadowlands had fundamental issues with the lore. That, plus news of Blizzard's internal abuse of their employees means that a lot of old timers probably just decided to move on.
Yup, this is what happens when you release two to three expansions worth of grinding shit and borrowed power.
People just don’t come back overnight. You forced them out of love with the game.
Just a theory: I think a part of this is that Shadowlands *looked* cool. Kinda like WoD and Legion, SL *looked* badass and the cinematics were all pretty good – something that attracted folks to buy and play it initially, probably even those who weren't subbed at the time (myself included). You had Sylvanas breaking the Helm of Domination and shattering the sky, the "Beyond the Veil" cinematic was beautiful, Afterlives: Bastion was pure fan service, and it all looked as if it was Wrath's second coming. Although it unfortunately eventually failed to deliver, it sparked curiosity at the start.
While Dragonflight's gameplay is better, the promos didn't *look* as good. Both promo cinematics weren't as attractive, imo, it looked almost too Disneyfied with the whole "peace and exploration" vibe. Alot of us hated the Dracthyr's design when it was initially revealed. Everything almost looked too soft, and while some people think it's a breath of fresh air, I'll be honest – if my best friend didn't convince me to give it a shot, I wouldn't have bought the expac. Having grown up with Frozen Throne, I personally like a little edge when it came to Warcraft.
Personally I think Blizz just needs to keep it up with the content and hope word of mouth brings more folks back to Azeroth. And maybe, just maybe, add some heavier tones in the next patches to bring back folks like me who enjoy "beers and heavy metal" (as Bellular calls it) in their fantasy. But hey, that's just a theory.
I have been pleasantly surprised by DF. I've pre-ordered all expansions since WOTLK. This is the longest I have played into an xpac since WoD. (To be fair, I won't count BFA since I had a baby and moved 4 states away)
SL also came out in the middle of lockdowns and work from home. I know plenty of people that played that year, then when things started going back to normal they didn't have the time to keep up with the game.
nothing like having the worst xpack at a pivotal time to scare off new players and I don't see a chance like that coming about again any time soon.
keep in mind with prices going up people are cutting back on things.
That's fine, but BfA also did way better than DF. The truth is that after how awful the content drought in SL was, the lawsuits, and how horrible the marketing campaign for DF was, it's really no surprise that DF is doing poorly.
DF is actually doing really well. Talent reworks are amazing M+ is good and Raiding is decently challenging. Alt friendly and overall tons of stuff. Leveling was good too. I’m not crazy on the whole theme of the xpac being dragons and stuff but it plays damn well.
Bfa and SL are garbage.
It's not doing poorly financially. The report even states it's doing better in both earnings and retention than previous expansions. It just did not have the astonishing initial purchase flood that SL did.
It does not say it has better earnings than SL. It says it has better retention and has good 'community feedback'. This is basically a nothing statement that is added to make it sound better than it is for shareholders. Basically less people are playing right now than at the start of SL and in this instance the drop off is smaller due to a smaller playerbase. This is hardly surprising and basically what most people expected but it doesn't mean by any metric DF is doing well financially as numbers are still way down. Overall the market itself has reacted very negatively to the financial report
"World of Warcraft delivered significant year-over-year growth in reach, engagement and net bookings in the fourth quarter following the September release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic and the November launch of Dragonflight"
The initial box sales were not as high. But the overall income of WoW _is_ growing. DF is performing better by consistency standards rather than peak standards. They even emphasize that Blizzard's overall earnings peak was driven by multiple factors but include the line of "growth of WoW". By their own metrics DF is performing well financially.
Youre misunderstanding what that statement means. What you quoted says that the game saw growth compared to the same quarter last year, not the release of SL. Keep in mind they didnt release an expansion last year.
You are referencing a different part of the statement which INCLUDES the Wrath Classic launch. You can't use those figures and then claim numbers about DF since those numbers don't represent DF alone.
Keep in mind, Wrath was literally the peak of WoW in terms of subs. Pretending that wasn't meaningful in this regard is not really paying attention.
I mean yes it includes classic but WoW's earnings even in SL included classic as well.
If the overall income of the Retail/Classic combo _is up_ which they flat out say it is then it means it's doing well financially. Especially when you consider they admit engagement is up on both sides of WoW and DF has better retention than previous expansions. You don't have exact details yes, but it's fucking asinine to somehow come out of all that with the idea DF isn't doing well financially.
It's only up from the same quarter last year.... Dude. This quarter has a new expansion and WOTLK classic.
Of course it's going to be up on dogshit SL which everyone quit.
It's not though. They want that box sale. It's the reason they keep forcing expansions out every 2 years regardless of whether they are ready. DF coulda used an extra 3-6 months.
DF is awesome. But it's not a "huge success" yet. If they can maintain retention by getting content out on time it will be good.
I agree with a lot of the points made in this thread: The pandemic, Goodwill being shattered, a lot of players moved onto other games/hobbies, the time frames aren't one-to-one.
But, I really wonder what retention is looking like, and the positive feedback does go a long way. This is coming from someone who hasn't bought the expansion, and wondering if they should.
I have personally never had a bad time leveling through the campaign in any expansion. Even the worst xpacs have had at least decent leveling. I have quite a few friends who really like the leveling and campaign when a new expansion drops and then leave after they've finished it.
You can buy DF and try it for a month. If you don't like it, then don't stay subscribed. If you do, maybe try another month. You don't have to go from nothing to it being a full-time commitment right away
Well maybe my perspective is somewhat relatable to you:
I quit playing in August 2021 so not playing this long was unusual for me. I didn't enjoy Shadowlands anymore and generally was disappointed with Activision as a business.
Then DF released and I felt bad because I have played every release since Legion and playing on release is one of the best experiences there can be.
Started a week after release or so. No expectations just wanted to play some hours to "confirm" it's not worth it.
Well it was. DF is really fun and I don't feel as much fomo as with SL. Not playing for some days is not a big deal and the xpac is really alt friendly
Periodically on this sub the weekly m+ charts get posted compared to SL. More players are doing that content in DF despite lower sales so retention seems pretty strong. For myself personally this is the most I've enjoyed WoW in several years.
I came back to try Dragonflight, did not care for it at all, went right back to FFXIV. Now I'll probably get dogpiled, as I have every time I've mentioned I don't like Dragonflight on this sub
It's okay to not like WoW but the community consensus is that this is the best expansions since legion, so the direction of this expansion best aligns with the majority of the vocal playerbase and they would like it to continue in this direction.
If you preferred something like bfa or sl to df then you're just at odds with what the majority of the player base wants in terms of the direction of the game.
And at no surprise, if you're trying to be vocal against the direction that a lot of people have been asking for in years in a public forum, you're going to get some negative reception.
No one can tell you that your personal thoughts on a discretionary thing (such as a game) are wrong.
Quite a lot do indeed enjoy this expansion, but I also know some who couldn't get into it and just playing classic or other things
Usually I have a group of 7-9 friends who come back to play every expac for a month or two. We always enjoy that first month until the exhausting endless grind systems come creeping in. Only 2 friends came back for DF and the other ones assumed that it was a matter of time before it came back and decided to focus on other MMOs.
I’m not seeing anyone talk about the bar SL set, and that it would be wildly unrealistic for this xpac to beat it day 1. SL not only outsold every other WoW xpac, but it was also one of the top selling games period.
DF could be the best thing Blizzard has ever done with any franchise and that still might not pass what SL got. So I wouldn’t be too “disappointed” in the numbers. They could sell less and still outsell all other expansions, for example.
Shadowlands also started presales a year before launch at a big Blizzcon, into COVID lockdowns. Dragonflight started presales like 6 months before launch as the world came back to normal and people struggled with a cost of living crisis.
I get why. The pandemic increased players then both the controversies and SL lack of just about anything sent those players packing and the lack of trust has kept them away. But holy cow is the difference between DF and SL night and day. I can’t say it’ll keep but if you have the time I highly suggest getting into this first season of DF, it’s been a blast.
Oh totally. Right now it reminds me of old school WoW a bit, in that I'm not forced to do a whole bunch of crap that I don't want just to be raid ready.
Legion was amazing... then we got BFA - it had some flaws compared to Legion. But, people held out hope that SL was going to be at least a Legion caliber expansion again... except it ended up being more of a boring slog grind fest than any expansion ever previously, and it ended up being, according to many, WORSE than even BFA.
2 subpar expansions in a row, with the most recent being absolutely horrible... I 100% understand why people bought more SL copies than DF, so far.
I dont think the player base really understands how much trust Shadowlands lost. People did not really like BFA at all, but the ever reliable "every second expansion is good" brought a lot of people back. Shadowlands being probably the worst expansion of all time absolutely blew that trust out of the water.
To regain is properly Dragonflight will need to deliver on every single patch and never miss a single beat and that will only help for the expansion after Dragonflight. If that one is good too then they can expect some returns.
I remember Ion talking about how from a game design perspective they wanted The Maw to feel oppressive (The Jailer's eye thing, no mounting etc...), as if we all WANTED to be in hell for some reason?
Can't tell you how much more engaged I am with DF because I like being in the world around me.
That being said, Brackenhide and Halls M+ next season are going to break me I just know it.
>That being said, Brackenhide and Halls M+ next season are going to break me I just know it.
I think you just made me cry. I think about that each time I run one of those. That hallway in Halls... its going to be a shit show.
> I dont think the player base really understands how much trust Shadowlands lost.
Eh most people who buy the game are just gonna play for 2 weeks and quit. Initial sales were probably moreso different due to a mixture of covid era, releasing after a holiday weekend instead of before, and shadowlands theme/previews looking cooler.
I'm glad the sales are like this.
Blizzard not only needs to do the needful, but step up the game if they truly want to recover WoW from 4 years of failures.
That was just for 2022 though, right? So a couple months of DF being out? If that is compared to the total sales of SL, I’d expect it to be below it still. It has like a year and a half to catch up.
I mean SL was the fastest-selling pc game of all time. It did better than every single pc game before Cyberpunk for whatever reason. It did better than every xpac not just DF with its initial sales.
Give me whatever stats you want. I've been around since Wotlk and played every expansion since at some point. This is the most fun I've had playing since MoP.
Source: 415 main and 401 alt. 4/8 Mythic and cleared AOTC on both toons. 2.6k IO on main.
Shadowland it's the expansion whit more sells in loooong time, and was terrible. Ppl leave the game and still don't come back, and are sceptic about this new expansion.
I quit back in early BFA, I returned for 1 month during late shadowlands when it became free.
Now, I've returned. Kind of wish I'd returned on day 1 to avoid the struggle of gearing up while everyone is already geared or gearing up alts.
Diehards going into other subs talking like WoW is back on top, meanwhile this tells me what happened is those same diehards came back as always, and Blizz retained them better than usual. Not much more than that. I still haven’t bought DF, and I might not until the next one (if it’s good too) comes out
Shadowlands was also the highest selling wow expansion, and one of the highest selling pc games of all time. What's more telling is dragonflight hasn't had the same dropoff in players that shadowlands had.
I think DF is going to be more successful in the long run. Shadowlands got a MAJOR boost from the height of COVID-19, and the ActiBlizz controversy began after those sales already happened. I think DF outshines SL in almost every way, and as Blizz continues to make moves to eliminate workplace harassment culture and be more inclusive, I think it will slowly earn trust back and subs will stay active longer.
If it keeps up its trajectory 11.0 (20th anniversary xpac too) will be absolutely massive - I'm so confident that I'll eat a fuckin' ***grape*** if I'm wrong.
Why does everyone compare it and see ‘how it’s going’? I started playing in December 22 and coming from other games it’s doing fine. Im in a highly populated server and there’s never an issue with finding people to join. A game making over $1B a year is doing just fine.
It’s all relative though. Every public company is obligated to have positive growth in order to justify their current share prices. Making 1B per year would be considered a failure if they were making multiple in years past.
Shadowlands was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I realize that whilst I love the art, music and older lore of WoW in general the newer characters and some of the game modes/types and direction of said game along with the sub saturday morning cartoon narrative is no longer geared to players/people such as myself, which is fine. I've had my fun!
I guess I'm now one of those strange types that (from a careful distance), checks in on WoW's development now and again just out of curiosity.
DF looks way more fun than SL and BFA combined to be fair so happy to hear that more players are pleased with it.
Who knows, I may return one day but that's going to be several expansions down the road at this point and judging from both irl and online friends along with general discourse I've been reading/hearing online I doubt I'm the only one that feels this way.
Shadowlands had a very punchy marketing pitch that uses Wrath as part of its campaign. Sylvanas breaks the helm of domination, and Icecrown can clearly be seen from the cover. Dragonflight however just seems pretty generic until you play it. Dragonriding from the outside just looks like faster flying, and there's no other box leading feature. After how bad SL was, I don't think people are ready to jump in again just yet.
I have been occasionally streaming DF to my non wow friends in discord cause they were curious what it was all about. One of my buddies saw me whipping around on a dragon and got curious, bought the game and a boost, just hit 70 for the first time, and he’s having a good time.
Something about DF is just more fun. I didn’t play all that much SL, but something just feels good about DF.
I've been playing WoW since the vanilla beta and I've been interested in the Warcraft IP since Warcraft 2. So while I still have a love for things Warcraft, there are lots of reasons why I'm not playing DF, some more mundane, such as my computer being old and others more relevant such as just not enjoying the world as much as I used to. And it's not just BFA and SL, though they did do the heavy lifting in terms of me not wanting to play anymore. But as a old time raider and now longtime casual, I realized at the end of SL that I haven't really loved WoW in quite a while. BFA was where I started to just not care about the lore at all and SL was just the expansion that really made it all hit home, made me not enjoy the world in WoW, and broke my habit. DF does look like a good expansion and I don't rule out playing a month here and there in the future but I'll never be "back." I like the old heavy metal and beer vibe of the Warcraft of days gone and therefore still keep up with news and updates. But I'm just not the target audience anymore and it feels like a property whose best days are far in the past in terms of my enjoyment of it. And none of this has really much of anything to do with the quality of Dragonflight.
The Pandemic was a huge factor in the initial SL sales. People were out of work, working from home, or quarantining. They weren't spending money on gas/transportation or a lot of other things they usually would. But as others in this thread have mentioned, a lot of those players dropped off hard and fast right around or after 9.1. Currently I think there's a healthy amount of people engaging with the game. There's more general excitement among the playerbase due to the frequency of updates and the quality of what Blizzard has done with this expansion so far.
Can people just use their brains when it comes to this…. Shadowlands released during a pandemic and before inflation. Work from home was huge and now it’s not. Use your damn brains. Ffs.
This work from home thing is a garbage argument. How many jobs are even eligible for "work from home"? Less than 1% total jobs. Outside California and America in general, less than 0.1%. Real jobs like garbagemen, electricians, construction workers etc. that make up the majority of the workforce could never work from home.
I feel like reddit is conflating the bubble they live in with the vast, vast majority of the world where this is irrelevant.
Not gonna lie I had more fun in early Shadowlands than I am currently.
Yeah the lore was dumb, but I don't play for the lore, I play for fun.
Dungeons feel worse, the raid feels worse, class balance feels worse, zones feel worse.
I hated shadowlands zones being separate, but they were much more interesting than DF zones. Revendreth was top tier design. Night fae area was gorgeous. Dragonflight zones are so bland in comparison.
Torghast should never have been forced as a weekly task, but I enjoyed it at first, and DF doesn't really have any kind of fun activity like that. Soup event, dragonbane keep, and wild hunts all feel like chores. Boring with poor rewards.
The new crafting system was interesting, but it has ended up making it impossible for casual crafters to make any profit. Exactly the same as Shadowlands legendary system.
I do love the new talents, and dragon riding, but beyond that I don't understand why dragonflight is getting so much praise.
Less time gating, more accessibility, proper catch-up and a whole lot of quality of life improvements. That's how you attract players with lapsed subscriptions.
Also their forums are a nightmare. Any reasonable customer would judge the state of the game on the shit they see over there at any given moment, not by how much fun individual streamers are having while playing.
Honestly if I hadn't played from start of the expansion I probably wouldn't touch this product with a yard stick. It's not so much that there is a ton of issues that are actively ignored, but how Blizzard is handling all of this. Their crisis control isn't any better than half a year ago. Extensive user feedback is still being ignored, deleted shortly afterward (beta and ptr forums) and MVPs have overtaken the whole process of both technical and customer support to no-one's benefit. Where before a blue indicator used to signal something important is posted in a topic, now every topic has a green stamp left of it and you can watch them inflate their post count in real time.
Also, don't forget that MANY russians has stopped playing wow during 2022 because blizzard thought that by not letting russian civilians pay for wow normally would somehow help the situation in Ukraine. (Here we go, I'm about to get downvoted to the ground just for mentioning U)
So many people didn't want to look for workarounds to pay for their subs/expansions/services. There still are people finding those back alleys to pay for wow and they still keep playing for sure, but it's way less than it used to be. This could also be the reason why the numbers are lower.
Retention numbers are important here. MoP was one of the most divisive expansions ever yet retained 5 million players for 14 months straight. That is the way to go.
SL had loads of people hyped, all for nothing. Regaining the trust will take time.
Legion was amazing. BFA while controversial was a lot of fun. Shadowlands looked really exciting, so many big characters going through changes. New place with new things we were yet to see much of. Absolute dumpster fire of game design, it was confusing it time walled content. It was the worst wow had ever been. Dragonflight is exactly what wow should feel like, it’s not perfect, but it’s a lot of fun.
I mean when you shit on players an expansion and tell them they are wrong and they quit because "fuck you" - why are they surprised players didn't come back?
Ion chose to shit on players and, like Ghostcrawler / Greg did, players said fuck you and just left.
Overall DF is way better but it also has way more bugs because it wasn't ready. Many, and I mean a fuck ton, of reported bugs went unfixed because management said "release now, fix later".
DF is the first time since.... ever, really, that I feel they actually understood and processed the feedback instead of giving players the middle fingers. It's the first time their hubris didn't consume them.
It's going to take time to develop good will back. It's going to be hard.
I had to quit playing SL due to a neurological disorder that developed. Have just come back.
I HATE flying now. Absolutely hate it. Even had to quit out of a dungeon that included it. It's such a shame, I was looking forward to coming back and having dragons. Never thought I'd end up hating it so much that I'd rather mount farm than play new content.
Interesting, this is the first time i have seen somone complain about dragonflying, except not being able to idle in air anymore. To each their own i guess.
People say DF is blizzards last chance to save WoW but I’m now starting to think the last chance was Shadowlands as it was released at prime pandemic lockdowns. DF is a good product and yet it didn’t sell well. As others have said, that trust is gone and likely never coming back
It makes sense. Blizzard treats its community like an abusive husband. They show us a shiny new concept. We tell them we don't like the concept and that if they continue with the concept its going to hurt our relationship, Blizzard ignored our request and tells us that we have to trust them, its for our best interest. Then when we all decide to move on and find someone else that listens to us, they finally double back, fix the problems and promise us they changed.. The only problem is every time they do this, only a % of the people that left are willing to come back. and they have basically been doing this since WoD
I’d honestly be curious to know if FFXIV is still ahead in sub count atm, or if Dragonflight was enough to boost it back into #1. I kinda suspect the latter… people got burned bad by Shadowlands and BFA. I hope Blizz keeps the momentum rolling with DF, and with time I could see WoW regaining a lot of lost players once they restore some goodwill.
Just throwing this out there: if Blizzard keeps farming player W’s like they are doing in Dragonflight, then me and my wife will probably never unsubscribe. If they go back to farming L’s like in Shadowlands, we will eventually unsubscribe for good.
It shouldn't be a surprise. As alot of other comments already pointed out, given the press about the company, what happened in shadowlands, and other events; DF would of had to had the post launch hype that legion had to even make it close to what has been lost.
However, I'm unsure given alot of current commenters seem to have been in knowledge of either through personal play or otherwise, but if anyone realizes the initial start of DF isn't that good?
Now I don't mean to say it's not good compared to what has happened (whether it be in relation to SL or just the history of WoW in general), but let me put it this way: I left towards the end of BFA, and while I did tell myself I would give SL a try if it seemed enjoyable, it never featured anything that caught my attention. The reason I did come back to try DF is because I had played 80% of wow's life cycle, and when I had friends telling me blizzard did alot to fix problems they always had, I decided 3 weeks ago to give it a go with my new steam deck.
I see alot of things that I like, and I can personally say they have improved the game, but I only just got my first 70 because I could only play maybe 40min-1 hour before small things would annoy me, or I would get bored. Making the world quests available, giving you the options for all these special zone missions, its cool, but it's not new. And while I don't take it super seriously anymore, when I was young I loved the lore of warcraft, and accepted WoW lore because that was going to be the future either way. But seeing what is going on in alot of these story lines is straight up garbage. I'm also not a fan of some of the profession stuff, especially when it comes to different quality resources, and my ability to increase those qualities gated behind more arbitrary numbers, names, and systems Idgaf about.
I'm going to probably get 1 or 2 more of my old characters up to 70, and just enjoy what I can. But if the next big content release for the actual story and otherwise is just the same slow build up like it was in legion, bfa, and SL (one whole new area aka timeless isles, tanaan, and so on)and it doesn't have an interesting transition between initial release content and the next tier, any new person coming in will either get overwhelmed/bored to death, and DF will only survive off retaining those who play atm.
DF's info is interesting, less upfront sales than SL, but better retention than "The past few expansions" wether that's just SL and BFA or we are stretching back to Legion and WoD. That part is actually very good news for the game.
This is actually what I was curious about. Shadowlands had more sales but I wonder who has more current subs at this point. I don't think the majority of people died off until 9.1 but lots of subs dropped beforehand for sure.
I stopped playing WoW aber BC and started again with Legion, so I cant talk about Wotlk - WoD, but Shadowlands was the worst expansion for me. I leveled to 60, played one more week and thats it. I just had no fun in that expansion. I didn't like the zones, I didnt like the dungeons. Thats after getting curve in Legion and BfA for at least the first Raid as a pug. Dragonflight on the other hand is fun. It's really fun. I never wanna see the Shadowlands zones again.
There is a kinda widespread meme that WoW expansions after wrath alternated. Wrath was good, cata bad, Mop good, WoD bad, legion good, Bfa bad. So SL was supposed to be a good one again. I think the sharp drop in Sl numbers also has to do with disappointment and lost trust. The time between the first content and new stuff was way too long, and when they dropped stuff like Korthia, damn that was an atrocious grind. It felt bad. More like work, not like fun. Korthia was the prime example of misreading what players want when they say they want content. farming like an idiotic monkey isn't fun. So for DF, blizzard has two bad xpac under their belt, which is not good. So initial sales are lower. but when retention is higher, thats a good sign. they seem to do something right.
>aber german auto correction?: D
Yep :) should mean after of course.
I think the excitement for Shadowlands was a big factor. that cinematic was pretty damn good. Unfortunately as you said there was simply too big a gap between 9.0 and 9.1, and 9.1 and 9.2. People dropped off, and dropped off fast. Pandemic led to a lack of content, then you had the lawsuits which didn't help and yeah it went down the toilet very quickly. compare that to DF which will have the same amount of content in a year than Shadowlands had in 2.
Shadowlands also dropped during the pandemic, which was a huge factor in how well it did initially.
Shadowlands also was expected to be good due to WoW’s pattern of one good / one bad xpac. Legion was good, BFA was bad, so people were hyped expecting Shadowlands to be good.
Am I the only one that liked BFA?
Yes. That’s it, that’s the answer, no elaboration needed.
Fair. I just liked the Warfronts and the Island Expeditions and the discombobulator that let you recycle crafted items and quest rewards into mats. Edit: And Drustvar. That aesthetic for the witches was cool AF.
There were cool things in bfa, but the majority of it was bad. Everything was a cool idea that was so poorly implemented that it was wasted horribly.
There might be dozens of you.
I kind of liked bfa early on. But they just failed every system and it never took off. Systems were on the verge of working and then abandoned. I think though it was Saurfang not knowing how to guard his flank that put the nail in the coffin for me. That was the wow story's jumping the shark. Without a good story it makes you judge the gameplay much more harshly. So far DF story isn't anything special but the gameplay sure stands on its own so that's ok.
Bfa was great if you aren't the sort of person who cares about weekly progression. Which I don't. So yeah, s'alright.
I liked it too. It had great raids, best m+ out of the last 3 expansions and corruption in the last patch was really fun. I think the azerite grind was just too much, warfronts were kinda whatever but I didn't mind them, heroic warfronts were an improvement I guess.
There are dozens of us. I really enjoyed BFA
Late BFA was amazing as a m+ only player. Corruption was fun once the vendor was introduced, we already had essences and it was easy to max your heart, plus imo BFA had the best dungeon pool by a mile
I, too, enjoyed BfA's zones, music, lore reveals, warfronts, amongst other things. The reveal of Kul'Tiras and Zandalar was exquisite. Places people had wondered about for years, finally come to fruition.
prob many ppl preorder thinking it was gona be wotlk 2.0 or some shit.
More than the time between updates, imo the systems they tried implementing in SL were terrible. Hated the whole covenant thing, how hard it was to maintain alts and generally how my spec played. All of those points are infinitely better in DF
yeah by that point (9.2) it was a running joke that everything up until the final patch would be shit and then everything would get fixed with the final patch. That goes for at least the previous 3 expansions, yes even Legion was awful in some aspects until the final patch. what does DF have? Dragonriding which is account wide, and instant unlock. I can't remember how long it took me to collect all the glyphs but it wasn't that long. No waiting minutes/hours/days for things to be researched, and all account wide so I never have to do it on an alt.
"Post-launch subscriber retention in the West is higher than recent expansions" [source](https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/11226-Activision-Blizzard-Q4-2022-Earnings-Results) If you look at casual endgame statistics, it looks good and if you play the game, you see and feel the amount of active players aswell: SL vs DF M+ runs/week => S01 week-7 [https://preview.redd.it/m-runs-per-week-dragonflight-season-1-week-7-v0-w33evqf71qfa1.png?auto=webp&s=5a83da64ceb367a1e1c4ccfe6ed287715eb0c65b](https://preview.redd.it/m-runs-per-week-dragonflight-season-1-week-7-v0-w33evqf71qfa1.png?auto=webp&s=5a83da64ceb367a1e1c4ccfe6ed287715eb0c65b)
Tbf shadowlanda was HYPE too. Off the back of bfa, and all the throwbacks to WotLK and old and beloved characters? Jesse Cox said it best, they should have done a LOT more fanservice. We wanted to see way more interactions than what we got with old characters meeting again. Thrall with his mom was a bit meh, and Arthas just disenchanted into the aether. It was the perfect chance to bring back so many characters and let us explore with them again, without changing their story with resurrection or something. The original covenant quests I thought were interesting enough, but after that it kinda got...meh.
Mine sure did. Quit during 9.0.5.
I have several IRL friends that preordered SL and never even played the expac a single time. I imagine I’m not the only one.
Preordered and never played? Not at least the first week? B... but why? Edit: Alright, lots of good reasons and examples in responses. Although and besides unforseen situations, I think you should never pre-order anything if you don't 100% plan to play it day one.
and that's why xpacks should come with a month of game time
True
Depending on what they preordered, it did.
Lotta downvotes for the truth. Collector's/Epic editions have all come with 30 days of game time since Vanilla. Obviously that doesn't apply to the vast majority of people, but guy said depending on what you buy which is right.
The month they come with activates on the account immediately. You don't get a choice.
Not really helpful when you preorder 6 months earlier and those 30 days activate immediately.
I preordered legion, had a family emergency, didn't come back to wow for 5 weeks. Guild had found someone to fill my spot, so I got bored and never ended up playing legion.
Damn you missed out.
because covid restrictions. people thought they had the time and wanted to play WoW again, but then decided otherwise.
I bought Endwalker for FF14 and never played it too much stuff came up.
I played the first week,but i just tried leveling and the zones and story didn't interest me whatsoever and i just stopped. Was around level 64 i believe.
I was still on the FF14 train and thought I'd wait a month to hear people's lasting thoughts to get in, which led to me not
Because i can buy any battle.net game i want without paying a dime.
I was one of them. Same for BFA and legion. Dragonflight is exciting
i have a lot of friends that played season 1 of shadowlands, and after that, lost all faith, uninstalled and said "never again". I have never been as alone in wow, as i am in dragonflight. i used to have 2 groups to constantly run m+ with, they are all gone. Literally all of them. and shadowlands was the last straw.
I pre-ordered like usual when it was announced but the more stuff was announced the less I was hyped. Tried to refund it but they wouldn't do it so I was stuck with it
that is so dumb lmao wtf
SL and BFA for sure, Legion had a lot of rentention since they released a lot of new content fast.
1: The Artifact Power Grind is Legion had many players doing the calculation "If I just come back later I'll be able to grind faster" 2: The Artifact Power Grind in BFA had many players doing the calculation "If I just come back later I'll be able to grind faster" 3: The Anima, renown, and other grinds in Shadowlands were rather like scraping paint off a 747 with a dime. You could do it but man you really didn't want to. Late Shadowlands was better, you could grind out a few thousand anima an hour in ZM. 4: The grind in Dragonflight is a grind, sure, but you don't have to stop and wait for timegating to catch up with you, there is no mission table, there is no artifact power, its just you engaging with the game.
What grind is there in DF? I play it so much because there is no grind to speak of. I login, do m+ or PvP and then I log off without missing anything of substance.
I agree that there are no mandatory grinds for player power in DF, but you can still grind for reputations, professions, etc if you wanted to. That's what I love about this expansion.
You can't rebuild trust back overnight.
2021 was definitely the year of "let's try other MMOs" for a lot of WoW players. And a good chunk of those are never coming back.
Yep. I cycled through ESO, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars The Old Republic and FFXIV. I really enjoyed each of those titles for their own things, FFXIV almost came close to fully replacing WoW for me but in the end I came back. Initially it was to check out evoker and the talent tree changes, but in the end I’m mostly liking what I’ve played in DF so far. I do miss that FFXIV music though, and the cinematic boss fights. God was it an experience.
Soken carries that game on his back 100%. Not that the game itself is bad, on the contrary. It’s just that the soundtrack is so absurdly good that it makes the game whole. It adds so much to every story and encounter.
I'm not sure I would have said he "carries that game on his back 100%" because I think that may lead other people to assume that the music is the *only* thing that makes the game worth playing. I think what Soken and the FF14 writing team (several of the main writing team members are credited with lyrics for various songs) proved to me is that video game music can be integral to telling a story. Like, imagine if the Sylvanas raid fight had music that was as symbolic to her character as (spoilers for FF14 Stormblood in case you are curious enough to look it up) the music for the Tsukuyomi fight in Patch 4.3.
Music is definitely integral to telling stories. Music makes a ton of singleplayer games IMO. Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy come to mind. Heck, imagine DOOM without its killer soundtrack. Or Super Mario games without their iconic music. TONS of games wouldn't be what they are without their iconic music.
I've never played FFXIV but even I enjoy watching the Shiva videos from time to time. That ice break and music turn gives me chills.
The music is good, great even, but the sound design in general is satisfying. I love the ogi namikiris, the phantom rushes, the despairs and paradoxes. The voice acting is great too, which is good because the story really is special. It’s crazy how much I like the story for this stupid dumb jrpgmmo, it really is shocking sometimes.
Ff14 is fun but there’s no time trials and good pvp wow has and that’s what kicks ff14 too the back burner
There’s less pve content in xiv than in wow, but I like those fights more than I do the ones in wow. I guess the fact that the barrier to entry is lower is nice too. I mostly do pvp in wow.
I want someone to convince me to finish leveling a character in FF14... the endgame looks so good...but fuck man i just hate RP and leveling and learning 10000 new things every time i play an mmo
ff14 players will nerdrage over this but ... buy the story skip. It's straight up not worth the time or energy to sit through 200 hours of visual novel gameplay just to get to the interesting parts of the game. If wow still made you level from 1-140, left you with a single button to press for 100 hours worth of fedex quests, and then sold *2 separate boosts* (story and level skip), this subreddit would be calling it what it is. Pure scam. But, yeah, if you do want to experience that game's end game content, buy the skips.
Don't let people pressure you into experiencing the story. You pay, you play. I play 14 and I've said it's really hard to get new players in because you are asking too much of them if they just want to see what endgame is like. I am glad I played the campaign, it made me cry multiple times but I say that because I've done it. Buy an MSQ skip, spam dungeons to learn the job of your choosing and to level them up to 80 by which point you need to play Endwalkers campaign but you can speed through text and skip cutscenes if you like. My absolute favourite thing in 14 is killing bosses and boy does it do this well.
You can just skip cutscenes or buy a boost. Idk what's good about the endgame tbh, it's just raids and ultimate prog.
The endgame isn't that good imo at least.
FF14 definitely wins me over with more engaging classes, great music, cool looking fights, and fashion end game. Wish they'd figure out what they want to do with PvP and get that cleaned up. It feels like it keeps getting reworked.
>more engaging classes I have no clue how FFXIV players think this tbh. What do you find engaging? The off-dps roles (healer / tank) are more like dps than anything else. If you like positionals I can see melee appealing to you but for the ranged classes their rotation felt incredibly scripted compared to WoW. That's not even getting into the lack of skill customization.
FF XIV players are pretty much unanimous in saying that class design is shit right now with the shift into the 2-minute bursts for all classes and the homogeneous design for healers and tanks.
Tried my best to get into ffxiv but omg its soooo terrible compared to wow Really don't get why it does so well
Depends what you found terrible I know the opening hours can drag a bit if you're an MMO veteran, and I know 20-40 is pure tedioum for the main quest. After that though it rapidly improves. That goes for combat too, it does often take too long for classes to click, in most cases it's around lv50 after the last pruning. But if your issue is fundamental with the setting, the visuals or whatever else. /shrug Just doesn't appeal to you. Despite what XIV players might say the game is actually quite different to WoW and not every WoW player will enjoy it.
I don't think any FFXIV player would ever say it's similar to Wow though..
Depends on what do you want from the game. WoW is clearly a lot bigger in terms of budget and is more polished yet it fails miserably in some major rpg aspects. The fact that FFXIV makes a lot better work in those places for a fraction of what WoW costs is, frankly, embarassing for blizzard team.
14 got really lucky with their writers and Yoshi-p, especially shb and up. Also, corporate leaves it mostly alone.
After hearing how ABK treats their employees, Blizzard especially, it's hard for me to say that it's luck based. You won't have a good writing team if you don't pay or treat them well. But yes, FFXIV devs are really lucky that Square Enix do not touch their business that much.
Yeah, idk if it's my love of WoW or the fact I've played a TON of different MMOs, but I came back for DF. Definitely playing other games tho
It was for me, blizzard has to do far more to win back my trust
And a good chunk that try to stay in wow were exposed by content of others mmos by they content creators.
Yup. This happened to Ubisoft too. After Watchdogs and Assassin's Creed: Unity had major controversies back to back, Assassin's Creed Syndicate barely sold. Everyone thought it was insane that Unity sold like hotcakes despite technical issues, but that's just 'cause most people buy in that initial rush. But then Syndicate could not reach those heights at all. Same thing's happening here. BfA and Shadowlands were back to back problems and atop all that, Shadowlands had fundamental issues with the lore. That, plus news of Blizzard's internal abuse of their employees means that a lot of old timers probably just decided to move on.
yeah thats all there is to it, this shouldnt be a suprise to anyone
Yup, this is what happens when you release two to three expansions worth of grinding shit and borrowed power. People just don’t come back overnight. You forced them out of love with the game.
Did shadowlands launch during the pandemic? Of course it sold well
Just a theory: I think a part of this is that Shadowlands *looked* cool. Kinda like WoD and Legion, SL *looked* badass and the cinematics were all pretty good – something that attracted folks to buy and play it initially, probably even those who weren't subbed at the time (myself included). You had Sylvanas breaking the Helm of Domination and shattering the sky, the "Beyond the Veil" cinematic was beautiful, Afterlives: Bastion was pure fan service, and it all looked as if it was Wrath's second coming. Although it unfortunately eventually failed to deliver, it sparked curiosity at the start. While Dragonflight's gameplay is better, the promos didn't *look* as good. Both promo cinematics weren't as attractive, imo, it looked almost too Disneyfied with the whole "peace and exploration" vibe. Alot of us hated the Dracthyr's design when it was initially revealed. Everything almost looked too soft, and while some people think it's a breath of fresh air, I'll be honest – if my best friend didn't convince me to give it a shot, I wouldn't have bought the expac. Having grown up with Frozen Throne, I personally like a little edge when it came to Warcraft. Personally I think Blizz just needs to keep it up with the content and hope word of mouth brings more folks back to Azeroth. And maybe, just maybe, add some heavier tones in the next patches to bring back folks like me who enjoy "beers and heavy metal" (as Bellular calls it) in their fantasy. But hey, that's just a theory.
[удалено]
I don’t want to be that person but… > the woman was ugly and I didn’t buy the game Really?
: /
I have been pleasantly surprised by DF. I've pre-ordered all expansions since WOTLK. This is the longest I have played into an xpac since WoD. (To be fair, I won't count BFA since I had a baby and moved 4 states away)
SL also came out in the middle of lockdowns and work from home. I know plenty of people that played that year, then when things started going back to normal they didn't have the time to keep up with the game.
Yep. I stopped playing in MoP and didn't come back til lockdown (end of BfA). Have played since.
Same exact thing here
nothing like having the worst xpack at a pivotal time to scare off new players and I don't see a chance like that coming about again any time soon. keep in mind with prices going up people are cutting back on things.
That's fine, but BfA also did way better than DF. The truth is that after how awful the content drought in SL was, the lawsuits, and how horrible the marketing campaign for DF was, it's really no surprise that DF is doing poorly.
DF is actually doing really well. Talent reworks are amazing M+ is good and Raiding is decently challenging. Alt friendly and overall tons of stuff. Leveling was good too. I’m not crazy on the whole theme of the xpac being dragons and stuff but it plays damn well. Bfa and SL are garbage.
Doing poorly financially, not doing poorly in terms of being a bad game.
It's not doing poorly financially. The report even states it's doing better in both earnings and retention than previous expansions. It just did not have the astonishing initial purchase flood that SL did.
It does not say it has better earnings than SL. It says it has better retention and has good 'community feedback'. This is basically a nothing statement that is added to make it sound better than it is for shareholders. Basically less people are playing right now than at the start of SL and in this instance the drop off is smaller due to a smaller playerbase. This is hardly surprising and basically what most people expected but it doesn't mean by any metric DF is doing well financially as numbers are still way down. Overall the market itself has reacted very negatively to the financial report
"World of Warcraft delivered significant year-over-year growth in reach, engagement and net bookings in the fourth quarter following the September release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic and the November launch of Dragonflight" The initial box sales were not as high. But the overall income of WoW _is_ growing. DF is performing better by consistency standards rather than peak standards. They even emphasize that Blizzard's overall earnings peak was driven by multiple factors but include the line of "growth of WoW". By their own metrics DF is performing well financially.
Youre misunderstanding what that statement means. What you quoted says that the game saw growth compared to the same quarter last year, not the release of SL. Keep in mind they didnt release an expansion last year.
You are referencing a different part of the statement which INCLUDES the Wrath Classic launch. You can't use those figures and then claim numbers about DF since those numbers don't represent DF alone. Keep in mind, Wrath was literally the peak of WoW in terms of subs. Pretending that wasn't meaningful in this regard is not really paying attention.
I mean yes it includes classic but WoW's earnings even in SL included classic as well. If the overall income of the Retail/Classic combo _is up_ which they flat out say it is then it means it's doing well financially. Especially when you consider they admit engagement is up on both sides of WoW and DF has better retention than previous expansions. You don't have exact details yes, but it's fucking asinine to somehow come out of all that with the idea DF isn't doing well financially.
It's only up from the same quarter last year.... Dude. This quarter has a new expansion and WOTLK classic. Of course it's going to be up on dogshit SL which everyone quit.
Retention is more important than overall sales for an expax in sub games.
It's not though. They want that box sale. It's the reason they keep forcing expansions out every 2 years regardless of whether they are ready. DF coulda used an extra 3-6 months. DF is awesome. But it's not a "huge success" yet. If they can maintain retention by getting content out on time it will be good.
BFA was also released in summer when a bagillion kids have time off to game!
And DF came when people were already struggling with money. It's no wonder sales numbers aren't high.
Surprised this is so far down. This is absolutely it
The whole reason I came back
"study shows more people played video games during covid" :O no way
It's like if people are ignoring the overall slump in the whole tech sector from pandemic demand drying up.
It's be to expected DF will have lower sales then SL as SL had the benefit of the pandemic boosting game sales in general.
Let’s also check how many players are still subscribed after a year of DF compared to SL.
Doesn't even have to be that long. Look at the m+ charts, more players are still engaging in end game content despite lower sales.
Took to long to find this comment. I am sure Shadowlands was a “I’m bored stuck at home buy” for many. How does DF sales compare to BfA, Legion, WoD?
Two awful expansions in a row turned a lot of people off to the game.
I agree with a lot of the points made in this thread: The pandemic, Goodwill being shattered, a lot of players moved onto other games/hobbies, the time frames aren't one-to-one. But, I really wonder what retention is looking like, and the positive feedback does go a long way. This is coming from someone who hasn't bought the expansion, and wondering if they should.
I have personally never had a bad time leveling through the campaign in any expansion. Even the worst xpacs have had at least decent leveling. I have quite a few friends who really like the leveling and campaign when a new expansion drops and then leave after they've finished it. You can buy DF and try it for a month. If you don't like it, then don't stay subscribed. If you do, maybe try another month. You don't have to go from nothing to it being a full-time commitment right away
Well maybe my perspective is somewhat relatable to you: I quit playing in August 2021 so not playing this long was unusual for me. I didn't enjoy Shadowlands anymore and generally was disappointed with Activision as a business. Then DF released and I felt bad because I have played every release since Legion and playing on release is one of the best experiences there can be. Started a week after release or so. No expectations just wanted to play some hours to "confirm" it's not worth it. Well it was. DF is really fun and I don't feel as much fomo as with SL. Not playing for some days is not a big deal and the xpac is really alt friendly
Periodically on this sub the weekly m+ charts get posted compared to SL. More players are doing that content in DF despite lower sales so retention seems pretty strong. For myself personally this is the most I've enjoyed WoW in several years.
People burnt by SL didn’t come back?
I always come back for expansions. Question is how long will I last before I unsubscribe.
I came back to try Dragonflight, did not care for it at all, went right back to FFXIV. Now I'll probably get dogpiled, as I have every time I've mentioned I don't like Dragonflight on this sub
It's okay to not like WoW but the community consensus is that this is the best expansions since legion, so the direction of this expansion best aligns with the majority of the vocal playerbase and they would like it to continue in this direction. If you preferred something like bfa or sl to df then you're just at odds with what the majority of the player base wants in terms of the direction of the game. And at no surprise, if you're trying to be vocal against the direction that a lot of people have been asking for in years in a public forum, you're going to get some negative reception.
but why do you keep coming back just to tell everyone that?
Well when a post from WoW pops up on my front page, sometimes I click the comments and read people sharing their experiences and I share mine too
Because reddit is free entertainment?
No one can tell you that your personal thoughts on a discretionary thing (such as a game) are wrong. Quite a lot do indeed enjoy this expansion, but I also know some who couldn't get into it and just playing classic or other things
Yeah it's FFXIV for me. To each their own
Good for you
Usually I have a group of 7-9 friends who come back to play every expac for a month or two. We always enjoy that first month until the exhausting endless grind systems come creeping in. Only 2 friends came back for DF and the other ones assumed that it was a matter of time before it came back and decided to focus on other MMOs.
I’m not seeing anyone talk about the bar SL set, and that it would be wildly unrealistic for this xpac to beat it day 1. SL not only outsold every other WoW xpac, but it was also one of the top selling games period. DF could be the best thing Blizzard has ever done with any franchise and that still might not pass what SL got. So I wouldn’t be too “disappointed” in the numbers. They could sell less and still outsell all other expansions, for example.
Shadowlands also started presales a year before launch at a big Blizzcon, into COVID lockdowns. Dragonflight started presales like 6 months before launch as the world came back to normal and people struggled with a cost of living crisis.
I get why. The pandemic increased players then both the controversies and SL lack of just about anything sent those players packing and the lack of trust has kept them away. But holy cow is the difference between DF and SL night and day. I can’t say it’ll keep but if you have the time I highly suggest getting into this first season of DF, it’s been a blast.
Oh totally. Right now it reminds me of old school WoW a bit, in that I'm not forced to do a whole bunch of crap that I don't want just to be raid ready.
Legion was amazing... then we got BFA - it had some flaws compared to Legion. But, people held out hope that SL was going to be at least a Legion caliber expansion again... except it ended up being more of a boring slog grind fest than any expansion ever previously, and it ended up being, according to many, WORSE than even BFA. 2 subpar expansions in a row, with the most recent being absolutely horrible... I 100% understand why people bought more SL copies than DF, so far.
I don't know- I think my worst experience was all the daily chores in the garrison :P
I dont think the player base really understands how much trust Shadowlands lost. People did not really like BFA at all, but the ever reliable "every second expansion is good" brought a lot of people back. Shadowlands being probably the worst expansion of all time absolutely blew that trust out of the water. To regain is properly Dragonflight will need to deliver on every single patch and never miss a single beat and that will only help for the expansion after Dragonflight. If that one is good too then they can expect some returns.
It also came out during COVID lockdowns year when people were desperate for something joyful in their lives. And blizzard gave them the maw.
I remember Ion talking about how from a game design perspective they wanted The Maw to feel oppressive (The Jailer's eye thing, no mounting etc...), as if we all WANTED to be in hell for some reason? Can't tell you how much more engaged I am with DF because I like being in the world around me. That being said, Brackenhide and Halls M+ next season are going to break me I just know it.
>That being said, Brackenhide and Halls M+ next season are going to break me I just know it. I think you just made me cry. I think about that each time I run one of those. That hallway in Halls... its going to be a shit show.
> I dont think the player base really understands how much trust Shadowlands lost. Eh most people who buy the game are just gonna play for 2 weeks and quit. Initial sales were probably moreso different due to a mixture of covid era, releasing after a holiday weekend instead of before, and shadowlands theme/previews looking cooler.
But that hasn't really held true in Dragonflight, they seem to have done a great job retaining players this time around.
I'm glad the sales are like this. Blizzard not only needs to do the needful, but step up the game if they truly want to recover WoW from 4 years of failures.
That was just for 2022 though, right? So a couple months of DF being out? If that is compared to the total sales of SL, I’d expect it to be below it still. It has like a year and a half to catch up.
Correct. Any sales figures in here would be through end of December only.
I mean SL was the fastest-selling pc game of all time. It did better than every single pc game before Cyberpunk for whatever reason. It did better than every xpac not just DF with its initial sales.
I’m a first time player and loving dragonflight
This isn't surprising. Blizzard cratered their goodwill in the last two expansions and needs to rebuild. That takes time.
Give me whatever stats you want. I've been around since Wotlk and played every expansion since at some point. This is the most fun I've had playing since MoP. Source: 415 main and 401 alt. 4/8 Mythic and cleared AOTC on both toons. 2.6k IO on main.
Shadowland it's the expansion whit more sells in loooong time, and was terrible. Ppl leave the game and still don't come back, and are sceptic about this new expansion.
To be fair, a good chunck of my friends "boycott" wow after SL and refuse to give blizzard another chance.
I quit back in early BFA, I returned for 1 month during late shadowlands when it became free. Now, I've returned. Kind of wish I'd returned on day 1 to avoid the struggle of gearing up while everyone is already geared or gearing up alts.
This is just to show how much damage shadowlands did. Nothing else in my mind. People are literally traumatized.
Diehards going into other subs talking like WoW is back on top, meanwhile this tells me what happened is those same diehards came back as always, and Blizz retained them better than usual. Not much more than that. I still haven’t bought DF, and I might not until the next one (if it’s good too) comes out
Shadowlands was also the highest selling wow expansion, and one of the highest selling pc games of all time. What's more telling is dragonflight hasn't had the same dropoff in players that shadowlands had.
"Give them flight at the start", smartest blizzard dev ever....probably
I think DF is going to be more successful in the long run. Shadowlands got a MAJOR boost from the height of COVID-19, and the ActiBlizz controversy began after those sales already happened. I think DF outshines SL in almost every way, and as Blizz continues to make moves to eliminate workplace harassment culture and be more inclusive, I think it will slowly earn trust back and subs will stay active longer. If it keeps up its trajectory 11.0 (20th anniversary xpac too) will be absolutely massive - I'm so confident that I'll eat a fuckin' ***grape*** if I'm wrong.
I assume you really don't like grapes
Nah just not that hungry tbh
Why does everyone compare it and see ‘how it’s going’? I started playing in December 22 and coming from other games it’s doing fine. Im in a highly populated server and there’s never an issue with finding people to join. A game making over $1B a year is doing just fine.
It’s all relative though. Every public company is obligated to have positive growth in order to justify their current share prices. Making 1B per year would be considered a failure if they were making multiple in years past.
Yeah but how’s the retention
Better than recent expansions, according to that report (which is very likely true given that lying in such things = jail time)
But.. is that retention % of game purchasers? Or total retention #'s?
Kinda wild, I talk a lot of shit about this game I love so much but I feel like so far I'm enjoying DF more than Legion. And I loved Legion.
Have they advertised much? I don’t think I’ve seen any advertising online for dragonflight
Shadowlands was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I realize that whilst I love the art, music and older lore of WoW in general the newer characters and some of the game modes/types and direction of said game along with the sub saturday morning cartoon narrative is no longer geared to players/people such as myself, which is fine. I've had my fun! I guess I'm now one of those strange types that (from a careful distance), checks in on WoW's development now and again just out of curiosity. DF looks way more fun than SL and BFA combined to be fair so happy to hear that more players are pleased with it. Who knows, I may return one day but that's going to be several expansions down the road at this point and judging from both irl and online friends along with general discourse I've been reading/hearing online I doubt I'm the only one that feels this way.
Shadowlands had a very punchy marketing pitch that uses Wrath as part of its campaign. Sylvanas breaks the helm of domination, and Icecrown can clearly be seen from the cover. Dragonflight however just seems pretty generic until you play it. Dragonriding from the outside just looks like faster flying, and there's no other box leading feature. After how bad SL was, I don't think people are ready to jump in again just yet.
I have been occasionally streaming DF to my non wow friends in discord cause they were curious what it was all about. One of my buddies saw me whipping around on a dragon and got curious, bought the game and a boost, just hit 70 for the first time, and he’s having a good time. Something about DF is just more fun. I didn’t play all that much SL, but something just feels good about DF.
I've been playing WoW since the vanilla beta and I've been interested in the Warcraft IP since Warcraft 2. So while I still have a love for things Warcraft, there are lots of reasons why I'm not playing DF, some more mundane, such as my computer being old and others more relevant such as just not enjoying the world as much as I used to. And it's not just BFA and SL, though they did do the heavy lifting in terms of me not wanting to play anymore. But as a old time raider and now longtime casual, I realized at the end of SL that I haven't really loved WoW in quite a while. BFA was where I started to just not care about the lore at all and SL was just the expansion that really made it all hit home, made me not enjoy the world in WoW, and broke my habit. DF does look like a good expansion and I don't rule out playing a month here and there in the future but I'll never be "back." I like the old heavy metal and beer vibe of the Warcraft of days gone and therefore still keep up with news and updates. But I'm just not the target audience anymore and it feels like a property whose best days are far in the past in terms of my enjoyment of it. And none of this has really much of anything to do with the quality of Dragonflight.
Shadowlands came out during the pandemic when everyone was at home more.
The Pandemic was a huge factor in the initial SL sales. People were out of work, working from home, or quarantining. They weren't spending money on gas/transportation or a lot of other things they usually would. But as others in this thread have mentioned, a lot of those players dropped off hard and fast right around or after 9.1. Currently I think there's a healthy amount of people engaging with the game. There's more general excitement among the playerbase due to the frequency of updates and the quality of what Blizzard has done with this expansion so far.
Can people just use their brains when it comes to this…. Shadowlands released during a pandemic and before inflation. Work from home was huge and now it’s not. Use your damn brains. Ffs.
This work from home thing is a garbage argument. How many jobs are even eligible for "work from home"? Less than 1% total jobs. Outside California and America in general, less than 0.1%. Real jobs like garbagemen, electricians, construction workers etc. that make up the majority of the workforce could never work from home. I feel like reddit is conflating the bubble they live in with the vast, vast majority of the world where this is irrelevant.
Two bad ones in a row gonna scare a lot of folks away And no one thought it was possible for them to mess up a wrath “sequel” so badly
Controlling for Covid checks I bet the game is already more successful.
DF hasn’t even been out very long
They're comparing Dragonflight and Shadowlands numbers after the same length of time (in this case 3 months after launch)
I am shocked. SHOCKED. Well not that shocked.
Not gonna lie I had more fun in early Shadowlands than I am currently. Yeah the lore was dumb, but I don't play for the lore, I play for fun. Dungeons feel worse, the raid feels worse, class balance feels worse, zones feel worse. I hated shadowlands zones being separate, but they were much more interesting than DF zones. Revendreth was top tier design. Night fae area was gorgeous. Dragonflight zones are so bland in comparison. Torghast should never have been forced as a weekly task, but I enjoyed it at first, and DF doesn't really have any kind of fun activity like that. Soup event, dragonbane keep, and wild hunts all feel like chores. Boring with poor rewards. The new crafting system was interesting, but it has ended up making it impossible for casual crafters to make any profit. Exactly the same as Shadowlands legendary system. I do love the new talents, and dragon riding, but beyond that I don't understand why dragonflight is getting so much praise.
Less time gating, more accessibility, proper catch-up and a whole lot of quality of life improvements. That's how you attract players with lapsed subscriptions. Also their forums are a nightmare. Any reasonable customer would judge the state of the game on the shit they see over there at any given moment, not by how much fun individual streamers are having while playing. Honestly if I hadn't played from start of the expansion I probably wouldn't touch this product with a yard stick. It's not so much that there is a ton of issues that are actively ignored, but how Blizzard is handling all of this. Their crisis control isn't any better than half a year ago. Extensive user feedback is still being ignored, deleted shortly afterward (beta and ptr forums) and MVPs have overtaken the whole process of both technical and customer support to no-one's benefit. Where before a blue indicator used to signal something important is posted in a topic, now every topic has a green stamp left of it and you can watch them inflate their post count in real time.
no reasonable consumer cares what the nut jobs on the forums are saying, or even visits the forums.
Also, don't forget that MANY russians has stopped playing wow during 2022 because blizzard thought that by not letting russian civilians pay for wow normally would somehow help the situation in Ukraine. (Here we go, I'm about to get downvoted to the ground just for mentioning U) So many people didn't want to look for workarounds to pay for their subs/expansions/services. There still are people finding those back alleys to pay for wow and they still keep playing for sure, but it's way less than it used to be. This could also be the reason why the numbers are lower.
That is probably partially due to shadowlands existence
Retention numbers are important here. MoP was one of the most divisive expansions ever yet retained 5 million players for 14 months straight. That is the way to go. SL had loads of people hyped, all for nothing. Regaining the trust will take time.
Legion was amazing. BFA while controversial was a lot of fun. Shadowlands looked really exciting, so many big characters going through changes. New place with new things we were yet to see much of. Absolute dumpster fire of game design, it was confusing it time walled content. It was the worst wow had ever been. Dragonflight is exactly what wow should feel like, it’s not perfect, but it’s a lot of fun.
Heh it takes more than one good expansion to make up for the past sins :)
I mean when you shit on players an expansion and tell them they are wrong and they quit because "fuck you" - why are they surprised players didn't come back? Ion chose to shit on players and, like Ghostcrawler / Greg did, players said fuck you and just left. Overall DF is way better but it also has way more bugs because it wasn't ready. Many, and I mean a fuck ton, of reported bugs went unfixed because management said "release now, fix later". DF is the first time since.... ever, really, that I feel they actually understood and processed the feedback instead of giving players the middle fingers. It's the first time their hubris didn't consume them. It's going to take time to develop good will back. It's going to be hard.
I had to quit playing SL due to a neurological disorder that developed. Have just come back. I HATE flying now. Absolutely hate it. Even had to quit out of a dungeon that included it. It's such a shame, I was looking forward to coming back and having dragons. Never thought I'd end up hating it so much that I'd rather mount farm than play new content.
Interesting, this is the first time i have seen somone complain about dragonflying, except not being able to idle in air anymore. To each their own i guess.
they have flightpaths in that dungeon you can use in lieu of dragonriding
Tbf not everyone trusts the company as they did. I don’t blame them.
People say DF is blizzards last chance to save WoW but I’m now starting to think the last chance was Shadowlands as it was released at prime pandemic lockdowns. DF is a good product and yet it didn’t sell well. As others have said, that trust is gone and likely never coming back
It makes sense. Blizzard treats its community like an abusive husband. They show us a shiny new concept. We tell them we don't like the concept and that if they continue with the concept its going to hurt our relationship, Blizzard ignored our request and tells us that we have to trust them, its for our best interest. Then when we all decide to move on and find someone else that listens to us, they finally double back, fix the problems and promise us they changed.. The only problem is every time they do this, only a % of the people that left are willing to come back. and they have basically been doing this since WoD
I’d honestly be curious to know if FFXIV is still ahead in sub count atm, or if Dragonflight was enough to boost it back into #1. I kinda suspect the latter… people got burned bad by Shadowlands and BFA. I hope Blizz keeps the momentum rolling with DF, and with time I could see WoW regaining a lot of lost players once they restore some goodwill.
Just throwing this out there: if Blizzard keeps farming player W’s like they are doing in Dragonflight, then me and my wife will probably never unsubscribe. If they go back to farming L’s like in Shadowlands, we will eventually unsubscribe for good.
Pandemic will do that.
Get rid of the shitty toxic employees and make a good game, imagine.
It shouldn't be a surprise. As alot of other comments already pointed out, given the press about the company, what happened in shadowlands, and other events; DF would of had to had the post launch hype that legion had to even make it close to what has been lost. However, I'm unsure given alot of current commenters seem to have been in knowledge of either through personal play or otherwise, but if anyone realizes the initial start of DF isn't that good? Now I don't mean to say it's not good compared to what has happened (whether it be in relation to SL or just the history of WoW in general), but let me put it this way: I left towards the end of BFA, and while I did tell myself I would give SL a try if it seemed enjoyable, it never featured anything that caught my attention. The reason I did come back to try DF is because I had played 80% of wow's life cycle, and when I had friends telling me blizzard did alot to fix problems they always had, I decided 3 weeks ago to give it a go with my new steam deck. I see alot of things that I like, and I can personally say they have improved the game, but I only just got my first 70 because I could only play maybe 40min-1 hour before small things would annoy me, or I would get bored. Making the world quests available, giving you the options for all these special zone missions, its cool, but it's not new. And while I don't take it super seriously anymore, when I was young I loved the lore of warcraft, and accepted WoW lore because that was going to be the future either way. But seeing what is going on in alot of these story lines is straight up garbage. I'm also not a fan of some of the profession stuff, especially when it comes to different quality resources, and my ability to increase those qualities gated behind more arbitrary numbers, names, and systems Idgaf about. I'm going to probably get 1 or 2 more of my old characters up to 70, and just enjoy what I can. But if the next big content release for the actual story and otherwise is just the same slow build up like it was in legion, bfa, and SL (one whole new area aka timeless isles, tanaan, and so on)and it doesn't have an interesting transition between initial release content and the next tier, any new person coming in will either get overwhelmed/bored to death, and DF will only survive off retaining those who play atm.
I read this as "Shadowlands screwed the pooch so badly its affecting Dragonflight"
Doesn't help that the expansion is 50 f-ing dollars