FFXIV has been steadily growing in popularity, and it’s not slowing down. Shadowbringers was one of the best periods of the game’s history and it was preceded by a solid expansion - and before that was arguably the best period of the game’s history. There hasn’t really been a lull like there has so many times with WoW. WoW is actually on the decline, still. It’s hanging on but Blizzard is driving it into the ground. Just because it’s still vocally talked about in the west doesn’t mean it’s more popular globally either.
They make very, very few changes based on feedback. If something makes it to beta, it almost never gets changed - regardless of how negatively it was received. Plus the major chest bug reached live with 8.3, and they released a half finished product that is horrendously designed and awfully received and expect players to be just fine with it as is.
It was also likely, “ready” to be shipped earlier, but they wanted to avoid an even longer end-expansion drought.
Clearly there is an understanding of why it is bad which is why you have over looked it.
BfA has more forms of content than any other expansion besides Legion which was about on par.
However the systems that drive the current gameplay is what is the issue with the game. Unrewarding content, weird gear balances, lack of cohesion of design, regrinding the same azerite traits, being pigeon holed into specific content to get AP which you have to do, absurdly rewarding daily or weekly chores that feel mandatory etc etc.
Noone can deny there is “alot to do in BfA” the problem is finding something you want to do.
Doubtful. Randoms are popping. Seeing rbg groups even though the seasons over. Arena groups. People still doing mythic. Zones loaded. Major zones loaded like org and uc. Not sure where this decline is.
Like to raid? Go raid. Like to do rated? Find people for arena/rbgs. Like to do solo pvp? Queue up some randoms. Like to level? Go level. What can’t you do that you could in other expansions?
Telling people just to go play a different game when they’re mentioning specifics that the game does well isn’t healthy behaviour. Blizzard could learn from Square and… y’know, actually communicate and not cherry pick and use lawyer speak. And they can stop using Twitter as their platform.
Blizzard desperately needs a shake up and needs to start valuing their players again. They used to.
In terms of high level PvE and PvP? Yeah. But they can’t do that. The game was built with two factions in mind and it can’t really just drop the factions.
The two factions cause problems when it comes to the more hardcore community though, and we see that right now. But that’s just one thing - the game itself has a lot of issues and that stems from Blizzard wanting to keep the player busy, whether it’s fun or not.
Uhh EU had 186k Arena participation for BFA S2 (114k Horde 72k Alliance) down from 412k in BFA S1, that’s 55% less in participation in a patch that introduce Conflict & Strife essence.
I’m comparing the company’s handling of issues and the intent with the design. Blizzard wants to keep players busy, Square wants to tell a story and have players enjoy it. And Square largely fixes the issues if it’s glaringly obvious rather than stay silent and do nothing whilst the population continues to bleed into one pool.
I don’t think you’re getting that Blizzard has taken an immensely profitable IP and handled it about as poorly as possible without driving it into the ground.
Are you on Blizzard’s payroll? Seems like you are. You’re ignoring the fact we have proof that the game is declining (in terms of PvP at the very least) but you don’t care.
FFXIV has been healthy and growing – but at a snail’s pace. They announced a combined 1 million subs between 3 of their MMOs back in like… 2015 or something. And as far as anyone knows, FFXIV didn’t hit 1 million subs standalone until just before Shadowlands with its hype train rolling in. If it ever did – given the 1 mil figure comes from essentially armory scanning, not an official report. And people DO make alts, even if not to the extent WoW players do for obvious reasons. I have 3 max level characters and 2 other alts.
There’s also the fact that they TOLD us about the combined 1 million, setting a precedent for announcing milestones. Yet the only thing they’ve said about FFXIV on it’s own is something along the lines of “more subs than ever!”, which is meaningless, but given the specificity of the 1 mil report, implies FFXIV may not have reached 1 mil standalone yet.
FFXIV is healthy. But it’s not on some fast track to overtaking WoW or something.
All I’ve ever heard is how bad of an expansion Stormblood was. Let’s not sugarcoat that with “solid”.
WoW is definitely historically garbage at timing patches and expansions. They frontload too much. That said, Legion was a lot better about it (the staggered raid releases helped), and BfA will likely be similar if it doesn’t take until the placeholder date to release the xpack.
I don’t think anyone is actually disputing this. WoW has been on the decline since basically Cata launched. It’s possible it reversed temporarily when Legion launched after the trainwreck that was WoD’s total lack of content, but if that happened, it’s surely back to normal by now.
I think it’s more likely that they’re trying different directions because doing what they’d always done STOPPED WORKING. Like I said, game has been in decline since Cata. It’s not like it just started in Legion or BfA.