take a look at twitch right now, i see no personality streams. just gameplay streams. the highest streams in wow atm are legit gameplay streams, people running M+ dungeons and arenas and crap… the “personality” streamers tend to stream during primetime for North America, when the majority of fans are awake and will tune in, not early AM hours like right now.
Also you’re not allowed to stream different games under a different game. So when these personality streamers decide to stream somethign else, they are listed under the category for the other game, and their viewers contribute to that game’s overall viewer count…
Except those gameplay streams aren’t being done by no names, they’re being done by twitch streamers that people recognize. And as said before, interest in twitch streams is not an indication of active subvs/people logging in. However, I’ll give you that atm I think the populations are still pretty high in WoW. I don’t think I’ve said that over all they aren’t. My point and that of the OP (and many others in this thread) is we’ve been noticing a decline of players in places where they were more numerous weeks before. So far I think you might be the only one in this thread who has noticed an inverse. We’ll have to see over the next month or two who is right. Blizzconline might be enough to keep people on the hook until 9.1 depending on what they promise. Time will tell I suppose.
Another thing you’re neglecting is there have always been people like you and the OP, who claim wow is dying every single patch since even vanilla (even though these doomsayers tend to still be subbed and remain subbed themselves and still play the game). It’s literally the #1 meme associated with wow. yet it keeps going 16 years later.
BG’s are popping pretty fast and RBG LFG listings are 2 plus pages long during prime time… PvP is doing just fine. That’s what I do so everything is fine from my end .
Saying the game is dying is irrelevant to the game losing population. People said the same in MoP, WoD, Legion, and BfA and guess what, the game didn’t die but it sure as heck lost a ton of subs. And I’m not saying the game is dying, just that the population is decreasing at a noticable level. And two months into a new xpac that’s worrying. Whether or not people doomsay doesn’t change the fact that people are noticing less people around from a few weeks ago.
Of course, it’s the best way to gear. For all the faults SL has, Blizz finally got PvP gearing right. Balance is in shambles as the recent tourney showed, but the gearing is really good. So good that many PvEers are moving to it to gear which I think is astounding lol
not necessarily that it lost a lot of subs, more that it just lost the abnormally high subs that arrived on the hype train after Cataclysm’s announcement, though the theme for mop was quite off-putting, though alot of the drop off was the excessively long stagnant 5.4 patch that lasted 15 months. We saw similar during WoD, where there was another strong hype train, especially due to the excessive marketing campaign blizzard had (so many tv commercials, billboards, magazine spreads, etc for wod), so brought in a lot of players who probably weren’t the correct target audience for a old looking timesink that was a 10 year old mmorpg at the time, and couple that with another 15 month of no new content for 6.2.
15 months of no new content would kill even expansions considered great expansions such as Legion, imagine being in argus, having completed all of what 7.3 had to offer and stuck no new content for 15 months straight, or worse, imagine 15 months of a BFA patch luckily the later never happened else wow would honestly probably be dead for reals.
Not particularly astounding when you realize people who didn’t pvp are still ~10 ilvls behind. If you have an alt (or main) that’s really hurting in the meta, for example, and one that’s not it’s reflected in ilvl now too
Yeah the hype train was strong for WoD. And everything they promised it would be a Blizzcon, had they been able to actual deliver, might have went on to be the best xpac to date. Ah, what could have been lol. And for sure a lot of the hype subs for SL have dropped. They came in, tried the content, and dipped. Happens every xpac. The real question now is are those the only subs that have left or are the subs that were projected to stay also leaving. Another thing to consider is Blizz has been pushing that 6 month sub option hard over the last year so a lot of people still have active subs, they just aren’t logging in. So even if still subbed, MAUs might be down drastically as well. Which is why I hope Blizzconline offers some changes that will keep those players subbed and will start logging in again. And bring back players who did unsub. We’ll never know the numbers of what’s really happening sadly, Blizz likes to keep those hidden these days, even breaking addons that can help track it lol.
Yep. The only difference is that this time I’m not letting my wife or guild friends guilt me back in, lol. My wife’s still playing every now and then. She likes her zombie crafting thing for Maldraxus, and most of my raid crew is still raiding it seems.
And normally, if I’ve been bored with the content, I’ll still stick around and help them out, and do some casual stuff on the side. But IDK, from BFA til now I just lost a lot of interest in the game to the point where I don’t care if I lose everything I built up over the years.
Discord helps with this. I can still play Jackbox with my guild, and a lot of them play FFXIV when WoW’s boring, so I’m dipping in over there from time to time.
9.1 is likely the last chance they have to appeal to me. But this constant lack of communication or even acknowledgement of the issues I have with the game right now lead me to believe that it’s not something they’re concerned with.
Completely agree about WoD: you can tell how much potential the expansion had just by going through the intro sequence but they just couldn’t follow through to deliver on it.
Speaking for myself, I WILL NOT PVP for gear. I do not enjoy PVP, and I’m not doing it. Now, I don’t raid above LFR or do M+ anymore, but if I did and was told the only way I would be able to effectively gear up was via PVP, I would quit the game before I did that.
I actually am quitting, just for a different reason. I’m quitting over the level squish completely borking legacy content at 60 (despite assurances that this wouldn’t happen), and the complete failure to address or even acknowledge it. I have 5 days of game time left.
And because it got to the point where I’m leaving over it, while fixing that would’ve been enough to keep me at least for awhile, just fixing that now won’t be enough to bring me back. There would have to be significant improvements made in other areas too before I would even consider it. Bugs, the general state of the game, SL being so unrewarding to play that it feels like clocking in to work, etc.
My guild has been fairly active still with the core players, I noticed there are a few folks less but nothing major yet.
Hoping for a 9.0.5 patch with heritage armor releases (idk why it takes them so long and stretched so far out… 1 race from each faction 3rd or 4th patch now??)
I do belive the OP is correct my friends list is now barren some have just quit others moved on to more friendly game with better rewards. If all the company cares about is Esports and Raids congradulations you did it! the people you want to leave are leaving and soon we will be calling you wildsstar 2 and we all know how well that bombed.
I was actually just noting the similarities between WoW and Wildstar at this point: both games seem to have this idea that they can just give casuals and midcores a condescending pat on the head and tell them to go sit in the corner without consequences.
I just picked up my Esteem title for 100 factions at exaulted on my hunter. It was 1 of the last I wanted to get. If this raid or die BS doesn’t stop soon I too will pack up and leave and find a new game.
luckily the later never happened else wow would honestly probably be dead for reals.