I’m not the one that needs proof because I’m not claiming that “the players” hold any particular belief. What I’m saying is that there are other reasonable possibilities as to why subscriptions are down.
It’s like a criminal trial where the prosecution is trying to prove someone is guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” and all the defense has to show is that there is “reasonable doubt”. While you disagree with what I suggested you didn’t eliminate it as a possibility.
Fact is, we have no idea how much subscriptions have gone down and we have several possible reasons why, content, age of the system, competition and a move to mobile.
Now I’m not claiming that any one of them is the dominant reason. Most likely they all have some impact. What I’m saying is that none of this is proven which means the people blaming it all on Shadow Lands have not proven their case. We just don’t know the reason.
Well that’s your theory but it’s not proven. We’ve been arguing this for a while and most of the “evidence” that I’ve seen is either forum opinions (this forum or others), “data sources” that seem to have come from nowhere or company surveys where owners have commented on them and it’s not clear if the comments are taken out of context.
Thing is, with statistics you have to be extremely careful. You have to insure that your sample size is large enough and that your sample is unbiased and random.
So far we don’t have that so none of us know exactly which in a list of possible reasons is causing subscriptions to fall off or how far they have fallen.
Honestly hoping that the opening scene of Dragon Flight is like the final scene in the second Bob Newhart show. We wake up in bed with our wife from the old show, and Shadowlands was all…just a dream.
I mean, if you view it realistically - The company spontaneously losing millions of players during the time of Shadowlands, saying its a mere coincidence that has nothing to do with the expansion seems like wishful thinking.
They didn’t come from no where? The sources are all over the place, but in the large overview of words exchanged I recognise it can be skimmed without contemplation –
Pretty self-explanatory where you can find that one lol
Go into any large guild and ask them their overview on Shadowlands as an expansion.
Youtube or Twitch.
WoW / Guild / Gaming Communities on discord who played or still do play the game.
However, I will say life is unpredictable and although it is highly unlikely a large handful of players spontaneously quit in Shadowlands unrelated to the expansion — It’s still a possibility that I’ll acknowledge. Because as you said –
Which is rather the core truth of it.
Out of curiosity - What’s been your most enjoyable aspect of the Shadowlands? Either lore, character or gameplay wise.
What if we spent both BfA and SL in some pocket portion of the Emerald Nightmare that remained from Legion? The pre-launch for DF is us waking up, effectively removing the past two expansions from being relevant in history/lore.
i dont think we should have gone to the shadowlands at all. nor should they have retconned what the shadowlands even are.
we could be on azeroth, a part of major events unfolding. related to characters and societies that we know/their evolution. we have magic, technology–everything for a good story with diverse plot directions
instead, we went to space afterlife. here, uther is blue, garrosh is a trinket, saurfang…is he also a trinket? arthas turned into a soul shard, then into nothing. khadgar is also dying now, cause why not
I’d love for them to reveal the Shadowlands we visited was the ‘Inbetween’ realm of living realm and the true afterlife — Those that ‘die’ in the Shadowlands either move forward to their true destination, or are reincarnated into the physical realm of the living.
Personally before the Shadowlands started, I was hoping they’d do the Tartarus treatment from the Percy Jackson books:
Where after one is slain, their essence is scattered & it takes some time before they reform.
They can be contained after being slain, through one means or another.
This would also give a great further incentive to the ‘Soul-Traders’ from both the Brokers and the Ethereals.
Either of the above would also mean – Arthas, Garrosh, and a handful of other sorely missed characters would have a chance to rise again - either for a reconciliation (not so much redeem, but accept & finding their own peace), actual redemption or to cause chaos again.
… It’d be cool with the reincarnation thing, if there was a reveal by one of the Eternals you could track it. Personally I’d love our boy Ursoc to come back & just have peace with his twin-brother Ursol.
Well *** IF *** they lost millions of subscriptions during ShadowLands sure but people were saying the same things during BFA. And in neither case did anyone provide any credible evidence that they were losing millions of subscribers.
As for data coming from “all over the place”, that’s the same as data coming from nowhere. What we need is data coming directly from WG. If we don’t have that then how can you rely on the data?
You stated more data is required, then claim too much data is not good enough?
If various sources corelate the wide-playerbase of opinions & reduces other distinctions, it would indicate a higher probability of truth from that those of which are being measured.
However –
I understand that would be the highest probable data, however if that’s the only source of information you’ll come to accept - then really any objective or subjective data either of us provide isn’t going to assist the debate go forward & land it at a stalemate.
Also, I’m curious towards your answer of this question —
It’s not a question of more or less data, it’s a question of accurate data. More data is useless if it’s not accurate. As the old software saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out”.
And yes, without that data we have no idea how “the players” feel.
The things I liked about Shadowlands were the zones, the story, the quests, the covenants, the dungeons and mostly the dredgers of Revendreth
The definition of ‘Data’ is facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.
I provided a handful many which build up exactly that. Sure, it’s not a final verdict that’s bang on precise to the way you’d deem it fit - but that does not regard it as inaccurate. That’s just a lazy excuse not to accept the information.
“Ignorance is an enemy, even to its owner. Knowledge is a friend, even to its hater. Ignorance hates knowledge because it is too pure.”
The story!??
Albeit there were some stories I liked, but for the most part I feel it sucked – Especially in various elements of the Shadowlands lore conceptually etc.
But if that’s your personal opinion, that’s fair enough I obviously can’t really dispute that lol - just rather stumped by it.
The massive bones & constant fleshcarving around Maldraxxus being explained as the eternally harnessed soul of Galakrond would had been cool.
Yes that’s exactly what data is, facts and statistics. But if they are facts and statistics taken from a biased source (i.e. internet forums) then the results are biased and unreliable.
That’s why I provided further corelating data as a backbone, which has been repetively dismissed. Statistics are often cross-referenced and correlated with various results and/or experiments. To the best of anyone’s ability that’s exactly what I provided with all the information that’s publicly available.
That being said, although I agree forums alone are an unreliable source - I wouldn’t necessarily call them exactly biased - as any opinion can be posted upon them. However forums aside, the above paragraph still stands.
Your statistics all have the same flaw, they all come from forums of one sort or another. Certain types of people enter their opinions in forums. So if you have multiple forums then you have multiple examples of the same bias.
And having Content Providers read those statistics that all have the same bias doesn’t help.
Only example of forum I provided was the WoW forums. Everything else was from what public opinion could be grasped -
Not a forum.
Not a forum.
Not a forum.
Not a forum.
I will say however, for the actual forums – That they’re unreliable because forums are generally infested to the brim by those who LOVE to hate the video games they are playing.
As for the content creators, I will be humble and argue against my own feedback that a mild sort (but certainly NOT most, or all) of those – would be biased. Given YouTube content creators tend to desire feeding peoples rage to rile them up bait hook & pull up their ad rates etc.
Although just about every lore CC or fan-page I know of (including art blogs) has either raged or quit WoW around Shadowlands (Or applied their own headcanon to push forward).
↑ — That all being said, neither of us will be able to say whether or not its been a big success or a huge failure or not - with absolute certainty, without floods of information of their direct sub numbers and pol-review data to why they decreased or increased.
Regardless of not having that ‘absolute certainty’ however - does not deem the data as being completely invalidated though.
If Shadowlands had been one central hub connecting several zones, each of which could have been visited in any order at any time without having to finish each zone’s “story” before moving on to the next, I wouldn’t hate it so much. But that’s not what it is.
lol