Why? Because money comes from most players, not a minority of tryhards who are mad at covenants forcing them to learn to play without stacking meta/fotm and roflstomping through content.
During all expansions of any Mmorpg there’s a huge number of players joining but the majority leave after a month, that is a fact of mmorpgs, your goal as a dev is to keep as big of a part of those returning/new players and shadowlands will absolutely achieve this.
Why?
-Covenants are a return to serious RPG design, real meaningful choices, you get to be part of a special group, slowly unlock stuff including , know allies and progress a story. Not only is this core system that will keep going throughout the expansion but it provides a certain flavor we didnt have before as they are seen as a sub class society of sorts which is a strong rpg element.
-Torghast, this will be a huge success because unlike what many wannabe elitists want to believe, there’s a huge group of players who enjoy solo activities and playing by themselves, Torghast not only provides a great challenge for fun but a great repeatable activity for everyone that loves solo content. And with the amount of tower and power combinations as well as the possibility of trying it on other classes that will attract a huge amount of players
-Story is going to be far more interesting, no silly war that ends with a peace as expected, major lore characters, Sylvanas, Jailer and most likely arthas in later patches, far more interesting storyline than previous ones
-M+ design is going back to a more casual side, nothing like bfa’s tryhard MDI made dungeons and trash of bfa, back to healthy dungeon design with all covenants giving dungeons different buffs so all covenants get some form of boost so tryhards cant stack 5x
-And of course raids, which have always been the standard part of WoW
In other words, yes, many tryhards wiil ragequit because they arent allowed to stack OP classes and be optimal by changing their build for every single boss, but there will be a far larger wave of casuals that are gonna love shadowlands and will easily replenish the losses.
Plus many people who obsess with meta quitting would improve the community, WoW needs less tryhards who call things that dont perform as meta “gargabe” or call anyone not playing meta that they “dragging their group down”, with such people gone, community instantly improves