I was perusing the latest Blizzard press release, because I’m bored and not getting any calls at work, and noticed this interesting tidbit:
- The World of Warcraft ® team is delivering more content faster than ever before following the November release of the Dragonflight™expansion for the Modern game, and subscriber retention in the West remains higher than at the equivalent stage of recent Modern expansions.
While it’s not the most ‘glowing’ endorsement ever, it seems to run counter to the most prominent doomers on this forum and their arguments lately.
Of course, I expect this news to sway no one and am sure people will say it’s all lies, but I thought it was worth sharing that news. 
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There are two counter arguments i can think of to that off the top of my head.
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the expansion didnt sell as many copies as other expansions. So only the more dedicated players are around anyway.
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they did a promotion on a 1 year sub just before the expansion came out. So anyone who bought one but is unhappy with the game, cant actually have left yet.
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I don’t doubt that they are retaining a higher percentage of active players. I would also think there are vastly less people actually playing the game after the Shadowlands disaster.
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Dragonflight ain’t perfect, but it has been the best expansion we got in recent years.
Maybe Blizzard finally learned that making a good product actually retain players instead of developing nonsensical mechanics meant to keep us grinding forever?
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Well, we’ve had more people buying bulk subs since BfA, so the comparison matters a bit more than if we were talking about MoP or Cata. Couldn’t imagine why DF would bleed less subs than BfA and SL. Real mystery 
It’s just how their MO goes: They make a bad xpac, numbers trend downward, they push the employees harder to push more content, they gain players through promotions and events, then they slack off… and the cycle continues.
All it means is that the people who stuck around and tried DF mostly stayed, but without knowing how much they lost due to BFA and SL the picture it paints is inconclusive.
My take is that amibigious news means they’re polishing the turd. Companies like to highlight obvious wins, and downplay loses. They never announced DF box sale numbers because they couldn’t brag about how it outsold SL and then only told us it didn’t outperform SL when they had to.
So if all they can do is say retention is high that means they don’t have good things to report.
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Hey, that scarf collection isn’t going to complete itself!
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Well i mean BFA was getting patches every like 6 months, it was a good paste … SL was just bad since people worked from home and patches took 8 + months . now everyone is back at the office and everything is back to normal
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Im one of the foolish people that bought a 1 year sub so i cant actually leave 
But the trading post does have me log on each month even if i dont actually want to play.
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Im trying to tell you 
Seriously though im sitting at a friends online about to hit the unsub button then i get hit with -
“Oh man! did you see the stuff dropping on the TP for next month? That one (insert) would go good with your hunters mog…”
“What? No i didnt, let me check it out…”
and i get caught up and forget all about unsubbing 
OH SHINY! 
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This doesn’t surprise me because the buy-in from the casual “box sales” crowd was smaller for Dragonflight; which was the main topic of conversation around its release, as far as numbers go.
Historically, about half the people who buy a WoW expansion stop playing a month later. They level up a character, look around a little, and then quit until the next expansion, at which point they’ll buy it again and do the exact same thing.
And just to repeat: That’s HALF the people who buy each expansion. A HUGE number of box sales. (And, btw, this is why leveling is never going away. It’s the ultimate casual content.)
Dragonflight’s initial sales were poor. If that was to more hard-core players (and, yes, everyone posting on this forum is hard core), then it’s not surprising that a larger %% of DF purchasers are sticking around. Because the “snowbirds” didn’t buy Dragonflight.
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I’m here till february but I haven’t played More than thirty minutes a week in 3 months.
Couldn’t tell you how many more are in my position
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Do you feel the rapid-fire content releases are a deterrent to you playing more?
Well this is gonna be a popcorn eating entertainment fest.
Its basically against certain rules to say anything positive about any aspect of WoW.
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Did you play through BfA and/or SL? I skipped both nearly entirely, and DF would have been my most consistently played expansion since MoP if my RL didn’t become serious business at launch. Those of us returning seem to be the ones staying rather than people who tried to keep up with the last four years.
I got a year sub and I probably would have unsubbed for a little while if I didn’t have it. I always think about that when people mention higher sub retention in DF.
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Ironically, I played the most in shadowlands because I was trying to hit gold cap and gold was easy. I succeeded and then promptly took a break at the end, after keystone master.
Even though it’s the most played expansion besides burning crusade, I really did ‘hate’ it. And by hate I mean, struggled to find fun and succeeded
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