tl;dr: Quitting post. If you don’t like these kinds of posts, move on to somewhere else!
I remember back in Cataclysm, when for the first time ever, WoW subscriptions fell instead of grew. Blizzard was very quick to point out that it’s playerbase was aging and outgrowing the game, and this was the real reason for the decline. That may be true, but one would think that new players would have been able to replace them. I think the real reason was that Cataclysm launched with less zones, less dungeons, and worse writing than Wrath, which had come before. Cataclysm was the first time my sub lapsed since I started playing, though only for a few months. It wasn’t terrible, but it was a step down from Wrath. It seemed excusable, given the world revamp that also happened, even if some of the zones were probably better before. As the expansion went on, the raids also got worse; the first tier was good, with plenty of bosses in varied environments, but then Firelands came out with a low amount of bosses and then Dragon Soul launched, also having a low amount of bosses but also reusing environments for most of the raid. It seems that Blizzard was more focused on its next expansion than the current one.
Mists of Pandaria was an improvement on Cata in most ways, even if the story was still being mishandled. I honestly believe that it would have exceeded Wrath’s sub numbers if the expansion weren’t marketed around pandas. For this reason it’s kind of hard to talk about MoP’s success or failure, but it launched with much more outdoor content than Cata and managed to greatly exceed Cata’s raid content over time. Dungeon content was the only thing that suffered here, but it was excusable given how much else was included. It seemed like things were looking up for WoW.
Warlords of Draenor was an attempt to correct the marketing issues that MoP faced. In that regard, it succeeded, with a cool (if underexplained) concept. It also had an excellent leveling experience… and then it fell apart completely. Once again dungeon content was neglected, but outdoor max-level content was as sparse as Vanilla. There was NOTHING for the casual player to do in this game besides leveling alts, but with a max level of 100 that was starting to be untenable (and I never really liked leveling alts that much anyway). Blizzard had stopped releasing sub numbers some time before this, but it was probably WoW’s low point. I was probably subbed for less than half of the expansion’s length, but managed to do pretty much all of the content besides BRF and the back half of Highmaul (outside of LFR, at least). If it seemed that Cataclysm was sacrificed to start work on MoP, for WoD it was obvious. The only thing besides the leveling content that people lauded in this expansion was the raiding, but even that was massively curtailed compared to the previous expansion. Also, Blizzard destroyed warrior gameplay in this expansion, so even the limited content that existed wasn’t even fun to play.
Legion was seen as a return to form for Blizzard. World Quests revitalized the world, the writing was actually pretty good (cheesy, maybe, but it embraced it correctly), they fixed warriors for the most part, and there was not only plenty of raid content, but Blizzard actually made new 5-man dungeons, and supported them for endgame with M+! There were individual pitfalls with legendaries and off-spec artifacts, but every expansion has these types of quibbles; the fact that I’m even bothering to mention them speaks to how flawless Legion was otherwise. If every expansion could be as good as Legion, WoW would be untouchable.
BFA was not as good as Legion. It couldn’t be; Legion was not the result of Blizzard’s default skill, but rather the result of sacrificing the previous expansion and also a wake up call at how badly WoD performed. Everything just seemed a little worse than Legion; the HoA was so boring compared to the Artifacts, World Quests failed to evolve, the writing was just a rehash of MoP, and dungeons were obnoxiously designed (Seat of the Triumvirate, a late Legion dungeon everyone hated, seemed to be the prototype for this) and there were less of them. Raiding remained strong, but as WoD showed that’s not enough to carry an expansion. Unlike WoD, the expansion was not cannibalized for the next. This was another expansion I did not remain subbed for the entire time. During this time the Blitzchung controversy erupted. It’s amazing how much I run into people who stopped when this happened. It wasn’t enough to make me stop, but it certainly was a messed up situation.
This brings us to Shadowlands. We’re mid expansion, so it’s hard to say what the legacy will be. 7.1 brought a new dungeon and better outdoor content (Korthia’s actually kind of fun, if not quite reaching the same heights as Timeless Isle). Raiding is still strong, and before last week I would have said that if 7.1 took 4 months instead of 8 to make I never would have unsubbed at all this expansion.
But we’re no longer “before last week”.
What Blizzard has done is unconscionable. You all know what I’m talking about here. It seems morally wrong to give that company any more money until the bad actors are purged. This has been going on so long that everything bad about Blizzard is put into a new light. When you create a culture of drinking at work and harassing employees who can’t trust their HR to fix things, that impacts development and support for your game. When GMs can’t help you with simple problems, it’s because they’re overstressed and overworked. When bugs go unfixed, it’s because the devs are partying or playing CoD instead of fixing bugs. When feedback goes ignored, it’s because the devs became so arrogant after WoW’s success that they became blind to their own failures. I think after Vanilla the devs might have been proud of themselves, but one success doesn’t create this level of toxicity. It probably took until Cata, which I think not coincidentally is when subs dipped for the first time. This arrogance likely translated into a personal level, resulting in the abuses we’ve heard at Blizzard. MoP’s poor marketing gave the devs an excuse to not try hard enough, which resulted in WoD. WoD might have been a wake up call, but Legion’s success gave them unearned confidence, since it was only due to sacrificing WoD. WoD’s failures likely caused permanent sub loss, so the devs wouldn’t cannibalize any more expansions, but without that, combined with the abuses at Blizzard, prevent any expansion from being truly good.
My sub expires today. It has expired many times before, but this time is different. Normally I’m just taking a break due to boredom or burnout. This time, WoW and battle.net are uninstalled from my computer for the first time since Vanilla. I’m not bored or burnt; Shadowlands may not be great, (jesus christ i’m so sick of sylvanas) but it was fine. I just can’t give Blizzard any more money until they fix their company. I really think WoW can be great again, without sacrificing expansions, if their employees can focus on the game without being distracted by harassment and alcohol.
