I am not really concerned with “Subscriber count”.
On youtube i am subscribed to a billion content creators… but I have gone months without watching a video of theres.
What would quantify this would be concurrent logged in users…
I kind of just see that the game is still running after 16 years and, if the revenue starts drying up, it won’t be anymore. If I can still play, then enough people must be enjoying it and playing, too 
Anything else is conjecture since we don’t have the numbers or the trends, really.
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It’s been trash since Mists ended, but we’re addicted and this is literally the worst period in gaming. Everything is bad.
Lets take a look at my original comment, which you replied to with a press release regarding the speed at which the expansion was sold:
You’ll note, my comment is referring to long term subscriptions. Your post had nothing to do with the point I was making. Either provide evidence that subscription purchases translate into long term subs, or we’ll assume that you have conceded your argument.
The original comment is irrelevant when you chose to pick that one point I made, and decided to have a discussion about that. All i’ve said was that Shadowlands is undeniably one of the most successful, if not the most successful expansion to have ever released in WoW’s history. There’s proof, studies and research behind my statement. Here’s one article I mentioned before that proves my point:
Do you have a case for this expansion NOT being as successful as the studies and numbers show?
You are correct.
However speculation is the only thing we have to truly go on at the moment. If we had real numbers we could forecast it out, provided they gave us the numbers for the past 2 expansions as well.
Concurrent users online is the metric i feel would provide you with the most accurate data if it was broken out by
Hours
Days
Weeks
Then we could watch this number over the course of the next several months and make our determination on the success based off that.
everything outside of that, is conjecture at best.
You’re conceding the argument then? Got it.
Glad we can agree that expansion purchases offer no guarantee of long term subscriptions.
My opinion is solely my own, but I’m burnt out by this expansion.
Life is too busy for me to keep up with all the weekly requirements.
That’s just me though; I wish the game the best.
Who cares about anything “games media” has to say about anything?
These are the same people who awarded goty because of political views.
Lmao
Sure, if that’s how you want to see it then I can’t stop you. But most folks will agree that this expansion is undeniably one of the most successful WoW expansions to release, regardless of subscriber drop off or not which again as another poster so kindly pointed out is:
A stunning endorsement of the news sites and verified organizations. /s
If you think high numbers indicate high quality, then surely you would also think BFA and WoD are great, second best expansion packs, right? Or does having a higher number means the previous expansion is bad?.. I wonder what you will think if the next expansion has higher sales numbers then Shadowlands. 
I’m not gonna even bring up Cyberpunk 2077’s 8 million sales and pre-orders and ask what you think of that. Because i’m sure you would cry tears of ultra joy like it’s the second coming of Ya-sus (jesus), over that high quality game because of so many sales, right?
argumentum ad populum is a poor choice for debates. i suggest working on this.
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During these expansions, many players lauded the WoW dev team as to how amazing the content was when it was relevant content. The problem with GD is that players forget seemingly instantly as to the state of player’s opinions back in time, and that causes for a lot of confusion. When folks experienced those expansions you mentioned, there was praise and when problems were shown, the next expansion would go onto fix them. Again, this is the Dev team listening to player feedback and implementing changes that folks refuse to give them credit for. GD will ALWAYS complain, but it does not diminish the past history of the game constantly evolving and changing for the better for us to reach the iteration of WoW we are at now.
MMO reviews are the worst things to look at. People who come in review the leveling and basic end game before heading off to never write about that game again till the next expansion in any kind of review process.
Imagine using that as a source. Pure desperation.
Also let’s not forget that a lot of these review sites get a lot of money under the auspice that they will be flattering.
if 2010 to 2020 has taught us anything dont believe polls dont believe statistics and do not trust those who claim to be correct
I am not desperate for validation…
I have no interest in Shadowlands success of failure. I make no money if it succeeds, and I play other MMORPG as well so its failure just merits more time in those other games.
My only investment, and the whole reason for this post… Is to try and determine if the loudest members of the community make up the majority opinion of the game.
Since the numbers are not available… reviews have to be used.
If there were numbers, this post wouldn’t exist.
The idea that the forums are this giant unrepresentative sample that gives a negative view of everything in WoW is false. Over time, having seen these forums over more than a decade, it’s become apparent that the forums are actually highly representative. The “vocal minority” is a minority only in the sense of being vocal, not in being naturally discontent.
But to recognize why this is the case, you kind of have to see the forums over the course of years, and you also have to distinguish between “thread creation posts” and “thread reply posts.” And almost everyone judging the forums doesn’t make that distinction and bases it solely on thread-creation posts - what the forums “front page” looks like when they check it.
The vast majority of posts on the forums (of course) are replies. Overwhelmingly they’re replies. A very slim portion of posts are the creation of new threads. Thread creations are what trend unnaturally negative at all times in WoW history. People typically never create a thread to say how much they love something in the game. If you were judging the forums by all the negative thread-creating posts, you’d be right to say that they’re just a negative vocal minority. But most people on the forums are just the type of people who like forums and like sharing their opinions. They’re not naturally negative about the game - probably the most common trait is people who are naturally procrastinating (that’s a slight joke - but we all know that a lot of people here are posting at work when they should be working). As I said, it’s not thread creation posts, but the weight of replies that tells you what the forums are really like.
And at many, many, many times in WoW’s history, people starting threads attacking various parts of the game were just as likely or more to have the bulk of the replies to their thread telling them why they’re wrong, why the game is fine, why they suck, and generally defend whatever aspect of the game was being attacked.
The forums, when all of that is taken into account, are pretty representative. What you notice over time is that when the forums get overtaken by a single complaint, and when the replies weigh far more heavily in the direction of backing the complaint rather than mocking the complainer, then the complaint is probably true, a real problem, and will get locked in as conventional wisdom as to something that was a bad issue within an expansion as people look back.
This doesn’t mean the expansion as a whole is bad, that everyone will quit, or that it stops people from playing by itself. To take an older (less controversial) example - at the start of MoP, it was a massive source of complaint on the forums that Blizzard had overdone it with dailies and rep grinds. It was widely agreed on the forums that this was a problem. It’s generally accepted that they did a poor job with this on launch. One patch later, Blizzard put in a mechanic to speed up rep gains for the initial MoP factions that also worked on an account wide basis, while new reps were tuned to give bigger gains. That largely took care of the problem.
Anyhow, one bad feature doesn’t sink an expansion. But it is a problem. And the forums are pretty representative in identifying a real problem when the complaints are overwhelming (when replies are taken into account). The good news is that this almost always results in positive changes. The bad news is that those changes were often called for as early as Beta, and Blizzard ignored the need for them until they get shouted about (in much larger numbers) on live. Typically when I see the forums this united around identifying an issue, I see the exact same complaining in game or hear the exact same complaints in discord.
Obviously, Torghast is the center of complaining right now. I’d be surprised if we didn’t see some big changes (not including the expected catch-up mechanisms that always get unleashed over time) addressing the complaints as they stand right now. I don’t know a single person who would quit over Torghast, but generally people seem to hate how it works right now, and it’s obviously not a good thing to have something billed as a central feature be hated.
Also, I’m not sure why anyone would take a review site like IGN seriously for something like WoW - review sites basically stick to the equivalent of the kiddie pool when it comes to an MMO and rarely ever have any kind of grasp of endgame issues. Even aggregate customer review sites, which are way, way better when it comes to games, are terrible references for an MMO because half or more of the reviews will have been done before taking long-term endgame issues into account.
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That’s true enough, but the fewer customers, the less investment into new content will be available. One wonders how much more content we would have in this expansion if the subscriber base were higher.
THIS!!! Can a mod please sticky this post?