This game came out in 2004 and around the last couple years before all the controversy WoW: Shadowlands was one of the fastest selling PC games ever. The population was popping off in here as well.
Even right after DF launched it was also very busy in here. WoW isn’t dead and still has tons that pop back into the game despite its age. What WoW needs is something big and new content wise imo, big changes, big risks, and new types of content to keep it fresh for the next several years.
Borrowed power was a cool concept and worked well for Legion, but it has its downsides as it only works for BIG EPIC expansions as you lose that power afterwards.
We’ve gone from Legion (Super Epic) to BfA (BIG EPIC) to Shadowlands (BIG EPIC) to a normal expansion without much to do. People are also probably in a bit of fatigue after 6 years of BIG SUPER EPIC content expansions with temporary systems that require lots of grind.
Yeah it might be in danger of dropping down below other mmo’s in popularity, but even during legion subs shot back up at around 10 million for a bit.
I’m saying the potential is there to stabilize it and also bring in people. We’re definitely playing a game that peaked at 12 million and for 14 years has been slowly declining in population tho for sure. I guess you could say “game is old” if it suddenly does die/drop hard and not attribute any of that to recent events in the last year or two tho.
Nobody has any idea what their sub count is since they stopped reporting it in WoD. Any numbers from halfway through WoD or later (including Legion) is speculation.
Just like no other MMOs release their sub numbers either.
I don’t think WoW will “die” anytime soon, but it’s definitely in the tail of the product life cycle graph with spikes each expansion release where people check it out for a month or so then bail.
Hello, I see you replied to the thread. Haha, Baldur’s Gate 3 is so good that I keep telling myself that I’m going to log into other games to get some stuff done but instead I just start up BG3 once again, haha! Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of those, “once in a decade” level of games, haha!
A big part of the problem is that it’s not just the dead servers. There are many “full” servers as per the server listing shows in-game that are suffering from the same mass exodus of players. Blizz seriously need to overhaul their measurements when it comes to server fill rates because I’d wager that if they did, you would find the vast majority of “full” servers were actually med-high population instead.
Of course the true solution here is to take a good dozen or so servers permanently offline and force distribute the homeless players to the remaining servers. Simply implement a surname system into the game to resolve the duplicate naming issue that would arise.
Of course, blizz would never do that as every single YouTuber would instantly post videos extolling wow’s impending demise as that would get lots of ad clicks.
I’ve played on several different realms and some are packed and some are completely empty. Blizz should consolidate realms again to bring more people to the empty ones and maybe lighten the burden on the super packed realms.
To be honest, trimming servers is something all mmos not on a mega server should be preparing for. No one learned from the decline of UO, and the ghost shards of NA. People who pick their region and not the one populated mega server wouldn’t know anyone still plays.
Casuals are bad players who have a lot of unprovable justifications for being bad. You will typically find them angrily explaining why they’re right, and overall defending their weakness with great strength.
Me personally I am a collector that loves M+ (and some social raiding).
Personally what kept me playing is battlepets though. Once you achieve KSH what’s the point of doing it on another character (except maybe for portals I guess). I’m never going to get a top 1% rating.
Because of the way the game is played these days it feels like if you don’t get KSM within the first month of a major patch you are behind… so outside of that we get THE SAME EVENT REHASHED over and over to keep you occupied and collecting.
My friend who doesn’t collect stuff Runs M+ with me for a month or so and stops resub. He really doesn’t chase mounts or anything like that and I really wish I could get into that habit.
Better off spending $ on new games that have more entertainment value. There was a time when $15 a month was fine… DF was a half assed expansion cut short, the sloppy approach to updating the game willy nilly with no QA testing, and the community has become toxic beyond description compared to what it was.
The question at this point isn’t will WoW ever get it’s **** back together but what will replace WoW? The devs either a) lost touch with what creates fun or b) the game is intentionally being neglected.
I got both mounts on day 1, catch up is not worth it because it’s only 402, which is only like 3 iLVL higher than all my alts and if I wanted to upgrade those I still need crests, which I cannot transfer from my main, and on top of that I need to run content that gives flightstones, all in all it’s just not worth the effort, it would take me weeks to gear up my alts just to 402 and months of flightstone farming to level them to 424.