Why do people keep insisting it? MoP only lost players… more than cata.
The only time where MoP subscriptiosn raised is when WoD was announced.
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The decline starting in Cata thru the last reported subs was honestly fairly linear. It’s just that Cata didn’t start declining from Day 1, because it still had steam from WotLK.
That aside, just want to clarify in case others see your post: I didn’t say MoP was a success on all fronts. That’s me quoting someone else.
Oh well i dunno why it happens. I suck at using the forum.
I have a sneaking suspicion that quite a few people are right in this thread, but primarily you OP. This expansion seems to be more of a dry-run of how they want to shape their philosophical core in terms of WoW’s development.
Classes
To me, the Legion to BFA transition had quite a few changes (namely the removal of the Artifact, which considerably lowered our strength.) Looking at Feral Druid, it's rotation has changed, but the spec feels... not at all different to me. Either they've settled on how it plays, or they've yet to figure out how players want feral to play. Windwalker is incredibly similar to Legion, even the damage tuning on tier-to-tier seems similar. I'm guessing that Blizzard wants to steer away from making massive spec/class overhauls, and more focus on fixing what's wrong with them already. This is both good and bad. Bad because so many specs were left feeling... vacant, empty, or underpopulated. When's the last time you saw a Survival Hunter?Theme
Then theme of the expansion, and especially with the 8.2 and 8.3 shift in theme, it seems Blizzard doesn't know what kind of theme the players like. To be fair, I'm certain none of us know what kind of theme we like. WoD was alternate timeline, but that failed. Legion was about this big-baddy named Sargeras, and that was a success (basically hunting down the Burning Legion from tier to tier was nice to me.) BFA is about... Old gods, Alliance attacking, Azshara being a nerd, then... old gods again? Wasn't this marketed as a PvP-based expansion? Realistically, the expansion's theme has shifted a lot, almost like they're trying to figure out what DOESN'T work. They've hit the nail on the head. PvP expansions do not work.Systems
I'll talk about the systems in place (albeit briefly.) Azerite gear, it seems they want to give players more of a choice, but abandoned that before Battle of Dazar'alor. Traits became too wildly strong, some became extremely strong extremely fast (Cough cough Swift Roundhouse cough). Some traits were left to wither, some traits were massively buffed. Then generic traits were good sometimes, but awful others. Realistically, Azerite gear failed in giving players a choice. The problem isn't with the players, and I'll discuss why later on in a section called 'Tuning Passes.'Azerite Essences, they were a really good mechanic. Now before you chastise me, hear me out. Remember in Legion when you got that button that added to your class and made it feel better? Wake of Ashes, Strike of the Windlord, etc. That’s what Azerite Essences were good at. They added a button that helps your rotation function better, alters your gameplay, or is a massive DPS button. The minors are just like Artifact traits in that they add even more, which is where empty-feeling classes started to feel better. Aside from acquisition methods, grinds, timegates, and not being account wide (a common thing people ask for, don’t blame me, my opinion is not stated in this), the system ultimately was a mix between a failure and a success. Re-rolling is incredibly punishing, and now gruesome/takes forever. My verdict is that it is a slight failure.
Titanforging/Warforging, yes. I have to go there. In my personal opinion, with the removal of sets (no, not tier sets, sets in general), TF/WF’s problem started to become rampant. In Legion, you had potentially seven slots that were guaranteed to be filled and unable to be replaced. Helm, Shoulders, Cloak, Chest, Gloves, Legs, and Weapon. I call those “anchor pieces,” in that the item level upgrade is so vastly absurd that it’s theoretically impossible to replace them, or you just can’t. Those slots, yes RNG felt bad if you got a max ilvl TF Drape of Shame and you use a tier cloak, but you had solace in the fact that your gear hasn’t changed for the worst, and realistically the Drape could be equipped if you shuffled your gear around and it wasn’t a loss. With only four anchor pieces this expansion (helm, neck, shoulders, cloak, and often times, it took months for them to become ‘anchor pieces,’) the subjectivity to RNG was dangerous to the population. I’ve heard stories of people getting cloaks 7 weeks in a row, I’ve heard stories of people getting trinkets 7 weeks in a row (lots of dungeon trinkets are bad.) Compound TF/WF with bad itemization or even bad trinkets, and some individuals go weeks without getting anything even in line with a “niche upgrade.” Overall, my verdict on TF/WF was that the system was failed. The system itself didn’t fail, but the system was failed, ignored, or not thought out carefully enough.
Corruption… finally the ugly beast rears it’s head. First off, it’s failed and not even due to the first two weeks where tuning was poorly done, but due to it’s non-damage tuning. It’s hard to begin with anything specific, but the current DPSPC (Damage per second per corruption) is so obscenely vast, but yet it seemingly fails to incorporate all roles. Healer’s (as a broad role) best in slot corruption is Void Ritual. There’s case for Ineffable truth, there’s case for Glimpse of Clarity being good, but the extra stats are what every healer wants. Tanks have, technically, no good corruption either. There’s simply no boss fight that enforces tanks to become bulkier, there’s no Armor check fights, no EHP fights, there’s no reason for them to wear corruptions that bolster their defensives, but instead wear as much dps corruption as the player can physically deal with. Ranged DPS have Tendies (Mind Appendages I think?) and Gushing Wounds (Lacerations?), and even Infinite Stars, but all three of those work for melee. Echoing void had something like a 12 yard range before everyone started to avoid it like the plague, Twilight Dev has something like a 20 yard range and even some deadzones. Across the board, the corruption effects are indeed cool, and there’s even some people taking advantage of the corruption effects in order to create new builds (There’s a BM hunter who runs like… +60% mastery stats from all sources out there.) Finally, the droprate. I understand the patch is suppose to be “played for at least 6 months” but the droprate on corruption effects is very disappointingly low. They’re low enough to the point that some individuals, like myself, don’t have any good corruption beyond the guaranteed corruption effects from the raid. I have 2 honed mastery, 2 mastery stat gains, 4-6 vers procs, a few glimpse of clarity items, and 3 TD pieces. Rank not mentioned, but the only good ones are TD (R3 for feral, R1 and R2 for Rdruid) and they’re AoE. I also have some void ritual pieces, but one’s raid, and one’s the OG 440 everyone got. My final verdict is that it’s failed due to tuning, difficulty, RNG, and the dps disparity created by it.
Tuning Passes and closing statements.
Early on, the tuning of anything was so far out of what due to various reasons. Artifact removal, lack of adding those small Artifact traits we were accustomed to, GCD changes, and the item level squish (resulting in a stat squish too.) Classes were bad, Azerite traits were bad, and considerably… a lot of specs were DoA (Dead on Arrival) due to all this. If we look at Feral for Legion, it was also DoA, but the rumor mill runs and come to find out that Beta Legion Feral druid had tons of changes and reworks that were QoL and balancing-based. By the time Legion released, they had peeled back all the feral changes. In Legion, there was only 3 notable specs that were DoA. Feral, Outlaw, Survival. BFA? Shadow priest, Windwalker, Feral, Survival hunter, Marksman hunter, (I think) Fury warrior, Afflicion, and I think a few others.
This comes down, harshly, on tuning passes and changes. I feel Blizzard’s philosophy on these two subjects is too rigid. It’s too stiff. I’m more than happy to agree that Blizzard shouldn’t open a raid tier and then nerf 4 classes and buff 4, but Blizzard’s really tried to keep their hands out of specs this expansion (seemingly.) I really wish they would push more towards a heavy-handed approach with Shadowlands. Several tuning passes every tier. Afflicion scaling too wildly? Make them require more haste rating for a single per cent of haste. Windwalker scaling too well? Adjust their ability damage formulas slightly. I don’t want to see many classes getting nerfed and buffed with bandaid aura fixes, I want to see classes have their spell-to-spell interactions back, and Blizzard watching for specs to be way skewed and immediately dialed back in line with every other spec.
As a final closing statement, the 26th week of Azshara, The Eternal Palace, Shadow Priest at the 90th percentile in mythic was 12.76% above the average dps mark. Frost mage, keep in mind at the 90th percentile of mythic, was 10.7% below the average dps mark. The next highest was Desto lock at 4.83% above, the next lowest was 9.87% below. The dps variation was 14.2k from top to bottom. That variance is far too wide in my personal opinion. I would say a dps different from top to bottom of 5-7% is a healthy amount. It’s not a bloodbath of “You’re not a fire mage? Gross.” but it still shows that any spec would be viable.
I’m basing on opinion from then and since, and not limited to a single feature. Generally even in expansions I listed as… lower quality, the raiding scene throughout is largely praised still in all of them.
While the kneejerk in dungeon difficulty certainly had an effect, the zones themselves were bland and felt empty. The zone to zone storylines were “okay” but nothing very grabbing or memorable. The class pruning began. The endgame world content was eyeseering.
I didn’t.
And WoD’s launch shot player count into space. Look how that expansion turned out. I bring it up based on those that stuck around to experience it, rather than those that bailed on it because of orient theme or race and just rag on it from hyperbole yelling across the street.
The story was solid and interesting, if suddenly a bit… dark. The zones, effects and architecture models were mostly beautiful. Largely hailed as the best era of class balancing for both PVE and PVP despite the talent system being tossed into a blender. And Troll Racial Gate in the raid scene.
Content coming left and right. Community outcry over Pandailia responded to with mentoring system added for rep starting at revered, making alt friendliness skyrocket and exalted a breeze.
Compared to it’s neighbors, it’s a glowing princess stuck on a subway between two sweaty fat guys man-spreading and farting.
maybe, but it sure doesn’t smell as good as these 1970’s test papers:
Legion wasn’t THAT well received. And I dare say it wasn’t FULLY the same team that did BFA. I think after the promotions, firings, shifting around positions, and others who left their post wrapped up… the team that ultimately worked on BFA, took over the latter half of Legion more or less.
So was BFA a test? No I don’t think so.
I just think it was a new lead in charge, and some stubborn heads that designed outta fear - tried to play it on the fence - - thought they had this great set of ideas that just didn’t pan out which ultimately had them constantly chasing to stay ahead in designing content for this expansion.
That ultimately gave them some big lessons to learn, and they’ve gotten so behind because of the constant band aids that they chose to just cut the rest of their planned content to focus on Shadowlands.
So with that in mind, they probably pushed in extra ideas, and systems to test out and see how they play out that will have a variation on in being implemented on in Shadowlands.
I just don’t understand the cata dislike. It was amazing on all fronts.
Interesting, challenging dungeons.
Phenomenal raids until Dragon Soul.
A new azeroth adding some spice to the world.
A good number of new zones to level in.
I’d rate it one of the best expansions honestly. Up there with wrath and mop.
I think people dislike Cata the most because it was the first expansion to have publicly known cut content (such as Abysmal Maw) and literally half the content was shelved, everything that involved Queen Azshara was cut (except one quest in Darkshore)
Looking at the 80-85 content, I’d bet most of the development time was spent on the 1-60 revamp. So the actual “expansion” content suffered for it.
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Wow. I wonder why no one thought of that before! 
I thought vulpera were supposed to be kind and cute, not dry and condescending.
Well cmon. This has been said a million times
I honestly haven’t seen it mentioned before. Though I don’t spent much time here.
Yes, it feels like since legion and BFA that they have been doing A/B testing to see what sticks and doesn’t.
It feels like patch 8.3 is an extension of this testing and preparing for what they want to do in shadowlands.
If I was to speculate their sudden poll survey and advertisement for the cloak suggests they are concerned players are turned off by a legendary grind.
Shadowlands will have torghast and legendary you will craft via that grind. That is basically what patch 8.3 is currently and the devs seem to be caught off guard as to why player are not buying into this concept.
So if players are not buying into 8.3 there may be a fear players do not buy into the entire shadowlands concept either.
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I stuck around. it was bad.
Ya wod continued mop trend of losing subs, both have that in common.
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Luckily it worked out for us all that are still here.
It’s not a test. Basically, they thought they could do everything better than Legion so they changed a bunch of stuff. Only the stuff they changed was mostly the wrong stuff.
That, and they decided to rework every single spec while adding in tons of GCDs on an aggressive launch schedule.
They did not succeed, so then they started layering systems in an attempt to fix things.
Top that off with a heaping helping of patented Blizzard stubbornness and we end up were we are today.
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bfa was a low budget expansion, Azerite was the netherlight crucible, essences use the old glyph ui, no tier sets or class specific sets, very minimal class changes. all of the class specific content in legion gave you reasons to want to branch out and see the storylines, bfa content seems to want you to avoid playing alts.
BfA was them continuing on from Legion’s systems, like they do every expansion, but trying to fine tune them as they went and making mistakes.
Mission tables went from the WoD version, to the class hall version, to the current version with them trying to make them useful but not mandatory.
After we had two expansions of world quests people realized they were just dailies you didn’t have to turn in and the shininess wore off. So Blizzard tried different methods to bring back that shine (Mechagon’s system versus Nazjatar versus the basic world quests)
Essences are Blizzard trying to find something meaningful for our characters with Azerite. People complained that Azerite didn’t have that oomph factor, so they added essences which had a little too much oomph.
Corruption is them trying to find a replacement for war/titanforging without scraping some kind of fun little upgrade system completely.
Shadowlands will most likely do something similar. Maybe they’ll bring back tier sets, maybe they’ll fine tune Azerite into something else, maybe they’ll do tier sets but have them share appearances like the current sets do. 