You are missing the point: Because of BfA, pushing this core narrative even in DF is just absurd because of the lack of talented writers to do a good one again.
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Tbh the real reason(imo and I’m happy I did get DF cus I’m really enjoying WoW again) is that BfA, SL, and to many folks who hated the systems even legion, sucked.
No, you are. You don’t understand the difference between box sales, and the whiners on General Discussion.
Again, you’re missing the point, and don’t understand what drives box sales.
i think a lot less people care about characters/story than you think. a whole lot of us have no idea who any of the characters even are, or what the story is. and new players certainly don’t. characters aren’t what sell. features/gameplay sells. and DF really had almost none of that to market.
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Because they finally burned people enough times for people to not reach in and try and touch the pretty blue dancing flames again.
Because SL was such a let-down, it broke the traditional Blizzard mediocre/bad expac → good expac → mediocre/bad expac → good expac cycle.
Because it was a long string of failures. Because it was bizarre, because it broke the lore, because its systems were bad, because its story was unsatisfying. Because it trashed beloved characters in its arc (the BFA-SL arc) for no good reason and then gave no satisfactory closure. Because it burned everyone from lore nerds to hardcore raiders to casuals in their own ways. Because it felt like a steep decline and because the out of touch dev team seemed more out of touch than ever before and drifting further and further away.
Because people were sick with the company that not only abused its players, pilloried them, mocked them, but it turned out abused its own employees, lied to the press about it, defended the undefendable and suffered no real internal reckoning with those at the top roost (CEO) long hated for other reasons refusing to depart and continuing the farce with hiring and then firing women.
It just reached a zenith, all of it, the decay of the game, the bad decisions, the loathing and contempt for the company behind it all. Years and years of “you all of have phones right?” and “the jailer arc was part of the plans from the beginning :DDD” finally crystalized with real failure in the form of two back-to-back expacs to wake many players up.
They felt betrayed, they left and after being burned repeatedly with promising new expacs many have finally learned and are saying oh no, not this time, we’ve done this song and dance before.
Blizzard earned their reputation as a great company making RTS games, earned it with wow through Wrath with their industry leading customer service, their fine quality, their amusing and at least entertaining storytelling, and their MMORPG which stood out as being more player friendly than many others existing at the time.
They burned it with WoD, with BFA, and took a flamethrower to it with SL.
It will not be earned back with one good expansion I hope. They deserve to have to work for it not just to make DF a good launch but a good expac through the entire 2 years, to make 11.0 and that expac a good expac not just at launch but through the major patches. It may however be more players cared about a serviceable story (and lets be honest, Blizzard at its best was never masterful compared to many other game studios and franchises at telling a story of depth that made sense in a fleshed out and consistent world) than they or even I think and with the SL developments having permanently injured their fantasy world, without a retcon that is a tacit admission of near total failure by the story team it may be WoW simply fades and accepts the crown being taken. Accepts being on par but not above FFXIV and other MMORPGs. There is a good chance Riot will claim their crown by the sword anyways as they have money, are developing a brand new MMO with a modern engine, a consistent story and lore, good writers, an existing franchise.
Look at how much they’ve given players already in their desperation. Old Blizzard would never have bent the knee to give players all pre-DF races having all classes unlocked on them eventually. Old Blizzard wouldn’t be bringing back old TCG items as rewards to try and boost streaming numbers for free advertising. They realize too late where they are and where their choices have led them, down, down, down where the corporate checkbook at Activision will not ever open wide enough to fund them ever getting out if they continue downhill at this rate.
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It’s the same design decisions over an over that have lead to the player base avoiding the game. Why bother to be drip fed and heavily time gated for 2yrs when you can just come back in X.3.5 and actually enjoy the game.
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I wasn’t talking to you idk why you’re replying to me. You’re obviously trolling.
Everything after MoP has been mediocre at best. People keep fooling themselves into thinking Legion was good by conveniently only remembering the final patch, just like people convince themselves Cata was bad by only remembering Dragon Soul.
Legion turned the game into “Diablo 3 for noobs” and hasn’t deviated from that design since. It blows my mind that people think it’s some pinnacle of WoW game design.
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Is that why you replied to my post? 
Bad marketing, all they ever had as a selling point was flying dragons(its all the trailers ever showed). That didn’t appeal to a lot of older wow players.
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Idc if you’re the OP I’m adding to the discussion not your trolling gibberish. Ignored.
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too late. Arthas was turned into 35 anima. Bolvar did nothing the entire x-pack. the Lich King stature has been belittled.
This was largely me, I only played a bit because it seemed so childish and out of place.
I do regret not getting the challenge mode sets though
I’ve farmed for hours non stop without needing to recharge. What are you doing?
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Thanks, I’ll add this to the list:
Reasons people have given for the “Only reason people are no longer subscribed”.
- When WOW was first created it was one of the only D&D like MMOs around. Now there are hundreds of new ones each year.
- In an industry where 5 years is middle aged and 10 years is an antique, WOW is an 18 year old game competing with tons of new technology.
- The trend these days is toward social media and mobile where WOW doesn’t play well.
- Some say it’s the story writting particularly in BFA and ShadowLands.
- Or it’s the toxic culture of the players that’s causing people to leave.
- Others point to specific abilities like “borrowed power” that have been taken away.
- Next we hear that it’s time gating
- Death. Wow players aren’t getting any younger, and younger players don’t share the same attraction to MMOs… particularly ones dominated by older people.
- The questing requirements are not long and grinding enough.
- The questing requirements are to long and grinding.
- They heard Activision say: “If you don’t like the game, go play something else.” or… “The game is not meant for you”.
- SL had too many mobs close together.
- And the number one reason subscriptions are down …[Drum roll here] … The Horde/Alliance cold war.
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Ihop pancakes are not as good as they used to be
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Burn all of the dragons and their eggs, who cares. I didn’t even find the rivalry between those two dragon dudes (red one I think, while leveling) very compelling, and I can’t even remember their names. Ditch dragon-riding too. It was fun for a day or two before I pined for my damn summonable flying mount instead of waiting for recharging circles.
Keep the talent trees, though. They are pretty cool. Put us back in the original setting somewhere- Kalimdor or wherever. Fix crafting so it is not just more intuitive, but also fun and not gated so much.
Actually, the return of talent trees is the highlight of DF. Dang.
The developers managed to severely botch many of those which turned some players away.
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Some people remember how bad they were burnt last expansion and either found new games they like or waiting to see how things go with this expansion. Some of them are waiting to see if we will be able to use our other mounts and if they say no then we saved money:P
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