I really don’t think this is the most significant reason. I do think it’s a contributing factor.
For a game to appeal to a larger audience it needs to favorably reward casual play. The more rewards favor skill expression the more the game will trim and cater to a smaller and smaller audience. That isn’t to say there should be an absence of rewards for skill expression, as that is also a driving factor for play, just that these rewards should be less significant if you want to appeal to a larger audience.
I would clarify this sentiment even more by saying that it’s not the high skill requirements that are killing the game, but that the gameplay has become so intricate and convoluted and complex that you can’t even SPECTATE without an unreasonable amount of game knowledge. Look at professional sports like football or soccer where the skill difference between a pro game and a pick-up game is MASSIVE but those sports continue to see huge amounts of interest and revenue because their simplicity allows for people to continue watching them, cheering on their favorite players and teams.
As it stands the only people who like WoW are the people who play it and there are fewer of those every day thanks for restrictive and exclusive gameplay.
The obvious implication is that it’s not selling well because we don’t have sales numbers. Blizzard has historically shouted sales numbers from the rooftops when they’re good. Since DF launched, they’ve had immediate sales/promotions and also remained mysteriously silent about sales figures. Shouldn’t be hard to deduce why that is…
They are back playing wow. But when they do videos or stream, their wow content viewers are down. People have lost interest in watching streamers play wow and talk about it.
People are indeed guessing based on Blizzard’s marketing actions and player participation in end game, because there are no official purchase or subscriber numbers released.
But you are guessing that the numbers are great, and you have neither data nor any actions that you can point to that would indicate they are happy with sales numbers.
If you could list us reasons why we should think that player numbers are up, sales are up, and participation in all content is up, it might help people to see why you believe that to be true.
Blizz hasn’t innovated much; it’s the same formula: level–>dungeon–>raid–>repeat. Most people are tired of the treadmill and would like to see something different. Ideas that have been floated are player housing, delves, quest chains for the solo player that have meaningful rewards, etc
the devs have repeatedly stated player housing is impossible to implement under the current engine. it simply DOES NOT ALLOW for it to be implemented how people want it to. this isnt a they don’t want to. it’s a they CAN’T.
Yet here you are still actively playing and posting as the same with all the other people like you. If it is so bad then why not just move on?
Also, WoW is still the top mmo for active players. All the FFXIV simps will try and say otherwise, but if it was then they wouldn’t feel the need to always run to the WoW forums to try and talk about their game yet WoW people could care less about FFXIV to feel the need to go to their forums and talk about WoW.
i can only speak for myself but I’m using the wow forums as a form of stimulation while I wait in the queue for another game because I have an active sub and relate to the posts and information here including the hope that maybe microsoft can turn this game around but frankly I would rather not be playing this game either especially since every time I log in on my $10,000 pc it lags but other games like the one I am waiting on right now seem to have no issue and even has better gfx
I’m not even going to comment on the content, because that is purely subjective.
But I will state that the time that you would normally be hyping an expansion, 100% of the press about Blizzard was negative. It’s tough to market in that, and they probably didn’t on purpose.
Now, sorry for interrupting please list your subjective reasons that align with your own biases.
Player housing isn’t something I care about, but players have been asking for it for years. Blizz gave us Garrisons so I’m sure they can come up w something
