Why isn't DF selling like hotcakes?

Community General Discussion
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Once players got past the honeymoon phase many seem to have checked out.

  1. Not much to do outside of M+ and Raiding that offers power progression which is something the players asked for but maybe not what they really wanted.
  2. Increasing the difficulty of M+. Reminds me a bit of the jump in difficulty between Wrath and Cata.
  3. Core X-pac systems like Crafting and Dragonriding are polarizing.

Add in multiple x-pacs since Legion that felt off, more good gaming options than ever before, and basically losing many of their veteran devs to the scandal I’m not surprised DF isn’t generating much heat.

On the other hand I think the new Talent system is a win and gives me hope that there’s a decent foundation for the future. Maybe.

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(I’m also not sure whom the new Reptilian Ballerina class was supposed to draw in.)

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Bro, it sold WAY better than hotcakes. What is the stock price for hotcakes right now?

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Age is definitely a factor. Every product has a life cycle, and this isn’t exactly coke.

The price would also be a factor. I think as a Canadian I pay something like $20-$25 a month to play. Compare that to their main competitor, FFXIV, where I can subscribe to it for about $11 and get a higher production value experience.

Then honestly add to that the PR issues. For years people were concerned that Activision was ruining Blizzard, but the company kept claiming they had no say in Blizzard’s day to day operations. That has since been proven drastically wrong, and as a result a lot of people refuse to play WoW out of principle.

And then there’s the gameplay. ESO and FFXIV have amazing housing systems, the content these games make is never obsoleted like WoW’s expansions are, and frankly Blizzard uses a different metric to make development decisions: “Engagement”.

That is to say, they will look at the statistics of how long you do a certain thing and conclude that therefore, you must like doing that thing.

This is why world quests have sucked for so long. The game makes us do them as a way to progress at times, even though they aren’t really fun.

And lastly…it’s just a dated game. Blizzard should have started development on WoW 2 like a decade ago. Up the poly counts, reinvent the game systems, take a ground-up approach and make a proper sequel. Instead they just slap a fresh coat of paint on it every expansion, tweak the engine a bit and honestly…people get bored of it. Zone questing design is out dated and crap, open world content is generally boring and not engaging, boss fights don’t have the production value of WoW’s competitors (Well, maybe ESO)…it’s not great.

So honestly, other than these few months a year that I sub to the game to check out the new content and get my PvP fix…why SHOULD I subscribe longer? Once I’m done here, I can go back to FFXIV and I have almost a years worth of patch content that feels more meaningful (especially since alts are completely unnecessary in that game), with a competently written story, decent acting, and better PvE. Even though I dislike the ultra-cheeky anime themes, the overall quality is just leagues above.

And even then, let’s say WoW still had no competitors. Why should I put time into growing a character here when there are other monthly services like game pass that give me even more content with even higher production value? Or I can buy steam games when they go on sale. WoW’s pricing model is vastly out dated.

And to top it all off, WoW’s archaic design philosophy also means it usually has the most toxic fanbase. No thanks.

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New player:" hm an rpg must be fun to play it"

After hitting m+ toxicity

new player: unsubscribe

Endgame is designed around elitists that’s why. Mop was the best addon after wotlk cause they actually put some effort into casual content and difficulty. Now it’s like liquid maximum calls the devs on discord and tell them how they want the game to be

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The people that would make up the missing box sales wouldn’t go anywhere near M+.

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this thread is making me hungry.

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If there was no Wrath I’d of unsubed by now.

If I want Dragonflying, I’d just go back to playing Spyro.

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I just tried an interesting burger recipe last night. Ground beef patty, goat cheese, sliced pears pan-fried in olive oil with sugar and salt. Brioche bun. It was amazing.

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It is that you do not live on the hype of X.0.0 that is bad of a honeymoon of an expansion THAT IS NOT COMPLETE.

The true results will always be X.1 and X.2 as the expansion goes, I’m really disappointed that 2 TIMES Blizzard makes the mechanic “HERE WE CUT IN 2” where as in WoD if it’s bad they end up in X. 2 instead of risking continuing and ending the expansion as it is, that’s what happened with Shadowlands, it really should give a more suitable ending and not just The Jailer, they made a lot of lies and failed the community.

The same thing that happened with WoD and its 6.2, they didn’t decide to end it regularly, they were afraid to continue it, and they gave the worst anticlimactic ending of the game.

something that Dragonflight is IMITATING what MoP is, good expansion zone content but that does not value the passion and feeling of Azeroth that we want to continue seeing.

Something that I am in doubt that will happen beyond 10.0, that is to say that it is repeating the same thing as Legion, BfA, and Shadowlands, that with saving with a new raid and Megadungeon they fix everything, however Legion gave more content and more dungeons In 7.2 and 7.3, nothing was forgotten in everything that is there as features in the expansion until it is completed as much as possible.

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  1. BFA also announced their box sales, pre-covid.
  2. Gameplay is definitely a factor as World gameplay from SL was a step down from even BFA, and Blizzard talked about DF having less. People got invited to the beta, and saw beta gameplay as well, so again gameplay is a big thing.
  3. No real flying out the gate, again. People are tired especially when BFA still requires pathfinder.
  4. New Talent trees are pretty bad, taking things from base class toolkits only to give them back in talents and forcing people to ‘pick’ between two abilities at times - some classes talent trees are still awful.
  5. Unbalanced classes is a big one in both PvE and PvP. People dropping out a lot because of how bad it is and how unfun it is to play.
  6. Story still isn’t particularly compelling or ‘interesting’ enough.
  7. New race is very boring and generic looking, as well as very lazily made for the dragon form.
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Plus no mogs or class variants.

Very dumb move on Blizzs parts.

Plus they need nipples.

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BFA and especially SL were really bad expansions. People were burnt, a lot of long term players quit for good.

DF is much better so far, though it still suffers from some serious issues - primarily atrocious class balance, very flawed crafting system, M+ or die gearing invalidating most other end game content and a story that isn’t particularly engaging - maybe because a lot is locked behind timegated renown?

Last night I enjoyed a quick 10man run in ulduar on the ptr more than dragonflight - primarily due to the far superior class design making playing your class in the raid more fun.

Also, playing a ranged caster in dragonflight is cancerous and unfun. The whole expansion has been designed around “how can we make a caster’s life as miserable as possible” in all forms of content.

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They are two big steps away from it anyway :laughing:

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Many mistake “I want” with “everybody” or “the vast majority”.

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BfA padded its day-one sales metrics by releasing the new races like 8 months earlier if you pre-purchased during Legion. As well as having a longer than average pre-purchase window.

Shadowlands padded its day-one-sales again. The instant incentives were fewer, but the window in which to pre-purchase was literally over a year long. Which is ridiculous.

Dragonflight had less than half the pre-order period vs Shadowlands and didn’t offer significant instant gratification rewards ala BfA, so of course it didn’t break records.

Shadowlands also launched during a Pandemic in which many people lost their jobs. It wasn’t the worst part of it or anything, but that definitely still would have helped it, just due to people looking for something to kill time.

Hard to say if that means the actual playerbase now is smaller, since this entire discussion revolves around cheesing sales data in the same way people cheese top parses.

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OMG STOP IT! stop making me hungry!

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Dragonflight is good, yes. Though, BFA happened and Shadowlands happened. People have a limited amount of goodwill. Goodwill was burned. Goodwill can not be underestimated.

:dracthyr_shrug:

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the other massive plot holes and the consistent ‘dumpster fire class’ lore the past few xpacs doesn’t help either.

Did you know that the lore bible (that is still advertised as such) isn’t actually factual anymore but instead from the PoV of the titans?

Lotta people liked the older lore and are realizing that the fanfic quality we have been getting since BFA hasn’t had much improvement.

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How is it better? In particular because you said this right after which I agree with…

I think BFA was far better that both SLands and DF. There was just more to always do.

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