Wrath was Peak WoW even for subs

[Zaalg-ashkandi]

Here’s another conclusion: Mythic Lite dungeons didn’t exist in original Wrath. Blizz adding them to Wrath brought this toxic, gatekeeping nonsense.

[Yehmi-trollbane]

@Hyperstrike-arugal

Well yes, “Classic players” (i.e. people playing Classic) are toxic. Most of them anyway. All the min/maxing, rushing through dungeons, huge focus on gear score etc. are traits which I consider to be toxic.

That is 100% correct.

@Hyperstrike-arugal

But the thing is that these behaviours were not present back in 2009 when Wrath was released

It actually was, just not very prevalent. Many guilds on my server were super elitists but you barely had any interaction with them.

@Hyperstrike-arugal

The only conclusion I can come up with is that most people who are playing Classic came to it from Retail, because these behaviours are part of the culture of Retail WoW.

Wrong conclusion. Many people I talked to were players back then and quit before. Those are practically the same players. The issue is that the mentality has shifted. Every resource is available in addition to people mocking raids that are 11/12 HC (for example).

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Yehmi-trollbane

@Hyperstrike-arugal

The only conclusion I can come up with is that most people who are playing Classic came to it from Retail, because these behaviours are part of the culture of Retail WoW.

Wrong conclusion. Many people I talked to were players back then and quit before. Those are practically the same players. The issue is that the mentality has shifted. Every resource is available in addition to people mocking raids that are 11/12 HC (for example) is the issue.

Well you named the most important difference between now and back in the day, virtually everyone in classic already played it. It’s not so much the resources it’s simply that it’s a well known game. Of course expectations are going to be different with that player base than with a player base where big chunks have possibly never even played an MMO before.

[Yehmi-trollbane]

Well yes. My point being its not “retail” players (whatever that even means) that took over, its the player themselves.

[Beararsed-stormrage]

As an avid Cataclysm enjoyer, I too feel like the removal of Wrath and TBC even was a bad move. Even keeping one active server for each era would be a more enticing experience. During Wrath some content was removed, and cata will change and remove even more so leaving these servers up, at least one of each would allow people that enjoy each era to still enjoy them and also give people a break from each era. I regularly find myself getting burnt out on classic era and going to wrath and vice versa. As for sub counts, I feel the newer playerbase are going to bolster cata due to the more challenging and competitive playstyle that was its own demise back when it was new to all of us vanilla-wrath players. Time will tell but afterwards its pandas regardless so thatll drive interest up again. From a veteran looking back on it as history, its a much different perspective and story compared to thinking and understanding that for a lot of classic’s playerbase and tbf, target audience, cata is new, its a new experience and when the game started to really ramp up in difficulty in all group content. Classic is a very strong tool for micro-actiblizzard to bring in newer younger generations and also give them things to do during retail lulls. If I were newer and heard the vets talking about “back in my day” I’d be excited as ever to go see this new to me era that they’re speaking on when its released.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Beararsed-stormrage

As an avid Cataclysm enjoyer, I too feel like the removal of Wrath and TBC even was a bad move. Even keeping one active server for each era would be a more enticing experience.

I’m guessing the issue is they didn’t manage the client/servers properly so they would have to maintain different versions for each version of classic they’re supporting. We can see this since they’re different client installs and they get patched differently.

Which is obviously a big cost just to maintain a single server for the middle expansions and why we’re going to be stuck with vanilla and whatever the current classic is.

[Phobodk-whitemane]

if the peak was in wrath, then wrath is where the problem started.

[Lorebeard-bloodsail-buccaneers]

Its true, the highest amount of subs in WoW’s history was during Wrath

Its been a downward trend ever since

[Nightstar-pagle]

Wrath was the height of the hype train for WoW. Tv commercials, magazine ads, friends and family playing creating word of mouth.
What I always look at is the fact that subs during this time stopped climbing and held steady, which means you had just as many people leaving the game as new players coming in.
Wrath was not the “golden” version of WoW. It was the first time the game was showing stalled growth.

[Hugemonkas-dalaran]

Worst two expansions by a mile back to back, Cata and MOP

big yikes

[Mashef-old-blanchy]

Lets expand upon this.

Do you know why WoW was peak subs during WOTLK?

Everquest was on the decline.

No other MMO was available and halfway decent.

Cata changed that. Competitors showed up.

The decrease does not correlate to the story/content. It has EVERYTHING to do with people getting older and other options becoming available.

SWTOR and LOTRO became a thing. Other less successful MMOs followed and there was a whole era with a litany of MMO games watering down populations.

Things that truly hurt retail?

Excessive time gating of everything.
Mythic+

There you go thats the problem. Dragonflight was much better then BFA/Shadowlands but after 6 weeks I was bored because everything was time gated.