Dragonflight...

[Venombite]

Yep, all in all, when the rest of the expansion is more or less set in stone, and we more or less know what's gonna happen and stuff... I'd say that Dragonflight has arguably been the worst expansion in WoW thus far. Bugs and lags just coming at you all the time, average (to say the least) raids, worst dungeons (and Mythic +) of any expansion, dead PvP, open world content pretty much non existent (and a bit that does exist by far the worst it's ever been), zone design and art pales in comparison to previous expansions, story pretty much removed and that's what's there is the worst that's ever been....

And "surprisingly" the game's popularity is at an all time low, the expansion didn't even sell well, and soon it grew to have less players than it ever had. But the interesting stuff is that it's popular on social media, people talk how it's awesome all the time, and then don't play it at all. I guess that's what happens to the games with good reputation on social media that aren't that good in reality, people go along the narrative of twitter and reddit, write how awesome it is, than log in, not have fun, and leave and loose all interest in it.

And honestly, if 11.0 end's up being another expansion like Dragonflight, it might actually be WoW's last. The long standing meme might finally come true.

 

[Dr Super Good]

I think social economic conditions are more likely to blame. WoW is a subscription game, and the subscription is not even cheap. A person could subscribe and play WoW, or they could subscribe to Disney+ and watch thousands of hour of content. This is not even limited to the film industry, with subscriptions for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft to play online games on their consoles. Some households subscribe to many such services, and it is likely World of Warcraft will be one of the first subscriptions axed over many of the others. The final nail in the coffin? World of Warcraft not only expects you to pay a subscription to play, but also demands you pay for the expansions themselves as well.

From what I understood (since I do not play WoW), Dragonflight also had several mechanical issues at release that did not sit well with some of the dedicated players. Playing as a dragon, one of 2 big selling points of the expansion, is cool and everything, but the race and class did not compete mechanically well in may roles compared with existing races and classes. Some of what I read suggested that the performance disparity was pretty significant as well. This meant that half the content was pretty much left to be sold to the minority of people who really wanted to play or roleplay as a dragon.

The other major content being sold was the ability to fly freely in World of Warcraft. If freely meant "within some very specific areas only"... So the fantasy of taking your mount, or wings, and flying around most of Azeroth, or other worlds, never materialised. The rest of the content was just typical "WoW expansion" content, which gets harder to keep valued after every expansion.

Lastly there is the competition in the industry space. People could play World of Warcraft, or they could play insert one of hundreds of AAA games here. Blizzard even did the silly thing of competing with themselves, pushing more World of Warcraft Classic variants into the marketplace to compete for its own World of Warcraft player base. Even if they drastically improved the value of all the expansions they ever made, it is still highly likely that the player base would be declining just because players are moving to other games, or activities, that better fit their interests.

If Dragonflight does mark the beginning of the end for World of Warcraft, it is unlikely to be due to the content alone. Pushing similar content 4+ expansions ago, while World of Warcraft was still strong, would probably have been much better received and made little difference to the subscriber counts that unfolded there after.

 

[PurrsandMlems]

WoW peaked during WotlK, you cant change my mind.