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In a recent statement from Activision Blizzard, Dragonflight didn’t perform as well as Shadowlands, at least when it comes to early sales. So let’s take an amateur look at the leadup into Dragonflight and identify reasons why it didn’t sell well even though it’s well liked by many of its players!
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0:00 Intro
2:54 BFA/SL effect on Dragonflight
5:00 Blizzard lawsuit
6:13 Preorders and faith
7:32 Cost
8:44 Features, teases and curiousity
10:02 Cinematics’ ability to hype
11:55 Dracthyr Evoker
12:52 Fan expectations and theories
13:59 But is Dragonflight itself doing bad?
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For me personally. I started playing a month after launch, because of the great reviews, like best since legion. And I played every expansion on launch except legion, So I was like, I'm not gonna miss out again. And I love it! But all my friends are just burned out on it, especially after the great launch up hype for Shadowlands. They just don't trust that the game is great, because they heard it one time to many and don't believe it anymore… So now I solo DF and still love it ^_^
I honestly had no intention of returning for DF, but figured why not and it's the only xpac since WOTLK that I have stuck around for more then 4-6 weeks after an xpac release (and I literally worked as a GM there for nearly 3 years lol). This is a trend I have seen among my circle of friends as well as most quit in the first month 4-8 weeks and all of them are still subscribed and playing whenever they can. I do know several people from Discords that were former players that have not returned, but are taking the wait and see approach to the xpac before returning as they just felt so burnt by BFA then SL. Plus side they are interested, but they just wanna make sure Blizzard sticks to their plans and doesn't go messing the entire thing up in the first major patch or two.
I like Dragonflight so far. But I can't help feeling like I'm playing WoD again : it feels rushed, full of potiental that will never be realised and with yet another 'profession revamp'
M+ is like playing Diablo III. Same shit, just random boss mechanics each week. That shit gets very old, very quick. Raids that have abusive mechanics that only hard core people care to deal with. I believe most casual people (like me) just want to play the game, see the story play out, all while looking good (xmogs). I (may I say we?) don't want another job. Same old problem… If Blizzard doesn't fix this the sales and subs will continue to dwindle. Self inflicted wound.
I mean every expansion drops off, we are 2 months after season 1 launch and most people have AoTC, KSM, some mythic kills and have done +20's. It's no surprise people we de-prioritize the game at this point.
You're absolutely right about the pricing. That's my main reason not buying DF until it comes on sale. With this day's economy, soaring costs of literally everything, I just can't buy it. And I have a uni degree waiting to be finished, so I can actually afford living lol. Still going to play WoW though, just more casually as an altoholic.
Fun little fact, SL was released around the same time as DF, but came in sale about 2-3 months after release (Christmas sale). I'm starting to think it's going to be a while until they do sale for DF, since they probably want to cash out as much as possible.
Looks like the people who were interested in watching this video are not the target demographic of the questions. People who have given up on wow don't watch wow videos anymore.
I am one of those people you might want to hear from. I did not purchase Dragonflight on any of my 5 accounts, but have continued to play old content.
I am so sick of seeing hype being used to sell expansions before even any details have been released, as in "DRAGONS!" followed by sycophants shouting that this was going to be the best expansion ever because "DRAGONS!" I am sick of Ion making vague promises and then giving something that barely resembled what players were led to believe they would be getting. An expansion should not be designed primarily to bloat box sales, because the real money is in retaining as many of those purchasers as possible.
You're having fun. A lot of people are having fun. That's because the expansion was designed for players like you, without any consideration of how casuals might feel about changes to their content. Without consideration of how mandatory dragonriding might impact players with a number of diverse impairments. People like me looked and saw an expansion designed to force casuals into hard content and a mythic+ community that wants nothing to do with them. People who used to like to craft things for their alts and their friends' alts now see crafting as a giant money and time sink where it's min max or die. It's everything that was annoying about Legion professions and Shadowlands legendaries and much, much more. I think these were the majority of crafters.
My friends who left because Shadowlands have not come back.
Blizzard needs to stop thinking that they can coerce people who have chosen not to buy the current expansion into buying it and playing by thinking that destroying the content they still enjoy playing will give them no choice, because they always have the choice to leave and take their entertainment dollars elsewhere. The community is a cesspool of self-declared esports heros who seem to think anyone who doesn't play the game exactly like them is doing life wrong. And they know there are no consequences for their bad behavior.
What would it take for me to consider buying Dragonflight?
1. Put Shadowlands dungeons back in the dungeon finder for level 60's.
2. Nerf old raids and dungeon content.
These two would show sincerity in working with the playerbase.
3. Make dragonriding optional. Let players who aren't good at riding through rings fly themselves on their mounts. Let druids choose to fly with flight form.
4. Bring back Legion-style world quests, lots of quests with a variety of rewards so you can do the quests you want to do.
Then I'd consider buying. That free trial "play a dracthyr for a month" offer was aimed at turning people like me into healers because they borked healing changes and made healing way less fun and there's a shortage now.
5. Stop coming up with creative ways to get the playerbase to fight with each other. My. God. What idiot thought calling a change to chat options "censorship" was a stroke of genius?
My guild wanted 4 M+ dungeons a week outside of Mythic raid prog. Not terrible but they need to be 20s. Thats a rough sale with the increased difficulty. That plus 6 hours of raiding per week caused me to take a break in mid January and I honestly haven't logged in since. The expansion is good but M+ and raids have gotten so hard and needing so many addons its just not fun anymore. After 10 hours+ of mandatory content for the week, there was no time for just having fun in the world.
The raiding communuties I run with have been doing better than ever, I remember player dropoff hamstringing our Mythic progress in SoD and basically precluded us doing Mythic in SFO.
Now? We´re regularly sitting people on HC or splitting up into 2 groups, and will be running mythic with 2 teams starting Wednesday and still probably have to sit a handful of players. 🤯
And I think that, for me, amounts to mission accomplished for Blizzard. They were never going to get everybody back, and they knew it. But those that did come back, or struck it through? They´re mostly having a blast and not going anywhere anytime soon,
I think that´s partly because in the process of pivoting, Blizzard basically didn´t just turn over a few new leaves, but realized they had to replant half the garden. And it will take time before they can reap tangible rewards from teh new seeds they´re sowing, but the foundation is rocksolid, and the plants are more and more evergreens.
And in the long term, that is what will bring players back or attract fresh blood, not "Here´s a flashy new thing that the next 2 years of your life will revolve around that you´ll never care about again when the next expansion comes". That was really only fun the second time we tried it (Legion), and if we drop the rose colored glasses for a minute mostly only in hindsight and after 7.3 🍻
I think DF is the best attempt at a good expansion since Legion, I personally think the problems are down to two things in combination: the horrible law suit and the fan base being burnt by crap expansions after BFA and then SL, it must of been very hard to retain any kind of faith or hope that Blizzard can function as a game company, let alone make a good game anymore. Blizzard needs to stay on form and continously pull out all the stops with every aspect of the game, if go back to making crap I think it really will be game over.
Shadowlands sold better than any previous warcraft expansion. Using his metric to determine if dragonflight failed is the same as saying legion or wrath failed because they sold waaay less than shadowlands
There needs to be stuff to do.
They've bowed so far to the FOMOers in terms of not having any content people can miss that it's now very easy to just…run out of things to do.
I don't think raidlogging and a handful of M+ keys per week are enough content to justify paying a subscription anymore. This was how WoD failed, and we'll have to see if 10.0.7 brings enough content to play to justify keeping a sub.
There isn’t a reason for me to play anymore? I played for lore, fun, and then dungeons/raid. And in that order. Lore is now LOCKED behind reputation, which it wasn’t before, and hasn’t ever been. You do the quests, you unlock the story, the whole story. Not just half, like it is now. Take out the lore, and they’ve lost themselves a player who has been dedicated to this game for 13 years without ever having a lapse in my subscription. I didn’t grind my life away to essentially read a book in game format before, and I’m not going to grind my life away now either. Not for something that hasn’t ever, should never work like that. YouTubers now upload the story in its entirety after they’ve grinded it. So I can have fun with WoW without ever opening the game! Thanks Blizzard!
Ironically, BFA and SL failed because they took the lore/story OUT of the game and into written books. Now, it’s IN the game, but you still can’t play it.
I like the Way Blizzard are going so np here👍🙏
I have enjoyed it much more than shadowlands which I quit playing so not sure why
pandemic aside dragonflight was really fun on launch (still is) but that means people TORE through the content. it was made easier to smash through due to the way gearing happens now as well (insanely fast and easy to get 380+) so people who dont alt got through stuff fast and many probably stopped playing while they wait for new stuff to come out.
funnily enough gated progression actually hurts this number more because if they could more easily gear into end game crafts or m+ gear scaled appropriately (get rid of the fucking vault) then those fast end game players wouldnt leave so quickly since theyd be more inclined to gear alts and try new stuff. being reasonable and consistent about how loot drops and what level it drops at would make a lot of players stick around longer and play in a healthier way (instead of trash like playing 8 mythics to fill vault and then not logging in until reset)
Yup, besides no normal flying… And a mess in professions, they are inviting wow players to play… A different game… And we want wow 😁 not other games…
I'd laugh less at the suggestion I would ever return if they got a single person on the team that cared about the current politics of the world instead of inserting more 30,000+ year old bullshit into a cosmology chart.
I can only share why I've not been playing. I did purchase DF, and I originally planned to do what I normally do, a sit out for a few weeks to let all the zoomers finish with the levelling zones. But so far, I find it difficult to even bother. My highest levelled character is now 62.
Why? Because nothing here draws me. I don't really care about the dragons, don't like the new race or class, don't care about dragon flying… I generally play druids and prefer my flight forms, not interested in what appears to be an overly convoluted profession revamp, not interested in overly convoluted and difficult to parse gearing systems, and, even though I'm not anywhere near end game, I expect the mostly solo end game to be just another increase a dozen counters by doing the same dozen things and maybe in months I'll have so gear that caps out months before the next patch or expansion.
I might decide to play some more, but so far, there just isn't that much that interests me.
They need to let shadow priest cast void torrent while moving
Nice overview. As one of the behind persons….I don't mind….what I do mind, is you can only fly with a dragon. Yes, the dragon is cool and fast and cool graphics during the spin or power dive. I would still like to be able to fly the mount of my choosing. I agree that player housing is way overdue, and WOD did not scratch that itch.
they need to do MORE content, not just the same old normal cyrcle of bringing a raid + some dugeons for m+ ….
Low numbers for DF means they lost China subs lol.