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World of Warcraft’s Long Decline
It must be said first that I say this absent any discussions about the quality of the game (or lack thereof). I actually like the core content of Shadowlands and the core gameplay of WoW, divided off from the negative ways in which systems and borrowed power intersect with that. But that discussion is subjective and also largely immaterial to the discussion I want to have in this post.To get more news about buy wow gold safe, you can visit lootwowgold official website.
Over the last decade (yes, it has been that long), WoW has been declining as the top-dog MMO. If anything, it says more about the genre as a whole that it is only now that WoW is clearly not number one, but here we are. From the game’s peak in early Cataclysm, public sentiment about World of Warcraft has steadily gone down with brief rebounds, each of which fails to meet any previous high watermarks for the game. At this point, WoW has failed to have the expected rebound for an odd-numbered expansion, and has instead continued a downward trajectory in public sentiment.
I just recently remarked on this issue in my post about the cadence of content updates in WoW, but now, 1 week out from the next patch, it is worth discussing here again.
WoW as a game has always had content patches whenever the development team damn well pleases. This alone isn’t bad, mind you – if you ask 100 players if they’re willing to wait for high-quality content, I think all 100 would say yes. The thing that dogs the WoW team today is simple – there’s a sliding scale for how much and how high of quality we expect content to be and how long we’re willing to wait for it. If you only deliver a content drop every 8-10 months but that content is primo, solid, and can last that long without artificial timegates or bullshit, it can still be a win. When you go that long and drop inferior content, stuff that is single-use and consumed quickly, or just don’t drop that much – well, the scale tips to the negative quickly.
Blizzard’s problem right now is that WoW patches are all negative on these factors – infrequent, with long gaps between releases, with small amounts of content that are consumed quickly after overcoming a number of artificial time gates, and then with too long to wait until the next update. Using myself (not an average player, to be clear) as an example, here’s my 9.1. The patch came out on June 28th 2021, and the big seasonal refresh was the next week on July 6th 2021. On July 17th 2021, I had already done Keystone Master for Season 2, marking me as largely “done” with dungeons, as anything past that point was simply to run up the numbers – better gear, higher rating for epeen, maybe clearing +20s for teleports, and helping friends/guildies. I finished the normal raid upon rejoining my guild in August, getting my normal Sylvanas kill on 8/18/2021. We ground through Heroic for about a month, with me getting a Sylvanas kill and Ahead of the Curve via a PUG on 9/13/2021. The story of Korthia and 9.1 resolved after weeks of artificial time gates, and I completed it on 8/21/2021. My guild completed the Glory of the Dominant Raider meta achievement on 10/7/2021, and that marked what was, for me, the effective end of the content. 3 months of stuff.
The problem now, then, is that the patch is still ongoing, and even the upcoming 9.1.5, solid QoL changes and all, offers no real “new” content. The first new thing since the patch content rollout of 9.1 is Legion Timewalking, with a two week event coming on 12/7/2021 – 5 months into the 9.1 season. This content is, itself, recycled, and thus not really new, although I will give Blizzard credit for Timeworn Keystones and for the return of the Mage Tower. That means that we are likely going at least 7 or 8 months with nothing truly new added to the game, if not perhaps (and likely) even longer. My guess is 9 months minimum, and I say that with no pleasure.
These gaps and delays are problematic because each patch that fails to hold interest for long enough gives more players a chance to dip out of the game. 9.0 lasted nearly 8 months, but that didn’t quite hit the same because the new expansion smell was still there and a lot of people were still completing various goals – alts, grinding through endgame content, etc. 9.1’s long draught sucks more because it is both longer and people generally have less to do – having had so long to meet early expansion goals, all there was to focus on in 9.1 was any longer-term expansion goals and the content on offer, which was about…3 months worth. I would use that for even the more casual players because the LFR raid was complete in August, as was the story campaign, and all that was left past that was for players to individually determine what they wanted to repeat content for – transmog looks, gear upgrades, etc. Most players I know, across the board, are at a point now in 9.1 where they’ve done what they want – I have a few guildies chasing the +20 grind in Mythic Plus for teleports, but that is 3 people out of ~36. Most of the rest simply log on for raid if at all.
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