TBC and Wrath did absolutely nothing according to these charts?
Graph is already out of date, after blunderstorm the sub numbers are going back to late Shadowlands numbers
Been playing Warcraft games since the late 90s. The Korthia patch was the closest to a "WoW killer" that I have ever seen. It was Game of Thrones Season 8 in that it wasn't just a bad quality product in itself, it went further and actively made you feel worse about the content that came before. You can't watch Game of Thrones Season 1 now without feeling worse because now you know what comes later.Of course, the above could be said about Shadowlands in general. But Korthia was the lowest point. And it happened around the time that all the allegations about harassment among Blizz employees became big news, too. People simple got it through their heads that the Blizzard they knew and loved is gone, and it had been replaced by something cynical and exploitative, or worse.
They diminished more than just specific characters. They destroyed an entire playable race. If they want to fix the setting, the first thing they need to do is put Sylvanas back in charge of the Forsaken as the Banshee Queen so a playable race that's been in the game since Vanilla can have their identity back.
Sad to see that TBC Classic didn't perform well. That was my favorite expac. But it is good to see WoW doing well overall.
TLDR: Shadowlands really was that bad.
I'm glad they acknowledged they ^&*!ed up with Jailer from a story perspective.The lead up being Sylvanas' heel turn, tearing the barrier between the Mortal Plane and the Shadowlands asunder...All so some dude that just showed up out of nowhere, that's supposedly been pulling the strings from THE VERY VERY VERY BEGINNING OF WARCRAFT LORE... can try to unite the cosmos against this bigger bad guy that's supposedly coming.
Honestly I'm very glad to see a lot of those points laid out. Especially about the Jailer being a complete husk of a character, in so many ways.
I liked SL.
I'd love to know what portion of players is around, like me, only due to sunk-cost fallacy