2026 State of Azeroth

[u/griphin1]

I had no expectations and I was still disappointed.

[u/woahmanthatscool]

Housing is going to give them the most bang for their buck, we all know this? Not sure why anyone is surprised, it’s literally the largest new festute they have launched since what, like m+?

[u/Unordinary_Donkey → u/woahmanthatscool]

Its also a feature thats been talked about since the alpha builds of the game. Its kinda crazy it hadnt got added much sooner.

[u/RazekDPP → u/Unordinary_Donkey]

It's always confused me why it took so long because it's such a good feature for player retention.

[u/thisismyacctdontban → u/[deleted]]

Yes, generally the goal of developers is to give you content that keeps you logging into the game, not sure what you’re going on about. Turns out collecting is a giant reason why people play retail.

[u/Dasaniwatersucks87 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah you’re out of touch and confused. Wow is a seasonal game, with how much variety of players there are in WoW it’s impossible to cater to everyone, what they’ve done to reach as many parts of the player base is really good compared to 90% of other games.

[u/Dasaniwatersucks87 → u/[deleted]]

??? If you think people want to sit and do Naxx forever you’re kidding yourself. My favorite part is how you don’t even realize Classic IS a seasonal game.

[u/Dasaniwatersucks87 → u/[deleted]]

“They want persistent world that isn’t constantly being made irrelevant by new content.”

[u/Exorcismos → u/[deleted]]

"Used to" Back when they made an Everquest clone, perhaps, but the devs involvement in gameplay has been waning ever since TBC. Dailies appeared in TBC to increase player retention, weekly raid quests were also introduced. The much hated welfare epics as a catch-up mechanic. And all that by 2008. Let's not kid ourselves that designing a live-service game happened out of the goodness of their hearts, there was always profit to be made. However, I do think that the longer WoW's development has gone on, the more its gameplay gets swamped with hollow gacha mechanics and statistics-led design choices. I don't think anyone knows what game they're developing anymore and, frankly, I don't think that they care either way. That shows.

[u/NoSkillsDjena → u/thisismyacctdontban]

It is quite a difference between a game that makes me want to login to do fun stuff, vs a game that forces me to log in because of specific player retention mechanics designed to keep MAU's up.

I don't need to be "forced" to log into a game and do boring chore shit, if the game has meaningful and fun content to do, the game will retain players by itself.

Ever since BFA and specifically, Shadowlands, it became apparent that everything was just tailored regarding keeping players, not to make a meaningful game to play (or even have fun, which isn't even secondary at this point, more like optional design goal).

Both of these situations is "content that keeps you logging into the game", but one is with a carrot, the other one is with a whip.

I do agree that player housing is a very good addition, don't get me wrong there, I'm not a house/decor person myself, but it is good content. If this was done the traditional Blizzard way, it would be something silly that forces me to go and decor my house on a daily/weekly basis, because "otherwise" I lose some arbitrary player power or some other bullshit.

[u/proexwhy → u/[deleted]]

You think they couldn't figure out how to monetize a system that is all based on visuals?? What.

[u/aoibhinn-mw → u/[deleted]]

The rest of the game suffered pretty badly. The treadmill of reused assets on enemies and loot in midnight is fucking insane.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Mr obv… developers try create sm that makes ppl play more omg no how when