I wouldn't say BFA is "that" fuck up. They would have to also fuck up the next expansion. I don't even know if that is enough. There is no other MMO available at this time that can compete with WoW, and I don't see one coming out any time soon.
Classic WoW is also going to bring in a ton of players. The 8.2 patch should be reasonably close to the launch of Classic WoW. If they make that 8.2 patch decent, a good number of players will decide to play both Classic & live. They will instantly recover from any "damage" they incurred from the last few months of BFA.
People have very short memories. They recovered from WoD, they can easily recover from BFA. They still need a large string of fuck ups to keep spiralling, and while they are capable of doing it, I doubt they will.
I would agree WOD was way bigger of a train wreck than BFA is. BFA at least has end game stuff to do and things for ever pretty casual people to get some gear upgrades via PVP or the new invasions or warfronts. WOD once you hit max level other than raiding there was fuck all to do. It killed my guild because what little pve end game outside of raiding it had offered rewards nobody wanted like that apexis gear shit. As much as people complain about scaling its way better than being stuck in the fucking Tannan jungle for what almost a year?
I would 1000% rather this than needing to log on to do random dogshit chores.
To me WoW is no longer an MMORPG it's a fucking X-box lobby to queue into bullshit while having to do chores while you wait. It honestly is hot fucking garbage.
That's been true of the game since Wrath to some degree. It's just gone further and further in that direction since then.
Playing WoW because it's fun to play is so 2007. Most of us have only been logging in as an obligation almost for the last decade or so. I mean, yeah the game is disappointing right now, but nothing I haven't been through already with this exact game, just a different flavor is all.
That being said, it still has a niche place for people, like myself, when it comes to repetative, simple shit to do. I've been doing weekly clears of old content for mounts/titles/achievements/whatever for so long now it's become a ritual almost. And even now with over 20k achievement points, I still have a metric fuckton of inane side shit I can do when i'm bored. It's not everyone's cup of tea, mind you, but for me and plenty of other people, it keeps us occupied between raid nights.
The cross realm BGs really killed them. I remember the first few nights loving the insta Ques but after seeing it just became a gigantic zerg they became just another grind instead of fun.
For years Ive been thinking WoW is no longer an MMO. With BFA I just started treating it like a single player game instead of trying to force MMO qualities in it and getting distraught. Actually having fun with it but also playing super casual mostly collecting mounts xmogs and battle pets. Ocassionly ill do an mythic or a raid but mostly its not even worth it since theyll just hand out the gear a few weeks later like the warfront gear/quest and now the 370 wq chests
They had to do cross realm stuff, PVP or PVE, when populations began to fluctuate. If you cannot get enough to queue on your server, then it motivates people to quit because they can't do anything.
The only reason they never did old fashioned server mergers is because their technology lets them basically merge them behind the scenes. Even stuff like FFXIV will use cross-realm matching for stuff like raids/BG to make sure queues aren't too long.
This is exactly why it is done. People are so fast to jump on the doom train as it is.I'm still convinced (admittedly with no evidence) that they're afraid of the bad publicity that comes from merging servers and that'sis why they went that route, despite there still being dozens of nearly dead servers that make for a miserable experience even with the cross server stuff.
"X is merging servers! Doom is nigh!" was used for pretty much all of the "WoW killers" and avoiding that sort of shit must have been a concern for them.
Fixed that.I would 1000% rather this than needing to log on DAILY to do random dogshit chores.
Fixed that.
I'd like BFA more if I could manage my time there. But I can't. There's a shitton of stuff that's timegated, and the gating is balanced against your doing it daily.
Case in point: Service medals (Honorbound/7th legions). You need around 1650 to get all the rewards. But you have a max of ~10/day and 15 weekly: - 5 daily WQ on whatever zone you have, 5 from your daily invasion, and 15 from the near-weekly assault. So, you need to log and work toward it DAILY for a minimum of 4 and a half months. Any day you don't log? One more day until you get the last reward. Missed the invasion? More delay. Free time this sunday? You can't catch up for the week's missed, so go do something else.
The latter used to be "go play my alts". These days, it's more and more "go watch some youtube".