Has World of Warcraft regained player trust? A large part says yes – but there are also many critics.
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight has been out for a few months. Many players were skeptical as to whether Blizzard could deliver again after Shadowlands, which had failed in the long term. In addition, there were several major corporate scandals surrounding sexism and discrimination, which also knocked a spike out of Blizzard’s crown.
Or to put it another way: the trust of even long-time fans was more than just cracked. Many have turned their backs on World of Warcraft or Blizzard in general. Even big streamers like Preach took a break until WoW and Blizzard improved.
That’s why we started a poll a few days ago to see if Dragonflight restored your confidence in World of Warcraft and Blizzard. More than 1,600 of you took part and came to an interesting conclusion.
Most are satisfied
At the time of the evaluation, a whopping 45% (728 votes) of you stated that World of Warcraft and Blizzard are on the right track and that they are trusted again. That’s a little less than half, but measured against how big the outcry was before and how drastic the scandals were, that’s a positive majority.
Above all, the fact that Dragonflight now has fewer mandatory tasks and gives the players more freedom is well received. For example, Slix writes in our comments:
Definitely yes, for me the best addon in a long time. Legion was not a good addon, too grindy in my opinion. The fact that there is no mandatory grind is what is so nice about Dragonflight. No reputation farming, no boring grind for any bonuses.
No, I log in, grab a few keys [Mythisch+] and I’m done. I don’t have to do anything else. And on top of that, there’s no real meta. So now I don’t have to make sure I’m playing the right class anymore.
WoW Dragonflight: All Season 1 dungeons ranked
More videos
A third needs even more time
Almost one in three (31%, 507 votes) is not quite sure yet and would rather give it more time. From the comments it emerges that one is mostly “cautiously optimistic” here, but one still has to check whether this is not a case of “Even a blind hen finds a grain”.
Blizzard and World of Warcraft will have to prove in the coming months that they can maintain the level and not run out of steam immediately after a strong start from Dragonflight. Looking back at Shadowlands, which also started strong but then quickly subsided, there are still concerns:
For example, Huehuehue writes:
I played Shadowlands very intensively at first, but since patch 9.1 I’ve only logged in 4 counted times for a few minutes. Let’s see how that goes now. Whether Dragonflight can catch me longer remains to be seen.
One in four could not be convinced
With 24% (399 votes) there is also a fairly large part that was not convinced by Dragonflight. Trust in WoW or Blizzard in general could not be restored. There are many reasons for this and most are individual.
While some on principle do not want to support a company that has allowed sexism and discrimination in its own ranks for so long, others simply do not enjoy Dragonflight. For example, they don’t like kite flying, or they don’t like the theme of the expansion or the lack of a major core feature.
Bread dumplings write:
Honestly, compared to Legion, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands, Dragonflight is dead boring to me.
Apart from PvE and PvP you don’t have a long-term job and you’re done with all the reputation, mounts and co in a few hours.
It feels like Classic, farming tedious mats and gold outside of group content.
Incidentally, the result of the survey is not only a phenomenon on MeinMMO, but was also indirectly confirmed by Blizzard. Activision Blizzard’s most recent financial report mentions that while Dragonflight hasn’t sold as well as Shadowlands, it has retained players over the long term. The values for ongoing subscriptions are as good as they have been in many expansions.
However, one should not forget that Blizzard also recently advertised an “annual subscription” – whoever has completed this logically counts as an active subscriber for a whole year.
At the moment, however, one can probably conclude that Dragonflight was received rather positively, even if some fans – mostly due to incidents that happened before Dragonflighth – have disappeared in the long term.
Did you expect this result? Or are you surprised that most are satisfied?