Even before the fiasco happened, World of Warcraft was already losing players.
Despite Blizzard’s efforts to appease the public, World of Warcraft is struggling. In terms of how long is up for debate, but in the past couple of years at least, player morale has been a downward trend. And while they announced the highly anticipated Phase 2 for World of Warcraft Burning Crusade Classic, shortly after, the story took a sharp turn to the left in the wake of the bombshell of a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard. As a result, a lot of WoW’s biggest content creators stated that they’re leaving the game for food amidst all the drama. According to Zepla, a famous YouTuber that streams a variety of content (which used to include WoW), it was nauseating to learn all of the things that’s been allowed to go on at Activision Blizzard. Could this possibly be the end for World of Warcraft and for the players that farm WoW TBC gold daily?
The Betrayal
While Zepla voiced out her concerns about what’s going down at Activision Blizzard, she wasn’t alone. A lot of other players felt betrayed as well. For a lot of the community, World of Warcraft was all they cared about from 2004 until the mid to late 2010s. Players were obsessed with the game–in love with it. Especially when Shadowlands and World of Warcraft Classic dropped, Blizzard, saw a lot of new players wanting to buy WoW tbc account to try out the MMO.
Even before the lawsuit scandal broke, World of Warcraft was already in the news. High-profile streamers and YouTubers who primarily played WoW moved on to other games due to Blizzard’s history of implementing unpopular gameplay changes and strange story changes. Needless to say, the longtime players were fed up with the company’s antics and decided to move on to different games.
Finding A New Home in Final Fantasy XIV
Finding a new MMO to play isn’t hard, but there’s a lot of choices which makes it overwhelming. This led to a talk about a “WoW Exodus”. A lot of the top streamers and players transitioned over to Square Enix’s MMORPG, Final Fantasy 14 for the very first time. Unlike World of Warcraft, FFXIV was a place of relative disarray at first. But as the years go by, Naokio Yoshida improve the game and added in new, beloved expansions. The biggest advantage that Final Fantasy XIV has over World of Warcraft is its relative flexibility. Players can play as little or as much as they want, and they won’t be punished for the lack of grinding. While this is also seen as criticism from veteran FF14 players that want more hardcore content, it’s ultimately what makes the MMO so accessible for everyone.
On the flip side, as a lot of former WoW players found a new home in FFXIV, World of Warcraft spend the last couple of years complicating its base systems and items even further, leading to players feeling like they have to clock in more hours if they want to be able to get the most basic endgame rewards. Lore-wise, we think most people would agree that WoW has hit a storytelling drought these days. The Season of Mastery is certainly a contradiction to that, but that part of WoW, more or less, is just the conclusion of the chaos that ensued between the player and the Jailer.
Losing Sponsors Left and Right
On July 21, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard due to repeatedly discriminating against their female employees. Yikes. But that’s not all, they were allegedly fostering a workplace where sexual harassment went unpunished as well. Double yikes.
Since then, multiple stories have emerged about how bad working for Blizzard was for women and women of color. Senior Blizzard developers were directly implicated in these stories such as making unwanted and aggressive advances towards their female coworkers. Ever since the lawsuit was filed, more former and current employees are stepping forward to share their stories of abuse. It’s been awful, and quite honestly disturbing the past few months for those that have been following the multiple statements that have been released so far. Perhaps the icing on the cake is that now, Blizzard isn’t just facing one, but two lawsuit charges. This led to the company losing sponsors for their games such as Overwatch and a lot of employees quitting, including Claire Hart (Blizzard Entertainment’s chief legal officer), Chacko Sonny (Overwatch 2’s boss and company vice president), and 20 more exiting soon after according Blizzard’s interview with the Financial Times.
Could This Be Goodbye for World of Warcraft
A lot of gamers have chosen not to play World of Warcraft anymore, or at least until all of the employees are properly heard. And it’s not just WoW that’s affected, all of the games that Activision Blizzard makes such as Overwatch have seen a chunk of active players dropping like flies. There’s no other way to put it: Blizzard is cucked to oblivion. They can’t possibly wriggle out of this one, and we doubt that the employees that received some form of abuse would back down. It’s safe to say that all of the scandals that are happening with the company will alter World of Warcraft and WoW TBC gold in some shape or form, for now, we’re just not exactly sure how. What do you think of the recent stories that are circulating about Activision Blizzard? Let us know down below!