World of Warcraft is enjoying an upswing. Although everything is quite simple right now, it's still fun - and brings great player numbers to WoW.
For a while, World of Warcraft, especially the “retail version” Dragonflight, was in a downward trend. Even though Dragonflight is objectively and subjectively significantly better than Shadowlands and has eliminated many major flaws, many people didn't return to Shadowlands - their trust was simply gone.
But now World of Warcraft is on a bit of a high again. The numbers seem to be going up, the world seems busier and there is a lot of praise from many quarters, even if some criticism, such as the Shadow Priest or the Windrunner Monk , still exists.
Why is World of Warcraft so popular again?
The most exciting indication here is the “Mythic+” area
If you're being completely honest, this is an unusual picture. There are usually a particularly large number of players in World of Warcraft at the start of an expansion. This number then slowly decreases over the course of the expansion and usually reaches its lowest level towards the end of an add-on.
Even though WoW hasn't published player numbers for a long time, there are other numbers that show the popularity of the game. Especially in the endgame areas “Mythic+” and the raids, there are various pages listing how many groups took part in certain activities. The most exciting indication here is of course the “Mythic+” area, as this represents the primary endgame activity for many. An infographic from raider.io shows how the current season 3 compares to the previous two seasons of Dragonflight:
Even though fewer people are now visiting dungeons than in the first week, the numbers are more stable than in both previous seasons. For comparison, the numbers from week 4:
- Season 1 had around 2,078,000 Mythic+ dungeon runs.
- Season 2 had around 1,102,000 Mythic+ dungeon runs.
- Season 3 had around 2,400,000 Mythic+ dungeon runs.
This means that Season 3 had more active dungeon visits in the “Mythic+” category in the fourth week than in either previous season.
The Amirdrassil raid is also well received. The bosses have an interesting design and in general the raid is easy to do on normal and heroic difficulty and hardly has any insurmountable blockages, as was often the case in previous raid tiers.
BlizzCon hype and The War Within
An additional factor why Dragonflight is currently picking up again is a mixture of several factors:
- BlizzCon has placed a new focus on World of Warcraft with the “World Soul Saga”.
- Anyone who pre-orders the next expansion “The War Within” will also get access to Dragonflight.
- WotLK Classic is currently on Icecrown Citadel - one of the most popular patches of all time.
- WoW Classic Hardcore is very popular, especially the painful deaths that many YouTubers and streamers react to.
- The “Season of Discovery” attracts new players into the WoW cosmos.
All of these external factors ensure that Dragonflight also benefits from the upswing and that many people at least take a look at the current patch - and then get stuck.
That's what the community says
The WoW subreddit and the current forums also discuss why WoW is so much fun and what actually makes it so. There seems to be a mixture of several factors here. The current gearing system is particularly praised , in which you can make significant progress in a wide variety of game content without having to grind endlessly or face insurmountable hurdles:
“It seems that unless M+ is an absolute clown event with overly confusing mechanics, then people will actually stick around and play the game.” – Frorlin
“This week (i.e. the next one in the infographic) will be particularly interesting. After a nice, easy push week of increasing dungeon visits, let's see how this week turns out that doesn't have great affixes." - Tullo
“People play to have fun. If the progression is fun, and not mind-numbing like most affixes and dungeons, then people play more. I hope Blizzard remembers this.” – dogfan20
Finally, an important point is that the current season, especially in the Mythic+ area, is easier and more beginner-friendly than it has been for a long time. The vast majority of dungeons have fairly clear mechanics and allow even newcomers who have previously been put off by Mythic+ to finally get a taste for them.
Can you understand the current “hype” of World of Warcraft and do you feel the same way?