Post-Honeymoon SHB thoughts?

[Jimsvaliant]

Great story, good music, good world design.

Bad dungeon gameplay, EX primals were solid, Raid is too simplistic, Savage barely better. Lack of challenge overall is a real problem, lack of any new game system AT ALL, while leaving past game systems behind without updates for years at a time.

Catering to the conservative playerbase with repeating the known and expected formula is also a bad design decision. WoW was at its most successful when it challenged the playerbase, and people expected more of that (end of BC, start of WotLK).

I think the panicky moves like fantasia to a 60 days sub, and the welcome back campaign already, show people are done with 5.0 and they are bleeding subs badly.

I wouldn't say it's a panicky move like offering a "limited time mount" for buying a 6-month sub after quarterly earnings report show huge loss of monthly activity. I think a month after an expansion release is too early to claim they're bleeding subs when their steam and twitch numbers are higher than they've ever been.

Personal anecdote: I was the only person on the personal discord I share with my friends that played Stormblood. I never push my friends to play FF:XIV because I know it doesn't appeal to everyone. We are all Vanilla WoW raiders and we all played WoW during Beta for Azeroth and quit two short months after. After the huge amount of hype ShB generated post-launch 6 of my friends have just started playing it again or for the first time. One of them only had to purchase ShB while three others have bought the complete editions after playing for 2 or 3 days. Just a few hours ago one more buddy and his roommate hopped on their inactive accounts because of the welcome back campaign. A less cynical person could look at the welcome back campaign as an interest bait rather than an emergency response.

Obviously no one has the numbers but Square Enix; however, based on 3rd party sources and my personal experience, I would say it's too early to cry bleeding subs.