It’s no secret that there are hordes of casualties and fatalities resulting from Diablo 4 (no spoilers, but we all know who I’m talking about), but what I didn’t expect was World of Warcraft to be one of them. As WoW Dragonflight continues to struggle against Lilith’s tides of blood, what the future of the MMORPG looks like remains shrouded in confusion.
While our WoW Dragonflight review sang the praises of the Dragon Isles and its all-new Dragonriding systems, the main issue I had with the expansion was the endgame. Unfortunately, my mind hasn’t changed. Things feel unbalanced, and dungeons and raids are an absolute slog – especially when affixes are added into the mix.
It looks like I’m not the only one, as data complied by ‘u/NORATHEDESTROYER’ (via Raider.io) shows the Mythic+ drop-off between Dragonflight Season 1 and Season 2. It’s unclear whether this is the total number of runs, or just timed ones, but either way, the figures are pretty damning.
There were 3,212,947 during the first week of Season 1, before a huge drop took the number down to 1,874,934. This is where Season 1 stagnated, with a few small blips.
By contrast, Season 2 began with 2,270,276 runs, before taking a downward turn. The numbers have been consistently falling, with Dragonflight Season 2 week 6 coming in at 939,428. Yes, there were less than one million Mythic+ runs this week.
Of course, there’s one thing that WoW Dragonflight Season 1 didn’t have to compete with: Diablo 4. While Dragonflight Season 2 got a head start on Diablo 4 by releasing on May 9, Diablo 4’s early access and eventual launch on June 6 has clearly had an impact.
There are other factors, though, including general mid-expansion fatigue, issues with PvP, and the fact that, sometimes, gamers like to go outside and touch grass in summer.
I think the main thing, though, is that Dragonflight feels like somewhat of a filler expansion. While I don’t miss the odd, omnipresent Thanos-style foes and awkward writing twists that came to define Shadowlands (RIP Sylvanas Windrunner), I do feel like Dragonflight’s narrative is somewhat conventional, and that new zones don’t offer much excitement.
If your eyes are on the next content patch for Dragonflight, we a list of the best WoW addons in case you’re a little rusty, and a WoW Dragonflight tier list to help you choose the best class for the job.