Asmongold explains why WoW players leaving in droves was good for Dragonflight’s development

Twitch streamer Asmongold shared that he believes that WoW’s next expansion Dragonflight was developed in large part as a response to the game’s community ditching the MMO as Blizzard fought controversy and Shadowlands disappointed.

Asmongold has never held back when it comes to critiquing World of Warcraft developer Blizzard.

He’s slammed the company for their pay-to-win design in the new mobile title Diablo Immortal, and has even gone toe-to-toe with developers of WoW over claims he’s one of the drivers of toxicity within the game.

Now, with the game’s next expansion Dragonflight just around the corner, Asmon has explained why he thinks a lot of the design choices were made as a reaction to the game losing so many subscribers.

Asmongold praises WoW community for ditching game

The 31-year-old streamer released a video on July 16 where he delivered his first impression of the WoW Dragonflight expansion.

He had positive things to say about the alpha and even claimed the game could be heading in the right direction. Asmon also explained towards the end of the video that the positive direction of the MMO wouldn’t have been the case if dedicated players hadn’t canceled their subscriptions over the last year and a half.

Blizzard had gone through a workplace harassment scandal in 2021, leading many players and content creators to leave WoW behind. This, coupled with the sour reaction from the community to Shadowlands, led the MMO to one of the lowest subscriber counts since it launched in 2004.

Asmongold claims that both the rise of other MMO’s like Final Fantasy XIV and the lawsuit “lit a fire under [Blizzard’s] ass.”

He continued, “There are executives over there that at Activision Blizzard, they see this and they go ‘f**k, what are you guys doing over there? Why are people leaving, why aren’t you listening to your player base?’

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The OTK-streamer finished his thoughts and said, “I think that everybody who did unsub actually was extremely instrumental in making Dragonflight, in many ways, a response to the community feedback.”

Asmongold made it clear that WoW players need to vote with their wallet in order to get the changes they want.