World of Warcraft may be fading out, but Warcraft itself is likely going to continue

[CaptainV]

Something has come to my thoughts, its blatantly clear with WoD and to an extent with Legion blizzard has been somewhat... lazy, regarding development of the WoW franchise of late, but then WoW isnt the Franchise, Warcraft itself is the franchise of the game.

A thought occured to me that blizzard may onpurposley be slowly leaning away from WoW itself in order to create a new Warcraft game to replace it, Warcraft 4 has been teased many times and they did say almost explicitly in a quote recently that if fan hype for Warcraft 4 was demanding enough they'd make it after SC2 was finished.

I believe this is possibly the case, the reason that WoW is dying, or fading, is because WoW itself is no longer the goal Blizzard wants to focus on in order to continue the actual franchise and as such the quality of its product is slowly becomming less potent in order to fade out WoW itself so that they can generate hype for a sequel to the MMO 'after' creating a new RTS game to build it up again.

It is possible that blizzard could use this to divide their target audience in half with the intention of taking WoW to a more mature level while prepairing for a next generation of players interested in the Warcraft franchise (especially with Warcraft the movie comming).

Think about it: WoW fades out slowly, this lets blizzard work on more mature but casually less content in the wow franchise (it lets them focus entirley on the vanillia fans hence Legion's massive amount of refferences to the old lore) by doing this they can give the old wow vanguard their last big kinda breathe before slowly turning to a DLC like model for WoW itself, making smaller compact expansions as content for the game but nothing on par with a big expansion like Legion.

This makes content itself more deliverable and easier to release, most likley it will be recieved well by fans because it can actually be released with most of its promises in tact.

Meanwhile Warcraft the Movie will create new fans, and for new fans, they need a new game, a fresh game, Warcraft the RTS (Either a HD remake of Warcraft 1 or possibly Warcraft 4 taking place long after WoW).

This will generate hype for a future WoW sequel designed for generation 2 of the wow fans.

Eh, its a shot in the dark but it isnt "impossible" that this is why blizzard is tactically slithering away development from WoW into its other products, possibly, because it simply wants to move onto a new warcraft game in general.

[TheFirstOnes]

Something has come to my thoughts, its blatantly clear with WoD and to an extent with Legion blizzard has been somewhat... lazy, regarding development of the WoW franchise of late, but then WoW isnt the Franchise, Warcraft itself is the franchise of the game.

A thought occured to me that blizzard may onpurposley be slowly leaning away from WoW itself in order to create a new Warcraft game to replace it, Warcraft 4 has been teased many times and they did say almost explicitly in a quote recently that if fan hype for Warcraft 4 was demanding enough they'd make it after SC2 was finished.

I believe this is possibly the case, the reason that WoW is dying, or fading, is because WoW itself is no longer the goal Blizzard wants to focus on in order to continue the actual franchise and as such the quality of its product is slowly becomming less potent in order to fade out WoW itself so that they can generate hype for a sequel to the MMO 'after' creating a new RTS game to build it up again.

It is possible that blizzard could use this to divide their target audience in half with the intention of taking WoW to a more mature level while prepairing for a next generation of players interested in the Warcraft franchise (especially with Warcraft the movie comming).

Think about it: WoW fades out slowly, this lets blizzard work on more mature but casually less content in the wow franchise (it lets them focus entirley on the vanillia fans hence Legion's massive amount of refferences to the old lore) by doing this they can give the old wow vanguard their last big kinda breathe before slowly turning to a DLC like model for WoW itself, making smaller compact expansions as content for the game but nothing on par with a big expansion like Legion.

This makes content itself more deliverable and easier to release, most likley it will be recieved well by fans because it can actually be released with most of its promises in tact.

Meanwhile Warcraft the Movie will create new fans, and for new fans, they need a new game, a fresh game, Warcraft the RTS (Either a HD remake of Warcraft 1 or possibly Warcraft 4 taking place long after WoW).

This will generate hype for a future WoW sequel designed for generation 2 of the wow fans.

Eh, its a shot in the dark but it isnt "impossible" that this is why blizzard is tactically slithering away development from WoW into its other products, possibly, because it simply wants to move onto a new warcraft game in general.

1. Wc and WoW are in the same universe. Also, I don't see WoW dying anytime soon.

2. legion is still in alpha...ALPHA...and it's looking 100x better than what WoD even became. Say what you like...but it aint going to do shit.

[Warpaladin]

1. Wc and WoW are in the same universe. Also, I don't see WoW dying anytime soon.

2. legion is still in alpha...ALPHA...and it's looking 100x better than what WoD even became. Say what you like...but it aint going to do shit.

Fading it is though :P

[Manabomb]

1. Wc and WoW are in the same universe. Also, I don't see WoW dying anytime soon.

2. legion is still in alpha...ALPHA...and it's looking 100x better than what WoD even became. Say what you like...but it aint going to do shit.

Yeah well, people were jumping up and down at all the cool shit in WoD's alpha/beta too. Then Blizzard shit the bed in the last 6 months of developing the expansion and completely jerked off content releases during the expansions release.

Legion very well has the potential to not only fail, but fail harder than WoD. Never discredit Blizzard's ability to fuck up an expansion.

[Phood]

I completely agree with the OP. There seems to be a lot of hype and media coming out now/soon. It seems that this extra content (movie, books) would have made sense in 2008 when WoW was at an all-time high, not on a 10 year old game with numbers strong but slipping. Something's up, gotta be.

[ro9ue]

Legion at the moment is looking to be my favorite expansion.

In all honesty I think the game had a slump from the end of Cata, the Dragon Soul tier up until the end of WoD because Blizzard was trying to, smartly, diversify their portfolio with SC2, D3, Hearthstone and HotS. Now that all of those games are solidified, I think all of their resources are going back in WoW. They just put out the Chronicle, they are doing the Traveler books, we have the movie coming, and Legion is looking damn good.

[TheFirstOnes]

Yeah well, people were jumping up and down at all the cool shit in WoD's alpha/beta too. Then Blizzard shit the bed in the last 6 months of developing the expansion and completely jerked off content releases during the expansions release.

Legion very well has the potential to not only fail, but fail harder than WoD. Never discredit Blizzard's ability to fuck up an expansion.

Wod was never going to be good anyway. If it was based on AU, then you ALREADY got an expansion that'll fuck up.

[UnluckyAmateur]

Wod was never going to be good anyway. If it was based on AU, then you ALREADY got an expansion that'll fuck up.

they tried to do a multiverse plot like marvel or DC but failed horribly. Mainly because they abandoned it after one major patch.

[Deleted]

A MMO with one million (western/paying) subscriptions will make more money in a year than all but the most successful movies or b2p games over their lifetime. WoW as of today should be clearly above that mark and additionaly generates income via addon sales, shop and royalties.

It's not realistic to expect monetization from non-subscription games to ever rival that ballpark, even if Blizzard tried wierd stuff with varying degrees of success: Diablo RMAH was a disaster, hearthstone and heroes - both likely relatively low-budget productions even given Blizzard's attention to detail - seem to keep on trucking. Starcraft II didn't exactly create hype with its third installment and Overwatch doesn't look balanced for e-sports, is a decade behind battlefield looking at graphics and hasn't even a short single player campaign afaik. Good luck with that.

So while Warcraft is a valuable brand, it's not easy to tap it's potential, unless Thrall replaces somehow Darth Vader in children's rooms and on Cornflakes bags after the movie. I really don't see it, but I've been wrong before.

[Auxora]

Warcraft was an IP prior to wow and will continue to be after wow. There have been plenty of books and more coming, the movie, the first 3 games, a whole store with just about every household product you can think of with warcraft plastered on it...so yep Warcraft is bigger than wow. Blizzard understands this well, it's more the gaming playerbase that gets obsessed and is focused on wow.

And the shift from a Blizz standpoint has already been happening, and it's not so much linear within the Warcraft universe. It didn't wait for wow 2 or wc 4 to begin. It's already happened with Hearthstone, to a lesser degree HotS, and will even more with Overwatch. That was obvious from last year's Blizzcon and the primary focus shifting, if it wasn't obvious already.

But as far as the future of the Warcraft universe, it's way (way) too important and major of an IP to just die slowly. I'm sure Blizz is cooking up something, whether it's wow 2, wc 4, something completely new, or just 5 more wow expansions over the next 10 years. But it's anyone's guess which of those they are planning. It would be a nice question for Blizz to maybe answer at this year's Blizzcon. Not expecting that to happen, just hoping...

[TheFirstOnes]

they tried to do a multiverse plot like marvel or DC but failed horribly. Mainly because they abandoned it after one major patch.

Think of it as their AU alpha test. They could Use WoD for the AU stuff and see if it plays out correctly. Sadly, it fucked up because no one would care for the characters because...well...we know them in real life. Unless you have an AU character do something badass...then we could care.

Oh...wait. (Looks at AU gul'dan in legion).....shhhiiittt!

[jbombard]

A MMO with one million (western/paying) subscriptions will make more money in a year than all but the most successful movies or b2p games over their lifetime. WoW as of today should be clearly above that mark and additionaly generates income via addon sales, shop and royalties.

It's not realistic to expect monetization from non-subscription games to ever rival that ballpark, even if Blizzard tried wierd stuff with varying degrees of success: Diablo RMAH was a disaster, hearthstone and heroes - both likely relatively low-budget productions even given Blizzard's attention to detail - seem to keep on trucking. Starcraft II didn't exactly create hype with its third installment and Overwatch doesn't look balanced for e-sports, is a decade behind battlefield looking at graphics and hasn't even a short single player campaign afaik. Good luck with that.

So while Warcraft is a valuable brand, it's not easy to tap it's potential, unless Thrall replaces somehow Darth Vader in children's rooms and on Cornflakes bags after the movie. I really don't see it, but I've been wrong before.

I wonder where you get your numbers? Sources? Activision Blizzard grossed around 3 billion in 2015 *overall*. A good movie can easily gross 1 billion at box office(worldwide), and that is minus video, broadcast rights, and merchandise(which can be huge depending on the movie). I remember reading profits for WoW are around $200 million and some change per quarter so yearly probably just under 1 billion. Not saying that isn't great, but a good movie will hit that easy just with the box office. Not to mention they keep making money off of merchandise, games, etc... etc... as well.

[Deleted]

I wonder where you get your numbers? Sources? Activision Blizzard grossed around 3 billion in 2015 *overall*. A good movie can easily gross 1 billion at box office(worldwide), and that is minus video, broadcast rights, and merchandise(which can be huge depending on the movie).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...grossing_films

24 movies all time above one billion and these numbers include TV and home rentals.


fun fact: The Lion King earned over $2 billion in box-office and home video sales, but this pales in comparison to the $6 billion earned at box offices around the world by the stage adaptation. "Choir of the lazy peons" incoming?

[jbombard]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...grossing_films

24 movies all time above one billion and these numbers include TV and home rentals.

You want to compare the most successful MMORPG of all time to an unsuccessful movie?

Also from your link
"All charts are ranked by international theatrical box office performance where possible, excluding income derived from home video, broadcasting rights and merchandise."

[Deleted]

@jbombard
You are correct, I misread it seems.

[soulzek]

WoW is not dying.
WoW is not failing.
WoW is not fading.

Never be an investor or business person. You probably wouldn't be very good at it.

[derpkitteh]

WoW is not dying.
WoW is not failing.
WoW is not fading.

Never be an investor or business person. You probably wouldn't be very good at it.

such denial, i hope you at least get paid by blizzard for it.

their complete lack of care for WoW anymore is blatant, and it's starting to hurt my love for it. why should i continue to care when the developers don't even care?

i don't want wow to end, i really love it. but if it does, i'll be done with the whole warcraft universe. unless they make wow 2. but they only want their quick money games like hearthstone now, so i doubt wow 2 will ever come, or a diablo or star craft mmo. blizzard as it used to be is dead, it's a modern company now and i mean that in the worst way possible.

[Deleted]

Blizz put so much time and resource in to Garrisons thinking they would be a huge hit for this expansion. They did not get lazy instead they got it wrong. A game of 10 year plus still having millions playing is Not dying, its thriving still in its good old prime. However dont think for one second i enjoyed WOD myself, i have played every expansion over these years and Wod was lacking in terms of entertaining content and personal progress out of raid content. Even most rares was rare 1 time in the entire expansion This play style may well suit some players but in my eyes, this is not the Style on an MMO. Mmo should be a grind, it should require time to achieve things, you should have to travel far and wide if you need herbs for your potions!! or ore for your armour. Dailys was either loved hated or tolerated, eitherway they shouldn't have been removed, they offered Lore and reward in mid expansion patches. Again if your not keen on the grind on them, should you be playing an MMO? Catering for the more casual players is there mistake, even our casual guild member's who log on much less than have struggled for things to do outside the garrison, even for them it should be challenging, time requiring and rewarding!

Oh and this talk of still in alpha.... when did we ever have an alpha that didnt have a NDA Slapped all over it? Live raid testing and so on. Your kidding yourself if you believe this isnt Beta at this stage, but it seems they want it to be alot more controlled and less on it this time. Live beta will probally open for stress testing im sure.

[Mormolyce]

It's over a decade old and still getting expansions. That's actually astonishing. I don't think it'll die any time soon, but it surely can't live forever. In its current form anyway.

[Atelniar]

If you are attempting to push out a WoW 2 you better be prepared for it to fall flat on its face. When WoW came around it wasn't in a period where f2p MMORPG's flourished in droves, which is the case now. GW2 is probably the only true MMORPG sequel that has been somewhat successful in the last five years, and that was significantly different and made some rather important steps compared to most MMORPG's. Then you have stuff like Skyforge with a completely different way of scaling your character than levels, with its prestige and how you unlock classes.

So, do tell: how is a WoW-sequel going to have a pipedream hope in hell of making a dent in the current market? It won't, not without making radical steps to advance the genre, and Blizzard has never been good at that with WoW, WoW is like america: it's a melting pot which takes things others have done previously and try to put their own spin on it, then you add a user-friendly and well-known interface which has become commonplace among MMORPG-players.

Warcraft as a franchise might survive, but when WoW disappears there won't be a sequel that reaches the same height as WoW did in its time. People have seem to forgotten that WoW was a player-constructed phenomenon unlike any other MMORPG before it, the machinima, the PvP-videos, stuff like Oxhorn's shorts, etc. All of that player-contributed content made WoW a cultural thing more so than a simple game, and that is why it became so big. It wasn't all that special in terms of gameplay or lore, tbh. People just forgot why it became popular and assumed the MMORPG-market actually was that big to begin with...

TL;DR: letting WoW die to phase into a sequel would be a gigantic mistake.