Let's be Cynical: Predictions on WoW (& it's Community) Over the Next Two Years!

[Sandrox]

Same, MoP was amazing because it was an amazing expansion, which only feel a bit short due to the team being too fast with content patches and then having it all grind to a halt with 5.4.

Content was not too fast, that how it should always be.

[PragmaticGamer]

Blizzard will discuss all sorts of cool ideas at BlizzCon.

Then will proceed to destroy all the fun of those cool ideas, so people don't want to do them.

[Kolvarg]

2 years is a relatively short time for WoW, we'll be deep into Legion and have some solid details on the next expansion, but probably that's about it.

My prediction:
Everything will remain about the same.

Playerbase will be slightly smaller (if they keep the subscription model) but still the largest sub-based MMORPG.

Some players will be saying Legion was the worst expansion ever; Some will be saying it was the best;

Some players wil be saying 8.0 is the last chance for WoW; Some will be saying it will be Legion 2.0; Some will be saying it will be the greatest xpac since <insert golden age xpac here>.

TL;DR: Most of us we'll still be around here, discussing the same useless issues without ever arriving to reasonable conclusions, most of the time without having a clue, and yet most likely still giving Blizzard our money =P

Me? I'll probably still be enjoying the final time with Legion and eagerly awaiting the good times 8.0 will bring me.

[Fascinate]

I actually hope this happens:

1. Legion does pretty good at launch, gets up to ~6.5 mil subs.
2. Two months later down to ~5mil
3. End of legion sub 2mil.

If this happens, classic servers will be a real possibility.

Listen i love the game and have played every patch since mid 2005, i dont want to see it die but i am also aware that they cannot really fix this game as it stands.

[TheWindWalker]

Content was not too fast, that how it should always be.

It should always release all content for the entire expansion within approximately 12 months then go on a 14-16 month hiatus. Gotcha.

[Packing an i5]

I think within 5 years if wow is still around which it probably will be you will see more in game cinematic, more voiced dialogue vs text. More visual improvements, better and more frequent holiday events. The Elimination of Group looting/ Mob tagging. Maybe another new class after Demon Hunter. A more flexible payment model.

[Montyqt]

dead... af

[Vurdah]

Adding Legacy servers does nothing bad minus cost Blizzard money. I'm sure they could make up some useless mount and sell it for 15 bucks to cover all the costs the server would ever need.

The reverse is also a thing. People who dislike the idea can't come up with a decent reason why not. The only thing it costs is Blizzard money/time. It doesn't cost the players anything. Adding it in is only a bonus to everyone. Play it or not, who knows, but not trying it seems stubborn. Yes, if it was popular, it would tell the current devs that they are trashcan, but I think everyone knows that already.

I know its off topic, so I'll stop.

I don't really have an on topic thing to post... oh well.

Yeah I'm not sure you know how businesses work. You don't invest a bunch of money into something that is only going to give you a small return if they would even see a return on it at all.

[Osmeric]

Majority has already quit the game.. from 12M -> less than 5M

It's likely 30+M have played the game so far (not all at once, of course), so maybe as many as 90% of people who have played it have quit.

[Sandrox]

It should always release all content for the entire expansion within approximately 12 months then go on a 14-16 month hiatus. Gotcha.

No, they should release content every 3-4 months, not have the huge gaps. The first 4 patches in Mists were at a perfect pace, but as always the drought afterwards was way too long.

[Caolela]

I stand by this, Legion will be the last decent expansion if it is, decent before WoW inevitably goes either free to play, or starts DLC sizing its expansions to make up for sub lossess.

Either way, if Legion is going to be the sunset before the nightfall, then it might aswell be a decent one.

Theres alot of promise with Legion, but I fear that it will never live up to the hype after WoD dissapointed so many players. World Questing might aswell be called dailies in disguise since thats exactly what it is.

You can also consider Legion's Leveling Content to be a good and bad thing. The idea of 4 zones of leveling content does at least make it alt friendly, but at what cost?

In addition trying to ground the players didnt work in WoD, I think this adversion to flying just limits content rather than adding it, why not just add a zone that can "only" be accessed "via" flying in the first place at least then it actually feels relevent to have it again.

Class Halls are also a hit/miss concept, trying to create a system where people visit a class hall with other players around might actually serve to piss them off more than want to be there. They also make a very narrow minded assumption that people will interact in their class hall, thats very presumptuous since I doubt they will even care.

Legion will be remembered as the last expansion that tried to offer the players something, but may not succeed in giving them it.

"If" it fails, as hard as WoD did, then WoW might aswell go F2P and Probably will.

It may even do so "before" Legion launches as some kind of promotional means of keeping players.

I wouldnt be surprised given the popularity of "vanillia" content, if blizzard adds some kind of permanent free level 1-60 trial that lets you do old raiding.

I agree with much of this. It's clear the writing's on the wall, and Blizz has gone too far every xpac, patch, "feature" to swing for the max profits. Grindy and boring while alienating players from the social part of the game.

That's going to be hard if not impossible to get back. Players, especially younger ones, have already been acclimated to being virtual loners, and it's led to laziness and easy play by and large.

A couple million, dwindling to a few thousand no-life diehards that don't shower for a week and still guard their BC/Wrath-era Blizzcon merch like ancient, rare artifacts that should be in the Louvre.

[Klingers]

I think that Legion's world questing system content will have legs for a few months, certainly longer than Garrisons, but people will eventually realise that the hamster wheel is basically endless and unlike the old Daily Quest/faction rep paradigm, there's no way to satisfactorily feel like you've "won" a faction. You won't see new quests unlocked as you win your second or third Netherwing race. You won't get to see the Isle of Quel'Danas be slowly unlocked or finally get that shoulder enchant you were after. People will see the hamster wheel and stop engaging with the content.

There won't be any patch dungeons. If we're lucky we might get two post-launch raid tiers this expansion. Don't count your luck on them being any less than 9 or 10 months apart.

We'll probably cap the expansion off with another 10, 12, 14 maybe even 16 months of sweet fuck-all while time is wasted with all the classes once again being superfluously gutted and rebuilt from the ground up.

To be fair though it'll all look pretty and sound great. Seriously. Fire the systems guys. Give the art and music teams a massive raise.

[VinylScratch]

They already said they dont have the data anymore and would be a tremedous task to even TRY to get these back online so people can get bored within 2 months. They are not fixing bugs, they are doing absolutely nothing. IM sorry, but you have a really short memory if you want a vanilla server back. Evertyhing changed during 12 years, includind yourself. And Blizzard knows that.

P.S. IF money was the issue for blizzard, and thats BIG if, they would have already changed the model. 12 years wasting money is not something a competitive company would do, so, they must be confortable with the current system. Its just logic.

Man you throw out the weakest canned arguments, let's see here:

1) They don't have data: A team of a couple devs in their FREE TIME managed to do this. If you're going to try and sell me a staffed team by Blizzard couldn't do similar, you're off your rocker. Hell, why don't they also just approach the Nostalrius team and hire them on since they already did most of the ground work, then they know they are hiring competent people. Or here's where you say something about how Blizzard shouldn't hire on people that recreated their content because they are "criminals". Either way, that's my answer.

2) "Bored in 2 months": Nostalrius over 10 days had 150k active players. The servers were alive for about a year and it was spread solely through word of mouth. With Blizzard having Twitch ban every Private Server streamer, and popular Youtubers weren't making videos under fear of getting a strike. Asmongold even said he desperately wanted to make Nostalrius content or to play it but he knew if he made any content on Youtube for it, Blizzard would have his partnership gone in a snap. Could you imagine the kind of numbers that'd be obtainable if Blizzard backed the idea? You'd have streamers, active Youtubers for a bit and it would self advertise. Not to mention a lot of people are afraid Blizzard will ban them if they touch a private server. Dunno about you but my guild on their PvE server alone had two raiding teams and a ton of active players that didn't raid. Server was always active. Am I denying people do play for nostalgia then quit? No, I know they exist but they get filtered out by level 20 anyway.

3) "Everything Changed in 12 years": Yeah, a lot of us don't like the changes. That's why we want these servers. i admit I don't have the level of free time I used to, but I still found time to hit 60, fully gear and raid weekly while doing dungeons on the weekdays just because I could, or helping guildmates gear out. A number of my guild also raided on retail servers, two of which had Mythic Archimonde down, more who were Mythic raiders in the off days. A lot of our guild was filled with adults working full time. Vanilla isn't this "you can't go offline or you die!" world. Leveling is easy, tedious and time consuming, but once you do that and get geared it basically becomes a matter of logging on for the couple hours to raid. You may have to play a bit to farm gold for your consumables but past that, you can get by on playing for four hours a week if your guild understands your working situation. Find a guild to fit your schedule, Vanilla players are far more accepting of how life is because most are adults. Don't know if you're looked at WoW recently but. . . it sucks. I may have changed a bit, but I certainly didn't change enough to where I prefer a game tube feed me items. I would say spoonfeed but then I still have to put forth the effort to swallow the food.

4) "They would have already": Not necessarily. Took Jagex a while to buy into the idea and when they did it pretty much saved Runescape for them. Also where the fuck are you drawing this 12 years wasting money? THEY'RE NOT DELETING WOW FOR THESE SERVERS. THEY'D BE A COMPLETELY FUCKING OPTIONAL CHOICE, IF YOU LIKE WOD, PLAY THE WOD SERVERS.

[brunnor]

Yeah I'm not sure you know how businesses work. You don't invest a bunch of money into something that is only going to give you a small return if they would even see a return on it at all.

Yes, innovation is never the way to make money. /s

[Vurdah]

Yes, innovation is never the way to make money. /s

Innovation is not the same thing as an investment. You are just showing just how little you know.

[Saucerian]

Oh, I could be really cynical, but I will just be realistic.

The WoW brand is badly damaged, as Diablo was after D3. RoS suffered as a result and so will Legion. The spike in subs will be much lower this time, even if Legion ends up being a better xpac. Honestly I think it will in some ways, but memories of WoD is going to tarnish it heavily from the outset.

Garrisons 2.0 for example. While they have much less incentive to sit in them, other endgame content is gated behind them. You will again have to derp around with the mission table and destructible followers, not because it's most lucrative, but required to do other stuff.

Mainly I see no reason it won't get boring just as fast. Everyone will have seen all the content in a month or however long they time-gate LFR. Re-running the same dungeons with bigger numbers to get more bigger numbers a la Diablo won't stay interesting long, I think.

What made the grind compelling in the past was the promise of new dungeons, etc, that you needed the gear just to succesfully attempt. That hasn't happened anywhere but raids since 4.3. WoD had one content patch and Legion is stated to have none. Why stay subbed?

[Osmeric]

WoD had one content patch and Legion is stated to have none. Why stay subbed?

Where was that stated?

[Saucerian]

Where was that stated?

I keep seeing people mention "one tier expansion" or that Legion will not get any new dungeons or raids in patches. Don't know if that's a fact.

[Deleted]

People will complain that gold is too hard to make after removal of garrisons. Probably a lot.

they could always buy a wow token

[Osmeric]

I keep seeing people mention "one tier expansion" or that Legion will not get any new dungeons or raids in patches. Don't know if that's a fact.

I wouldn't believe a statement like that unless it was sourced from someone official.