Warcraft 4 "is" a possiblity now, as is WoW's eventual abandonment.

[CaptainV]

One thing that has become clear since recent events of Legion is that while Legion undeniably has some of the best story in WoW, its gameplay has suffered, people are loosing interest in wow, and "not" comming back, including myself. I think the reality is harsh and direct, but clear.

WoW will eventually be made free to play in order to keep lost subscribers comming back. I wouldnt be surprised if this is a feature of either the next expansion or the one after it, as blizzard has been ebbing towards F2P for a while now, the Tokens literally can make your experience f2p if you farm enough gold but thats not quite F2P so much as "farm" to play.

Regardless, some people probably had an abundance of money after WoD given how easy it was to farm coin there, meaning they probably havent paid for an expansion subscription in a while now.

The economic downfall of WoW was an inevitaiblity anyone could have seen comming, the sad truth is that WoW was never going to sustain itself on that alone.

People who are paying are probably alot less than you think, again, WoD made it exploitably possible to amass so much wealth in your garrison that some folks are probably swimming in money right now. As a result of this its likely blizzard will move to F2P over time because of that lack of wealth generated from WoW itself. Right now their biggest profits come from the fact they've ebbed into publishing content and not simply designing it. With alot of their newer economic gains from things like Destiny, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and Definately Overwatch.

While WoW continues to be a profitable cow I think even they know the time has come to slowly let it go, which is why less and less is being made and less quality content is being focused on. The games work got lazier each expansion and with Legion its so lazy its almost laughable. Virtually no new weapons were made in Legion, they just finally added the second set of gear that everyone wanted forever since launch and most of the armor sets are the usual reskin montage of colours.

The mounts were probably the hardest thing 7.2 had to make with different colours for each one but even that is hardly that difficult when done right, which means they're just getting lazy for the sake of being lazy now. I think blizzard knows this, and I think honestly? They dont care.

They've even moved a lead designer from Wow, SC2 and HoTS to some new project they're working on, which is either going to be a big and ambitous MMO, or more likely, an RTS.

SC2 and HOTS definately give me that vibe considering HOTS was built on RTS engines using the heroes of warcrafts games, and SC2 is an RTS, revovling around base building and army micro management.

With SC2 finished, its quite possible, Warcraft 4 is now in progress. Likely taking place some time after the events of Legion I have no doubt WC4 will be used to "freshen" the franchise with new heroes, faces, and have some nostalgia plays like an older Anduin and Velen.

See WC4 would be the perfect way to drag new players into the game. It would be able to recreate the magic that WC3 did back in the early 2000nds and equally build hype for a potential WoW 2 that could be in the works in the aftermath of WC4. This can only be a good thing, as WoW can then finally move on.

As for Wow itself, I suspect it has enough life for maybe 3 expansions after Legion, if they go back to their 5 levels per expansion system that puts it at a 125 level cap which would work fine. If they kept going by 10 levels then 150 would be the level cap after 4 expansions, which is also a possiblity, but I still think thats less likely.

I think Legion is the last "Big" expansion and after it, everything else will be alot smaller, compact and more likley to forfil their origional "one expansion per year" quota as they will simply make micro-expansion packs designed to fill the blanks while crossing between WoW 1 and WoW 2.

In conclusion though, this is not a doomsaying of sorts but more an inevitaiblity, it is almost certain Warcraft 4 is being worked on with Sc2 more or less being finished, and WoW being slowly faded into a lesser work for blizzard which is becomming more evident each expansion.

The chances are, the team will wrap up what story they have left to tell in Azeroth, and finish WoW there... with WC4 and Wow 2 possibly taking place in a new planet, which would be a good way to freshen things and start over.

[Mackeith]

Clearly you now very little of the lore, the gaming industry, the way the WoW token works, and game development. But nice wall of text. 2/10 for content, 1/10 for predictions, 8/10 for length.

[Deleted]

"Hey World of Warcraft is losing audience, we need something new and fresh to catch up new players!" ..... " Hey hey listen up, i have a great idea, let's do another Warcraft based game! That sure will bring freshness to the business!"

[Deleted]

What @Mackeith said. Sure, this is all opinion but at least try to argue some points instead of trying to pass them as true. For example you have this:

"As for Wow itself, I suspect it has enough life for maybe 3 expansions after Legion"

but give no reason as to why that would be true.

[Soulwind]

Warcraft 4 has always been a possibility. They just had to base the campaign on existing lore (they have 10.000 years of it).

It's not the story that has prevented that game from coming out, it's the fact that Starcraft 2 is Blizzard's current generation RTS.

And while that is also "dying", the whole RTS genre is, and I doubt a new Warcraft game would be succesful enough to justify development right now.

IF the RTS genre becomes popular again, IF Starcraft 2 does not and IF they choose not to make Starcraft 3, then Warcraft 4 could be their choice. WoW is not the problem.

[Apanonar]

You do realize people paying their subscription with a token actually make Blizz more money?

[Queen of Hamsters]

WoW will keep on going as long as we keep on playing. To think that it's closing in on the end when expansions still draw so many people and the game still makes close to a billion dollars on bad years is just plain retarded... and I suspect, wishful thinking to some...

Harsh truth; They won't abandon WoW. Even on the day that it stops being profitable enough to keep producing expansions, it'll enter maintenance mode and go F2P. That day might as well be 20 years from now. Just look at far less successful MMORPG's that are still running and having content released.

- - - Updated - - -

You do realize people paying their subscription with a token actually make Blizz more money?

Yep. Always a fun fact to point out to the people riding some high horse over "not giving Blizzard their money"...

[Thorbalt]

No, the only way it will go is that at some point they will switch from wow to wow 2 for the SINGLE reason of dramatically reducing the amount of code they have to work with and being able to break fully from the old, zombie code from vanilla that is still hard baked into things here and there

[Queen of Hamsters]

No, the only way it will go is that at some point they will switch from wow to wow 2 for the SINGLE reason of dramatically reducing the amount of code they have to work with and being able to break fully from the old, zombie code from vanilla that is still hard baked into things here and there

To think that they'll spend the millions upon millions of dollars required to put out another WoW whilst also risking to alienate every.single.loyal.player just to escape some code...

Yeah, not gonna happen. They've worked around the code for all these years, they'll continue doing so.

[tumppu]

As far as revelations go, this post sure did include a lot of lines to just say "Everything that has a beginning, also has an end".

[SoulForge]

You do realize people paying their subscription with a token actually make Blizz more money?

No. People selling tokens makes blizzard more money. People using them don't make blizzard any money.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Is this a college paper or something? You can't put "is" in quotes for something like that without including a reference. Unless a blizzard employee says there is a possibility then you don't need to be writing dissertations about it.
Obviously some day wow will end but it is no time soon. Warcraft 4 on the other end makes no sense to me. It's hard to project blizzards goals in what would likely be at least another 10 15 years, but rts is essentially a dead genre. Would make more sense for them to make anything else with the universe than another rts.

[Queen of Hamsters]

No. People selling tokens makes blizzard more money. People using them don't make blizzard any money.

... If nobody purchased them for gold, nobody would buy them with real money to sell.

Mental gymnastics much? If you pay your subscription with gold, you're still contributing real life cash to Blizzard. Supply wouldn't happen without demand.

- - - Updated - - -

Forgive me that I only quote that - but we have been hearing that for 6+ years now. WoW was even dead when it had most subs, according to some people.

Yes, yes, yes...WoW WILL eventually end, but since some clever people have predicted that already for 4/2015 (among other things like BiS gear in the shop) I find these threads more amusing than grounded in any reality as of what will happen next.

Yeah... I remember clear as day how WOTLK WOULD be the final expansion because "they'd run out of story"... We're lucky that the developers of this game aren't as void of imagination and inspiration as a chunk of the playerbase seems to be. :P

[Lahis]

Is it the "WoW is ending and Warcraft 4 will come" time of the year again?

People have been claiming this in one form or another since WLK ("Warcraft story ended with Lich King! They need more RTS for more story!"), but alas it hasn't happened and won't happen.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Also, blizzard actually makes more money from token sales. I glossed over that at first but after rereading it appears you actually don't understand this. A large chunk of this assumption is based on that misunderstanding too. Awkward! The token effectively assures the game will never be free to play, and they clearly don't care about those who unsub otherwise they would have caved on the legacy realm idea. They have 0 reason to ever go free to play, but that doesn't mean it won't eventually be abandonded.

[Nathanyel]

You do realize people paying their subscription with a token actually make Blizz more money?

This, and I'd wager at least 50% of the WoW players did not play the original RTS games (at least not before starting WoW) or are interested in RTS games in general. So 'abandoning' WoW and hope for the success of a new game in a genre that's slowing down would not be a good move.

I could see an approach similar to the Total War: Warhammer games, release a game with a story set in the past that doesn't affect WoW.
The lore offers many settings, albeit with wildly varying units, that haven't been touched much in the MMO:
- The armies of the Titans destroying the Black Empire.
- The wars between the Trolls and the Aqir
- The Kaldorei taking over from the Trolls
- The Pandaren, Jinyu, Hozen and Grummles liberating themselves from the Mogu
- The War of the Ancients (first Legion invasion)
- The War of the Satyr
- The Troll Wars (Humans + HElves)
- The War of the Three Hammers (Dwarves vs Dwarves)

[Deleted]

But at the same time, both MMO's and RTS games aren't very popular anymore in this day and age.
So you would have to make another Warcraft game that will almost exclusively be interesting for (former-) WoW players, which isn't all that commercially interesting.

[Nachturnal]

Not a current WoW player, but I'm wondering why your post speaks with such certainty. As if there is tangible and well known proof of your opinion.

[thilicen]

All of that text only to have it end up being one big fucking echo.

[AcidicSyn]

~snip~ With alot of their newer economic gains from things like Destiny, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and Definately Overwatch. ~snip~

What?

/10char