Fate of WoW tomorrow at Gamescom

[Seranthor]

It's just the cold hard reality. The steady sub trend is about -1.5m/year and it has been going since the end of WotLK. Release of new xpacs and patches provides bumps, but those dissipate in 1-2 quarters. That means that the trend rate at the next xpac release is going to be about 4M subs. If they don't reverse the trend, by the end of the next xpac they would be down to 1-2M subs, which is not enough to keep WoW going, especially if the trend is still down.

Of course Blizzard is going to pull tricks like bundling 1y subs with free copies of whatever, and trying to use the movie hype to drive subs. And there's of course some hardcore floor of addicts that will keep playing until the end, although nobody knows where that floor is (e.g., is it 1M or 100k?). But everything we know is pointing to the current game design does not have the ability to retain players long term. The next xpac is the make or break for WoW. They must change the trend and it's not going to change by just doing the same things they've been doing in the last xpacs.

Sir, You really should reconsider trying to pass of your opinions as fact, specifically, you have no clue at all about what is or is not enough subscribers to keep Wow going... What you are willfully ignoring based on your own clear bias is that as long as Blizzard sees Wow as profitable they'll continue to make expansions. Which flies in the face of your 'make or break'. 'Everything we know' isnt everything there IS to know, 'Everything we know' isn't all that Blizzard knows... and I would bet there are folks working on the expansion after this one, and even working on the expansion after that. Didn't one of the devs recently say in an interview that they expect Wow to continue for another 10 years?

I get that you want to make bold out there statements, but when you make them expect to get some pushback from folks that dont buy the hype.

[Deleted]

Sir, You really should reconsider trying to pass of your opinions as fact

Every post on these forums is "just someone's opinion". It goes without saying. Did you have any actual argument to make? Because all I saw was unsubstantiated faith that everything will be magically better because there is something secret and revolutionary at Blizzard that we don't know about.

I'm just making an argument based on things we do know. We know the subscriber numbers, we know Blizzard's financials (they're available online), we know that the whole WoW infrastructure (developers, Q&A, customer support, billing, server, etc.) were set up to handle a ~10M playerbase and dropping to low single millions is going to mean they can't go on as they used to, we know dropping subs cause more dropping subs when the servers get deserted and your friends leave. You can stick your fingers in your ears and close your eyes and hope it all goes away, but I don't see any reason to think WoW is going to stay alive for another two xpacs unless the next one does something radical to reverse the trend. You certainly haven't provided any argument or reason to believe otherwise.

[cityguy193]

Sir, You really should reconsider trying to pass of your opinions as fact, specifically, you have no clue at all about what is or is not enough subscribers to keep Wow going... What you are willfully ignoring based on your own clear bias is that as long as Blizzard sees Wow as profitable they'll continue to make expansions. Which flies in the face of your 'make or break'. 'Everything we know' isnt everything there IS to know, 'Everything we know' isn't all that Blizzard knows... and I would bet there are folks working on the expansion after this one, and even working on the expansion after that. Didn't one of the devs recently say in an interview that they expect Wow to continue for another 10 years?

I get that you want to make bold out there statements, but when you make them expect to get some pushback from folks that dont buy the hype.

What are you even saying? You seem to be pushing off any opinion you do not agree with, while claiming your own as fact.

- - - Updated - - -

I guessed you missed it, their stock is up >11% in just the last day, I think you have confused your wishful thinking for reality.

- - - Updated - - -



How quaint... you've failed to calculate in the subscription spikes prior to each future patch and expansion, So your PDF is nice historically, but is absolutely not predictive of the future.

It takes that into account dude. Do you not know what trend means. In reality, you cannot even expect a 3 million increase of the playerbase for the next expansion, so the trend would be even faster.

God, people on this forum like to think they are smarter than they actually are.

[Deleted]

No King rules forever

No,seriously...there's two ways of thinking in these forums.

1 . WoW will eventually age and have a slow long death over the course of years.
2. BLizzard will make WoW 2.

Both are wrong....come the right moment Blizzard will just revamp WoW (engine,combat,everything) the same way SoE tried with SWG:NGE ( or to be precise we hope not exactly like NGE XD).

Maybe this new WoW have less success or more success (how the f*** could I know?) but it is 100% obvious that they are not gonna let one of the major success in the industry of entertaiment just "die".

The "Fate" you refer to just indicates if that "revolution" comes sooner of later.

[NickCageFanatic]

Why does it matter?

I'll watch just because I'm curious to see, after all I've played this game for many years. Even though I stopped about 4 months ago for good.

Blizzard has taken a different approach to their business strategy. WoW isn't going to be their big time cash grabber, it's games like Hearthstone and HoTS that are the future of Blizzard. These two games, including Overwatch are clearly getting WAY more developer attention than World of Warcraft, it's clearly showing in the lack of content that WoD gave players.

Look at the state of Ashran! It's broken, and it's been broken since launch!

WoD had two content patches, yes TWO not three because 6.1 doesn't count at ALL as a content patch, more like a giant hotfix! Right now. If this new expansion Blizzard announces today isn't released by Christmas or at the very latest this Spring...oh man another year of only 1 raid to do...that 5.4 million sub count will drop to under 2 million guaranteed.

Edit:

If I could say something, WoD got a total of 10,000,000 players playing WoW a few months after launch. The expansion isn't even done and Blizzard has lost about half...HALF it's subscriber count from when the expansion started. And they say it's because Diablo was released in Asia....that's such a bad excuse it's not even laughable.

[Valynor]

There is no ¨Fate¨ tomorrow for WoW, they choose this way, what they are going to do is keep WoW in the ship.. with good expansions if they put effort into the game which we havent seen in a while, Ofc they will nevear reach 12 mil subs again, no MMO rules forever still, that day hasnt arrived yet nor is soon, I apologize for my english :P

[Seranthor]

What are you even saying? You seem to be pushing off any opinion you do not agree with, while claiming your own as fact.

- - - Updated - - -



It takes that into account dude. Do you not know what trend means. In reality, you cannot even expect a 3 million increase of the playerbase for the next expansion, so the trend would be even faster.

God, people on this forum like to think they are smarter than they actually are.

Really? lets see... developer says in interview they plan on making expansions for the next 10 years... thats not my OPINION...

“I definitely can’t tell you what our 20th anniversary is going to be. I can tell you there is definitely going to be one,” World of Warcraft lead game designer Ion Hazzikostas said in an interview with Cnet. “I have no doubt saying that. We’re definitely planning into the future, talking about what the next expansion is going to be, and what the one after that is going to be, just in terms of big picture storylines, how can we start setting things up now, where do we want the game to go. Ultimately it’s all one step at a time.”


So, what opinion of mine am I passing off as 'fact'? Speak pup.

Really? it took that into account... show me where... I saw the PDF and I see lines straight down... So Please pup show me...

[jbombard]

Really? lets see... developer says in interview they plan on making expansions for the next 10 years... thats not my OPINION...

“I definitely can’t tell you what our 20th anniversary is going to be. I can tell you there is definitely going to be one,” World of Warcraft lead game designer Ion Hazzikostas said in an interview with Cnet. “I have no doubt saying that. We’re definitely planning into the future, talking about what the next expansion is going to be, and what the one after that is going to be, just in terms of big picture storylines, how can we start setting things up now, where do we want the game to go. Ultimately it’s all one step at a time.”


So, what opinion of mine am I passing off as 'fact'? Speak pup.

Really? it took that into account... show me where... I saw the PDF and I see lines straight down... So Please pup show me...

If you don't plan for the future, you likely won't have one. However just because you plan for the future does not guarantee you will have one either. It is extremely unlikely a developer come out and say "yeah, were know were screwed and were just coasting and grabbing as much can as we can before it's over". When they make announcements they have use marketing talk, or misleading truths. Everyone plans for the future, but many times that plan includes maximizing profits at the players expense.

[MoanaLisa]

Closing this. You can discuss the fate of WoW over in our new Legion forum.