Originally Posted by
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.