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

[potis]

This entire post has to be a troll. No one is stupid enough to believe the WoW token doesn't bring in more money than regular subs.

You will be surprised.

If you follow mmo-champion posts.

9/10 dont play WoW anymore but raid Mythic NH.

9/10 Hate WoW but been playing since Vanilla.

[Flonominal]

How is this a forum post? Warcraft 4 and WoW's abandonment are possible? Man, what hard-hitting journalism complete with credible sources and a clear train of thought by the author

[Deadpulse]

I would literally kill for a warcraft 4

[McNeil]

The RTS genre is still 'deader' than MMORPGs, unless Blizzard finds a way to revolutionise the genre they'd rather go for the more popular ones. In which case they did so with the FPS and MOBA genre. Maybe they can find a way to make WC4 more RPG'ish and not as micro/macro heavy as Starcraft, basically doing what WC3 did but taking it a huge step forward. I could see the campaign maps of WC4 being HUGE with a lot of different optional quests, where you still control heroes that can level up and get items. And I would love to see even more factions than the original 4 from WC3, it might be hard to balance but this shouldn't be the games main focus.

As for WoW it will still be around for a while despite the heavy decline. The game is on maintenance mode and it will remain there as long as it can bring in money. Even if WoW eventually 'dies', I have my doubt that they'd go for a new RTS game though.

[Rotted]

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.

indeed, the only time they've ever, ever mentioned finishing wow was in Wrath (It could of been BC) but they said in a blue post they wanted to see wow out to level 100 and thought 100 was a nice figure to end on.

But we keep paying, they keep making

[Raqubor]

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

If there is no demand there's no market. So yes, the people buying tokens get Blizzard more money.

[Broken42]

Wrong. If ppl decide that token price is too high they would stop buying them and eventually token sales would bring less and less money, thus you cant have make money without both sides being happy about what they get for what they pay.

That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works.

First off tokens are $20 and they give you $15 worth of value. Regardless of if they are selling on the AH, Blizzard has already got their money. Now the price is already controlled to keep both sides in check.

Too many tokens and not enough people buying them? The price goes down.
Price went too low and now people are buying cheaper tokens without the increase in supply to match? The price goes up.

That's why you see fluctuations in the price throughout the week, it's the token price correcting for imbalances in supply and demand. And when those tokens that people have posted sell, because they are going to sell, Blizzard has made $5 over what they would if the person buying the token had just put $15 in their B.Net wallet.

[Igi]

I think i saw the same post when WoD came. And MoP. And Cata. And Wotlk.

[Artharior]

I wonder why people always saying wow die bla bla and we see this kind of post where the autor speaks a wall of text and then he no talk again meanwhile everyone loses time point him his wrongs.

[Deleted]

WoW will eventually be made free to play in order to keep lost subscribers comming back.

When will sillies stop with this bullshit logic? 1.000.000* 13 Bucks is still 13.000.000 bucks a month. Even if players drop to 500k that would be 6,5 millions bucks a month. Blizzard is a company that first goal is to make money. why would they give up on that much money per month?

the Tokens literally can make your experience f2p

Wrong. Its a DELUSION of f2p.
#1 time you have to invest to get the gold. #2 someone buys the token and pays even MORE as if you would pay the month with bucks.

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.

You surely have FAILED every economy lesson there is. WoW sustained itself with its paid subscription for 12+ years and that wont stop just because YOU think/hope/wish for it.

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.

on the contrary thanks to TOKENS Blizzard makes even more money then before. A month is 13 bucks, a token is 20 bucks. Without tokens bought by money no one can buy them with gold.

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.

So your BULLSHIT logic is other Blizzard products make more money so WoW will go free2play?

considering HOTS was built on RTS engines using the heroes of warcrafts games

nothing new here as Tower Defense was the successor to RTS but your wrong again. HOTS has Heroes of every of Blizzard ISP since the start.

With SC2 finished, its quite possible, Warcraft 4 is now in progress.

SC2 is FAR from finshed and SC Gold proves that. Why would Blizzard sabotage themself by bringing out another RTS?

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.

No it wouldnt. Times change.
thats not how nostalgia works.

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.

#1 there wont be a wow2 #2 blizzard has long given up on yearly expansions.

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.

All this is, is WISHFUL thinking - nothing more!

[Deleted]

'WoW is dying'. I think I summed it.

[Frozen Death Knight]

The Warcraft universe itself is a dying IP, Warcraft 4 wouldn't change that. Besides, they would only be able to do a spin off game, not something that progress the actual lore because we already have WoW.

The popularity of Hearthstone and the sales numbers for the last two WoW expansions in the first month of their launches would have to disagree with that. The interest in WarCraft is still there, despite the subscription numbers for WoW not being at their peak like back in the days of WotLK. Having new WarCraft games in a different genre would still be interesting to people if done right. Heck, despite the bleak future of RTS as a genre, there are people who are still hoping for WarCraft to go back to its RTS roots (I know I do).

[Jyggalag]

The real question is do Blizzard still have that creative genius that made the original WC games so good? I personally hate the direction WoW has took on these past few years. Would WC4 be any different?

[lolpve]

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

If tokens weren't in the game a huge swathe of the playerbase would have quit already. Blizzard would make more money if token users were buying subscriptions, since there really isn't the demand to buy gold so much these days. Tokens let Blizzard inflate the size of the playerbase and put a band-aid over their catastrophic subscription losses.

I agree with OP, the game will eventually go F2P since the sub model is becoming less attractive each year the game goes on. They will snare people with expansion costs and microtransactions.

[Saucerian]

No and no.

WoW will go on for a long, long time; there are people who will literally play it the rest of their lives. I know a couple.

RTS is dead. Free Starcraft won't bring it back.

[Xtin]

To sum it up for people who cba to read this wall of text - author has no clue but tries to sound like a mmo guru and economist at the same time .

[wholol]

A warcraft 4 would create enough story and lore to feed WoW's playerbase, as such it is counter intuitive that warcraft 4 be released or even thought of as an "after wow" thing.

If WoW dies out and/or becomes f2p the last thing blizzard will do is make warcraft 4.

[Evanescoduil]

People say this every year. You've yet to make an original or compelling point.

[Pum]

No and no.

WoW will go on for a long, long time; there are people who will literally play it the rest of their lives. I know a couple.

RTS is dead. Free Starcraft won't bring it back.

I've played since 2006 and currently I have quit for 2 months, but I know I'll go back, I know full well that I'll play WoW until it is dead and buried, and if that doesn't happen then I'll play it until I'm dead and buried. WoW is the best game I've ever played and probably ever will play.. if that's nostalgia or addiction I'm not bothered, credit where credit is due. Not everything is perfect and Blizz fuck up from time to time but they're never really that big a deal.

There are thousands like me, what is WoW may never die.

[Thorbalt]

well, to be quite honest...i think we all know that when mechwarrior 5 hits every game is basically going to become a graveyard for a few weeks