Must WoW go Fully PG to continue to Thrive?

[Kithelle]

Should just stay where it is...suddenly turning it PG would be a massive overtaking that it doesn't need because I doubt it will hook many young children and it doesn't need to be R rated

[apples]

wow has been fully PG since literally the day it was created. it was and always will be designed as a game for the masses.

welcome to 15 years ago

[Onikaroshi]

wow has been fully PG since literally the day it was created. it was and always will be designed as a game for the masses.

welcome to 15 years ago

Wow has always been PG-13 (or teen) it has many things that wouldn't be allowed in PG rating.

[Mirishka]

The Ascians' motives and modus operandi are a bit more complicated than the Burning Legion's, and Shadowbringers gives a lot of insight into their motives and their start of darkness that manages to keep them sympathetic without causing players to lose sight of the enormity of their actions, nor does it try to paint their actions as justified--they are very clearly wrong and the driving conflict is their inability to let go what cannot be regained.

Complexity isn't the point, the point is you said 'in FF14 entire planets get wiped out!' and I felt it was worth pointing out that in the lore 'thousands' of worlds are now lifeless, shattered husks in the wake of Sargeras and the Legion.

We can argue the details until we're blue in the face, but the point was (and remains) that WoW also does the 'genocide across many worlds' thing.

[CaptainV]

No and tbh id argue if anything wow needs to be rated at 18+ since its themes ever since WOTLK onwards have been getting progressivley darker and more disturbing both in undertones and sometimes in outright obvious ones.

Tbh this game needed to up its age rating 3 expansions ago, when we had things like outright blood rituals and macabre depicitions of gore and death in a game thats catered to 12 year olds, not to mention rampantly increasing sexual innuendo in flirts/dances and skimpy outfits that have for years gradually pushed the age rating to its limit.

Id say wow's being held back by a lack of opportunity to go fully into its dark fantasy roots like WC3 was able to, and id say if they just abbandoned the idea of being afraid of upping the age rating and just "did it" they'd actually have more of an engaging and deeper plot.

[Azerate]

I'm not sure what exactly "PG" encompasses, I'm not from the US. But I disagree that the game is brutal or sexually explicit in any way. I don't think it ever was in fact. Wow has always been this kind of candy-high-fantasy with sweet colorful cinematics that make regular people cringe. And if you mean that people are killed - this happens all the time in cartoons. Graphic details and gore are almost never (if at all) shown. I don't think there's anything in WoW that couldn't be pasted into a slightly more serious cartoon for 7 year olds.

Tbh this game needed to up its age rating 3 expansions ago, when we had things like outright blood rituals and macabre depicitions of gore and death in a game thats catered to 12 year olds, not to mention rampantly increasing sexual innuendo in flirts/dances and skimpy outfits that have for years gradually pushed the age rating to its limit.

I don't think we're playing the same game. Someone dancing in a skimpy outfit isn't a sexual innuendo. Are you one of these christian moms that make facebook fanpages about Frozen 2 being satanic creation?

[Shadowsgrace]

Oh hell no, I bet you if they made a "World of Warcraft: After Dark" a more Adult version of the game, it would probably sell more than traditional retail. Don't forget all those bans that went out, after people were using a mod to make BG flags, and Gather nodes HUGE so they were noticeable, then remember how many were reverted because most of them were people just modifying.... *Ahem* Character "Assets". There's your Money maker Blizz.

[Cosmic Janitor]

What an inane question. First of all, the functional difference between PG and PG-13 is practically non-existent. Not to mention that the amount of new players, especially very young players is mostly a function of their parents and other people in their surroundings having still contact with the game, not the overall appeal to the demographic like fortnite

[Liftinmammals]

I wouldn't think so. I'd say everything is ok where it's at currently. A game is a game. Let's just roll with it.

[bagina]

Dunno, WoW doesn't seem to know what it wants to be either. One moment you have those serious pathos-fueled realistic cinematics, in another you have characters acting dumb and spewing shit out of a Saturday morning cartoon. There are cases of tonal whiplash everywhere.

I never percieved WoW as a game for kids, with all that explicit gore, undead running around, corpses hanging from trees, demons etc. Weird how you ignore these and draw the line at Telldrassil. Like, genocide has been in WoW since the beginning. All those undead are genocided citizens of Lordaeron.