How healthy is World of Warcraft's future?

[Naiattavain]

i would take the vanilla approach so that everyone has some thing to feel good about when playing the game again. most people left. that how i would fix the game who cares about elitist's. and once the games fixed and most peeps can win again. keep the game the way it is and heavily criticize new changes to the game. wow stopped feeling like wow after wod and legion changed everything.

[TheLucky1]

The expansion sales themselves pay for the next, this will go on for a looooong time, it just won't ever be as big as before.

We will see how much impact the scandal and SL's mediocrity have financially on them with the next quarterly report and 10.0 day 1 sales.

Because as much as people bark and bitch on sites like mmoc/reddit/forums we are but a very small fraction of players and I'd wager that especially day 1 sales for 10.0 won't drop much compared to bfa/sl thanks to the ignorant consumer culture.

[threads]

the game will probably never completely die but it is definitely not going to be the #1 mmo for quite awhile.

[Lochton]

Thanks. In the future, please do not misrepresent the state of your knowledge with claims you know you cannot back up.

EDIT: ah, that was someone else. My apology for the error.

Apology added.

It is okay. I merely commented due to the fact that even if you believe in a better or worse future of WoW, alas, the numbers we all want to hear do not exist to us.

[chiddie]

i would take the vanilla approach so that everyone has some thing to feel good about when playing the game again. most people left. that how i would fix the game who cares about elitist's. and once the games fixed and most peeps can win again. keep the game the way it is and heavily criticize new changes to the game. wow stopped feeling like wow after wod and legion changed everything.

The game is not fixable, because for the majority of players it revolves around doing (well, actually TRYING to do) group activities with unknown people and this won’t work in the long term.

Also they cannot turn it into D3 with optional party content because it’s a mmorpg.

Devs are stuck and come out from the mud won’t be easy.

[NineSpine]

The game is not fixable, because for the majority of players it revolves around doing (well, actually TRYING to do) group activities with unknown people and this won’t work in the long term.

Also they cannot turn it into D3 with optional party content because it’s a mmorpg.

Devs are stuck and come out from the mud won’t be easy.

That model works fine for other games though, most notably FF14.

The problem is how blizzard tries to do it, not the general idea.

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If blizzard would get their head out of their ass and create content that provides challenge to content, make the leveling experience more fun, and try to return the game to a community driven enviroment then the game could go into a new golden age.

Instead of the illusion of challenge known as mythic go back to normal, heroic, and retain the name of mythic but just keep it as the most challenging experience for the 1% bring fun and exciting raids, drop the 25 man down to 10man do away with lfr and encourage reasons to communicate.

The leveling experience with scaling is just horrible, you feel like you gain no power yet evolving in level and skill. Scaling was a cool concept but ultimately fails especially in higher levels where it can become a chore to kill one mob near max lvl.

Cross servers were a fun little concept on paper but ultimately ruined the community, merge servers into giant mega servers, and let these new generation players fear being blacklisted by the server for being a prick or leaving everything early because the run wasnt smooth as butter.

Just because you want back-breaking levels of difficulty doesn’t mean anyone else does. Extremely difficult content is not popular in any game. Stop confusing your fetish for what everyone else wants.

[dope_danny]

I think World of Warcraft is in its Managed Decline stage of its lifespan. Its not dying anytime soon but its growth period of significant new players is long gone and they aren't going to grab a new generation with a 17 year old hotbar mmo riding a early 2000's rts game zoomers only know of from hearing about the warcraft refunded debacle.

So the game is now modelled as a retention trap. To keep the existing users logged in as often as possible for as long as possible with that cash shop icon forever on the bottom right of the screen. The Boosting and Token hustle alone is making them more money than ten times their subscibers did back in the day even with the output rates and storytelling both taking a hard right into garbagetown.

Until the money stops flowing the current model won't change and until that switch for f2p thats surely been ready for a few expansions now just in case flips theres no sign they are going to improve the quality of the core experience due to feeling like they are in trouble in terms of the livelihood and health of the game as a factory farm.

Thats stagnation at best really. But when its a profitable one they aren't going to change when every other game they have ranges from struggling to barely more than abandonware at this point.

[DarkAmbient]

That really I would say depending on the studio and its size. Smaller studios tend to hold games alive for much longer. yet Activision Blizzard is too big for that and if the game wouldn't give them enough profit then I kinda doubt they would hold a game for too long. But yes, there would be countless people playing in any case. Hell, some of those characters next year 23rd November will turn 18 years old... Hell, for some I am sure their character is even considered as their baby, on the same level as child or pet. Those people would even play if maybe all cities would be deserted.

Oh yeah, there is definitely a core of people who will never stop playing until they die or the servers are shut down. And even then they'll probably just go to private servers.

[vashe9]

I have been playing since the early days like 2-3 days after vanilla release... Just stopped recently, SL isn't as fun as other xpack, it's more of the same but with more "borrowed power systems". Got fed up, like my guild (they tried to raid 9.1 but they disbanded after a few months)

Wow can continue without me, I dont think anything will fix it (for me) I need something fresh


Oh and the story, the story sucks BALLS. Its stupid, and even if I'm considered a "leftist", i think most of the "equality" changes are just plain stupid... I'm glad I left this game

[tankbug]

WoW is a white dwarf by now, and will probably remain so for a long time

[Sevyvia]

Not very. It was already in slow decline, but the scandals will have hastened that. I do think the game has some chance at winning back some of what it has lost, but I doubt it'll happen until the next expansion. Too much shit is all wrapped up in Shadowlands. I quit in BFA, and I know plenty others that did as well. Didn't come back to try the game until the next expansion.

Honestly, though, I wish they'd just knuckle down and work on the game. Anything else they do right now is going to make some group mad. Whether it's the rabid Twitter mob that doesn't actually play the game, or the "just leave it alone" group that don't want to see kneejerk changes to old content. Or some other grouping. It honestly doesn't matter, at this point. Just get through Shadowlands and move the fuck on.

[Irian]

Maintenance mode isn't far off? I think WoW already is in maintenance mode. The content of Shadowlands has been a bland and predictable excuse to go to an afterlife which has no sensible rules or lore, relying on dragging up old names of dead characters and waving them around to draw on a feeling of nostalgia while they implement the bare minimum each major patch.

Like I seriously don't think it can be any more maintenance mode than Shadowlands. This expansion just radiates "phoning it in".

[justandulas]

So you compare not even 3 months long tier vs 8 month long tier and call it a day?

Statistically speaking, well over 90% of guilds kill a boss in that 3 month window so it’s an accurate tell of how far the population has fallen

Unless ofc, you think most kills from here on out are going to be freshly formed guilds which we both know isn’t reality

[Shadowferal]

Afaik the game is making more money now than during its player count peak, so quite heqlthy I would imagine

You actually believe that blizz has over 12 million paying subscribers?
...if they did they'd be braying that loud and proud for the sake of their stockholders. ...upon rereading the post
...making more money off of a shrinking customer base and doing nothing to increase that base isn't a vibrant growing company. It's a company on life support.

[Cosmic Janitor]

The first 2 options are jokes, for the last two, I'm a bit torn. I personally think WoW is in throuble right now, but I think in part the reason for that is because they've ramped down development efforts and priorities for the game. I'm sure we are quite a ways off from entering actual maintenance mode. They will instead push out a few more expansion for easy cash infusion, but I don't see much hope for WoW being Blizzard's core title going forward. I'm very curious about the current headcount of the wow team, especially those that work for full time on it and aren't putting out fires in D4 and OW1.5.

[Very rare pepe]

Financially the game is still doing fine because of whales and a hardcore audience, outside of those 2 groups it is a seasonal game now, some people come and play for a month or 2 and quit till the next expansion. WoW isn't going anywhere anytime soon so if you are worried about putting your time into a dead game I wouldn't worry.
WoW definitely is on a steady decline though in terms of quality and player count and in general hype for their product, I don't think it can be saved from the slope it is on but that slope isn't steep and isn't worth worrying about yet, check back in a decade.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Maintenance mode isn't far off? I think WoW already is in maintenance mode. The content of Shadowlands has been a bland and predictable excuse to go to an afterlife which has no sensible rules or lore, relying on dragging up old names of dead characters and waving them around to draw on a feeling of nostalgia while they implement the bare minimum each major patch.

Like I seriously don't think it can be any more maintenance mode than Shadowlands. This expansion just radiates "phoning it in".

Oh you don't know what actual maintenance mode is then. That involves only new additions to the cash shop and at most adding some higher numbers to items and enemies instead of making new stuff. Practically perpetual diablo3 seasonal content but worse.

[chiddie]

That model works fine for other games though, most notably FF14.

The problem is how blizzard tries to do it, not the general idea.

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Just because you want back-breaking levels of difficulty doesn’t mean anyone else does. Extremely difficult content is not popular in any game. Stop confusing your fetish for what everyone else wants.

It works when the idea is not tying the 100% of gear progression to it.

Because, let’s be honest, 1 player on 10 arrives at +15 because of the “challenge”, if best gear was at +5, almost no one would go past that.

The challenge thing works when you do it ONLY for the sake of the challenge and rewards are secondary. In D3 gear wise I have really no reasons to go past GR100 but I am pushing nonetheless further on to see how far I can get with my own skills. Someone will stop way earlier and will have my same or even better gear due to rng but you know? I don’t care because gear means very little in this case. I am pushing for the sake of pushing but I’m not punished if I don’t push. I can do other things, try other builds and so on.

In WoW if you can’t upgrade your gear, you have nothing to do, and you can only upgrade it via party stuff.

[Shadowferal]

What are you talking about, I didn't suggest Blizzard had 12 milion players. They have approx 1.5 million players if Bellular's analytics are to be believed. I said that I'm pretty sure the game males as much momey, if not more, than when it did have 12 million. From micro transactions. And if that's the case then Blizzard has no reason not to support the game.

And as I edited;
...making more money off of a shrinking customer base and doing nothing to increase that base isn't a vibrant growing company. It's a company on life support.

[Osmeric]

I said that I'm pretty sure the game males as much momey, if not more, than when it did have 12 million.

From micro transactions.

I don't see how this could be the case. I mean, when Blizzard sells a token, it replaces a month's worth of sub and brings in just a bit more money (less than 50% more). How does that make up subs being down by a factor of 8?