How healthy is World of Warcraft's future?

[Tyris Flare]

i would be surprised if they survive another major expansion cycle at this point and don't have to start pumping more and more money into a failed product.

A billion+ dollar failed product.

These forums are really incredible sometimes

[T-34]

So...blizzard profited from the past 3 expansions and their respective dubious quality + layoffs...

Seems to me a little cynicism is warranted regarding players' hope for a better game.

Or that MMO-Champion has become a "safe space" for a tiny minority of obsessed WoW-haters that can't let go of their former big love

Blizzard's job is to make money for its owners and such high net revenue per MAU must make the bean counters there salivate.

[pahbi]

A billion+ dollar failed product.

These forums are really incredible sometimes

If anyone has any extra billion dollar failed products please feel free to send it to me.

[MoanaLisa]

If we divide net revenue by MAU then we get:

Activision: 6,2 us$/MAU
Blizzard: 18,8 us$/MAU
King: 2,49 us$/MAU

So even though Blizzard has the lowest operating margin it has by far the biggest net revenue per MAU of all 3 parts of the company.

A regular monthly subscription plus services will do that.

[Kathranis]

WoW is a forever game, it'll be sustainably profitable so long as they want to keep making content for it. That's just the reality. It has enough core users for that.

People seriously have such idiotic takes on this board. Look at how long every other MMO has lasted with only a miniscule fragment of WoW's playerbase, and you seriously think this game is going to collapse?

[CancerCulture]

Well, if Blizzard is getting taken over by the Woke Crowd, then you can expect their product to diminish at a much faster rate, independent of the sexual harassment drama.

Woke Culture Religious Beliefs are not popular with Average Americans, with opposition usually being censored or banned due to intolerance.

[Shadowferal]

What's profitable for Blizzard, doesn't always resemble a quality product for its customers.

[Khaza-R]

WoW is a forever game, it'll be sustainably profitable so long as they want to keep making content for it. That's just the reality. It has enough core users for that.

People seriously have such idiotic takes on this board. Look at how long every other MMO has lasted with only a miniscule fragment of WoW's playerbase, and you seriously think this game is going to collapse?

Depends on your definition of "collapse". Surely Blizzard could keep WoW afloat indefinitely just by releasing something like Season of Mastery servers for all of their previous expansions.

But as far as new expansions go, I would disagree they are a sustainable way to keep WoW alive. Just judging by the ever decreasing MAUs I would guess that each new expansion brings back players but with increasingly diminished returns. That and the retention of users between each expansion seems to be slipping more and more. If it hasn't already happened, then I am sure someone at Activision will see there's no reason to expend the same budget on WoW expansions that they once did.

There might be many more expansion in the future for WoW but they will likely be less content and lower quality.

[MoanaLisa]

Just judging by the ever decreasing MAUs I would guess that each new expansion brings back players but with increasingly diminished returns.

That may be true. It also might not since MAU's are an aggregate for all Blizzard titles. Decreasing MAU's might be Overwatch or Hearthstone or anything really. We don't know how that splits out and how much of that number is an increase or decrease per title. It might be all World of Warcraft but likely not. You can look for Blizzard's MAU number to spike heavily once they manage to release Overwatch2 or Diablo: Immortal, never mind what they'll look like when they get Diablo IV out there. I don't think you can make any safe conclusions about individual title performance from an MAU aggregate. You might see a small spike from the recent Diablo II remastered launch. I think they overpriced that so it might be smaller than expected.

[Sharein]

Blizzard going woke will be the final nail in the coffin.

[Arcreid]

Depends on your definition of "collapse". Surely Blizzard could keep WoW afloat indefinitely just by releasing something like Season of Mastery servers for all of their previous expansions.

Season of Mastery will fail so hard, not only because it only attracts a fraction of an already fractured playerbase, but also because people have done Vanilla WoW for so many times already.

[Megor96]

Seeing how much fun those WF raiders are having in FFXIV and some even questioning why they're still playing WoW, I really don't think WoW has any legs to stand on anymore. While other games have better community's, story, game design, graphics and developers. WoW is just declining with horrible devs that seem to hate their players and constant terrible design decisions.

[Relapses]

Seeing how much fun those WF raiders are having in FFXIV and some even questioning why they're still playing WoW, I really don't think WoW has any legs to stand on anymore. While other games have better community's, story, game design, graphics and developers. WoW is just declining with horrible devs that seem to hate their players and constant terrible design decisions.

Yep, WoW's officially dead because some people played another video game and enjoyed it!

[Khaza-R]

That may be true. It also might not since MAU's are an aggregate for all Blizzard titles. Decreasing MAU's might be Overwatch or Hearthstone or anything really. We don't know how that splits out and how much of that number is an increase or decrease per title. It might be all World of Warcraft but likely not. You can look for Blizzard's MAU number to spike heavily once they manage to release Overwatch2 or Diablo: Immortal, never mind what they'll look like when they get Diablo IV out there. I don't think you can make any safe conclusions about individual title performance from an MAU aggregate. You might see a small spike from the recent Diablo II remastered launch. I think they overpriced that so it might be smaller than expected.

True. I completely agree with you that the vase bulk of MAU drops are from OW and Hearthstone. Which had way more users to begin with. However, if we look at the past 3 years of there's been a consistent decline in MAUs. The only exception is Q3 of 2019 which would has a small spike likely due to the initial hype and popularity of Classic. Otherwise even the releases of BfA and SL were unable to cause a spike in MAUs.

Season of Mastery will fail so hard, not only because it only attracts a fraction of an already fractured playerbase, but also because people have done Vanilla WoW for so many times already.

The popularity of private servers over the years says contrary. But also its pretty impossible to be a failure when its just old code of a 17 year old game that requires virtually no development. Even if it only generated an extra 2k subs, it would still be a success.

[Megor96]

Yep, WoW's officially dead because some people played another video game and enjoyed it!

I wouldn't say WoW's dead yet. But it certainly needs something that makes it stand out from other games. Right now the only thing WoW has that sets it apart is an incredibly terrible story, easily offended devs, timelocks and rng depended loot systems.

[Stickiler]

But as far as new expansions go, I would disagree they are a sustainable way to keep WoW alive. Just judging by the ever decreasing MAUs I would guess that each new expansion brings back players but with increasingly diminished returns. That and the retention of users between each expansion seems to be slipping more and more. If it hasn't already happened, then I am sure someone at Activision will see there's no reason to expend the same budget on WoW expansions that they once did.

The problem with your theory is that Shadowlands sold more copies in the first day than any WoW Expansion ever, including WoTLK, which says that new expansions lead to a higher spike in revenue than they ever have before. The box price alone pays for ~3 months worth of subscription in terms of dollar value, assuming 40USD, which means it's insanely profitable. Napkin math puts that at around 148 Million Dollars, on top of the normal subscription income.

[Shadowferal]

Selling expansions just means Blizzard is doing well.
The customer that paid for overpriced shit? Not so much.

[Relapses]

I wouldn't say WoW's dead yet. But it certainly needs something that makes it stand out from other games. Right now the only thing WoW has that sets it apart is an incredibly terrible story, easily offended devs, timelocks and rng depended loot systems.

Nah, the only thing that sets WoW apart is its community's unique ability to look at any possible situation from the single most cynical viewpoint imaginable. It's also the only game I know where people quit playing but for some reason feel compelled to hang out on forums for the game and tell everybody they encounter how much happier they are playing another video game.

[valax]

They better start wrapping things up and call it an era before it's too late for Blizzard

[Soon-TM]

I wouldn't say WoW's dead yet. But it certainly needs something that makes it stand out from other games. Right now the only thing WoW has that sets it apart is an incredibly terrible story, easily offended devs, timelocks and rng depended loot systems.

To be fair, the one thing that Blizzard does better than the competition are its dungeons and (especially) raids. Which coincidentally happen to be the most expensive things to develop, but are left pretty much abandoned after ~6 months (raids) or at most 2 years (dungeons).

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Nah, the only thing that sets WoW apart is its community's unique ability to look at any possible situation from the single most cynical viewpoint imaginable. It's also the only game I know where people quit playing but for some reason feel compelled to hang out on forums for the game and tell everybody they encounter how much happier they are playing another video game.

Everything related to big corporations should be regarded with a generous dollop of skepticism, or cynicism if you prefer. They are not your relatives, they are not your friends, and will look for every single opportunity for providing less and charging more, directly or indirectly. You may happen to like one (or several) of their products, but that doesn't mean that you should feel personally offended by someone not taking each and every statement from Blizzard (or any other big corpo, for that matter) at face value.