How healthy is World of Warcraft's future?

[Relapses]

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.

That's a cute rebuke of capitalism you've got there. Would you say that we do, in fact, live in a society?

[Soon-TM]

That's a cute rebuke of capitalism you've got there.

Yes, it is. At least you got that part right.

[Khaza-R]

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.

First day statistic, I assume accounts for pre-orders and new bundles. Something that didn't exist in the WotLK era or at least was only exclusive to certain retailers back in that time. Regardless, its obvious even with those sales their retention is the worst its ever been. Expansions are not how they've remained profitable, and they've even said as much. Its by relying more and more on "value added services"

[Megor96]

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).

I honestly disagree with you on this part. Modern WoW dungeons or more specifically m+ have turned the community into one of the worst in gaming. These dungeons just turned people into number obsessed speedrunners that rage when they wipe even once and probably wouldn't care if the whole place was a textureless white hallway with cubes as enemies. As for the raids, IMO any content made around people having addons like DBM or WA is a failure in game design.

[Relapses]

Yes, it is. At least you got that part right.

So your problem isn't Blizzard or WoW, it's the fact that corporations exist and profit. I mean. Cool, I guess?

[Soon-TM]

So your problem isn't Blizzard or WoW, it's the fact that corporations exist and profit. I mean. Cool, I guess?

Awww, just when I was thinking that you had somehow managed to get at least a part of my posts right, you went back to your usual strawmen. Oh well.

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I honestly disagree with you on this part. Modern WoW dungeons or more specifically m+ have turned the community into one of the worst in gaming. These dungeons just turned people into number obsessed speedrunners that rage when they wipe even once and probably wouldn't care if the whole place was a textureless white hallway with cubes as enemies. As for the raids, IMO any content made around people having addons like DBM or WA is a failure in game design.

That isn't so much an issue with the dungeons themselves as it is with the timer, Blizzard seems to think that adding a timer solves everything. As for raids, it's indeed silly that they're designing them with things like WA in mind, but the hardcore crowd seems to love content that cannot possibly be done without crutches like add-ons. Well, who am I to take their toys away.

[Kralljin]

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.

Considering that Blizzard makes barely any changes, their effort on their end is also miniscule, hence even if it only attract a small audience, it's going to be fine.
Simply because it's not going to be a repeat of the 2019 Classic Launch, doesn't mean it's going to "fail so hard".

Seriously, are some people still that dense to grasp that a certain audience just likes Classic and is completely fine with replaying it?

[mbit]

As for raids, it's indeed silly that they're designing them with things like WA in mind, but the hardcore crowd seems to love content that cannot possibly be done without crutches like add-ons. Well, who am I to take their toys away.

Its good cause addons act as a private difficulty setting. If you get bored you can turn them off for a more interesting fight. For your average player you want them enabled because he cant handle a fight without. It allows nuanced difficulty in same raid.

[TidalConflux]

A billion+ dollar failed product.

These forums are really incredible sometimes

A game that is going on 18 years, shot Blizzard into mainstream knowledge, led the MMO genre for X amount of years, and made billions is in fact a failed product just because people dont like the game anymore.

[TrollHunter3000]

Typically I stop giving a company money when it's found they're responsible for deaths yes

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How can I virtue signal when I'm anonymous genius - no one here knows who I am

How is that relevant? lmao

[Koward]

How is that relevant? lmao

Virtue signaling means publicly expressing opinion with the calculated intent of communicating good character (to look virtuous). He meant it cannot be done if you're anonymous, as the "publicly" part would not work.

[ercarp]

10.0 has to be as big as Legion, if not bigger. Otherwise, there's just no coming back from this disaster. I'm expecting a new class and a full revamp of the old world.

[TrollHunter3000]

Virtue signaling means publicly expressing opinion with the calculated intent of communicating good character (to look virtuous). He meant it cannot be done if you're anonymous, as the "publicly" part would not work.

The "publicly" part doesn't necessarily imply your actual identity. He's posting this view on a public forum, that's the public part. Why can't someone intend to portray their online alias as virtue? Seems like virtue signaling would be possible still.

[Accendor]

It's not dead, but it's heading that way. It's too old, too many bad decisions by the devs, silly lore decisions, the sexual harassment stuff, annoying elitist community, lots of compelling MMO alternatives that we didn't have 5 years ago. They need a new game really. I think people are just tired of the same old same old.

That's an interesting point of view, considering that the most voiced complain is that the game is too different from what it was a few years ago.
I really thing age has nothing to do with it, it's wrong decisions only.

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10.0 has to be as big as Legion, if not bigger. Otherwise, there's just no coming back from this disaster. I'm expecting a new class and a full revamp of the old world.

I don't think that's enough to be honest.
The revamp has to happen, yes, but one class is not enough. New speccs for everyone maybe? I don't know, but as of right now your are right - it needs to be bigger than legion.

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Its good cause addons act as a private difficulty setting. If you get bored you can turn them off for a more interesting fight. For your average player you want them enabled because he cant handle a fight without. It allows nuanced difficulty in same raid.

I think the main issue is that there are fights that are simply not doable for 99.9% of the playerbase without addons. At that point it's not a difficulty setting anymore.

[mbit]

I think the main issue is that there are fights that are simply not doable for 99.9% of the playerbase without addons. At that point it's not a difficulty setting anymore.

My bet is closer to ~1-5% can play without. But even 0.1% wouldn't be especially bad compared to other games. You can look at hardest achievements in steam games and you will see many games have only 0.1% accomplish the highest achievements. Its still cool that it exists. It might not cater to many people but the ones who do enjoy it are glad it exists.

[MasterOfNone]

Blizzard is a billion-dollar company. It's fine.

The game still easily pays for its upkeep and development. It's fine too although there are system design issues that need to be addressed.

Anyone thinking that this tempest in a teapot about paintings, emotes, flirts and the rest is going to have much of any effect on revenues is going to be disappointed. Only the very few paying attention to this give a damn about any of it.

i do think this is correct, but i also believe that the majority of people leaving wow are not leaving for emotes or even the blizzard scandal. the game design is not amazing at the moment. its been rough for two expansions, and i think people are finally voting with their wallet to not entertain ion's little playground of nonsense.

[Osmeric]

I don't think that's enough to be honest.
The revamp has to happen, yes, but one class is not enough. New speccs for everyone maybe? I don't know, but as of right now your are right - it needs to be bigger than legion.

None of that would be enough for me. I would require them to explain what in their design philosophy led them astray, and how the philosophy has now changed. Superficial changes without explanation of the underlying rationale will not be worthy of trust.

[AngerFork]

None of that would be enough for me. I would require them to explain what in their design philosophy led them astray, and how the philosophy has now changed. Superficial changes without explanation of the underlying rationale will not be worthy of trust.

I have a hard time understanding this mentality. Is it really more important to have a series of blog posts saying why they thought covenants would be a good idea with constant apologies? We get a lot of those explanations already via their own blog posts & at Blizzcon. To continuously ask for more & more is to take away time from Blizz working on 10.0, which is where I'd far rather see them expend their efforts.

The best apology I can think of for the rough times in Shadowlands is a fantastic 10.0 with great gameplay & solid content.

[Kyphael]

When Disney buys it? It'll make gobs of money from cross-promotion.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

When Disney buys it? It'll make gobs of money from cross-promotion.

And would be in an infinitely worse that than it supposedly is right now. If people think the crusade of watering down/cleaning up the game of anything that could be sniffed as potentially controversial and/or "not aligned with company morals/beliefs" was too much now... just think if Disney got their hands on it.


EDIT: Obligatory acknowledgement that it's not inherently bad that Blizzard has been/continues to do this cleaning up process; just a statement about those who are making a big deal about it.