Some of you guys write fanfic on this forum like it's a full time job. What the fuck does this even mean? "The future of WoW is up in the air"? Everquest 1 still exists and still shits out expansions. Microsoft are still updating Minecraft.
They're not going to pull the plug on a game that once captured the online zeitgeist so entirely that it had a playerbase in excess of some countries populations multiple times over. I don't give a shit how many of the people on this forum claim the game "died" in TBC/Wrath/MoP/Cata/whatever else because they stopped making it the way you specifically like it, it's not going anywhere and you are deluded or ignorant if you think otherwise.
They are not gonna can WoW, ofc. Though, dunno if its current "1 patch per year" approach differs too much from maintenance.
It wasn't a typo. I meant that's how much they know Warcraft; it's nothing important in their memory; it's no different than you hearing any random game once or twice in your life max.
They just see hard and boring facts; what is popular and makes money; even Overwatch is more important to them because I heard it had 5 mil unique users within 2021.
Last edited by epigramx; 2022-01-22 at 05:23 AM.
No. They have several expansions planned and they will continue as planned.
I don't think so, or that they need to.
I do hope that the WoW sub will move to gamepass and that it will reduce the amount of content that is honestly just designed in a way to keep people subbed (like timegated covenant story etc.).
To get a perspective on Wow's longevity, think back 5 or so years, when the story was that Blizz had managed to diversify away from wow with franchises like Overwatch and Hearthstone. Fast forward to today, and those franchises are languishing and Wow is still easily the cash cow.
Obviously none of us can say for sure but if you read the investor call they talked about 2 mobile Warcraft titles in advanced development that they would share soon. When they talked about WoW they simply mentioned "more premium content coming".
I don't recall them ever referring to an expansion as "premium content" even before it had been announced. So make of that what you will.
As an interesting development Mike Ybarra released a statement last week that said he had, "some exciting things to announce, and I’ll be sharing more next week."
Will be a real shitshow if the exciting announcement is the mobile titles. I think everyone is assuming he will be making the 10.0 announcement.
Aside from that, the MS deal doesn't complete for nearly 18 months with Bobby at the helm until then. I'm sure there will be some amount of influence but I think everyone would agree that as long as Bobby and current Blizzard management remain in charge there won't be huge course corrections or changes.
2 years from now though I expect things will look very different. Microsoft has specifically said they are excited to begin working directly with Blizzard developers on gaming titles. That sounds we could see some real big changes but it's so far off in the future we can't really speculate what that means. What will the gaming industry look like in 2-4 years from now? Hard to say.