How exactly do you think Microsoft will affect World of Warcraft as a game?

[epigramx]

For example

1. Will they alter the game engine a lot? Will they do a major technological revamp? Will it be able to do a lot more for developers to play around (e.g. vr or ai or multiscreen/consoles/mobile)?

2. Will they alter the way the game itself is promoted to new players? E.g. will it be renamed to just "World of Warcraft"(no expansions)? Will it have an MS Launcher?

3. Will they affect the lore at all? Will whatever expansion Blizzard had planned 2 years ago go as planned next year? Are they going to make another movie?

[hulkgor]

1. Nop

2. Nop

3. Nop.

Pretty sure they won't impact the game itself as much as you seem to think.

[trapmaster]

Def pretty certain they wouldn't make any fucking changes, but only add more cash shop and stuff. We are talking about mircosoft

[Dhrizzle]

Def pretty certain they wouldn't make any fucking changes, but only add more cash shop and stuff. We are talking about mircosoft

Are Microsoft products overly loaded with RMT stuff? I don't really play them much but don't see them complained about the same as Acti-Blizz and EA.

I personally think it could be good for Blizz (and other Acti-Blizz studios) as there will be less pressure on them to perform to a strict schedule. Since going independent from Vivendi there will have been more pressure on game makers to make products as each one is a significant part of the company's revenue, as a small part of a small part of an absolutely massive corporation they'll likely have a bit more space to breathe.

- - - Updated - - -

For example

1. Will they alter the game engine a lot? Will they do a major technological revamp? Will it be able to do a lot more for developers to play around (e.g. vr or ai or multiscreen/consoles/mobile)?

2. Will they alter the way the game itself is promoted to new players? E.g. will it be renamed to just "World of Warcraft"(no expansions)? Will it have an MS Launcher?

3. Will they affect the lore at all? Will whatever expansion Blizzard had planned 2 years ago go as planned next year? Are they going to make another movie?

I can't see Microsoft affecting direct development of the product, I do think they'll promote it differently and we might see Blizzard games rolled into the Games for Windows launcher (or whatever it's called these days) with a possible push for the game to be released on XBox.

[Myradin]

Are Microsoft products overly loaded with RMT stuff? I don't really play them much but don't see them complained about the same as Acti-Blizz and EA.

Heavily depends on the game. Microsoft prides itself on its hands off approach.

You get Sea of Thieves with some small micro-transactions after being just buy to play for years. Then you have halo infinite which is a glorified store with some game attached.

[ablib]

1. Nope.

2. Kinda.

3. Nope.

1 and 3 are absurd.

Expect Microsoft and Xbox to be front and center, not Activision. So, the battle.net launcher will most certainly go away. WoW will become part of some type of tiered game pass and heavily advertised to console players. Console development will be bumped in priority.

[The Stormbringer]

1.) Will they alter the engine? Probably not. At best we might see them pushing console support.

2.) Will they alter the way the game is promoted? Almost certainly, Microsoft has a lot of name brand power.

3.) Will they affect the lore or make a new movie? Almost certainly not, they'll let Blizzard deal with that stuff, and the last movie sold poorly.

You should be asking more important questions though, such as "Will they be just as anti-union as ActiBlizzKing? Will they allow more remote work from home? Will they offer more raises, bonus incentives, an benefits? Will they actually pay for quality customer support and Q&A?" Those are the real questions, IMO.

[Zalraki]

It will force you to open web tickets in Edge browser

[Resheph]

You are confusing ownership and distribution with the running of the conpany. No, they will not concern themselves wirh tech or existing content.

They will obviously make the game part of gamepass and will probably push for quicker contenr cycles. MS woild decide when an expansion goes live as they would coordinate and market so the pressure to deliver will be quite something, just ask the Bungie guys.

[Lolites]

most likely? not at all
WoW is small part of blizzard, which is small part of actiblizz, which will be tiny part of gaming section of microsoft, which itself is just part of microsoft itself, thinking they would directly involve themself in it to such degree we would see some significant difference is kinda naive...

[debraflynn]

You'll be compelled to use the Edge browser to access web tickets.

[Sinaa]

It's hard to say, I think a lot more will change than people realize. The current "go hardcore or go home" approach might change as well, I expect Ion to get sacked, or promoted away from his current role. Battle Net Launcher rebranding is possible too. Making WoW free with the xbox game pass & adding more crap to the store is also ..

[Mysterymask]

Probably barely anything..

Wow is a small blip in the grand scheme of things quite honestly Microsoft bought this for Activision more than Blizzard since CoD is a powerhouse. At most we might get some fun Microsoft themed cosmetics (Banjo Kazooie pet, BattleToad themed gloves for Monks) and maybe this going on Xbox live but of you think for one second they are gonna revamp the engine or fire Ion or Danasur or even massively change the gameplay I have to ask you one thing


What has changed with ESO when Microsoft bought Bethesda?

[Biomega]

It almost certainly won't, in most real and meaningful ways.

I expect there to be some changes to the subscription model - how exactly we cannot say yet, since this is too far in the future.

But in terms of design? Nothing is going to change.

[McNeil]

I doubt that Microsoft will be involved in any in-game changes. At best I could see them add the WoW sub into the Game Pass which could give the game a huge influx of new players.

Microsoft has been doing some neat remakes for their older games aswell so there might be hope for a fixed WC3, WC4 or even a classic+ version of WoW on an updated engine. Still find it hard to see this happen but a man can dream.

[crusadernero]

It's hard to say, I think a lot more will change than people realize. The current "go hardcore or go home" approach might change as well, I expect Ion to get sacked, or promoted away from his current role. Battle Net Launcher rebranding is possible too. Making WoW free with the xbox game pass & adding more crap to the store is also ..

what do you mean by "go hardcore or go home?". DF aint like that at all.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

WoW has been in managed decline for the past decade. The game (and by extension, the Warcraft brand name, and Blizzard as a whole) holds no appeal to zoomers. Microsoft didn't buy Activision-Blizzard for Blizzard. They bought it for King (aka the owners of Candy Crush Saga, aka the owners of one of the most successful mobile games of all time), and for Activision (Call of Duty and the other games they publish, which are popular with zoomers). Blizzard is just a little extra cash to them, but has no long term future as Blizzard games reel in less and less money, all of the talent is long gone, Blizzard's prestige has been pissed into the wind, and the company fades into irrelevancy. At most, Blizzard might get integrated into Microsoft's services, if only to try to get the remaining Blizzard customerbase to maybe buy other Microsoft products, but overall I don't think Microsoft will bother making any effort to micromanage WoW.

Are they going to make another movie?

Maybe an animated movie, but live action no.

[Azerox]

They will make it great again, with stuff to do.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It's hard to say, I think a lot more will change than people realize. The current "go hardcore or go home" approach might change as well, I expect Ion to get sacked, or promoted away from his current role. Battle Net Launcher rebranding is possible too. Making WoW free with the xbox game pass & adding more crap to the store is also ..

The problem with addressing "go hardcore or go home" is that not only would it require a tremendous amount of time and effort (will never happen given how low effort WoW development has become) it would require another thing that is simply impossible for Blizzard to do: to admit failure. Remember why Nostalrius was shut down. Nostalrius had over a million accounts. If you have 800,000 people wanting to use your software (and you can charge $15 a month to them), perhaps you should provide a way for them to do it. Most people would say "yeah, that would be a worthwhile investment". But Blizzard didn't, and you have to ask "why?". The answer is that the popularity of vanilla private servers WoW makes the current retail version of WoW look really bad. The current version of WoW went from 10 million subs at the end of 2014, down to 5 million subs, and then it kept plummeting to the point that Blizzard was so embarrassed that they stopped publishing the sub count. "Our game is so crap, we refuse to admit just how unpopular it actually is". As seen by the last ten years, they would rather lose their customers than get off their ass and admit that there is a problem and fix it.

[MoanaLisa]

Very little. Whatever changes they do make will come into play several years down the road.

Microsoft doesn't make movies.

Everyone needs to get used to the notion that Blizzard is hardly a blip in MSFT's revenues. WoW is only a small piece of that. It's not the most important game in the world and its revenue will be buried in the many, many billions that MSFT reports every quarter. They will likely give Ybarra some general goals for revenue and engagement metrics and then leave him alone. I think that when Microsoft takes over Activision Blizzard a lot of people here are going to be shocked. The quarterly revenue and engagement stuff that everyone likes to interminably argue over are very likely to disappear entirely. Take a look at Microsoft's Quarterly statements. You won't find but a few lines about gaming in there, one, perhaps two, about PC gaming and the rest about X-Box.

Personally I think that will be the biggest change.