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

[Stickiler]

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.

Oh man, I can't wait for the "OMG BLIZZARDS NUMBERS ARE SO BAD MS IS HIDING THEM"

[epigramx]

Console development will be bumped in priority.

How will they begin doing that, with 999 abilities per class?

It would require the simplicity of Guild Wars 2 I guess.

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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.

For workers, and people into politics. Most gamers don't care.

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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.

That's an interesting thought, but it might also cause the opposite. Maybe Activision were stupider at that (or Microsoft may have learned mistakes) and Microsoft may cause longer dev cycles.

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WoW free with the xbox game pass

As I said to someone else: how would they do that (popularly), when the game can have 999 buttons per spec?
It might need simplification like some other mmos like gw2 which has practically 10 buttons per char.

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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.




Maybe an animated movie, but live action no.

that depressive view of it, reminds me of the trek franchise, which is utter trash after trash after trash at its recent iterations.

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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.

maybe for a while. don't forget they'll have full power to kill it entirely.

also: microsoft itself can change (it did seem to change in the past).

[MoanaLisa]

maybe for a while. don't forget they'll have full power to kill it entirely.

Why would they? Are you implying that just because World of Warcraft doesn't print as much money as it used to that it's not printing money at all? It still is.

[epigramx]

Why would they? Are you implying that just because World of Warcraft doesn't print as much money as it used to that it's not printing money at all? It still is.

They can do stuff like shutting it down entirely for a total remake. It might be a smart choice in the long term of time horizons of 5 or 10 years.

The internet has multiple times more users than 2006 and wow has fewer total users probably than 2006 so it's not doing well long term.

[Mysterymask]

They can do stuff like shutting it down entirely for a total remake. It might be a smart choice in the long term of time horizons of 5 or 10 years.

The internet has multiple times more users than 2006 and wow has fewer total users probably than 2006 so it's not doing well long term.

That doesn't answer why except you feel like it would...

Because as been said numerous times wow is a small SMALL blip in Microsofts radar in this purchase they are probably more interested in Diablo and Hearthstone than wow. Fuck they are probably more interested in King and Toys for Bob than they are in Blizzard

[Thundering]

Hopefully they can push blizzard to make more content.

[Nymrohd]

The game will potentially have access to a bigger budget and will have better marketing opportunities (though really, the D4 marketing campaign shows that ATVI already has what is needed).

[Messinna]

i dont think will be a change that big to afect game as we know it

[Nymrohd]

That doesn't answer why except you feel like it would...

Because as been said numerous times wow is a small SMALL blip in Microsofts radar in this purchase they are probably more interested in Diablo and Hearthstone than wow. Fuck they are probably more interested in King and Toys for Bob than they are in Blizzard

I'd say King for mobile market expertise but I'd also say Battle.net because it is just one of the best platforms. But I have extremely high hopes for D4 and if it proves itself in this year while the acquisition is finalized it may get a lot of support. WoW is no longer a star product; it's still a cash cow and they will keep milking it but I don't expect major investment on it.

[kranur]

They will not interfere in the way some people think they will ... like they will not replace people with their own and start changing the gameplay, engine or whatnot.
The changes will be around budget allocation, promotion and monetization direction. We might see WoW bundled in the pass with more things in the shop or there might not any changes at all, just give it the resources and let it bring the profit ... no one can tell you EXACTLY how it will affect WoW except the directors at MS.

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They can do stuff like shutting it down entirely for a total remake. It might be a smart choice in the long term of time horizons of 5 or 10 years.

The internet has multiple times more users than 2006 and wow has fewer total users probably than 2006 so it's not doing well long term.

I suppose there is better chance for them to take more "risks" and work on new products on the franchise but there's no way a company will shutdown a product that people are actively paying for to take chances. And even if they do consider an updated WoW, it will take many years until it's anywhere close to release.

[Sezerek]

I'd say King for mobile market expertise but I'd also say Battle.net because it is just one of the best platforms.

Yeah I think blizzards value in this takeover is their extremely good infrastructure with battle.net, I certainly can see a remake of the gamepass launcher with the battle.net tech as its foundation.

[khazmodan]

I was in a bowling alley and saw a big 4 person arcade version of Minecraft, they will try to create some other versions of the popular games to sell on mobile, console and whatever else they can grab a buck from. The difference that Microsoft will bring is that they actually understand the product on a nuts and bolts level so they will be smarter than Ion and Bobby which are just a lawyer and a stingy business guy. The problem is that Microsoft has never been strong in the creative department and they kind of understand that now since they seem to let the individual teams figure that part out. The reality is; WoW is a fading MMO, they might make an investment for a couple of years to see if it can be saved, then they will put it in light maintenance mode with a junior team.

[Nymrohd]

I was in a bowling alley and saw a big 4 person arcade version of Minecraft, they will try to create some other versions of the popular games to sell on mobile, console and whatever else they can grab a buck from. The difference that Microsoft will bring is that they actually understand the product on a nuts and bolts level so they will be smarter than Ion and Bobby which are just a lawyer and a stingy business degree guy. The problem is that Microsoft has never been strong in the creative department and they kind of understand that now since they seem to let the individual teams figure that part out. The reality is; WoW is a fading MMO, they might make an investment for a couple of years to see if it can be saved, then they will put it in light maintenance mode with a junior team.

Way I see it, WoW has to show results with 11.0. Microsoft as you said might give it a solid budget and additional resources (developers etc.) for 12.0 but if that fails then we should not expect anything on the scale of Legion and BfA, let alone a World Revamp anymore.

[MoanaLisa]

They can do stuff like shutting it down entirely for a total remake. It might be a smart choice in the long term of time horizons of 5 or 10 years.

That's insane. Never mind shutting it down while they work on what I guess would be WoW II for at the very least 3 or 4 years. That would likely kill the game altogether. Even if they left it up it wouldn't get much in the way of patches and expansions. As I said, that's just insane.

[Djaye]

they will bring WoW to consoles/xbox and throw it on gamepass.

it will be the death of the WoW community unless there are specific console servers/battlegroups

[Kokolums]

Microsoft is buying ABK (Activision Blizzard King) as an entire entity, not just WoW.

I'd say the big prize in the transaction is Candy Crush.

When you see an acquisition like this, what often happens is the juiciest chunks of the old company are devoured by the buying company, and the undesirable bits are resold to another party to deal with. So MS will grab CC for sure. But where does WoW fit in? I see 3 options for WoW.

1. they port it to console
2. they port it to phones
3. they decide WoW was a great game once but its in decline so MS piddles around with it for a year or so, making big promises, and then out of the blue sells the IP to someone else who might turn it into a gatcha game or something.

If I had to bet, I'd say MS holds onto the WoW IP for a year, makes big promises, never delivers, and then sells it. Possibly the best outcome there would be MS sells it to Rob Pardo and his bonfire studios. They still don't have a game. So it would suddenly make sense why bonfire hasn't released anything yet.

[RobertMugabe]

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?

1. I can see them long term switching up the server infrastructure and potentially removing regional restrictions, but that's about it. I don't see the game itself being "remade". The Battle.Net service will most definitely get removed over time and get replaced by Xbox Live.

2. I can see them remove the Battle.net app, but there certainly won't be an "MS Launcher" in its place, when the Windows Appstore can take care of updates. I can see them also release World of Warcraft to Steam in the future, but of course all of it will run on the same servers/account connections.

3. No.

Overall, over time, they will most definitely bring all the Blizzard games more into the Xbox ecosystem and behind the scenes we will definitely see a change from Battle.net to Xbox Live. I can also see them eventually porting WoW to Xbox (with controller and keyboard/mouse support), but not anytime soon, probably 12.0.

[Awelon]

You won't see any difference whatsoever.

[Echocho]

Hopefully they'll provide leadership that the team won't loathe

[RobertMugabe]

It will force you to open web tickets in Edge browser

(I know it's a joke, but still)
That's already the case when you do it ingame as the browser is just a wrapped Edge.