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

[VinceVega]

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. No
2. No
3. No

At most you will see more stuff on the shop and integration into gamepass MAYBE but i doubt it because it still makes way to much money with the sub.
It will mostly affect internal processes at blizzard regarding projectmanagment and responsibilities with probably some kind of leadership change for MS.

We will not see any change ingame whatsoever. MS does not gain anything from fucking up an existing companies plans for a game that still shits money left and right.

[Nymrohd]

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

Also, leadership that is effective.

[Bumbasta]

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?

Yes, the endboss of the next expansion will be an Apple

[baskev]

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?

first of i think several governments ( UK, EU, US) are going to block it.

But IF it happens.

I think they will sell it on a new market place ( or give free stuff if you have a gamepass). So lets say you get xbox gamepass + small fee ( smaller as now) for wow. and you will be able to get both.
Maybe some cross promotions . Master chief armor :P <<< just kidding

They will look at branching the lore out via tv shows, or animation. but movie not i think.


For the rest i think it will be the status quo. Maybe remove or add some people in the organization. But why remove stuff or bring danger to a cash cow like wow.
the numbers range from 750k to 1,6 mil subs. Lets take 1,3 mil subs vs lets say everyone has the cheapest option ( some will go more expensive, some will use gold). but lets say the cheapest. that is 13 bucks. Thats still 17 mil a month!!!!!
thats like 10% of a game like hogwarts legacy launch profit. It does not sound much 10% but for a almost 20 year old game....it is. and its being payed every month. hogwarts is 1 buy and forget about the cost for a while.

[Mysterymask]

Why are so many people thinking we're gonna get movies or tv shows out of this.
We got ONE Xbox game tv show (Halo) and it didn't do too hot

There's no Minecraft show
I believe there was a Viva Pinata show once upon a time and that just kinda existed (Rare)
Elder Scrolls never had a movie or tv show
Fallout got nothing
Doom already had a movie and I think that was pre Bethesda
Killer Instinct had no movie
Etc etc etc

[Soikona]

first of i think several governments ( UK, EU, US) are going to block it.

But IF it happens.

I think they will sell it on a new market place ( or give free stuff if you have a gamepass). So lets say you get xbox gamepass + small fee ( smaller as now) for wow. and you will be able to get both.
Maybe some cross promotions . Master chief armor :P <<< just kidding

They will look at branching the lore out via tv shows, or animation. but movie not i think.


For the rest i think it will be the status quo. Maybe remove or add some people in the organization. But why remove stuff or bring danger to a cash cow like wow.
the numbers range from 750k to 1,6 mil subs. Lets take 1,3 mil subs vs lets say everyone has the cheapest option ( some will go more expensive, some will use gold). but lets say the cheapest. that is 13 bucks. Thats still 17 mil a month!!!!!
thats like 10% of a game like hogwarts legacy launch profit. It does not sound much 10% but for a almost 20 year old game....it is. and its being payed every month. hogwarts is 1 buy and forget about the cost for a while.

I don’t think so, reports are showing EU will pass, UK seems to be moving to MS side, but I dunno about the US.

[lieutvurt]

Some countries/regions are very poor thus MS will probably do a tiered sub like Sony & WoW will be in there. Microsoft does keyboards & it was very close that xbox ran windows like early ps3s had Linux, it is already possible to use mouse+kb with a console but that support will get even better & wow will come to xbox, logically. consoleport addon is quite good but can't quite fathom why there aren't any mmo joypads with 6 or 8 face-buttons.

[Nymrohd]

I don’t think so, reports are showing EU will pass, UK seems to be moving to MS side, but I dunno about the US.

US has allowed MS to request all of Sony's exclusive contracts for the last four years in the purpose of discovery.

The EU seems interested in some form of compromise. It's not like the EU ever shies away from taking bold stances on anti-trust issues; Vestager's political career has been built on that.

Don't know if there is much development on the UK side. Early on they were parroting Sony views which was just unprofessional.

[epigramx]

(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.

edge is just another chromium skin. the only popular browser base that isn't chromium is firefox.

[sociald1077]

How much did microsoft affect Bethesda when they bought Zenimax?

None.

Sure the games showed up on Game Pass, but outside of that, Microsoft is content to let the companies manage themselves and just work to better integrate the products into existing delivery pipelines.

[baskev]

I don’t think so, reports are showing EU will pass, UK seems to be moving to MS side, but I dunno about the US.

reports show, uk seems. dunno about us.

dunno, show, seem. Not 100% yet. Could happen, could also be blocked or they need to loose so weight.

- - - Updated - - -

How much did microsoft affect Bethesda when they bought Zenimax?

None.

Sure the games showed up on Game Pass, but outside of that, Microsoft is content to let the companies manage themselves and just work to better integrate the products into existing delivery pipelines.

none?? so missed the sacking of 10.000 people....including 343, bethesda and some other parts of the company....yeah...no effect at all :P

[Dhrizzle]

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.

I'm pretty sure battle.net style infrastructure was one of the main reasons Activision originally wanted to acquire Blizzard, that and their mastery of leeching money out of gamers pockets.

[RobertMugabe]

I have no idea. I hope they will include WoW into gamepass. While i doubt it.

Not impossible IMO. Blizzard already earns their revenue for WoW by selling you the expansions, while the subs are primarily there to finance the server costs (incl. maintenance, staff etc.). With Microsoft they could save these costs by using the Xbox Live service and thus the base WoW game/WoW sub could be included in Game Pass, while they would still require you to buy the expansions (possibly at full AAA game price, which is already almost the case). This way, the average WoW player would still end up with a sub + buying the expansion, but you'd also get so much more out of it by having Game Pass.

[GabrielKnight]

Not impossible IMO. Blizzard already earns their revenue for WoW by selling you the expansions, while the subs are primarily there to finance the server costs (incl. maintenance, staff etc.). With Microsoft they could save these costs by using the Xbox Live service and thus the base WoW game/WoW sub could be included in Game Pass, while they would still require you to buy the expansions (possibly at full AAA game price, which is already almost the case). This way, the average WoW player would still end up with a sub + buying the expansion, but you'd also get so much more out of it by having Game Pass.

It could be great for WoW's population also, since many users of the pass will feel tempted to try it out if it's included.

[Linkedblade]

Best case scenario is the subscription to WoW is included with Xbox game pass. And that would be a significant value add.

[Chilela]

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)?

If there's any major technological revamps, it won't be specifically due to Microsoft. But as it stands, the game's been sort of in a long state of relative decay in terms of population, so there's relatively little reason to invest that much time and effort into a full-blown overhaul, unless...

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?

I could see BNet eventually being baked into Microsoft's architecture, as well as WoW potentially becoming a Gamepass product. If the latter ends up happening, the influx of potential new blood could very well make a technical overhaul less of a pipe dream and more of a slim, but not impossible chance. I don't think the expansion name thing will change regardless, however.

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 don't see any major lore shifts occurring. At most, there could be some minor expansion alterations, but nothing more than that. Any major shifts won't happen until at least 12, or even 13.0. Any chance for a new movie is all but dead at this point, given Blizz's current relationship with China, who was the main reason the first movie wasn't a total bomb.

Overall, given that Blizz would be going from big corpo 1 to big corpo 2, I think significant differences to WoW itself will be few and far between, if existent at all.

[Soon-TM]

I don't know. MS could either take an almost full hands-off approach, as is the case with e.g. ESO... Or could turn WoW into a full bazaar of MTX with a barebones structure of a game, like they did with Halo Infinite.

[Goat7]

Probably gonna see the game on Microsoft PC game pass aka xbox game pass.

Other then that

No changes, game will still suck

[Phurox]

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

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

- - - Updated - - -


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

- - - Updated - - -


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.

- - - Updated - - -


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.

- - - Updated - - -


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

- - - Updated - - -


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).

Ff xiv works on playstation with a controller. You press the shoulder buttons and then other for additional abilities.

Besides, xbox support keyboard and mouse so that could be a requirement.

I doubt they make it for console though, as the hardware will bottleneck the game alot.

I also doubt the game will go into GP,as it would cost them more in the long run.

ESO plus is not included in game pass

[Hamburger]

I just want Clippy as a pet