With the sale--do you think WoW is moving into maintenance mode after 9.2?

[Lord Kragan]

Imagine buying up a company for a never seen before price and then put its biggest money maker into maintenance mode.

MMOC 200 IQ

But we are not talking about candy crush, we are talking about world of warcraft.

[Lord Kragan]

Yeah just like bethesda's launcher

oh wait

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and we're talking about blizzard not king

Well, you're not talking properly then. :V Microsoft didn't buy bllizzard, it bought activision blizzard king. Playstation's stock collapsed not due to wow, but due to Call of duty. Wow's and company are just gravy on top of the actual dishes.

[Nzx]

10.0 must be pretty far along into development, so there will be a 10.0 release. After that, the future of WoW is up in the air, and that's before Microsoft even entered the picture.

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.

[cparle87]

WoW hasn't been a top game on anyone's mind since 2016. Actually in most gaming circles it's regarded as a dinosaur.

I love how you can speak for everyone and most gaming circles. We call that fallacy argumentum ad populum. Look it up.

[Lord Kragan]

They are not gonna can WoW, ofc. Though, dunno if its current "1 patch per year" approach differs too much from maintenance.

[epigramx]

I specifically mentioned Warcraft not starcraft. Warcraft has been a top game in the industry for decades. I guarantee it was a factor.

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.

[rrayy]

No. They have several expansions planned and they will continue as planned.

[Aydinx2]

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.).

[Coniferous]

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.

[Sarange]

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.

Yeah, one of the highest grossing games ever is nothing important to microsoft.

[Vampyrr]

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.

I know about Fortnite despite never playing it or watching videos on it. I know what it is and that it makes a lot of money. Warcraft is like that for most people, they know what it is without playing it or watching it.

[epigramx]

Yeah, one of the highest grossing games ever is nothing important to microsoft.

It is important. The argument there was that it's not the sound of the name that matters too much to them but the hard numbers, because at that level of money ("BILLIONS" -- Carl Sagan): all the games they could get would be famous anyway.

[Segus1992]

I know the deal was just announced but do you think they'll halt working on 10 until MS can evaluate the buy? I know 9.2 is actively being worked on right now, but I feel like 10 expansion may not have the same level of support, and could lead to a delay while the company evaluates the IP.

This may be one of the most ignorant questions asked on this forum (actually let's be honest, no it isn't) - do you think MS bought AB for 68 billion dollars because they wanted to lose money?

[mrcodez]

I know the deal was just announced but do you think they'll halt working on 10 until MS can evaluate the buy? I know 9.2 is actively being worked on right now, but I feel like 10 expansion may not have the same level of support, and could lead to a delay while the company evaluates the IP.

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.

[Deadite]

This may be one of the most ignorant questions asked on this forum (actually let's be honest, no it isn't) - do you think MS bought AB for 68 billion dollars because they wanted to lose money?

Pretty sure the main reason was how many xbox's they will sell when the next CoD is xbox exclusive. I doubt it is the 68 years in will take for wow to make that much.

[Segus1992]

Pretty sure the main reason was how many xbox's they will sell when the next CoD is xbox exclusive. I doubt it is the 68 years in will take for wow to make that much.

It's absolutely a combination of factors. Unless you mean you think they'll sell tens of millions of extra xboxes because of CoD, after they've said they won't make more exclusives.

[Deadite]

It's absolutely a combination of factors. Unless you mean you think they'll sell tens of millions of extra xboxes because of CoD, after they've said they won't make more exclusives.

They did? That is mental. Odd that they would spend 68 billion and not abuse the hell out of exclusives. CoD does about 2 billion a year and the same for Candy Crush with WoW nearly a billion? Guess they have a plan.