For Blizzard to develop an RPG standalone game in the World of Azeroth?
It has been mentioned that the lack of new IPs are a concern. Many times it has been mentioned that WoW has walked away from its RPG roots (by some, not stating a huge amount).
So why not develop a single player experience in the world of Warcraft IP? One that heavily stays with RPG elements. Think Dark Souls or even the newest Zelda game. I know that’s quite a gap in development style, but you get my gist.
A game that players could go to when WoW has its lulls. I wouldn’t mind microtransactions so long as they were not linear to player progression (ie a mount is fine, so long as mounts are discoverable in game).
They could even develop it as a mini-mmorpg, where you could invite your friends to play in 5 man content/raids (capped at 5).
Thoughts on the idea? It’s not overly fleshed out on purpose, looking at feelings more than feedback on specific features.
Imagine a raid boss where you have 10-30 npcs holding off waves of adds, as you and your friends fight a really juiced up boss. The zero timer being you overrun with those adds if they kill all the npcs. The fewer the npcs alive, the group now has to deal with a few adds here and there as they trickle past the npcs.
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My continued thoughts:
I’m not exclusively interested in their survival as a company; tho neither am I invested in their downfall either.
I’m more interested as a fan. A Skyrim type game set in the WoW universe would certainly be interesting. It would be quite the job to create, but they could save time by using art assets (some like the cartoony on purpose vibe).
As for them making mobile games; I don’t have any issue with that. I do take issue with them being a PC developer and only having a mobile game to announce during what has traditionally been a PC centered convention. Had they PC games to announce and display, I would venture to say the negativity would have been minuscule at best. Outside of that, I wouldn’t tell them to not pursue the mobile market to some extent.
I actually see them entering the mobile market as a bit of a laugh. Titan was supposed to be a new MMO. But by the time they realized they were chasing their tales, the MMO genre had already taken a massive dip. By the time they finally developed Heroes of the Storm, LoL had already had way too much time to solidify their market. Hearthstone (though it does actually do well I think) came only after decades of Magic the Gathering. Overwatch also joins an already well established and saturated genre, tho that genre is fairly persistent when compared to the other ones.
What do they all have in common? They show Blizzard (imho) have really played extremely safe (almost to a self defeating pace) when it comes to innovation in their own IPs. Mobile will be no different. They wouldn’t be looking to innovate their either. But they will want to get their share of the market; but I won’t begrudge them that. Business is business.
However, what genre is just as persistent as first person shooters? Standard RPG experience games. Since the launch of D&D they have been around in one form or another. Longer than shooters even.
That is why I’m wondering if it may be time to consider such a development. I think many would enjoy a pure RPG experience. MMOs can be enjoyable, but they inherently have their design constraints. RPGs don’t really suffer from many of the issues WoW currently is hurting from today.
Just my thoughts.