What would've happen with WoW if it was released today?

[darklogrus]

It would probably be mediocre at best since it basically is going up against what the current version is struggling with.

[Druidzorz]

If it launched as vanilla, yeah no, it would fail. We got games like the division and destiny that would be better for the players.

If it was legion as the vanilla launch, yeah itll survive. Bfa might survive but bfas shortcomings is mainly due to being directly after the greatness of legion.

Wrath might survive but anything else i dont see it happening.

thats funny because legion was mostly a dumpster fire. mop had the best class balance this game has ever seen. wrath had some of the best story and really good raids.

[kaminaris]

Yet, the reverse is true..

No sorry, modern type of gamers don't want to invest a lot of time in game because its just a game.

[Ange]

No sorry, modern type of gamers don't want to invest a lot of time in game because its just a game.

"Modern" type? Not really.

People play MMO's without knowing that it does not end after 48hours of gameplay all the time.
WoW's success is the low entry point, not so edgy graphics, slow start into MMO gameplay that turns many 48hour gamers into one-game players that play regularly the same game.

Just look at shadowlands main changes, they clear up the 15year old clutter for a better FIRST_TIME experience. Blizzard knows very well the secret sauce that drives WoW.

[cozzri]

Remember when blizzard copied companions (followers) and Starship (garrison) from Star Wars: The Old republic? And then totally abandoned the concept because they half-assed it. It’s a great system in SWTOR.

[Dastreus]

I would have gone the way of Wildstar.

[kaminaris]

"Modern" type? Not really.

People play MMO's without knowing that it does not end after 48hours of gameplay all the time.
WoW's success is the low entry point, not so edgy graphics, slow start into MMO gameplay that turns many 48hour gamers into one-game players that play regularly the same game.

Just look at shadowlands main changes, they clear up the 15year old clutter for a better FIRST_TIME experience. Blizzard knows very well the secret sauce that drives WoW.

Yes really, key point is time invested vs amount of fun.
And since WoW was really slow start for couple of expansions, something like vanilla wow wouldn't had a chance today.

Shadowlands changes are about 6 years too late. We all knew first impression is important long time ago, we also knew that first impression of wow as new player completely sucks donkeys cock. We also knew leveling was slow as fuk. Timelines disjointed.

It doesn't turn any "48h gamers" into anything, not as long they don't have fun. Since even after leveling you are still required to do many boring shit to have some fun.

[rogoth]

Wait a minute, isn't Everquest still alive and played? Sure, it's not the glory days, but I think there are still some people who play it?

to use another metaphor, modern day everquest is more akin to the crocodile, sure it has a lot of genetic similarities to dinosaurs but are essentially an evolution of the dead things of the past, much the same way that you could say cataclysm was the last 'proper' wow expansion.

[Orby]

WoW was lightening in a bottle it came around at the right time and place... 15 years later it might have been an entirely different game.

[Quintalos]

If it were released today, it would be F2P with cash shops and loot boxes galore, i.e. the asian MMO business model.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Failure.

WoW had it moment because plenty of players went from Wc3 to WoW. Nowadays I think that almost ~90% of the playerbase are the ones who started to play in vanilla-wotlk and they're playing the game just because they invested too much time and they don't want it to be wasted... or they're just too attached to the game and for some it's actually fun for them to play it.

When the question of "when you started playing" is asked, I'm always surprised about how few veterans there are still playing. The amount of people who started in Classic or TBC is extremely low (as a huge % of those left during WotLK in the first place), the amount of "Wrath babies" left is also very low, although sligthly higher.

The vast majority of players did without a doubt start playing during on of the latter expansions though. Most active retail players today probably started in MoP, WoD or Legion.

[munkeyinorbit]

Just think for a moment that WoW was released someday near today, let's say it was vanilla WoW, but some of the QoL feature WoW has today, from WoD models to some of the systems Legion and BFA brought.

How the mmo community would've received? Could had been a success or a failure? It's release would've refreshed the mmo genre?

What do you think?

What MMO community? FF is the only other community there is and would not been around if not for wow.

MMO market is basically dead. If wow released now you would see headlines like "is blizzard going to survive through to the end of the quarter?"

[ThrashMetalFtw]

thats funny because legion was mostly a dumpster fire. mop had the best class balance this game has ever seen. wrath had some of the best story and really good raids.

MoP was without a doubt one of the worst expansions of all time for class balance. It had amazing class DESIGN, but the power balance between all those classes was at an all time low. The only time when balance was worse, was in Classic and TBC, but back then it was like that by design, with the hyrbrids being designed to perform worse than pure dps.

Remember S2M Shadow Priests in Emerald Nightmares? Now imagine that shit for an entire expansion, and you have MoP Warlocks, with Mages and Rogues not far behind. Sure, if you don't count the extremely OP outliers listed above, or the extremely dogshit outliers on the other end, like SPs, Ele Shamans, Rets and DKs, I guess the remaining specs were balanced pretty well. But then you would have to ignore half the classes and specs in the game that belonged to the "Extremely OP" or "Borderline useless" categories.

/NeverForget being 1# Shadow Priest on Malkorok 25HC, a fight that allowed SPs to exploit the mechanics and get huge advantages over the other classes, but still being near the bottom of the Dps in my at the time, relatively bad guild. Such balance, much good.

[munkeyinorbit]

When the question of "when you started playing" is asked, I'm always surprised about how few veterans there are still playing. The amount of people who started in Classic or TBC is extremely low (as a huge % of those left during WotLK in the first place), the amount of "Wrath babies" left is also very low, although sligthly higher.

The vast majority of players did without a doubt start playing during on of the latter expansions though. Most active retail players today probably started in MoP, WoD or Legion.

Source please

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Source please

Play the game.

[Piplupzero]

Its impossible to conceive of a world where WoW didn't launch when it did. Wow was THE mmo. People saw wow success and wanted to emulate it, no game inspired developers to try copy the subscription mmo model with such zeal before.
Without it totalbiscuit (rest in peace)would never have been on nordrassil and wow radio which led to blueplz which led to his youtube content that led to him being the biggest voice in the gaming industry for a fair few years and thats just one person.
Without Wows breakaway success would blizzard have continued warcraft in some other form? WHat would a blizzard without the massive amount of revenue WoW generated even look like? Would they even have enough bargaining power to merge instead of just being taken over by activision? Im not even sure what activision would do with a bunch of pc brands of above average earnings. They couldnt even manage their console ones. Would "activision west" even have the resources to make overwatch which popularised loot boxes to such an extent every game for the next 3 years included them?
Theres just too many factors and thats not even scratching the surface.

[Jamie081]

MoP was without a doubt one of the worst expansions of all time for class balance. It had amazing class DESIGN, but the power balance between all those classes was at an all time low. The only time when balance was worse, was in Classic and TBC, but back then it was like that by design, with the hyrbrids being designed to perform worse than pure dps.

Remember S2M Shadow Priests in Emerald Nightmares? Now imagine that shit for an entire expansion, and you have MoP Warlocks, with Mages and Rogues not far behind. Sure, if you don't count the extremely OP outliers listed above, or the extremely dogshit outliers on the other end, like SPs, Ele Shamans, Rets and DKs, I guess the remaining specs were balanced pretty well. But then you would have to ignore half the classes and specs in the game that belonged to the "Extremely OP" or "Borderline useless" categories.

/NeverForget being 1# Shadow Priest on Malkorok 25HC, a fight that allowed SPs to exploit the mechanics and get huge advantages over the other classes, but still being near the bottom of the Dps in my at the time, relatively bad guild. Such balance, much good.

Disc Priests dominated the healing charts because of their ridiculous absorb mechanics and braindead smite spamming. Now you have Priests reminiscing on forums in BFA over how amazing class design was in MoP. It's almost a meme.

[Absintheminded]

People would probably be claiming it as the next Rift killer