How healthy is World of Warcraft's future?

[Drusin]

WoW will be fine. Once the new expansion is announced and the hype train starts rolling, the majority of this will be brushed aside and forgotten (until the next lull comes around).

I do find the little community game of doomsaying and hype training amusing though lol

[Dacia Ultan]

This is just blatantly untrue though. They're not removing all the adult content, just the really shitty hamfisted crap. Like look at some of the flirts they removed, one of them was basically "Nice hands, oh and btw MY VAGINA IS LUBRICATED, I REPEAT, MY VAGINA IS LUBRICATED"

Okay, but they also took out: fart jokes; a boast about leg strength; and a couple of "furry reminders" in "you're sick, Jessy!" territory. And the /burp and /fart emotes.

[uuuhname]

It's puritan bullshit and literally anyone that doesn't see that is braindead anyway.

or maybe they just don't care, because they're adults and have real things to worry about...

again, this is all in the context of ongoing lawsuits into the toxic work environment Blizzard created. I continue to make this point and it gets roundly ignored... I wonder why.

[Beet]

Imagine voting futures never been brighter. Like really? I remember in 2005 seeing the old WoW website showing in detail what they hoped to add to WoW in the future. It was so detailed and deep. They didn’t have near the resources and staff they do now yet they had ambitious goals and accomplished most of them. They never stopped creating back then.

Now here we are today. We have less discourse between the developers and players than ever before. They’re more focused on changing old “offensive” things that no one gave two shits about. Thank god we have such Christians leading us and not letting the game be dirty. Because jokes matter too dammit. More than working on the game! After all if some poor virgin heard those pandaren flirts they might make the biggest mistake of all and touch themselves. Think about what Jesus would say.

- - - Updated - - -

It's not just removing Emotes, its changing item/quest/NPC/region names, removing any semblance of "adult" humour, removing any semblance of female sexuality.

It's puritan bullshit and literally anyone that doesn't see that is braindead anyway.

You get it. I’m old enough to remember when we used to laugh at these puritans. They were always conservative religious people demanding that anything “offensive” be removed. Those dirty video games, rap music, and South Park! We can’t allow anyone to refer to intercourse with innuendo. Think of the children right?

So ironic now it’s spread to the other side that used to combat it.

[Dacia Ultan]

or maybe they just don't care, because they're adults and have real things to worry about...

again, this is all in the context of ongoing lawsuits into the toxic work environment Blizzard created. I continue to make this point and it gets roundly ignored... I wonder why.

Genuinely cleaning up their act is one thing. The removal of shit like fart jokes, by contrast, seems pretty irrelevant to that.

[Beet]

I think removing garbage like this is a good step, because it was never part of what was good about WoW in the first place.

I’d beg to disagree. If you look back at early reviews of WoW people loved the innuendo and corny jokes. I know it’s really hard for upstanding religious folks of moral virtue to hear but they don’t have to listen to it.

[uuuhname]

Genuinely cleaning u their act is one thing. The removal of shit like fart jokes, by contrast, seems pretty irrelevant to that.

it totally is. which is why Blizzard employee's need to unionize.

[saixilein]

Overall SL could have been one of the best Expansions ever - I was in love with the lore and the Art of the World/enemys itself - but it really falled fast apart, after...:

- delayed release
- long watingtime until 9.1
- bad balance of covenants
- again long content drought after 9.1

I guess its like WoD - good ideas and coreworld - but poorly executed.

And when they just lettimg SL suffer, like they did it with WoD the next addon will be something like legion and everyone will be hyped again.

[Beet]

Lol at people acting like its the end of the world.

Watch all these complainers resub on the major patch, buy token because they cant do anything and need to get carried and then pretend they arent doing it.

And then watch the next expansion release how all these complainers reappear in drones, take 5 months to do things they are supposed to do in 2 weeks, and back to complaining.

And yeah, Blizzard has lower MAUS because they havent released a new game in years, wait for the OW2/D4/WoW expansion period and speak again.

And no, i am not defending Blizzard, but going against the masses of hypocrites.

You know in the old days I’d agree with you. But the last two expansions has been nothing but a constant leap off a cliff. Players aren’t coming back for big patches like before. That’s the problem. Your comment would have fit during say Cataclysm. Where it was a shitty expansion it still managed to pull folks back in every patch. But now? Not so much. I honestly believe by the time WotLK classic is out we will have more people playing the old versions than current which is sad.

Anyone thinking that this tempest in a teapot about paintings, emotes, flirts and the rest is going to have much of any effect on revenues is going to be disappointed. Only the very few paying attention to this give a damn about any of it.

Funny. I would say even few people complained about it yet they were changed. But here we are. Gotta represent those Puritan values.

[Echocho]

Gotta represent those Puritan values.

Indeed. We got to have that wholesome christian feel to our war game

[Daronokk]

Lol at people acting like its the end of the world.

Watch all these complainers resub on the major patch

Resub on the major patch? I haven't even subbed for this entire shitty expansion. And I even got the game for free when buying a new graphics card. I just don't see the appeal of this shitshow asspull expansion

WoW is steadily going downhill. And Blizzard is fast burning goodwill lately so it might go even faster these days. At this point I won't even be surprised if we'll see the definite end of WoW in the next 5 years.

Besides from that Blizzard hasn't released a good new game since Vanilla WoW. And the last few tries were the worst. The only positive news comes from remakes, which is just pathetic considering all the old people at Blizzard left and the new guys can only live off their predecessors success.

[Smash Adams]

WoW will be just fine. The people who love it, will continue to love it. The ones who hate it, will continue to hate it. Blizz could create a masterpiece of an expansion and we’d still be on MMOC reading these threads every day. The wild misconception that WoW needs to have this massive player base to be measured a success needs to be done away with.

One good expansion and all these problems will be forgotten. Good gameplay will have people ignoring the past few years.

[uuuhname]

all the old people at Blizzard left

wonder why they left....hmmm

[glowpipe]

Sl has no future, thats done and dead. They might be able to pull it back with 10.0 but that expansion is make or break. If they fuck up 10.0 aswell. i don't think they can recover. They have a small shot yet!

[Nak88]

It's do-or-die time for Retail in the next expansion. Classic/TBC/Wrath is doing fine and can probably carry Blizzard on its own, but they can't afford to have another fiasco in 10.0.

[Adamas102]

I disagree, with every option you take away, writing an interesting story or making a great game gets progressively harder, for blizzard the challenge is even greater because of the tone they've kept in the game previously, with loads of "rule of cool" some crude humor, a little dash of sexy, a big heap of violence and most mature topics being open to exploration with a lighter tone.

It is certainly possible to write a great story that is also very clean, look at lord of the rings for example, but that was the life work of Tolkien, a great author. Now compare that to the fart breathers blizzard employs for their story.

Well if the argument is that bad story tellers need to rely on cheap shock value over compelling story then yeah, sure. But that just leaves you with schlock, which is very rarely interesting. That being said, I don't think the MMO genre is conducive to great storytelling anyway, especially a game like WoW with all of its self-imposed limitations revolving around the faction divide and the expansion churn.

The setting of WoW is definitely a very colorful, "cartoony", and generally light hearted one where all types of humor feel at home, but the main driving story has always been super serious fantasy drama. Would taking out the humor affect WoW as a whole? Yeah, I'd say so. Even if most quests and dialogue aren't particularly humorous, it would certainly affect the overall tone that the game has established over the years. But would it affect the main story? Not really since it has always been pretty devoid of humor, especially the more low-brow, sexual innuendo humor that seems to be the target of this purge.

Basically, WoW is never going to have a great story regardless of whether or not it keeps the sex jokes and cleavage armor.

[Shadowferal]

In the other poll that compares WoD, BfA, and SL ...and WoD is leading by a 2:1 margin.

....that's not a healthy sign at all. Pretty bleak actually.

[Jujudrood]

I voted "it will be fine" because it will be fine, in terms of how Blizzard defines the word "fine".
It's still a cash cow and still earns its keep, so they will keep making cut-rate content and storylines for it.
Even if it drops to 500k total monthly players, that's still 7.5mil a month/90mil a year, which will still drive content and such.
That's all they care about; the money.

This isn't the mom and pop shop who cared about making an innovative, fun to play game.
They will make convoluted, time-gated content that is easier to make than anything with real depth and ride it out because it works.
Maybe not for you, maybe not for the guy over there, but the casual masses still play.

If you want to change the company's direction, either pony up a shitload of money and get on the board or just unsub and go away.
The more people that leave, the louder the message will be, but if the casual playerbase doesn't follow suit, it's business as usual.

[dizzzave]

I think WoW is in pretty dire shape.

The things that developers think are good/bad for the game do not at all align with the problems that players have with the game and there hasn't been any indication that the developers understand this or have any interest in changing course.

I don't expect players or developers to have exactly the same priorities, but the problems that players are reporting are doing continual structural damage to the health of the game. The Alliance is dying out as everyone leaves or switches to Horde (and Blizzard has no plan or answer), the game has devolved into a super stratified player base where the majority of group finder is people selling boosts/carries.

I don't think WoW devs are wrong to want an inclusive game, but its obvious that the problems that plague WoW are far deeper than cleaning up leftover relics from the creeps who made the game before.

I think a lot of players are reaching the point where they can't be convinced to come back to the game and have permanently moved on. There isn't some huge untapped market of people that haven't played WoW before and Blizzard seems intent on milking the few remaining diehards for every penny they can before turning off the lights.

I don't know how they come back from this. I hope they can find the magic again. I loved WoW once, it hurts to see it die like this.

[rogueMatthias]

I've been seeing continual "Warcraft is dying" posts since WOTLK. It hits different this time - I feel it's genuinely in trouble.

I even kinda like Korthia but I just have no real motivation to even bother logging in right now, and with all the drama at Blizzard I think the whole brand and loyalty has really taken a hit, and them editing out all the puns isn't helping.

They better whip out Arthas' suprise appearance in Shadowlands quick.