How healthy is World of Warcraft's future?

[Djaye]

However, i'm going to take the wild guess that Everquest doesn't have over 200 people on their dev team.

with any luck, Metzen and OG blizz crews new company can cherry pick the talent when they do start dropping the guillotine.

expecting a crossbreed of an MMO and tabletop game from them. banking on the popularity of GM style story telling right now.

Imagine an MMO were you can make your own adventures?

[Sentynel]

Video games are a product of creativity. It needs a good environment to flourish. Blizzard is literally the opposite of that. Bad work floor atmosphere seemingly, lawsuits and censorship of their own art. That will not magically result is something worthwhile. Wow is dead.

And yet the most flourishing era of the game (and the company in general I'd say) was when those who are now accused by snowflakes were in charge.

Lol the contradiction.

[Master Guns]

“Set the player base on fire”
Lmao could you be any more dramatic

[exsanguinate]

Sorry to say that but no doubt there's a problem with developers being lbgtq and gender wanna super heroes / white knights.

And I say that because I feel like no matter what religion or gender affinity you have you should always treath everything neutral. clearly thats not the point right now. too much gender stuff / cancel culture influcence.

[Osmeric]

Nice measuring stick! How do you get that info off that site?

Go to the front page at wowprogress.com. Look at how many guilds have downed the easiest boss in the tier on H. Divide by the percentage. This is the total number of guilds tracked for that tier (meaning, have downed a boss on N or above.)

For H Tarrague, it's 16784 and 70.16. 16784 / .7016 = 23922

Click on other tiers (links nearer the top of the page) to get their stats.

[Varitok]

Not to be dramatic but it is funny how every big company, game, empire always seems to follow the Greek/Roman decline path. Starting small and ambitious, slowly building a game/company/country that is culturally and technologically a leader. Then once the comfort stage sets in, these entities being on top of their respective markets/region, thats when the corruption and decline starts. Bad decisions, ignorant populace/player/consumer base leading to the inevitable decline and loss of prestige/land over years of internal strife and corruption. Eventually the barbarians/competitor is at the gates and populace still thinks the invaders are about to be pushed back any moment. Dramatic I know but the principle of the respective declines always seems so similar.

The refusal to question any Blizzard choices by diehard fans is why the game is on the decline. It's sad since I want WoW to be great.

[burek]

It all depends on what type of developers Blizzard has. If they are 9-5 workers and are not passionate about WoW then the future is bleak. If they are like at 11 PM - Hell, I want this thing in WoW because it would be so awesome then WoW's future is bright.

They are passionate about their pronouns, not their jobs. And besides, they work much less than 9-5 according to their blizzcon panels, some idiot there bragged about his typical day at work that includes maybe 2 hours of actual work and the rest is just dicking around.

[dacoolist]

9 out of 10 people arent even playing wow in this thread: but act like they know whats best for the game lol

Go play ffremastered with asmon, nobody cares

[Zka]

Next retail expansion is gonna be the first I'm not gonna purchase unless they make a 180 degree turn on their design ideas. Probably not gonna happen. Only classic is playable, but even that will end in a few years. Or they are gonna continue the classic product line with fresh content, but I doubt they can execute that properly. All the talent is gone and it's all about the money now.

[Lolites]

i think wow is fine for few years at minimum, actualy, statisticaly speaking, some of people in this thread might die before wow...

[Rozz]

Realistically most consumers will play regardless of what they remove, even if some of it appears silly.

People care more about the gameplay. So far there is still no overhaul in their approach against serious toxicity, griefing, harassment(people getting around ignore lists and literally stalking ppl for months across characters, accounts, servers, etc), M+ spamming, and botting. Gameplay wise, Ion and his team show zero remorse for their system methodology that has been criticized since legion. I expect them to do the same stupid shit again because, to be frank, it appears like a matter of pride on their end. There is no reason for them to brute force players through known issues just to undo them later on when they fulfill poor expectations.

Lore wise, the story also hinges on the development cycle. If the gameplay and dev crunching doesn't fix itself, the story will be a reflection of that. I'll still play the next expansion bc tbh it's out of habit at this point but I can only hope it's fun this time. I'm not afraid to stop paying and come back when things are better.

[Paperfox]

Blizz has lost their way.

I believe that they are so used to the idea that so many loved the game that they thought the players would be happy with whatever they gave to them. Selling lots of tokens to the esports crowd while the dedicated keep the lights on seems like a good formula for success. The playerbase is always going through churn, so they ignored people leaving until they realized it was an exodus.

If 10.0 is a great expansion that fixes a lot of the things that drove players away then they could get another shot at their glory days. I doubt that will happen as the new team still has all the financial constraints and goals as before.

My sub will be up in a while and I'm starting to look forward to when it's done.

[Dracullus]

If you go to wowprogress.com, you'll find about 45,944 guilds downed a boss (N or above) in the last tier of Legion (and more in earlier tiers, as participation declines over the course of an expansion.)

Right now, 23,922 guilds have downed a boss in SoD (N or above). And this isn't even the last tier of this expansion.

So you compare not even 3 months long tier vs 8 month long tier and call it a day?

[Miross]

Realistically most consumers will play regardless of what they remove, even if some of it appears silly.

People care more about the gameplay. So far there is still no overhaul in their approach against serious toxicity, griefing, harassment(people getting around ignore lists and literally stalking ppl for months across characters, accounts, servers, etc), M+ spamming, and botting. Gameplay wise, Ion and his team show zero remorse for their system methodology that has been criticized since legion. I expect them to do the same stupid shit again because, to be frank, it appears like a matter of pride on their end. There is no reason for them to brute force players through known issues just to undo them later on when they fulfill poor expectations.

Lore wise, the story also hinges on the development cycle. If the gameplay and dev crunching doesn't fix itself, the story will be a reflection of that. I'll still play the next expansion bc tbh it's out of habit at this point but I can only hope it's fun this time. I'm not afraid to stop paying and come back when things are better.

in the of the day what will really define if people will continue to play or not wow is 10.0, it has to be good if not amazing because the playerbase will not survive another WoD,BFA, shadowlands kind of expansion so soon

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.

[Osmeric]

So you compare not even 3 months long tier vs 8 month long tier and call it a day?

It's doubtful many new guilds are raiding these days. If we go to

https://www.wowprogress.com/encounte...rragrue-normal

we can see maybe 5 new guilds killing the first boss on normal each day. At that rate, and assuming it didn't further decline, another 5 months would add about 800 guilds.

We can also look at Nighthold instead, the second raid in Legion, which is a more fair comparison to the second raid of SL. 30803 / .4929 = 62,493

You will also notice that the % that just did N is down. It would be interesting to track that over the time since then, to see if this trend holds up. Has the low end of raiding been preferentially lost? This would be a sign the casuals are particularly unhappy.

[Dracullus]

It's doubtful many new guilds are raiding these days. If we go to

https://www.wowprogress.com/encounte...rragrue-normal

we can see maybe 5 new guilds killing the first boss on normal each day. At that rate, and assuming it didn't further decline, another 5 months would add about 800 guilds.

We can also look at Nighthold instead, the second raid in Legion, which is a more fair comparison to the second raid of SL. 30803 / .4929 = 62,493

Wait, so this just counts guilds registered on wowprogress? Then you completely ignore people pugging raid on group finder. Don't you think pugging 'culture' is growing vs. organized guilds every year? Especially if we are talking about trying entry Normal bosses?

Of course any method from unofficial site is flawed, but yours has just too many unknowns. Main is obviously assuming normal raid participation = game participation. Few months ago someone pulled numbers of chars who did some basic achiev in 9.1 for EU/NA chars, which is far better measure.. but of course it was compared to 9.0, so again pointless work.

But if people would measure some basic achiev from 7.2 vs 8.1.5 vs 9.1, we could got something worth attention for mid-expac comparisons. I suspect 9.1 would got worst number (hello content drought), but 8.1.5 vs. 7.2 would be pretty close.

[Rozz]

in the of the day what will really define if people will continue to play or not wow is 10.0, it has to be good if not amazing because the playerbase will not survive another WoD,BFA, shadowlands kind of expansion so soon

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.

Tbh I didn't think they'd do a double BFA/WoD back to back. I think that story-wise it would've been fine w/out covid, but w/ their internal issues and design philosphy the gameplay wouldn't have felt any better. More stuff to do, but the same bad systems.

[Osmeric]

Wait, so this just counts guilds registered on wowprogress? Then you completely ignore people pugging raid on group finder. Don't you think pugging 'culture' is growing vs. organized guilds every year? Especially if we are talking about trying entry Normal bosses?

Of course any method from unofficial site is flawed, but yours has just too many unknowns. Main is obviously assuming normal raid participation = game participation. Few months ago someone pulled numbers of chars who did some basic achiev in 9.1 for EU/NA chars, which is far better measure.. but of course it was compared to 9.0, so again pointless work.

But if people would measure some basic achiev from 7.2 vs 8.1.5 vs 9.1, we could got something worth attention for mid-expac comparisons. I suspect 9.1 would got worst number (hello content drought), but 8.1.5 vs. 7.2 would be pretty close.

I'm begining to think your "or even indicate" wasn't entirely in good faith.

[Flutterguy]

I'm having a hard time thinking of what they could do with the next expansion to really hype people up. This is the first time they've had back to back expansions with largely negative feedback.

[Biomega]

At this point, I'm not even sure WHAT would make me resubscribe.

If it's "just" another expansion with the same pattern of borrowed power system + rep + weekly grind thing etc. I don't think I'd be interested. Maybe I'm just not the target audience anymore, that's entirely possible. But I feel less and less catered to by the core gameplay loops of accumulating credit for a weekly chest and so on. The virtue signaling isn't make or break for me personally, but it sure doesn't help credibility. And the poor narratives and bottom-tier character "developments" don't exactly help either.