I suspect SL's hiatus will have the lowest subs in history and it will trigger events

[Val the Moofia Boss]

what do you think they might do?

Nothing will change until Ion is replaced.

[Rusken]

Let's face it; most people still around from the early days of the game are 40+ year olds who start not even gaming anymore; the younglings aren't few but they don't tend to stay especially since WoW is nothing too special in the context of new games.

An expansion that just has "dragons and Alex the hot!" is not going to cut it; it might have a small peak at launch but even that may be underwhelming; the new producers will likely pull the plug entirely and possibly try something extremely new.

The nature of "extremely new" is up in the air but I have some predictions; perhaps they will delete all technical notions of 'expansion' and release it only as 'Warcraft'; what do you think they might do?

People have been saying this every expansion since Cataclysm. There's always a big dip in subs at the end of an expac, then the hype of the new one brings a ton of people back to repeat the cycle.

Hell look at BfA, it also had the lowest sub numbers at the time then Shadowlands set sale records. If there's one thing Blizzard's good at it's hooking people into the new expansion. Dragonflight is already appealing to a lot of people with the Talent rework, I wouldn't be surprised if it also set sales records even with all the shit Blizzard's going through.

The only major change Microsoft will make with WoW's monetisation is adding it to the Game Pass, they certainly wouldn't do something as drastic as dropping the concept of expansions when they have very recently shown to be massive boosts in sub numbers and share prices.

[Jester Joe]

Nothing will change until Ion is replaced.

Ah yes, the ever reliable "blame the dev".

Like Celestalon before him, and Ghostcrawler before him.

Ion isn't going anywhere until he decides to himself, people need to get over their hate boner for him.

[Osmeric]

Ah yes, the ever reliable "blame the dev"..

You're right, it's kind of silly. He's just one person. Nothing will change until a large fraction of the dev team is replaced.

[Jester Joe]

You're right, it's kind of silly. He's just one person. Nothing will change until a large fraction of the dev team is replaced.

Oh sure. Because random forum goers are the ones who should totally make that call.

[Gratz]

People who are worried they aren't doing the popular thing keep posting about how "ITs RALLY bIg GaME, every1 so jelllly."

It will EASILY be the lowest active sub era in the history of WoW.

[Huzzaa]

Your first paragraph nails it. WoW can't compete with today's games and is only really popular among addicts and sunk costees.

So it's become more a niche hobby some people are clinging to for almost 2 decades. I think WoW can survive among niche hobbyist, but Blizzard should scrap any ideas of a revival, even an absolutely slapping expansion will not create more first time players, just bring old players back who don't play but still check up on forums and stuff like me.

It's hard selling a game created in 2004 to people born after 2004. It's hard seeing WoWs graphics (people's first impressions btw) be comparable to xbox-360 graphics. People were spoiled by great graphic RPGs like Skyrim over a decade ago, WoW hasn't gotten more popular since then.

I honestly think it has more to do in animations and pitcture clearness than anything else when it comes to that.
The old models feel more snappy and reactive to me than the new ones. Why this is, very hard to explain, but it just feels this way.
Also, the general graphics rebuild after the revamps using the new graphics APIs or whatevers is objectivally bad compared to the old. A major league bummer if you ask me.

I can truthfully say that TBC and vanilla look far better overall on my ridiculous machine with a 3080, 5800x, 32GB 4266Mhz RAM and a dual monitor setup, mix of a 1080 and 1440, where I play the game on the 1080p. Not talking of fps, it's the jaggys and picture clarity.

Idk what they've done, but they've ruined that aspect big time. I have to run 4K upscaling with maxed AA, when I used to achieve the jaggyless(non-popping) experience in the old engine with x4 MSAA and nothing else apart the usual x8/x16 anisotropic. In my mind, this is the worst part about all of this. (I have at times thought it's my eyes or something but nope, load them up side by side and difference is night and day. TBC is looking beautiful and clear. Nothing to do with nostalgia, the picture is clear and it doesn't pop around edges compared to the horrible mess of blur in retail on really any short-to-moderate distance text/object)

The modern game is so terrible to look at running the same settings from TBC. At max settings(modern game) it's a little bit behind with being clear to me than the other game. WTF? I'm lucky to be at this point in my life and able to afford this sort of a rig and still run a stable 120 fps on average on max...(limiter, it can do more but I don't utilize the overhead)
But imagine the other people.. especially the newcomers, the kids. They see this with its ugly lines around model edges and blurry texts and they'll just walk away because of that alone, since most of them will likely be inheriting daddys 660Ti or something and aren't able to afford to juice up the upscale + AA.
Even though some characters look kinda fine, when you don't move the screen around too fast/much...
I think this is ridiculous.


Anyway. That is my opinion. Alongside the grand fuckup in the graphics department, they've been consistently making a non-fun game since MoP. The only exception-ish time being Legion. Rest of it is systems of systems of do and forget in 3 or 12 months.

Also, I remembered that I don't use water details or shadows or any of that stuff, but to me that never mattered anyway. It was always texture resolution and a bit of AA. It's just that now, you gotta crank that dial to the limit in order to enjoy some resemblance of clarity that used to be there. Don't know what they did, but to me it just makes DX12 look bad. But I might be wrong, maybe it's just Blizzard that sux at it.

[Osmeric]

Oh sure. Because random forum goers are the ones who should totally make that call.

I was making an observation, not demanding a change. I don't expect that change to occur; I expect them to fly the good plane Warcraft right into the ground.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It's hard seeing WoWs graphics (people's first impressions btw) be comparable to xbox-360 graphics. People were spoiled by great graphic RPGs like Skyrim over a decade ago, WoW hasn't gotten more popular since then.

I think the art direction of MoP and WoD is gorgeous, and looks better than most games coming out today. Even Outland still holds up due to the art direction of that shattered fantasy world alone (much like how Morrowind looks aesthetically superior to Oblivion and Skyrim, despite the latter two games being technically superior). Sure, Assassin's Creed might have higher graphical fidelity and more bells and whistles, but the artstyle is drab and unappealing to me.

The problem isn't the graphics. It isn't the combat either. Combat is decent enough. If FFXIV - a game that has exploded and become mainstream over the past two years - has objectively worse combat than WoW, then young gamers can tolerate WoW's combat.

The problem is the absol-freaking-lutely god-awful player experience new player experience. The game is horrendous at presenting its story to players. Clicking on NPCs to read walls of unvoiced text is unpalatable. Even FFXIV manages to present the text better by breaking it up into smaller, more digestible chunks. FFXIV also has cutscenes, which aren't very well directed or animated, but are decent enough. And very good voice direction (something WoW once had). Exile's Reach isn't a good hook, and when you finish it, you are thrown into the middle of a war you don't care about. Who are the Horde and the Alliance? What are their values, their histories, their ideals? Where are they located? Why are they fighting each other? Why should I care about this pretty boy prince or this green tusked dude? Who is my character? Why isn't my character participating in the story? And then before you even finish the BFA questing, you are shuffled off to Shadowlands where the context again changes (wait, why are we working together now? Who is the Lich King?).

And if you miraculously haven't given up by now, then trying to learn the story will probably do it, because the Warcraft story is the most bifurcated story I've ever seen, even worse than Kingdom Hearts. At least with KH, you can just buy the compilations and the only thing you're missing out on is a minor piece of lore trivia from a smartphone game. But in WoW, you have to read a bunch of novelizations of WC1 and WC2, and then read Lords of the Clans (in an age in which schools indoctrinate people into thinking that reading is boring and unfun because they're forced to read shitty books like The Great Gatsby, also most of those Warcraft novels are out of print), then play Warcraft 3 (which is in a completely different genre, and the acclaimed original version is not easily available), and then you have to play classic WoW, and then you switch to retail and play a lot of older questlines that aren't as fun as the more modern ones (same issue with FFXIV where you have to play through hundreds of hours of old content before you can get to the much more fun new content that interested you in the first place), all the while reading shitty books in between expansions.

Or you spend hours reading stale WoWpedia entries or watching 3 hour long Nobbel videos.

[Aggressive]

I suspect people will still bitch no matter what the dev team does.

They could wait till Q4 2023 to release it and people will still return to play.

That might even be a good idea to delay it for ample time to deliver a AAA product and community morale. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

The only thing that will make the heart grow fonder is if Blizzard will focus on making this a great and good expansion (Dragonflight), not wasting time groping and grabbing their employees ass or stealing their breast milk out of refrigerators. Just focus on giving us a good expansion and listening to the community. This is what my heart will grow fond of. Nothing else.

[Jester Joe]

I was making an observation, not demanding a change. I don't expect that change to occur; I expect them to fly the good plane Warcraft right into the ground.

Just like how WoW was totally dead the last expansion. And the one before that. And the one before that. And it's always dying, of course.
Despite Ion talking about how they'd have to worry about levels again the road in 2030, the game is totally dying and on maintenance mode of course.

[zhorteye]

Let's face it; most people still around from the early days of the game are 40+ year olds who start not even gaming anymore; the younglings aren't few but they don't tend to stay especially since WoW is nothing too special in the context of new games.

An expansion that just has "dragons and Alex the hot!" is not going to cut it; it might have a small peak at launch but even that may be underwhelming; the new producers will likely pull the plug entirely and possibly try something extremely new.

The nature of "extremely new" is up in the air but I have some predictions; perhaps they will delete all technical notions of 'expansion' and release it only as 'Warcraft'; what do you think they might do?

I'm starting to see more and more people running around since the announcement (This being on silvermoon alliance) and starting to find it easier getting groups for stuff.. So honestly, i'm getting a feeling that we'll be surprised and actually not end up having a big drop is players, or atleast not as big a drop as people seem to expect (Seriously, doomsayers go away already)

and with the alpha having hit the wowdev servers, be it in an encrypted form, it seems like they're much further in developement that what we've seen from previous expansions at their announcements... But we'll see.

[dwarven]

There isn't enough competition. Not even outside of other MMOs. What else is there to play this year until Q4?

Lost Ark is a good one or take a break from MMOs. There are tons of other non-mmo games to play too.

[Steelangel]

lost ark is pay2win just like wow, you pay for progress or slowly farm it.

I mean, that's a take.
It's a bad take, an uninformed take, a dare I say "moronic" take. A take so malformed that it should have been rethought before it left your keyboard...

But that's a take.

[VMSmith]

Oh sure. Because random forum goers are the ones who should totally make that call.

With this kind of logic, what is the point of a forum at all? Shut it down if you don't want people discussing their opinions about what should be done.

[Daedius]

Your first paragraph nails it. WoW can't compete with today's games and is only really popular among addicts and sunk costees.

So it's become more a niche hobby some people are clinging to for almost 2 decades. I think WoW can survive among niche hobbyist, but Blizzard should scrap any ideas of a revival, even an absolutely slapping expansion will not create more first time players, just bring old players back who don't play but still check up on forums and stuff like me.

It's hard selling a game created in 2004 to people born after 2004. It's hard seeing WoWs graphics (people's first impressions btw) be comparable to xbox-360 graphics. People were spoiled by great graphic RPGs like Skyrim over a decade ago, WoW hasn't gotten more popular since then.

As an old player I wouldn't touch another Blizzard product again with a 40 foot pole after the whole harassment lawsuits, so fat chance of attracting me back to a company saturated with hypocrisy.

[Biomega]

It would need to be an AMAZING expansion to get me back into the game - and so far it's not looking like one.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud the decision to go back to talents and gear as the main source of power. Great move.

But the fact that they're turning flying into a restriction-riddled, time-gated minigame is not sitting well with me. And dracthyr being restricted to a single class just sounds like a death knell. That's not the kind of design I want to reward with my purchase. There's too much other shit to play to put up with those kinds of inane decisions.

[Jester Joe]

With this kind of logic, what is the point of a forum at all? Shut it down if you don't want people discussing their opinions about what should be done.

That's a strawman.

There's nothing wrong with discussing opinions.

But "FIRE THE ENTIRE DEV TEAM BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL TRASH" isn't discussing an opinion. It's not even giving any support or logic to the opinion. Sure, it's technically still in the realm of opinions, but it starts to cross over into ignorance at that point if you have no logic or reasoning behind it. And it's most certainly not worth discussing if you have no actual sustenance behind such an "opinion".

Like, it's fine to say "I dislike WoW" and that's the end of your opinion. You don't need to justify something simple like that. But if you're calling for punishment of others, yeah, you should have some sort of reasoning and not just a "I don't like what they've done".

[VMSmith]

But "FIRE THE ENTIRE DEV TEAM BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL TRASH" isn't discussing an opinion. It's not even giving any support or logic to the opinion.

Except, that's not what Osmeric said, which makes this quote an actual strawman. Val said nothing will change until Ion is replaced, you reduced his comment into "blame the dev", Osmeric then replied that you were right and nothing will change until a significant fraction of them are replaced, you then re-arranged that into "they're all trash". Who's being dishonest here?

Sure, it's technically still in the realm of opinions, but it starts to cross over into ignorance at that point if you have no logic or reasoning behind it. And it's most certainly not worth discussing if you have no actual sustenance behind such an "opinion".

Do you require every comment on the forums to meet such stringent requirements? Like, every time someone shows displeasure with Ion they must write an essay to your exacting standards, or else it doesn't even count as "opinion", it's just "ignorance", as you say? Years of conversation listing why people are displeased with them must be regurgitated every time they repeat the thrust of the comment?

Like, it's fine to say "I dislike WoW" and that's the end of your opinion. You don't need to justify something simple like that. But if you're calling for punishment of others, yeah, you should have some sort of reasoning and not just a "I don't like what they've done".

I'm surprised, given that you're a moderator, that you've somehow been sheltered from all the years of conversation denoting exactly why people are unhappy with both Ion, and even a significant fraction of the development team.

[ClassicPeon]

As an old player I wouldn't touch another Blizzard product again with a 40 foot pole after the whole harassment lawsuits, so fat chance of attracting me back to a company saturated with hypocrisy.

100% mate. That’s why you are still here talking about wow