The longevity of WoW going forward.

[Zodiark]

I've been a longtime WoW player. I started my love for WoW even before it was even announced. Back in 99' I started my MMORPG hobby and started with EverQuest. I was hooked on the whole idea of exploring a vast world with dynamic content and real people to play with and meet. However I was a video game afficionado first and foremost. I had by that point been playing video games almost 15 years. So when Warcraft III came out it opened my eyes and my imagination ran wild!

What IF there was an MMORPG that actually LOOKED like a console video game?

For me this was IT. I immediately scoured the internet for any assets I could find to modify my EQ client to LOOK like WoW. So when WoW was announced I couldn't have been happier.

Part of that love for WoW back then came, as I said from the fact that to ME it looked like a proper video game I might have played on a console. My ideas for RPG's as a young man and teenager filled my mind. I didn't necessarily want the best LOOKING game. I wanted something that was fun but also very deep. However in the years to come developers seemed to always want to push the envelope of gaming not with more depth necessarily but with better visuals. Because lets face it. Visuals in gaming is what sells.

There are several games in recent years that have had tons of content but if the game itself didn't visually catch the eye of the players then it fell by the wayside.

I believe WoW could continue it's lifecycle indefinitely with a bit of future-proofing. In the past other games have updated their engine to something a bit more modern which would allow for better gameplay and deeper storytelling and make it easier for developers to drop in new content.

For years people have been asking what's next? Will there be a WoW 2? I think WoW as it is now could evolve into that game. It has already to a point but the ultimate limiting factor has always been the backbone of the game. It's engine. Look at the evolution of games over the years. Recently a new Legend of Zelda game has come out. It and breath of the wild share many similarities and many have lauded it as being a brilliant successor to the earlier and wildly popular Breath of the Wild. I believe one of those reasons besides a passionate team is the fact that the game that came out in 2017 used and engine that allowed for not only a good LOOKING game but one that could be iterated on in the future by saving development time by not having to reinvent the wheel when it came to the look and feel of the game itself.

Imagine WoW in a similar fashion. With a more modern engine that allowed for more dynamic gameplay and depth. Maybe use of cell shading to keep the essence and feel of the WoW look which by all rights has always had a bit more "cartoony" style to it.

[Kokolums]

Because lets face it. Visuals in gaming is what sells.

wrong. its one of the biggest wrongs in gaming. ive seen countless video games push great visuals fall flat on their face.

[Aucald]

wrong. its one of the biggest wrongs in gaming. ive seen countless video games push great visuals fall flat on their face.

Graphics are kind of the great accelerant of gaming - if they're welded to a good underlying structure, in this case, a good game with a solid foundation, then they make everything better. But if they're the only good part of a terrible game then they just sort of make everything feel shallow and cheap, like a 1-star motel with a really opulent lobby. Graphics alone can't fix a bad game, but they can make a good game even better.

[Gorsameth]

No one has ever played a game they didn't enjoy because the picture was pretty.
But plenty of people have played with actual asci graphics in the 21st century because the content was worth the bother.

Also I love how you talk about how other games have updated their engine. If you think WoW isn't constantly updating the engine and back-end you have not been paying attention the numerous times they have talked about it over the history of WoW.

[Zoura]

WoWs engine has been updating ALOT recent years.

[kranur]

The engine is old, updated and still working decent and even better than most games but still old.
Graphics are outdated, I know they still do the trick for many people but they're whatever.
The game itself is just bloated as fuck.
All in all a modern re-do would be welcome, and we won't get any of that until the game dies a very slow death, simply because it's more profitable to not invest a ton of money and take the risk, because if they do WoW2 and it flops, that's it, they don't have people clinging to their 15 year old chars and lists of mounts, titles and whatnot.

[NineSpine]

I've been a longtime WoW player. I started my love for WoW even before it was even announced. Back in 99' I started my MMORPG hobby and started with EverQuest. I was hooked on the whole idea of exploring a vast world with dynamic content and real people to play with and meet. However I was a video game afficionado first and foremost. I had by that point been playing video games almost 15 years. So when Warcraft III came out it opened my eyes and my imagination ran wild!

What IF there was an MMORPG that actually LOOKED like a console video game?

For me this was IT. I immediately scoured the internet for any assets I could find to modify my EQ client to LOOK like WoW. So when WoW was announced I couldn't have been happier.

Part of that love for WoW back then came, as I said from the fact that to ME it looked like a proper video game I might have played on a console. My ideas for RPG's as a young man and teenager filled my mind. I didn't necessarily want the best LOOKING game. I wanted something that was fun but also very deep. However in the years to come developers seemed to always want to push the envelope of gaming not with more depth necessarily but with better visuals. Because lets face it. Visuals in gaming is what sells.

There are several games in recent years that have had tons of content but if the game itself didn't visually catch the eye of the players then it fell by the wayside.

I believe WoW could continue it's lifecycle indefinitely with a bit of future-proofing. In the past other games have updated their engine to something a bit more modern which would allow for better gameplay and deeper storytelling and make it easier for developers to drop in new content.

For years people have been asking what's next? Will there be a WoW 2? I think WoW as it is now could evolve into that game. It has already to a point but the ultimate limiting factor has always been the backbone of the game. It's engine. Look at the evolution of games over the years. Recently a new Legend of Zelda game has come out. It and breath of the wild share many similarities and many have lauded it as being a brilliant successor to the earlier and wildly popular Breath of the Wild. I believe one of those reasons besides a passionate team is the fact that the game that came out in 2017 used and engine that allowed for not only a good LOOKING game but one that could be iterated on in the future by saving development time by not having to reinvent the wheel when it came to the look and feel of the game itself.

Imagine WoW in a similar fashion. With a more modern engine that allowed for more dynamic gameplay and depth. Maybe use of cell shading to keep the essence and feel of the WoW look which by all rights has always had a bit more "cartoony" style to it.

WoW does not need a better engine or better graphics. Both things would make the game more resource intensive to develop. It's a tab-target ability combat system. There is virtually nothing to be gained gameplay-wise with a new engine.

There are other MMOs with extremely impressive graphics. They are mostly very unimpressive games, because the quality of the graphics means glacial content release schedules. High fidelity graphics are a massive drain on content production.

What is holding back wow is a lot of extremely bad design decisions made a long time ago that are almost impossible to walk back. These are things like the strict vertical expansion model.

[LordVargK]

Update WoW's graphics and see it fail simply because many players use old hardware.
Heck, Blizzard convinced Microsoft to port DirectX 12 to Windows 7 just for WoW. If that's not a clue then I don't kow what is.

[Eazy]

Pool bilard, poker or chess don't really have good graphic but I still enjoy playing them.

Graphics are nice, but sometimes the more of it - the worse(see some of the newest games where the maximum graphics actually made the game harder, such as the tank wars(or whatever it's called)).

WoW has graphics good enough, I don't think it needs more, especially considering with all the beautiful animations and effects.

[Myradin]

Graphics gets shallow customers who'll dip, while good gameplay is what keeps people playing.

WoW's engine has had numerous upgrades over the years. I don't really think cellshading is to wow's benefit either.

There are other MMOs with extremely impressive graphics. They are mostly very unimpressive games, because the quality of the graphics means glacial content release schedules. High fidelity graphics are a massive drain on content production.

This, I mean I consider the big MMO's to be WoW, FFXIV, and ESO and honestly WoW looks like the best of the three. FFXIV has nice character models and gear but its environments are bland and without reshade the game looks drab (though Reshade is often used to fix this). ESO is probably technologically the most advanced but it has this weird uncanny valley thing going on where it looks cheaper.

I guess there's EVE in its own corner with some great visuals, but the nature of the game makes it considerably easier to update.

Every other big graphic MMO has fallen to the wayside pretty fast.

[schwank05]

wrong. its one of the biggest wrongs in gaming. ive seen countless video games push great visuals fall flat on their face.

I fully agree with this statement, I have played WOW for the last 17 years on Poorest Graphics Fully zoomed out and my character has had the same armor set on since 2012. So No Graphics and visuals are not what sells. Good Gameplay and a great Combat system is what makes a game playable for me. I have never cared about the whole character model update or dynamic water stuff because it is not directly related to Dungeons and Raids which is what I have always played WOW for over all other MMO's it just has the best Gameplay and Combat system.

[Khain]

I'm pro WoW 2, I think WoW is just too old with bloated and convoluted systems and addon requirements that push away new players. It has been 20 years it's long overdue for a sequel. But I don't think it will happen, I asked this question before in the official forums and most people don't seem to want it, they are just too attached to the pixels they collected over the years.

[javierdsv]

Zelda TOK is topping every chart right now and its graphics are pretty mediocre. So no, gameplay sells.

There's still people playing Runescape... people will keep playing WoW until electricity on Earth runs out.

But, a new engine would indeed give a fresh life to the game. The problem is, the game is so massive that changing the Engine could prove fatal. I honestly don't think Activision will ever run budget for such a project. Unless... it's a separate game built from strach, a sequel of some sorts. With a smaller starting world.

So my recommendation is... well, get your expectations low, and don't have high hopes on this.

[NineSpine]

Graphics gets shallow customers who'll dip, while good gameplay is what keeps people playing.

WoW's engine has had numerous upgrades over the years. I don't really think cellshading is to wow's benefit either.

This, I mean I consider the big MMO's to be WoW, FFXIV, and ESO and honestly WoW looks like the best of the three. FFXIV has nice character models and gear but its environments are bland and without reshade the game looks drab (though Reshade is often used to fix this). ESO is probably technologically the most advanced but it has this weird uncanny valley thing going on where it looks cheaper.

I guess there's EVE in its own corner with some great visuals, but the nature of the game makes it considerably easier to update.

Every other big graphic MMO has fallen to the wayside pretty fast.

Destiny is probably the closest game to an MMO that has nice high end graphics and doesn't have a really bad release schedule... but it also suffers from lots of asset copypasta and a serious problem with how rare new enemies are introduced.

[dacoolist]

I'm pro WoW 2, I think WoW is just too old with bloated and convoluted systems and addon requirements that push away new players. It has been 20 years it's long overdue for a sequel. But I don't think it will happen, I asked this question before in the official forums and most people don't seem to want it, they are just too attached to the pixels they collected over the years.

If a wow 2 ever comes out: I'm gone

If blizz wants to destroy all the effort most of us put into wow - sometimes the reason we play it to begin with (along with fun lol) - make a wow 2: I'd be gone along with every single friend.

If you want a different game: go for it - wow's WOW2 happened with TBC launched in 2007 - we don't need an entirely new game, that's why they have expansions

As for the graphics: they've updated the graphics so many times you can't even count at this point. Do other games look better: yes - but does that make that game overall better: Hell No

[Aucald]

If a wow 2 ever comes out: I'm gone

If blizz wants to destroy all the effort most of us put into wow - sometimes the reason we play it to begin with (along with fun lol) - make a wow 2: I'd be gone along with every single friend.

If you want a different game: go for it - wow's WOW2 happened with TBC launched in 2007 - we don't need an entirely new game, that's why they have expansions

As for the graphics: they've updated the graphics so many times you can't even count at this point. Do other games look better: yes - but does that make that game overall better: Hell No

I was actually trying to think of any MMORPG sequel that's had noteworthy success and/or eclipsed its original game. Asheron's Call 2 flopped hard. EQ2 is considered to mostly be a failure. GW2 isn't really an MMORPG sequel, but rather a sequel to a standalone RPG. Are there any other MMO sequels of note?

[Kiivar86]

I was actually trying to think of any MMORPG sequel that's had noteworthy success and/or eclipsed its original game. Asheron's Call 2 flopped hard. EQ2 is considered to mostly be a failure. GW2 isn't really an MMORPG sequel, but rather a sequel to a standalone RPG. Are there any other MMO sequels of note?

Would FFXIV count? Either to FFXI or to the original FFXIV before the whole A Realm Reborn?

Honestly though I'd count FFXIV in its own league because of, well, everything. Not many would do what they did, and to succeed, no less.

But yeah sequels generally don't do well. EQ2's is especially notable since it weakened the original EQ and allowed a certain newly released MMO named World of Warcraft to usurp its position.

(Also its always fun to point out that while it isn't the king it once was, Everquest is still getting expansions. 29th expansion last December)

[Shadowferal]

I'm pro WoW 2, I think WoW is just too old with bloated and convoluted systems and addon requirements that push away new players. It has been 20 years it's long overdue for a sequel. But I don't think it will happen, I asked this question before in the official forums and most people don't seem to want it, they are just too attached to the pixels they collected over the years.

I too am WoW 2.0. The game is faded away from what made great to begin with.

I was actually trying to think of any MMORPG sequel that's had noteworthy success and/or eclipsed its original game. Asheron's Call 2 flopped hard. EQ2 is considered to mostly be a failure. GW2 isn't really an MMORPG sequel, but rather a sequel to a standalone RPG. Are there any other MMO sequels of note?

Don't look at the sequels. Look at why they were made.

- - - Updated - - -

(Also its always fun to point out that while it isn't the king it once was, Everquest is still getting expansions. 29th expansion last December)

That is intriguing.

[exochaft]

Zelda TOK is topping every chart right now and its graphics are pretty mediocre. So no, gameplay sells.

There's still people playing Runescape... people will keep playing WoW until electricity on Earth runs out.

But, a new engine would indeed give a fresh life to the game. The problem is, the game is so massive that changing the Engine could prove fatal. I honestly don't think Activision will ever run budget for such a project. Unless... it's a separate game built from strach, a sequel of some sorts. With a smaller starting world.

So my recommendation is... well, get your expectations low, and don't have high hopes on this.

I'd have to concur that the "graphics > everything" is sort a console company lie they've been telling themselves for years... and ironically it's usually creators (like some Nintendo games/IPs, indie game creators, etc.) that will challenge that idea. While nice eyecandy is... well, nice, it's empty calories unless there's substance behind it. It may get the ill-informed into the door and move some product, but word-of-mouth (especially with how frequently we get even AAA games that are trash) is a very powerful motivator when it comes to the longevity of interest and sales in a game. This is why companies pay game 'journalists' with money or access in order to generate positivie buzz around their products, because there's more than enough people out there who will give you their honest opinions for free (even if they don't agree with each other).

It's very akin to the MCU trend, where they keep telling themselves that insane graphics and CGI are what will bring people in; while it may attract the ill-informed and those who will consume whatever regardless if it's good or not, a good and engaging story is what really fills the seats and keeps people coming back for more. Furthermore, it's become more apparent with interviews and behind-the-scenes information that even top executives in this form of media will lie to themselves and each other out of sheer pride because they think they're smarter than everyone else and can't be wrong... it sounds childish, and it is, but it's also sadly true.

Anyways, when it comes to WoW: getting better graphics at this point at best would yield extremely minimal renewed interest in the game. The problem isn't necessarily the graphics, it's all about content and engagement. Nothing wrong with bringing out the best graphics possible, but the best graphics with no substance is doomed to fail. However, if improved graphics came as a side effect of drastically improving or remaking the game engine for WoW, that miiiiiight be a different story. The ultimate problem is that even if there was an engine update (the odds of which are insanely small), that doesn't necessarily mean that the story and game design philosophies would change. Simply put, anything that would lead to improved graphics is likely not related to what keeps people away from WoW or fails to retain players.

As things stand now, the future of WoW is the classic system. Engagement and retention has been dwindling for years, with no end in sight, which makes large game updates (like expansions that we've gotten over the years) less and less viable in the eyes of Blizz. The cheapest and likely most effective way to preserve WoW while basically put it on maintenance mode is the classic system. It would still generate revenue while likely freeing up most of their devs who actively work on WoW for other projects that have way more money-making potential. This isn't a "WoW is dead!" response; this is just acknowledgement that even if Blizz wasn't on a losing streak with expansions in recent history, the game was going to decline over time... it's just a matter of how quickly. There's many great games out there that have stood the test of time, retaining a player base who will still actively play said games despite how old they are; WoW will likely have this, too, hence the classic system.

[Thirtyrock]

Wow's graphics are fine. They've been updating them, over time, and the game looks dramatically different than classic. But blizzard has talked about how they don't want to move too far away from the original cartoony feeling, because that's part of the vibe of WoW.

Wow's content is what keeps it going. And WoW's content is the best it's been in years, right now.