The longevity of WoW going forward.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Flasks are indeed the most broken gameplay element in PoE, and they are slated for a huge nerf/rework in PoE 2.

PoE 2 isn't being rolled into 1 any more though so they will seemingly stay a problem unless they change that part of 1.

[Twistnectar]

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.

This! I still play a game called "Tibia" sometimes, and so do many many others. Trust me when I say, I don't play it for the graphics. I find it fun to explore, and find new dangers down every hole (or up every hole? lol). The game isn't for everyone, but for those that love it, they stick by it and I don't think the graphics have ever changed from 2D.

[DUMB APE]

I don't disagree with you but I do think you're analysis is a bit one-sided. I used to think like this but then I took a step back and looked at gaming as a market as a whole; Here's the thing I realized:

The themepark MMORPG was a phase of gaming that led to other games and it's time has passed. It occupied a unique place in gaming history as they were the first real video games with "communities" because the community apps and social media didn't exist yet. Think about it from 1999-2008 (Almost 10 years until Facebook was available to the public) MMORPGs had a place where chats were real time, and the game existed in that space. Once social media came along the MMORPG was cooked.

WoW did drop Subs after Cata and WoD saw the biggest drop-off of players. I think it's not because people were jaded. More likely players just got tired of the game that kept asking for more. I feel like your post is predicated on the belief that WoW could get those players back and I don't think that's possible at this point.

All speculative gaming analytics guess WoW has between 1-2.1 million WoW Subs with 500-750k active players. I think that's where the game is now and that's where it's going to stay with a dwindling return each year. Could they stabilize their numbers and stay there; Maybe? But even then it's what we call in my industry a closed group (AKA Dying population with no new enrollments). This is WoW's real problem, it's not bringing players back, it's keeping new ones and I'm sorry but a game that is meant to be played with multiple people, rushes you to max level, then those players demand you go outside of the game to get add-ons to play with them, will never ever retain players who's first time is doing this.

WoW is just an archaic massive game that can't move forward into newer game market trends without having to do a total revaluing of what they have. The question I think here becomes what does MS think of WoW as an IP. I'd wager they think of it as an after thought. It generates some money, but compared to King, CoD, OW, and Diablo WoW doesn't compete with those IPs at all. So the real question is how long does MS think WoW's current model is fine letting it exist as it currently stands.

I think the longevity of WoW hinges on getting into the gamepass where players can passively play the game without having the hassle of a separate sub and the elimination of add-ons so consoles can play the game. That's where the real longevity of WoW resides moving forward. Unless they want to do some real radical investments such as creating and enforcing strict toxicity measures, WoW to me just will never grow outside of the 500-750k active players and will remain a dying group. It'll exist for quite a while, but bare in mind EverQuest is still alive. WoW will either have to move to gamepass or they'll remove their 2-boxing rule.

Yeah, maybe I am a little biased towards Blizzard. I have a lot of resentment for them due to the way they treated the playerbase over the years. Ignoring feedback. Making fun of us on livestreams. Punishing us when we don't just put up with what they say (Pathfinding in WOD for example). But you're right, I agree with you. WoW is a dying game and it isn't just because of bad design decisions, MMORPGs in general are a dying genre. It's possible that the era of MMOs are just something of the past now. It's the flagship of Blizzard and has brought them a lot of success in the past but I don't think that's going to be the case in the future, especially with Microsoft coming into the picture.

Runescape used to be huge back in 2005, it's still going today but it's nowhere near the level it was at back then. It seems like we both have the same idea of what's going to happen to WoW. It'll still be around but it'll be a shadow of its former self, barely around to be acknowledged with a small fraction of a playerbase still playing regularly. You mentioned EverQuest as well, still kicking but barely alive and around. That's the future of all MMORPGs, I think. They used to be the kings of the video game world and now they'll be ancient relics of a great era. I'm hearing about dead MMO servers that people visit, like a museum or something, lol. WoW survived to the present day due to the insane sheer amount of inertia that propelled it from its massive success from 2004 to 2011, it's slowed down quite a lot and eventually, there'll be no inertia left.

It's a shame since WoW is still at the top of my list of favorite games of all time. I miss the game a lot and wish I could play it as I used to. But even I have to admit that the gameplay, the game design and the style is all outdated. It's based off a video game that came out in 2004. That was when the PS2 was still one of the best consoles in the world! It's crazy that it's still managed to keep going until 2023. Even with all the bad decisions Blizzard made, even with awful game design and awful expansions, it's still kicking. How many "WoW killers" came as potential contenders and just died over the years? I've lost count. WoW is in the hall of the greatest games of all time. A legendary one.

But yeah, it's pretty much on life support now. I don't think there's anything that Blizzard or anybody else could do to bring new people in or bring back old players. It's too late for that. The best time to do that was when the game was still strong and people were giving proper feedback, back in Cataclysm/MOP. That was the prime moment where they could've maybe turned this ship around. That's when we still had tons of players and a lot of love for the game. If Blizzard had just listened to the feedback in WOD... That's my opinion, though.

[voskopoula]

1) the curse of WoW is that it will die so slowly noone from the ppl still playing will believe it is closing it's servers.
2) WoW's bad move was losing all the developers it started with , primarily Metzen then the rest. Activision getting in, wow losing it's heart.
3) the rest are technical details (and problems) that sometimes make people want to play more than not playing lol

[Ragedaug]

Correlation is not causation. All sorts of things were happening at that time. That they reverted flying just means there was some impact, not that it caused all the losses then.

I did not say "correlation was causation". I said, removing flight was causation for many people leaving. Then many people leaving was causation for immediately doing a 180 on removing flight.

[Osmeric]

I did not say "correlation was causation". I said, removing flight was causation for many people leaving. Then many people leaving was causation for immediately doing a 180 on removing flight.

You used the correlation between removal of flying and people leaving to conclude that the latter caused the former. You used a pure "correlation = causation" argument. Not sure why you are having a hard time seeing this.

[Chilela]

This is fundamentally besides the point. They can and should have hit the most "bases" they could have, which ultimately would have meant ignoring the elite minority whom they expressly cater too. The above quote acts as if all interests in the game are EQUAL...

IMO, it's a bit more complicated than that. While there are certain things where the majority opinion is very cut and dry, Blizz likely also has to factor in how much money certain segments of the playerbase are ultimately bringing in. For example, that "Elite minority" very well could be a major driver for token purchases (and microtransactions in general), so keeping them content would likely be considered a higher priority than keeping a similar, or even somewhat larger, number of average Joes who pay the sub cost but nothing else. Similarly, if the majority of players holds an opinion on Issue A, and a majority holds an opinion on Issue B, there's no guarantee that there's near-perfect overlap between those groups. Then, you have to factor in that some decisions simply aren't significant enough for people to quit over, even if they're against the decision being made. And it's not like you can reliably gauge popularity of decisions, outside of maybe internal data. Pretty much every forum is dominated by whatever faction is the most vocal, even if they're not necessarily the majority. Polling players can easily result in only the people that really care about something actually bothering to respond, potentially skewing results. So while "Majority rules" does make sense on paper, there's a bit of fine print to be considered as well.

[Ragedaug]

You used the correlation between removal of flying and people leaving to conclude that the latter caused the former. You used a pure "correlation = causation" argument. Not sure why you are having a hard time seeing this.

I'm having a difficult time seeing your point, because it doesn't make any sense to me and you haven't done anything or presented any counter arguments to help me agree with you. You saying "nope, you are wrong", isn't enough to get me on your side.

The reason I suspect the mass exodus of players dropping subs when no-flying was announced, is because there is a lack of literally any other explanation to what happened. So in the lack of evidence I default to Occam's razor. If you have better evidence (or any evidence) of what caused Blizzard to immediately 180 on their no-flying decision, a backtrack that was completely unprecedented, I'm all ears.

But you can't take the only plausible reason we have and say "that doesn't mean anything", without having at least an equally or more plausible answer.
----------------
For my background, I work in the I.T. troubleshooting and repair space. Whenever a client calls and says "the thing isn't working", one of our first questions is, "were there any changes that occurred just prior to when the thing stopped working". And while it's not every time, if a change was made just before the break, it's very likely the change led to the break. Granted, I will investigate to ensure that is the case, however for this issue, Blizzard will not provide any information to aid the investigation, so we are stuck with speculation. And at this point, the change, announcing no-flying, is the most likely cause for the break.

[Drusin]

I believe WoW could continue it's lifecycle indefinitely with a bit of future-proofing.

I believe wow could continue its lifecycle indefinitely with no future proofing lol.

In the past other games have updated their engine to something a bit more modern

Is this just a veiled Wow2 thread?

For years people have been asking what's next? Will there be a WoW 2?

And then I read this lol

Wow2 is risky because I'm not gonna fucking play it, 100% fact. I'm of course not the whole community but people like me are going to stay at Wow1 and people like you are going to go to Wow2 and now we've made two smaller communities. Though Wow2 will certainly have a bigger launch day and have millions more players than wow1 because people gotta try it out right? But in the end I don't know if it would last, and I think Blizz feels the same since they haven't done it.

[Osmeric]

I'm having a difficult time seeing your point, because it doesn't make any sense to me

We're done then. Bye!

[dwarven]

The game seems pretty dead except for a few mega servers. Usually this happens towards the end of an expansion but we're not even half way through DF. And that's in spite of them adding a lot of content.

[FelPlague]

Why did they hide the sub count at all if the sub count wasn't a factor for them to consider in their design decisions? Why, after the sub count was hidden, were future expansions (post-WOD) designed with a ton of RNG and timegates that forced players to stay subscribed for nearly a whole year in order to complete the content? If you ask yourself these questions... There's really only one answer.

They ignored player feedback for years, they were punished when 5.5 million players unsubscribed and they've been hemorrhaging subs since. They've never managed to recover from that and they never will. Their sub count before they hid it was around 3.5 million. Today, it is likely 1 - 2 million subs at peak times. They could afford allowing players to complete content quickly and unsubscribe when they had a huge sub count. But they can't afford to do that, anymore. To recoup the massive losses from losing all those subs, they've artificially inflated the playtime so people don't just complete the content and unsubscribe.

All of this is literally because Blizzard absolutely could not stand being wrong and did not want to back down. They did not want to listen to the playerbase.

"Why was stuff after wod designed with TON of RNG"
Cause EVERY expansion was designed with a ton of RNG, and looking at expansions like dragonflight where almost all RNG has been removed, massivly discredits your logic. Literally currencies used to upgrade gear with pre-determined amount earned from content, weekly vault that lets you choose your gear instead of bonus rolls from mop on where you just went "i want something off this boss!" and then either got gold, or an item you didnt want, and that was it...
Ontop of crafted gear being the strongest it has ever been really.

- - - Updated - - -

Their sub count before they hid it was around 3.5 million.

no it wasnt, it was still above 5 mil dude, the fuck you on about?

also mate, your saying that only after wod did they start "artifically inflating sub time" with "multi month requirments"
when wotlk had multi month legendaries
cata had multi month legendaries
mop had legendaries that took a year
wod had legendaries that took almost multiple years
This is going by your logic is pathfinder having taken 6 months.
When really you could get it done in a couple weeks no problem really.

- - - Updated - - -

You know that's exactly what they did in WOD when 5.5 million players unsubscribed because they refused to add flying into the game?

You must be famous if you knew all 5.5 million people.
The only way you could know all 5.5 millon people unsubbed cause flying was removed.
Nevermind the fact 5.5 million unsubbed cause after the initial release of an expac the sub numbers always slow, and of course as the game got older that slow became a decrease. Also nevermind the fact wod had masive amounts of hype and initial content, that after a few weeks/months was revealed to have no endgame, meaning that TONS of people arrived, only to play the expac for a month or two then leave again, because of yes in part flying, but also cyclical players, which has always been a thing, because of lack of content, and because of just bad endgame, garrisons included. But nah, all 5.5 million quit cause no flying.
So by that, where are those 5.5 million now? cause flying was in day 1 of the expac.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, because this happened at the very start of WOD. Not halfway through or even three quarters a way through. Blizzard announced that there would be no flying in Draenor. Players tried to reason with Blizzard. Blizzard as usual doubled down and thought players would take it. They thought wrong and they were punished immensely as 5.5 million left. Blizzard could've actually just added flying back in without a fuss but they couldn't, not without getting their revenge on the playerbase for showing them up. They added Pathfinding and that pretty much showed two things; one, the game had no content and they didn't want players to find out. Two, they were spiteful and immature, unable to accept their mistakes with grace.

literally none of this is true.
idk if you know, but the 5.5 mill quit over a total of 6 months after the expansion launch.
blizz had already spoken about returning flying by then, and pathfinder was literally added less then a month later after that period.
And no they couldnt "just added flyting back without a fuss" because the zones were made entirely without it. if you had played at all then with the feather item you would know, cause skyboxes were fucked and janky, "out of reach' areas were fucked and developer areas were very easy to access, including an entire open landscape off the south shore.

"The game had no content and they didnt want players to find out"
We already knew it had no content, and adding flying had nothing to do with that since we could already instantly teleport and transport across draenor in seconds with portals and garrison perks. You say 5.5 million quit cause no flying, but then say "blizz didnt want them to see there was no content"
no, the 5.5 million quit CAUSE of the no content.

- - - Updated - - -

Gaming companies have gotten way too bold and arrogant. It's not like how they used to be in the early 2000's, where they were scared to upset their playerbase so they listened to their feedback and improved the game. They think they're above the players and that they're in control.

also reading this made me fucking laugh, cause this was never fucking true.
literally the early 2000 devs were famous for going on the forums and telling players to go fuck themselves.
like seriously, some people hated some of the OG devs because they openly told players they were "Fucking imbeciles who didn't know what the fuck they were talking about"
hell there is still logs from people like mike morhaime and kaplan shit talking players. It wasnt till the late 2000's when they had to crack down, and GM's who still did it, or went too far got fired.

I still remember hearing "Paladin's arnt supposed to be good at anything because they are a hybrid class with the hybrid tax, you want a good class too bad play something else."

also dragonflight has been literally nothing but the devs taking and listening to feedback, making changes, reverting changes we don't like, and adding things we ask for.

[Johnjohn]

Tough question. WoW is in a decent spot because lets face it mmos are expensive to make and not a lot of AAA companies attempt them. Older mmos have also shown that they can survive with not that many players (50K, sometimes even less).

While I think the game will be around as long as Blizzard supports it, I do think accessibility is the number one key factor to make this game decline at a slower rate. Not that I would ever return probably at this point, but tryhard content on a 19 year old game will get you a niche audience at best at a much faster rate than making the game fully accessibly to as many people as possible. BFA/SL really showed this (although those of us with experience could see it a mile away). Make the game more accessible and with the WoW universe on your side the game will out live me.

[Osmeric]

Tough question. WoW is in a decent spot because lets face it mmos are expensive to make and not a lot of AAA companies attempt them. Older mmos have also shown that they can survive with not that many players (50K, sometimes even less).

If you can call that state "surviving". It would cause massive reduction in staff on the WoW team.

[Zodiark]

I believe wow could continue its lifecycle indefinitely with no future proofing lol.


Is this just a veiled Wow2 thread?


And then I read this lol

Wow2 is risky because I'm not gonna fucking play it, 100% fact. I'm of course not the whole community but people like me are going to stay at Wow1 and people like you are going to go to Wow2 and now we've made two smaller communities. Though Wow2 will certainly have a bigger launch day and have millions more players than wow1 because people gotta try it out right? But in the end I don't know if it would last, and I think Blizz feels the same since they haven't done it.

I actually really enjoy WoW. Hence why I've played it for almost 20 years and when you consider the fact that even during the days when I was playing EverQuest I still found assets for WC3 and used them to mod my client to make EQ look like what I would imagine a Warcraft game would look like. By using various spell icons, etc.

Just because I mentioned WoW2 doesn't mean I was inferring anything. I don't veil my thoughts. I speak pretty plainly. IF this was a wow2 specific thread then I would have titled it that way. I mainly got the inspiration for this from several different places, games, anime, even a fantasy wallpaper I've been using now on my desktop for the past year. I started imagining how WoW could evolve yet still keep the same type of look and feel and colorful palette. Then I started thinking of other games that have a similar aesthetic.

[Kallisto]

no it wasnt, it was still above 5 mil dude, the fuck you on about?

also mate, your saying that only after wod did they start "artifically inflating sub time" with "multi month requirments"
when wotlk had multi month legendaries
cata had multi month legendaries
mop had legendaries that took a year
wod had legendaries that took almost multiple years
This is going by your logic is pathfinder having taken 6 months.
When really you could get it done in a couple weeks no problem really.

I know people like to use this image to show that the game was still in freefall when they stopped talking about sub numbers (I know this isn't what you're doing) but that really wasn't the last sub call they had, they had one more which showed the bleeding had basically stopped. Which means if it was embarrassment why halt reporting when the bleeding stopped, why not 1-2 reports earlier?