Should Blizzard develop a new WoW mmo instead of yearly expansions?

[Lynexia]

The funny thing is that it's most likely already happening just not in the way people expect. I absolutely forsee full revamps of old maps maybe into even them merging the azeroth maps into one for a ship related expac in the future.... I welcome the change.

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Now they release things partially unfinished under the "game as a service" tag so that way they can save money on development time, beta test the game with a mass audience, and then repackage the unfinished and broken parts as "new content" later down the line.

this is just gamer conspiracy.... world of warcraft has always done thing. Do you think that hellfire peninsula was in wow alpha just for funsies? Or you know the emerald dream? or the dragon isles?

All of these places were originally intended to be in the BASE vanilla game, they just didn't have time... Have we been beta testing for almost 20 years have we?

[Ilookfly]

The sad reality is that we already got wow 2.0 and we're probably closing in on wow 3.0. It is just the way a lot of live service games go. Under the hood the current game is nowhere close to what it was in 04 or 05. Same with the overall graphics. It has been heavily updated.

[Woggmer]

Now they release things partially unfinished under the "game as a service" tag so that way they can save money on development time, beta test the game with a mass audience, and then repackage the unfinished and broken parts as "new content" later down the line.

If you're talking about WoW, that doesn't match the description at all... It's been an MMORPG, it was way before "Games as a Service" was ever even coined as a phrase. They won't make a "WoW 2" without having to kill retail WoW in the process.

If you're referring to Overwatch 2 on the other hand, there's already plenty of evidence that suggests that most of the development was spent too much on PvE. Once Kaplan left the team, they shifted full force into the PvP aspect, at a time when PvP on Overwatch was stagnating and dying along with the Overwatch League. Now we're at the point where there is no PvE team at all, and that now everything goes into skins.

But that's about Overwatch and not WoW...

[Elfezen]

the time where mmorpgs could function as a genre passed long ago, they are too overwhelming, very time consuming and not accessible enough for the average person who plays videogames, a Warcraft 4 would be more profitable at this point with the likes of baldur's gate and single player stuff being always awarded as "game of the year", maybe even in aarpg style (like diablo) which is closer to mmos, if not strategy, even though warcraft 3 is considered to be the best rts of all time

[Mojo03]

If you're talking about WoW, that doesn't match the description at all... It's been an MMORPG, it was way before "Games as a Service" was ever even coined as a phrase. They won't make a "WoW 2" without having to kill retail WoW in the process.

If you're referring to Overwatch 2 on the other hand, there's already plenty of evidence that suggests that most of the development was spent too much on PvE. Once Kaplan left the team, they shifted full force into the PvP aspect, at a time when PvP on Overwatch was stagnating and dying along with the Overwatch League. Now we're at the point where there is no PvE team at all, and that now everything goes into skins.

But that's about Overwatch and not WoW...

They do what I described on all their games and have for a while now.

The "when it's done" mantra is not a thing with them anymore. That's old Blizzard.

Diablo 4 is probably easier to see it on, though OW2 is a good example too. Warcraft 3 reforged also.

Instead of releasing games in a well fleshed out and polished state. They release new games early in partially unfinished state, unofficially beta test it to a mass audience, then repackage unfinished content that should have been in at launch with fixed broken parts and market them both off as new content down the road.

This isn't counting obvious omissions of content that aren't intended to be in at launch, such as seasonal updates in WOW that comes with a new raid and quest hub.

I guess in the example of Warcraft 3 they just straight up ditched it after it got review bombed so hard and they fired all their RTS teams (wasn't the RTS teams fault it was dumpster fire management, a theme with all problems at Blizzard)

Maybe it's shifting back a bit after MS bought them, but what I described has certainly been the norm since Mike Morhaime left and Acti fully took over Blizzard.

[Woggmer]

They do what I described on all their games and have for a while now.

The "when it's done" mantra is not a thing with them anymore. That's old Blizzard.

Diablo 4 is probably easier to see it on, though OW2 is a good example too. Warcraft 3 reforged also.

Instead of releasing games in a well fleshed out and polished state. They release new games early in partially unfinished state, unofficially beta test it to a mass audience, then repackage unfinished content that should have been in at launch with fixed broken parts and market them both off as new content down the road.

This isn't counting obvious omissions of content that aren't intended to be in at launch, such as seasonal updates in WOW that comes with a new raid and quest hub.

I guess in the example of Warcraft 3 they just straight up ditched it after it got review bombed so hard and they fired all their RTS teams (wasn't the RTS teams fault it was dumpster fire management, a theme with all problems at Blizzard)

Maybe it's shifting back a bit after MS bought them, but what I described has certainly been the norm since Mike Morhaime left and Acti fully took over Blizzard.

They might.. but not for Overwatch 2, it's practically doomed at this point since they laid off the entire PvE team during the mass layoffs.

But again, there's already several testimonies saying that spent too long on the PvE.. they wanted to release the full thing, but Activision and Bobby Kotick wanting money sooner to meet the next quartering's demands.

So if anything, it was a mix of both.... You've got one camp, Older Devs, where they strived to focus on quality and take lots of time to their work, but ultimately leaves the consumer stagnated of any content.. then you've got Activision and Kotick wanting things done fast to make ends meet, only caring about the end result.. which means faster content, but terribly made content...

Still... this isn't just a Blizzard/Activision thing, several other game companies are following this exact business "meta."

[Osmeric]

I guess in the example of Warcraft 3 they just straight up ditched it after it got review bombed so hard and they fired all their RTS teams (wasn't the RTS teams fault it was dumpster fire management, a theme with all problems at Blizzard)

https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-game...ing-bad-revie/

[The Stormbringer]

Sure, if you wanna play it 10 years from now and have next to zero new content for the current WoW in the meantime.

[Evilfish]

I'm not an expert but it seems they can still milk the wow engine, so maybe not a good idea.

Besides a new WoW would mean it's biggest competitor would be the old WoW and I'm not sure they want to split their community like that.

[PenguinChan]

Why do you think Plunderstorm exists? It's literally Blizzard creating new mechanics and ways to play and using that data for future events or expansions. If it don't work, they don't add it to the base game or future expansions / events. Think Diablo Seasons - I'm amazed some people don't realize this is just Blizzard expanding the WoW engine over time.