Did they seriously think that WC4 wouldn’t sell like crazy?
Were they seriously incapable or afraid of crafting a narrative that didnt operate outside of WoW’s events?
To me, I dont think that WoW was ever an excuse not to make WC4… I think the community has always wanted it and i think that it was a guaranteed sale. The RTS genre is alive and well.
Not really sure why blizzard has spent 8+ years skirting around avoiding it frankly.
I think its been a big loss.
Would love to see some stats about the RTS genre being a worthy investment for development of a new game, because I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s a very sound business decision to see if that is the case by refreshing WC3 and seeing how it goes. If it goes incredibly well then they probably will consider WC4.
They are afraid and they didnt menage to achieve a general consensus over this matter.
There are several reasons for that :
2.Some claim RTS genre is dead, so not profitable for them
Some want it , but they are afraid to fail, cause it would be like biggest project ever after wow,with kinda different gameplay genre
Another group from number three but with slightly different opinion : Ye we are afraid but ,lets solve our fear with sentence : Wow is wc4
Maybe if they see how Reforged will pass on a global stage as a game, they will talk more about it in future.
6.Now collect all of it above and a group who discuss it would be like this : it cost a lot,and it would be a biggest second serious project after WoW,but RTS genre.
7.There are millions of fans waiting it, artists all over the world use to practicing using blizz style mentioning nostalgia over wc3 or naming their work wc4, or just using wow words for their work. Some are rly nostalgic,and want something new like wc4 in new light of modern world we live in, and some are just fake lovers to boost their portfolios.
So thing i like about blizzard games is cause they build a : Blizzard world,universe with its style,background storys,mythsetc. Its a gaming religion,iconic.
But nope,it wont happen.They need an excelent organisation ,discuss alot before make anything, and think years ahead, imagining this project would be new RTS WoW,learning from old mistakes,havng new ideas. AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS = They dont have a globalist, a generalist ,a theoretist. They need a shaman,prophet ,blizz religious alike figure,an iconic person to run all of this who knows to generalise things,organise people,having a plan,looking years ahead forward,knowing the future of the project,in same time think about profit, please the funs, to have blizzard universe and wc3 SOUL pervade all trough his body, never throw away a source of power which is wc3,always drain a power from it,imaginise things, be revolutionary.
That project would certainly take 3-5 years with a desire to be constantly alive and updated, and its artstyle should not be cartoonie like HOTS or hardcore realistic, cause cartoonie is childish and realistic textures age very fast and you can F it up very easy and its not good for huge projects.
I bet all fans of the world would logically (an open world RPG alike game like WoW) go 100% movie quality over current WoW, so they could live and play in Warcraft MOVIE.
We sadly didnt reach that level of tehnology and we have only bad reality digitally processed, which is not that good as final product.Never go this way until scientist let us having virtual reality world at least 95% movie quality for games,which may not happen for 20 years.
So, for RTS genre of wc4 is more logically to go handpainted realism, and for RPG WOW more logically would go movie realistic,which is not good to ask cause we dont have that tehnology (not cgi movie realistic like reforged, i talk about real virtual reality quality of models exactly same like that enviro and Anduin, a real gameplay)
xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKZ7ygLTR0g
So WC4 should be handpainted realism = realistic sculpts with handpainted textures over them (i am not talking about realistic proportions,i talk about realistic sculpt of Dreadlord face for example in Reforged,or mortar team model or rifleman)
Somethng like this style which was recently showed in wow and its really really rare to see,and wc4 should even better devote than this
xhttps://i.imgur.com/5ST8WJv.jpg
This costs ALOT m8. Considering wc4 would be kinda related with wow content.
Multiply all creatures,units,buildings,races,and skins,environment doodads and tiles,whole,citys,cinematics…
An RTS wow-wc3 mixture,constantly developing further,alive,whole teams discussing and meeting cause of it,a biggest project in history of blizz 
People have a tendency to think something will be profitable because they or they friends would want it. And as much as I want it too, there are many problems when talking about WC4:
This is why I think it’s not viable.
Creating a Warcraft IV is near impossible given what WoW has done to the lore. If there is a big bad evil out there it has already been killed, permanently. The only evils remaining are the Void Lords but fighting them would basically turn Warcraft into StarCraft seeing how they create beings like the Old Gods trivially.
I suspect a new intellectual property would be used as a spiritual Warcraft IV. It opens a lot of potential that Warcraft has already used up.
Others have already pointed out good points. I have a very hard time thinking even myself, how and where WC4 should placed. As other said, it is a serious economical question, whether a totally new RTS title would be worth it. Also, the lore has some issues: where should WC4 be placed? Rewrite WoW? Start it after WoW? When would that happen, since WoW would have to be killed off, and that won’t happen as long as there are customers paying for it. One thing would be to make WC4 co-exists with WoW, but that, too, would be a very risky gamble.
Honestly, as much as I want WC4 too, I’m pretty comfortable with Reforged. And the best bet is to just get DLCs and other extra content for Reforged. There is potential for content for years to come - we don’t necessarily need a whole new title.
Second best option would be actually to just reboot the whole franchise, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea, but still, it would be a huge economical effort and there’s no guarantee it would pay off. Reforged is in my opinion the perfect middle-ground for testing out the waters, if there’s still room for the new rise of RTSs.
Even if I want a wacraft 4, with all the bones in my body and soul, not gonna happen. Blizzard is making too much money on WoW to risk losing some by dividing the fan base. I know their subs are low but its still a money maker. Plus the elephant in the room, lore.
To have any chances, WC4 would either need to follow WoW lore after it ended, which is not happening any time soon. Or they could tell told and untold WoW stories to keep the peace in WoW community. Which quite honestly I dont want at all.
For me, and its one unpopular opinion, I believe the whole WoW story thing should be a vision/dream and never actually happened. Or even completly ignored all together, then Wc4 happen which follows Frozen thrones maybe a few years later.
But as most of you pointed out, business wise, WC4 would have not made sense either for Activision.
RTS isn’t a dead genre. Stop parroting what you’ve heard EA say. SC2 revenue was huge.
Avoiding WC4 was a major mistake.
You’re all wrong.
EA said that? I just find out.
But don’t be delusional. We gave you arguments.
SC2 was launched 9 years ago and it wasn’t a big boom.
Look at what kind of games are popular between teens and kids today.
The answer is there
If WC4 were a traditional RTS, no it wouldn’t sell like crazy.
RTS are not in high demand these days. They have a demanding learning curve, are not easily accessible to a wide audience, and it’s an ‘old’ genre in the eyes of many current standards.
Did you see how well Dawn of War 3 sold? Age of Empires Online? Hell, even any of the Command and Conquers of late? RTS isn’t in a high demand here.
They could always scale it back and choose a different setting that eventually ties in with Azeroth. We’re talking MCU post-Thanos finger snap moving the series forward with massive changes to history.
SC2 did sell well, yes, but it’s still like the only RTS game on the top-selling games list for a long time. And yeah, there hasn’t been a lot RTS games since, and there could be potential for another one, but it’s still a gamble. Plus, there’s all the other problems, as have been pointed out. I can totally see why they wouldn’t make another Warcraft RTS - as much as I wanted them to make one.
Ababmer - You know, i think Warcraft III: Reforged is a good move and the way to Warcraft IV. WIII is the game of my childhood and I’m so happy to see it in the new graphics. I want more WIII Remastered instead of WIV.
About lore,you can do whatever you want with it. You can add alternate past,alternate future and such a crazy ideas xD.
At the end you can tell whole wow storyis just a telling of an old Medivh.
And then he can say :Now humanity looks like this “then cinematic of him with small crew of humanity in space ship floating around universe” and go fighting with void gods , performing his role in new expansion Star Wars of Warcraft or just Star Wars sound better.
You can twist whatver you want. And ye you can rewrite lore, and go similarites with wow but not copy it as whole, not to hurt purists and wow. I mean, ofc i joked above but it can be DONE carefully,and both sides would have to accept some things -.-
I know its case sensitive,but i talk about economics , and you know blizz care a lot for it…Thats the real question…
Anyway, i think Reforged is a nice testing ground, a great ambush to see how we will react . So who knows,maybe someone will put 1 day wc4 subject on table
Honestly, they should do a prequel. See how Wc3 reforged goes. Then do the more historic parts of Warcraft. No need to make new lore. Leave that to Wow.
If there’s a future for RTS games, I believe it’s by crossing over into other genres. Just like Warcraft 3 was revolutionary at the time by blending in RPG elements (something SC2 did much less of) or separating the whole production and resource management from the real time strategy/tactics part like the Total War series does.
One particular avenue that I think would suit the Warcraft franchise well to be pursued without stepping on the lore toes of WoW is the MMORTS or MMO real time tactics game. It has been attempted before a few times but the projects were plagued with extremely bad design decisions, ranging from extremely unbalanced gameplay as a result of pay to win elements, encouraging players to stay in their own safe space most of the time or allowing others to destroy everything you’ve built while you’re offline, as well as terrible netcode, unstable servers and higher-ups forcing devs to incorporate MOBA stuff or some other fad into the title that didn’t really fit the original concept.
Essentially the way an MMORTS would/should work is as follows:
You’d have servers that support several hundred, maybe up to 1000 players online simultaneously. Each server consists of dozens of maps of which there’s only one instance per server. The playerbase is divided up into 3 factions (think Horde, Alliance and some Burning Legion or Old Gods faction) that will fight to control as much territory as possible. Some territories would have special benefits for your faction and would be the most heavily contested.
Players can invade territories or reinforce ongoing battles, but for each map every faction is limited to a combined ‘power ranking’ to ensure you can’t simply win by outnumbering the enemy factions on a given map. Your personal progression (research, hero level, etc) grants incentive to keep coming back and try new things, but it also increases your personal power ranking so your statistical advantages need to be leveraged with better play. You can’t just roll over the enemies by having better armies if the enemy can bring more, weaker ones. I’m not a fan of systems that try to create balance by making high tech units take up so much ‘food’ you can only field a couple of them at a time. It feels much better if it’s balanced by the number of players on each side and their combined levels.
The story and cinematics could be presented with periodic updates to the game world (maybe in ‘seasons’), also changing territories or adding new ones to the world map. Introducing new units and whatnot.
I think that a game like this DOES have the potential to attract younger gamers while still offering plenty of depth for veteran strategy gamers to explore (though admittedly not for esports). It would be a big financial risk to undertake, but almost every true innovation is.
If so, let Illidan and his minions RIP in northrend, Arthas frozen in his throne, Deathwing bound beneath the earth, Pandas off of the world as a BLZ joke, then we can have a genuine discussion about the possibilities of the lore. Don’t roll away the stone from the grave and drag out these villains’ dead bodies to take a beating.
I’ll just add my 2 cents, saw alot of same stuff.
Entirely new game costs alot of money.
That’s okay if not for the fact that RTS is not popular right now. Which makes it a big gamble. Wc3 is already done. People know it as it was very popular. Probably easier to get old players to return and let that hype create new fans instead of entirely new game that could fail. Wc3 still had a strong playerbase to count on. Point for wc3
You need new storyline for a new game.
This raises issues as they have WoW already pushing the story forwards and this is not the type of lore you wanna have different canons for. Also fans of Warcraft are very sensitive to lore changes/expansions. Alof of work and money with big risk if they do this. Risk that doesnt have to be their because WoW. Point wc3
You need new units, new balancing
Also money. Alot of development time. Why dont use the units from wc3? Well then the game is considered a ripoff… they cant win that one. Another point for keeping wc3.
If you just want there to be a warcraft themed strategy game…its already out there! Its already fairly balanced. It already has all the things blizzard wants to have in such a game. It makes so much sense to me to just upgrade the graphics.
Thats my thoughts. Im really happy with their choice. I dont think i would be ready for a wc4. Its new and im older and have less time to play. I like that I could just spend 2 weeks and im back on old level.
Yes, Warcraft VI would sell like crazy, but it’d be dead within the year.
The main point is that people calling out for another Warcraft RTS are really just expecting a Warcraft 3 with prettier graphics, and maybe a new storyline. People were the same about Starcraft 2, and the outcry when it wasn’t exactly a Starcraft 1 with pretty graphics was very, very loud. So why invest time into making an entirely new game, when you can make the remaster and integrate a store for campaigns into it? It fulfills the same demands, and saves you the shame of being accused of pulling a battlefield or a Fifa of releasing the same game over and over.
On top of that, World of Warcraft is now the face of the Warcraft franchise. While they’ve been selling extremely well, Warcraft 1 and 2 are niche as hell, and are virtually eclipsed by Warcraft 3 and by extension World of Warcraft. When people think “Warcraft”, they think about the MMO first, not the RTS. If I was a game developer, I would be immensely stupid to not capitalise on the franchise’s main leg when releasing another title. In essence, where WoW was a “spin-off” from the Warcraft RTS, every Warcraft RTS to come will inevitably be seen as a “spin-off” from WoW, and so it would be just making it unnecessarily difficult for yourself to make a selling title set in Azeroth that is in no shape or form associated with WoW.
We have a splendid example in the film, actually. It is a film that is explicitly described as taking part during the first war. The first war had no trolls, no Tauren, no undead, no night elves, no Draenei, no Arthas, no Jaina, no Illidan and no Murlocs. Despite of this clear communication, people went into the film and were immediately disappointed that their favourite character from the MMO wasn’t in the film. Disregarding all the gross retcons that they still did to appease the WoW crowd just for brownie points.
The storyline of the very first game is so vastly overshadowed by the MMO that they couldn’t even make a full-fledged license film of that original game without having to concede points to the MMO. What makes you think there will ever be any room for a sequel title where they could do that?
wc4 will be a new timeline if/when it ever gets made.