When did they say that? Because that doesn’t sound like something a company would ever say.
That they are developing 3 x-packs simultaneously for the first time in the franchise’s history.
That they are using a cutter design philosophy for these 3 X-packs that will continue the trend of providing the least content possible
And that at the end of the three x-packs there will be significant changes
Obviously, all three of those things are up to interpretation…but saying a WoW relaunch or WoW 2 on a new engine is completely out of the question is short-sighted.
They came out years ago stating that their development cycle has always been “Current expansion - Upcoming expansion - Design and plan the next expansion after that”. Blizzard has always worked on three expansions at the same time. That’s why WoW has as large of a team as it does with several different people planning and working on the pipeline.
Now they are creating a “trilogy”, meaning that they have planned out what they want to do for 3 expansions. So now they are working on finishing the next one. And doing pre-production work on the one after that.
The only difference is that this is the first time that Blizzard announced this early that they are planning to do that. To actively work with a three expansion-Saga plan in mind. I don’t think this disproves your point, I still disagree with your take on it, but it is important to note what’s actually unique about Blizzard’s announcement … and it isn’t the expansions themselves.
While I was just being silly with my earlier response I don’t think the titans are bad per say. However while Azeroth itself might be important to them us mortal folks most likely mean nothing to them in whatever their great plan is.
If that many people have made the pilgrimage to this particular horse to keep beating it, ask yourself why so many people feel the need to do so. Maybe, just maybe, there is actually something of substance and merit to it.
Alright, fair question. We’ll look at MMORPGs only.
What do you have if you remove every aspect of gaming that every title within a genre shares?
You are left with a games unique story/narrative, art direction (including music), and what I will just call a “vibe check” or “X Factor”: Something about the game that just clicks with you and others that is hard to quantify, but is very much real and detectable.
Now, let’s look at civilization: if you take away everything that all civilizations have in common (governmental/bureaucratic structure, economic environments, etc), what are you left with? Their culture: their unique story/narrative (history), art direction (architecture, art, and music), and the, for lack of a better term, spiritual undercurrent that defines a people.
These are quite parallel for a reason. Warcraft is a culture. A culture that millions of people vibe with. A culture that they can say has its own unique values that no other game has. A culture so powerful it single-handedly altered the landscape of gaming as a whole and of wider internet culture. If WoW was to be redone, overhauled, given a sequel, or whatever else, these people would still vibe with it. It would still be their Warcraft, their culture.
Now, that being said, Warcraft’s true culture has been under attack from within for some time, but that is another topic for another thread. There is a reason Metzen was brought back.
Op,in a world of magic, realm, plains of existences ,cosmic wonders you only think of a destruction of a world ? That maybe true in a real existence but not a dream ,besides have really looked at our universe and how the spiraling swirling galaxies and energies have the same form of nerve structure as your own? It is truly an amazing life we live viewing of it as a whole .
You already said this. You haven’t defined it.
I can define it, and I just do it by pointing with my full hand at World of Warcraft’s 18 years and beyond. But I’m not pointing at Metzen, I’m not pointing at Warcraft 1, 2, and 3. I’m not pointing at a raid, I’m not pointing at any one particular character, or even the people who play the game itself.
I point towards the conceptual all of it. Because all of it is tied inside of World of Warcraft. Which sounds hella’nerdy but here’s the thing… you aren’t wrong, but you missed the point:
Why did World of Warcraft explode in popularity in the first place? The people, that’s the answer. Back when the game initially launched you had two options:
Facebook or World of Warcraft. Sounds ridiculous? Yah’, it does. But that’s what your options were in order to communicate with friends and even family back then in terms of social media.
World of Warcraft grew as a platform because it effectively became a type of social media back when we didn’t even have the word “social media” clearly understood by the larger population. The game is intrinsically connected and connecting to people.
That’s the only thing that WoW has kept up that’s been regular for 18+ years. It has epic cutscenes, moments, games, mechanics, bosses, all of these things. You have the stories of people running into Battlegrounds using Thunderstorm to defend a bridge, to capture a flag, you have these scream inducing moments of 0.01% kills and wipes on bosses, you have amazing and epic scenery, characters that people have grown up with for their entire lives and seeing someone loudly and very prominently ask “Is he the bomb this time?!” and more.
All of this is connected to “World” of Warcraft.
The Warcraft universe was an amazing RTS series, but it never ever got even close to doing any of these things.
The reason why World of Warcraft has touched so many people is because for so many people it has become synonymous or a parallel of life. That’s ridiculous to say but, that’s the honest take on it. People have grown up with it. There’s endless number of people who talk about how much time they have spent in-game and then have reflections on that. Some folks make comics out of it making fun of it. But then continue to play because… it is part of one’s life. It is a culture for a reason, but not because of the name. But because of what it is.
You make a sequel to that … the hell are people playing the game for? It has nothing of these stories. It’s just a number that went from well… nothing to now “2”. So… why play something that no longer has this meaning? It ain’t World of Warcraft anymore, it is (World of) Warcraft 2 Electric Boogaloo.
No one will regard it as a world because… well, you just restarted your world. Restarted your memories. Restarted well, everything. You just made every single powerful emotion that WoW has delivered for the past 18 years … completely pointless.
That’s why MMOs doesn’t have sequels. Even the ones that do, don’t get treated like that. Guild Wars 1 was Guild Wars. Just like how Guild Wars 2 is Guild Wars. But they aren’t the same. They are unique in what they delivered, the memories created, the people that were touched by the game; everything becomes different.
You cannot create a sequel to culture. The only thing you can do is to destroy it… and then create anew. Europeans aren’t Romans anymore. We haven’t been that for over a thousand years. Americans aren’t British anymore (or Irish, or any of the other groups of people folks love to pretend that they are). Culture requires continuity to survive and flourish. You destroy the cultural chain, you destroy the culture, and you are left to rebuild from whatever remains of it.
Your definition (or rather lack of it) is proof in your own words that WoW 2 would kill WoW. Because otherwise it ain’t culture, at that point it is just a game with a number attached to it. There’s no Call of Duty culture, there’s no Assassin’s Creed culture. They are just games of varying quality.
This is a wholesale erroneous analysis and conclusion. You can identify issues well enough, but you are breath and britches when it comes to offering solutions.
This right here shows you have no concept or knowledge of how history and culture works… like, at all. Every culture that exists is indeed a sequel to cultures (sometimes multiple ones) that came before. And ya know what? They are improvements to the ones that came before. Pretty much across the board (at least in the West). Western Civilization in its modern iteration is the result of thousands of years of refinement. Sequel after sequel, each one a bit better than the last. Brits ARE a bit Greek and Roman in their culture. Americans ARE a bit Brit in their culture. There are clear cultural through threads you can follow back for millennia. Your claim that this is not possible with WoW shows you are short sighted and, as I already pointed out, a woeful pessimist.
Once again, your presumed intellectual authority has come back to bite you.
I mean. Ok. I will concede that WoW can exist as long as existing means making sure the servers still run.
To a degree. For a while they have only been just using old models in old zones. I don’t know how the most recent expansions are. But that’s how it was awhile. Literally the same exact zones, same mob models. Released like yearly.
It’s honestly something I’ve been saying for a while now, that Warcraft could use a “reset” of sorts. This could do exactly that; get rid of the whole “cosmology” thing, have a giant, climactic battle, and then end it with Azeroth “awakening” to end it all.
Our characters “awaken” thousands of years later, where the world has been reclaimed by nature. The mortal races are only just starting to get a foothold to begin rebuilding their civilizations, and Azeroth uses the last of her power to awaken us so that we can guide the mortal races towards a better future.
At this point, you would effectively be considered an “Ancient” among those few who know of your past, and a simple “Adventurer” to everyone else.
Would be a great way to get us back to a more “grounded” world, returning to familiar locations but changed by thousands of years. Additionally, we could have all new characters, factions, and even races having sprung up in that time.
