Not really. Happened to Everquest changing as well. It doesn’t belong to Sony Online Entertainment anymore.
I dunno.
People still emulate old N64 games, others still play even older MMOs like Runescape.
WoW will continue to have a market even as many of its players log in from their retirement homes. The question is how long it remains profitable enough to ensure development and server upkeep.
Barring incredible advancements (which we may very well see) in AI (even just LLMs like we have now) that allow devs to overcome the tech debt and spaghetti code to perform the needed updates to the engine with economic efficiency, I think it’ll remain overall very recognizable to its current iteration.
I’m almost positive they will end up revamping the game on another engine but port everyone’s stuff over so they don’t lose anything.
I’ve played this game for nearly 20 years but I can’t imagine still playing it in another 20 - not to mention I’ll be 70 in 20 years. Well off course if the lord allows it. Lol
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WoW’s code and framework has continued to be optimized every major update… The game in its current state the original engine and frameworks could of never even come close to handling . There’s zero reason to think that this isnt going to continue to happen
Maybe by then we can just upload our consciousness to the servers…
I can’t see into the future, so you may be right. I can see how much more lag wow has than other games though. This isn’t just me; even top streamers have trouble running 40 man content because of the intense lag.
Now if they are able to update things than perhaps the game can go on. I’m not a wiz at technology so perhaps it is possible.
If they finish the Worldsoul Saga in a satisfying way, then that is good enough for me.
5-6 years or so to go.
Maybe by then I will be ready to lay down the game.
Well if you compare the graphics of retail to original WoW 20 years ago, you’ll notice that they aren’t the same.
Gameplay mechanics have also evolved. Sure, you still target things can cast spells or use abilities on them, but a lot of things related to combat have changed over the years.
So even if WoW is around in 20 years, it obviously won’t be the same.
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Comparing a streamer to a regular player is… a weird thing to do, as streamers have a lot of other CPU overhead than a regular player
I have a rather high spec machine (7950x, 4090, 64gb ram) and run full max everything, including RTX options and in a 40 man I’m not seeing any struggle…
While I get my machine’s not the average players, wow has always run on varying levels of systems from a potato to beast machines… It’s why it has the settings options it has
The biggest issue with WoW is it still relying on a CPU for a majority of its heavy lifting, when GPU’s would be better suited to it… Including the number crunching aspects . The problem is by making that shift, it removes the accessibility in what Wow can play on
I dropped a decent chunk of money building out a small collection of older systems and games over the last 2 years, I dunno. Still love playing old titles like super Mario world, Pokémon blue, the old Zelda titles, etc. there is a big market for that stuff.
As new hardware becomes available, the software will slowly creep up as we figure out how to leverage it. Wow should continue to get a new coat of paint every so often.
I’d imagine lore/story may be the first bottleneck they hit (have hit). Plenty of suggestions for mechanical improvements on this forum alone.
I play WoW through VR goggles. If it’s so amazing now like that, I can only imagine how it will be in the future… true 3D, more realistic scenery, characters. I’m old, and I’ve been playing since Vanilla. The game has evolved by leaps and bounds, and I think it will continue to do so.
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I’ve been playing since 2009 and I’m going to be 70 next month,does that mean I’m to old to play a game I enjoy?
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Maybe in 20 years, WoWs base graphics could stay the same, but some crazy technology would let players render it like it was made in UE5.
We already have AI powering DLSS etc.
Wouldn’t be surprised like in 20 years if that technology turns in to something so much more.
Like re-render really old games in modern quality graphics. No need for developers to re-make or remaster.
For example, graphic wise, Resident Evil Remake had major improvements when comparing it to the original on PSX.
That sort of thing, but your GPU does it automatically for you.
Then you could use that tech for WoW as well.
(Unless Blizzard categorizes such thing as an exploit.)
I don’t understand how people still push the notions that “WoW will only last for another year. Another 5 years. Another 10 years.”
…when EVERQUEST
… yeah, the FIRST ONE … is still live.
I don’t think people understand just how accurate it is to say: WoW is NEVER going away.
They may stop selling expacs and only do occasional dlc. However you want to adjust that dynamic to fit the “WoW is dead” dynamic … but it’ll still be there.
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I don’t exactly recall where I saw it, but there was an article that revealed Blizz was originally aiming for a minimum subscription base of (I think?) 250 thousand when WoW was first released. They were of course delighted that it was far more successful than that, and set up more servers to handle the unexpected surplus of players.
It seems likely that, as time passes and the player base probably continues to shrink, they’ll simply reduce the number of active servers, the needed staff to support it, and release less new content. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it did last at least another decade, and still turn a profit.
In the leadup to Shadowlands we were told they were going to connect all low pop servers into much larger server groups in order to standardize the player experience. I believe it was the second wave where disaster struck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTBzljqDEf8
This brought that to a halt. It took them weeks to fix characters, accounts, and guilds on Khadgar server.
We never heard another word about connecting servers again. The project was apparently abandoned. They must have run head-on into an engineering issue that they were unable to deal with or much more costly to work around than they were prepared to push ahead with.
The way I see it, the playerbase will continue to shrink as long as the primary focus of development is the esports demographic. “This content nobody really likes is your content” isn’t going to cut it for players who feel like the game is no longer fun for them. The idea that the game must focus on a single target demographic because “it’s not possible to please everybody, so why bother?” goes against what made MMO’s popular, which was providing content for a diverse population. You can’t change players and turn them into something they aren’t and don’t want to be. But you can turn them away from the game.
Right now we are experiencing The Great Experiment to Make Casuals Git Gud™. Good luck with that.
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WoW is the only game I seriously play, I’ll be here until my servers shut down, or a health issue arises, or I just get too old or bored or whatever. Even if we didn’t get any more expansions and the game just stayed as is, I’d still play pretty often, considering I have a lot of alts, so still a lot to do.
Will they have? I feel like the evolution of games at a core level has slowed dramatically over the last like 15 years, as have the evolution of graphics. There will always be change, but I don’t know that the change will be as crazy as you think.
If anything, it’d be VR, but VR will always be an adjacent thing and not a replacement. Not everyone wants to or has the ability to turn gaming into a physical thing, + space constraints and such even if it gets cheap(er).
Who says WoW wouldn’t also change? It’ll likely always stay with tab target combat though. Graphics are updated fairly regularly here though.
Ah, yes. The “you think you do but you don’t” and “don’t you guys have phones?” mind-set. Some of the best examples of failing to read the room ever perpetrated. Blizzcon is such a rich source for memes.