Turns out the only thing that can kill World of Warcraft is World of Warcraft under the helm of a dev team that is actively passive aggressive toward its player base, with an attitude of “play our way or go blizz yourself” and a list of stakeholders solely made up of bean counting MBAs in suits that came over from Activision. The dev team completely cutting off contact is often blamed on the player base (gaslighting at its finest), but there are plenty of games where the developers interact with their players, either directly or through community managers. Look at Warframe for an example of how a company that doesn’t even have the deep pockets of Activision Blizzard can manage to pull that off.
The sheer hubris of the developers on simple quality of life asks like pvp vendors or a decoupling of rep from core gameplay features, their unwillingness or inability to design content around flying (despite countless examples currently in the game of content that was built with it in mind), and their destruction through neglect of pvp and some classes or specs are the actions that show us where their priorities are: solely and entirely on forcing players in to the content they think we should be playing.
And the worst part is, there is no excuse. They came out at the last blizzcon and told us explicitly that they are aware that players want less rng and more agency. That players want the option to focus on the parts of the game they find enjoyable, and not be forced into specific content over and over again (chores, grind, or however else people express this). The developers know. And they make promises, but then they release things like 8.3, which show no regard for these principles, and then insist that we trust them that Shadowlands will be better.
What trust can there be when there is no action? Words are not enough, though real communication would be a start. Not just forum chats, there are a multitude of options for live streams, twitch channels, and all kinds of other things, and companies that would compete for the right to broadcast them. But it also means that simple actions that can fix current problems (in ways that hurt no one) happen quickly, not "in a few months when we can find a way to implement it as a passive aggressive middle finger to the player base (see the current announcement about flying, but with monsters that slow you with 100 yard range, a clear passive aggressive dig at people who request flying).
And if the current developers can’t bring themselves to learn some humility and actually lower themselves to communicate with their customers, that’s fine. There are a lot of employment opportunities out there, and I encourage Blizzard to give the devs a generous severance package and let them move on to a company that fits better with their “play our way or go blizz yourself” attitude.
Well, that, or watch the WoW Killer do its work. Your game, Blizzard. Your choice. Just don’t expect me to pay to watch you crash one of your flagship products into a mountain.
