What are your predictions for the future of the lore of wow? I will start with a few examples.
After Sylvannas is killed in Garrosh 2.0, Thrall will come in to appoint Baine was warchief and then leaves to go play with dirt. Baine will this go crazy and start killing a bunch of people for… reasons. Then we will have Garrosh 3.0. Also Lor’themar will be killed by a random butterfly… for reasons.
Anduin will continue to make terrible decisions that make no sense and that would have had terrible consequences if they happened in the real world. However, because of the writing in wow, everything will turn out ok… because human potential.
Malfurion will get kidnapped again and need to be rescued. Unfortunately, the princess is in another castle.
The big decision coming up for alliance players is: Should we side with Anduin to save the world and do no evil or should we side with Tyrande to save the world and do no evil.
Nott sure. I honestly think the next Expansion is the last expansion and Activision is going to shelve WOW and force Blizzard to go back to making Brand new games . Blizzard has run out of ideas for this game and now that Metzen is gone , there is no one to fill that void
Dont think its making them enough money and the shareholders and wall strreet want NEW games. I Doubt Kottic cares how much WOW is making. He needs new IPs to boost the stock price. Video game companies have proven time and time again they dont make smart decisions.
They are already starting to minimize WOW , it barely gets a mention in the share holders meetings .
They did get new games. They got Hearthstone, Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm along with D3 and SC2. Blizzard’s production rate of games is quicker than it’s ever been (when it was just hopping between Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo). WoW isn’t slowing down Blizz from creating new games and WoW is still a solid, predictable cash cow, even with it’s steadily decreasing revenue.
While I’m not happy with the current state of the game, or the story, I see a lot of passive aggressiveness in your theories there OP.
The story is only half completed. Odds are it’s not likely going to be anything “astounding,” or mind-breaking; however, I have a small glimmer of hope they’ll figure out it’s not working and alter their course. Odds are I’m way off, but one can hope.
"It was a dark time for Azeroth. After the Aerie Uprising, the world teetered on the edge of oblivion. Kurdran had found something in the troll ruins, some sort of artifact. Whatever it was had changed him. And in turn, he changed the Wildhammer. The skies grew dark, dotted only by Wildhammer grphyons and stormhammers. They slaughtered forest troll villages across the Hinterlands, and then beyond. They captured Tyr’s Hand and laid waste to the Brotherhood of Light who had held it since Tirion’s fall. With the cobbled fleet held at Tyr’s docks in the former Scarlet Enclave, Kurdran and some of his elite Wildhammer sailed for Northrend.
Where they landed was unclear but when they did, they had a fleet of tol’vir ships with them. By the end their campaign, they had with them an army of frost giants, iron dwarves, and Frostborn marching behind them. And the flag of Aerie Peak flew above Ulduar and its forges. When they returned, all of eastern Lordaeron trembled as his amassed army of stone, storm, and iron began to ravage the Plaguelands. They began scouring the land of forest trolls, undead, and, most unsettling, non-Titanforged. They began attacking the elves, and that is when the world took notice. Dead trolls is one thing, but dead elves? That is criminal. The elven defenders rallied in southern Quel’thalas. With them, the Amani.
Few could believe Thalassian and Amani would stand together, but against this dawning threat from the Hinterlands, the world was changing. Kurdran rained hammers and lightning from the sky, his gryphon riders from the Aerie and the Iron Riders from Ulduar clashing with elven and troll dragonhawk riders. Then, in the distance, it erupted. Stratholme, the burning city. Its flames snuffed out by a massive storm. At the heart of the city, a colossal being of stone, its body shackled with lightning, and a great clenched fist of silver. Tyr, the fallen Keeper. Kurdran had somehow raised him. The Thalassian defenses would crumble and they scattered. The Aerieforged Empire had been declared and Kurdran’s advance had begun. Armies of earthen poured out from Northrend, portaled en masse to the Hinterlands and beyond. The nations of Azeroth were forced to take notice: The Wildhammer threat must be extinguished."
Thats not ATVI plan. They want brand new games and tthey want them yearly. HS, OW, HOTS and Diablo 3 are all several years old. OW is stagnant and has seen really nothing new added in a while. HOTS has been abandoned and HS is just there. No word on D4 .
WOW eats up a good size chunk of resources just to keep providing content for a rapidly dwindling player base and dwindling revenue. You cant get investors excited about ATVI by continuing to pump resources into a 15 year old game.
So again… explain to me how WoW is eating up too many resources when Blizz has developed games at a quicker pace Post-WoW then Pre-WoW? They clearly can do more than one thing at a time.
And again, tell me what business person would pull the plug on the only game that has been a consistent and predictable source of money? WoW has a fairly predictable population growth (or decline, however you want to word it) whereas new games are flash in the pan sources of income that can’t be depended on past a year. Therefore, anyone with half a brain would keep milking the cash cow that can still be milked while creating new sources of income.
This is basic business… seems like you’re basing what you think will happen on anti-Activision propaganda and not on basic economics. You’re basically claiming that McDonalds should get rid of the Big Mac and focus on brand new sandwiches just because the Big Mac has seen a gradual decline in sales. The Big Mac is still their most dependable seller, even if it’s sales weren’t as good as 10 years ago.
Because the game is increasingly more expensive to develop for year after year. Every game is. Costs keep going up . A reason why Blizzard expenses kept increasing . ATVI has put in cost cutting measures. And really you can not compare McDonalds business model with a video game developers. Blizzard is a very old game. Its revenues are declining . If Activision wants to increase its stock price since it lost almost 50% last year , it wont be with a ancient game that is in a dying genre . They are not going to put their best and brightest talent working on WOW when they have to develop brand new titles.
At some point the ROI on WOW is diminished enough where it is no longer cost effective to keep it going. Its could still be profitable, but the Shareholders and Wall street dont really care about that because WOW is not increasing the stock price . And if they keep “milking” this cow to the point they are continually hurting Blizzarrds and Activisions Brand image, They will cut it loose . This company is not run by People with a passion for video games any more, its run by accountants and corporate suits looking to please investors .
And you’re clearly acting like WoW is Blizzard’s ONLY game and that all their resources go into WoW. It is also not more expensive to develop year after year. The engine is done, the development tools created… now you just need to train people on using the dev tools to create new content. Level design is still the same amount of work each expansion, skeletal frame/art is generally the same amount of work each expansion… what is the increased cost?
Again, it’s very clear that WoW has not prevented Blizzard from creating new games and all these new games have proven to be inconsistent sources of revenue while WoW maintains a regular, predictable source of income. You don’t get rid of that. WoW is the safe bet. You continue maintaining that safe bet until it reaches the point that it is no longer profitable and WoW is faaaaar from that.
The cold reality in this business is that the cost of video game development is almost always rising. The games get more complicated, and users demand larger and larger worlds, particularly in titles like World ofWarcraft and Call of Duty where Activision Blizzard thrives. You can see below that at Activision Blizzard and Take-Two Interactive , operating expenses have surged as the spend heavily to produce new games. At Electronic Arts ([NASDAQ:EA]), expenses are growing more slowly, but that company has been relying more on its classic games to help hold costs down
Even though WOW is established , The cost of developing expansions for it increase . Then the costs of maintaining servers, salaries, plus overhead. WOW revenue has been declining , so at some point ATVI says enough . Just because its “stable” does not mean the Board of directors, the share holders or BObby Kotic want to keep pumping resources into a game thats in decline when those resources could be put into projects that increase profits dramatically like Mobile games
And blizzard is pretty much Shelving HOTS, OW is barely getting any attention and HS is just there. Activision has told Blizzard " NEw games NOW". We have already seen a big round of firings , likely more to come . If Blizzard does not get a brand new IP off and running, you can bet the Bobby Kotic is going to clean house in a major way . WOW eats up a good chunk of the expenses .
Even if the sub number is only 1 million…that’s still 15 million dollars a month. How much money does it take to run WoW a year and produce new content? If it’s less than 180 million dollars a year then they are making a profit.
Yea, new games now which is why the games that aren’t producing a consistent revenue stream are being shelved. Guess which game isn’t being shelved? WoW.
We’ve seen WoW expansions. They are not bigger and larger worlds. They do not get more complicated. Have you even been playing this game? Each expansion is relatively the same size with the same amount of content. The only increase in expenses would come from natural economic shifts but the actual cost of producing WoW expansions and maintaining them is fairly low… all MMOs are and that’s why most MMOs can sustain on 300,000 - 500,000 subscribers.
I would bet anything that the $40-60 price tag on expansions ($40-60 Million at the assumption that 1 million players will purchase it… BfA sold at least 3+ million IIRC) is enough to more than cover the production of the game and the maintenance of the game for the two year period it’ll last. It’s basic math… you’re worried about the boogeyman but you can’t even look at the numbers right.
I am not really worried about the Azshara rising event, but there’s strongly been hints about some apocalyptic event coming since the final patch of Cataclysm.
There’s been rumors of the Real End Time coming as well as Hints on some of Christie Golden’s other work.