Correct.
We could actually have an updated engine w/o a new WoW.
Again correct. 5-6 year min and who knows how many tens of millions of dollars.
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Why would they replace their cash cow? Updating the engine on a 16 year old game would only require people to have better and stronger PCs which would limit their player base of casual gamers.
I would, however, be in favor of a new MMO from Blizzard. Maybe World of Diablo or World of Starcraft, or maybe even a whole new universe.
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Half of those camps are true though. In the 5+ years it’ll take to make WoW 2 our entire playerbase will unsubscribe and float off to other games. WoW will actually die.
What exactly would a WoW 2 do though? Like what would be the point? The graphics are already brilliant, WoW has a unique style and the art team does it flawlessly to modern standards. New innovative features and system changes can be done on a patch and expansion level. They aren’t going to scrap the many characters and stories they’ve spent so much time developing.
I just never get what people are expecting out of a sequel. 
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I disagree on all but the story aspect . . . kinda . . . there’s been so many retcons it would be interesting to see the world rebuilt with all the current elements in mind . . . still not gonna happen though.
they tried that and failed, it appears they don’t know how to make a fun MMO. Remember Titan project started in Wotlk era and ended in WoD era which became overwatch - that was the new MMO.
WoW 2 probably isn’t going to happen. There just isn’t a market for new MMO’s. Established games are still popular because so much time has been invested in them by the players. A fresh sequel is going to be a tough sell.
The biggest thing I can think of that’s an “engine” thing is perhaps dyeing armors. But even then, they could add it probably without being too large an issue technically. It’s the artistic debt that’s a problem there. Anything done would require most likely reworking every piece of equipment which…is a lot. I’m sure people can say “well only allow NEW stuff to be dyed” and that’s a solution, but I think we’re all aware that will feel bad and instantly lead to complaints.
WoW2 also has a lot of problems. While I think there’s a lot to be said for a hard reset of things and to level the playing field you will inevitably get the people who want to transfer their stuff from 1 to 2. Which kind of renders the whole fresh start without baggage moot.
Then you’ll get the people who will stay in 1 vs 2 and split the playerbase. Let’s just say it didn’t work out for EQ how they expected a sequel to go. Or Maplestory.
At the end of the day, it’s a better idea to keep extending WoW until you eventually turn off the lights.
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Acti-Blizz already decided against doing another MMO, years ago. The reason was that their read of the online gaming market didn’t support making another MMO. The growth in online gaming was moving away from MMOs and towards other genres, like royales and MOBAs and team shooters and so on.
MMOs cost an epic amount of time and money to create. That is even more the case for a company like Blizzard, who would release any game with very high production values and a minimum of bugs (regardless of whether the design is good or not). And Acti-Blizz aren’t interested in that effort unless there’s a large payoff at the end – they only do blockbuster type games, not games that are merely “successful”. All of that ads up to deciding not to make another MMO, and it seems extremely doubtful that Blizzard will revisit that decision.
It makes far more sense, from a business/product perspective, to keep on producing iterations of WoW as long as there are enough subscribers to achieve the profitability level Acti-Blizz is looking for to justify continuing with the game.
As for the passion … Acti-Blizz is a public company. It’s about product, revenues and profits … first, last, and in the middle.
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Actually there are about a dozen coming out that I have on watch. Crowfall actually comes out next month.
D4 kind of looks like they are trying to make it an MMO. It actually looks like they are trying to rip of Path of Exile from what I’ve seen.
While you could expect an influx of fresh players with WoW 2, the problem exists with the current game. How can you be sure that enough people will turn their backs on up to 16 years of work and start from scratch, no matter how much better it might be? They would also have to be willing to write off everything that WoW currently is (becoming was) and accept WoW 2 as a clean slate and not compare it to current WoW as they are different games. Undead Arthas with his queen Sylvanas could rule Alliance and all dwarves & gnomes are their own faction and hostile to both Alliance and Horde, and do not forget the new Horde warchief: Windle Sparkshine! Keep in mind half the people that jump to classic (start from scratch) return to retail. Basically current WoW will need to wither and die on the vine driving enough people away on it’s own to become totally unprofitable before investing in something new is likely to happen.
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WoW 2 is going to be made by the same dev team who made Shadowlands. Well actually probably even less since many have left just from when that project was started.
I have no idea why people think they could make a completely new game when they can barely handle making an expansion.
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I’m not saying that they won’t continue making them, but it’s sort of a niche genre now. Vanilla WoW was the right game at the right time. That’s never going to happen again for an MMO. Those new games will be FTP in 6 months.
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And here we have it. So in others, how about no, OP. k bye
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Right. The market isn’t there for another multi-million sub game. The online gaming world is fragmented between different genres of online games now. And the portion that plays MMOs is mostly deeply invested in one or two games (main and alternate), such that while many peel off to try new ones, the new ones generally don’t get a critical mass of players at any point, and end up as small games.
ESO and 14 are the exceptions, both of which were able to recover from bad starts – one through a massive investment of additional development cost (ARR) and the other by going to a different business model. And both of those had the benefit of having two of the largest IPs in gaming behind them.
Other than that … it’s Runequest, and then small games with niche playerbases.
You know this reminds me of the early 2000s when everyone thought a World of Warcraft couldn’t compete against a Everquest 1 or 2 and that the market was over saturated with MMOs like Dark Age of Camelot, Asherons Call and so on so the genre wasn’t ready for a new game.
I think the genre is hungry for a new game like they were in 2004. I think its a sleeping giant waiting for someone to fill the void. To many people are exploring other games more this time then ever before.
I think you guys are wrong.
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The reason it won’t get upgraded nor will there be a WOW 2 is because the game itself runs pretty darn good still on most machines from like 7 years ago still, why would Blizzard won’t to got out those players and miss out on 100,000s of dollars?
With current blizzard… i don’t think they can relaunch and make wow 2
If Star Wars can’t do it, no one can. It’s too late and that void doesn’t exist. Games have evolved and the players with them. Grinding the same stuff for 2 years at a time isn’t as appealing as it was in 2004.
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It would. I don’t think people realize just how expensive MMORPGs are to make. They are literally a make or break game and there is a cemetery full of companies who thought they could make it.
What does this have to do with what I said? We are on version 9.0 which means this is WoW 9. We can get an updated engine w/o scraping the current game. Also a new MMO will take a MINIMUM (knowing Blizzard it would be way more then that) of 5-6 years and the last MMO they tried cost them an estimated $60,000,000.
If Blizzard was going to make a new MMO (which is what they seem to be trying to do with D4) it will have to happen concurrently with updating WoW.