http://www.gamespot.com/news/next-two-world-of-warcraft-expansions-planned-6367729

Blizzard confirms that they have two more expansions ready to follow up the Mists of Pandaria, which to my knowledge is still beta testing.

Looks like they're going to milk this as much as they can. Thoughts?

 

The game has steadily gone downhill since the high of Mimiron Hardmode. That's pretty much it for me. TOGC was okay, ICC was boring and easy, Cata was shit. Don't see how they can make it better.

 

Are they really trying? I cannot see how pandas could possibly be a good idea.

 

Oh my god, seriously? Since Mimiron Hardmode?

Fuck the game started going to hell at the end of Burning Crusade.

 

I still don't get the previous expansion. Pandas, WTF? I don't consider Blizzard one of the great developers like I still consider Bioware.

I don't think people who haven't gotten into WoW will ever do so in meaningful numbers anymore. By now we've all seen the South Park episode, seen the commercials for all the expansions, weathered the time period where all our friends were playing before they quit. It's not like I'm going to pick it up now.

So it makes sense for Blizzard to make more money as WoW's life cycle continues. WoW has a ton of subscribers still, 10 million. It'll take a while for that to drop down. But it will only drop down from now on.

Another thing is that Blizzard makes a fuckton of money every month off WoW. With 150 million dollars every month, they could make multiple new games, but they aren't doing shit. I don't expect to see anything of quality from Blizzard anymore.

Starcraft and Diablo, though they have cool worlds and have arguably addictive gameplay, are technological relics with the most transparently stagnant gameplay mechanics ever. The tactical RTS is something I haven't really enjoyed (or I would play a better one like Rome Total War), and a dungeon hacker and obsessive loot hunting is a stupid concept to me.

Don't really like Blizzard. Rather, I'm looking to Bioware's next move in light of Mass Effect 3's abortion of an ending and to Quantic Dream.

 

WoW was always about raiding for me. Yes, Vanilla was fun blah blah blah but 40 mans were too much of a hassle to organize and were just fucking tedious. TBC was fantastic, Karazhan was a great entry instance, and SSC/TK/MH/BT/Sunwell were all fantastic, interesting fights. I still think Ulduar is the best instance of all time, with Mimiron Hardmode being the best fight, which is why it's always been the high point and the pinnacle for me. As a whole TBC was the best, but specific point in time where everything started going downhill was after Ulduar.

 

Jesus fucking Christ, let it die already, Blizzard.

 

I don't think Blizzard was ever a really great developer purely in the sense of the games they made. I think their talents lied more in the area of creating games that could hold large player-bases for extended periods of times, and in turn learning how to monetize that player base as much as possible. For example, in Diablo II you had markets where players would pay real money for loot (I don't get it either). Blizzard themselves is planning on running their own external market for Diablo III where players can sell items, but Blizzard extracts a large percentage of the sale.

Admittedly, when it came out Starcraft was definitely an impressive achievement in RTS gaming if you take into context the games that came before it. However, in terms of recent work (say last four years), Blizzard has done nothing impressive. Or at least nothing impressive if you compare them to Bioware or Bethesda.

They have, however been extremely profitable.

 

That is the most roundabout way of saying 'they make games people like' I have ever seen.

 

Heh, you got me.

 

Not a surprise. It's much faster to write the story than to implement it after all. It'd be weird if they had no idea what the next couple expansions are.

As far as Blizzard doing nothing, they do have those two SC2 expansions, Diablo 3 and a planned expansion(I believe) and their new MMO Titan which is supposed to be an original IP. Even if you're not into those, I don't think it's really fair to say they're doing nothing.

What's with the love for Bioware in this thread? I feel like Bioware took a dump in a box and called it the follow up to Dragon Age. Then, when they were wiping, it would seem they got a bit on the end of Mass Effect 3(haven't played, just going by what I heard). I used to love them, but after DA2, turning KoTOR into an MMO instead of properly finishing up with a third, and ME3 being exclusive to Origin I've pretty much given up on them.

 

I will always be disappointed they didn't go with a three-faction game with BC.

Horde: Orcs, Trolls, Tauren, Forsaken
Alliance: Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes
Burning Legion: Demons, Blood Elves, Naga, Draenei

 

This isn't even faintly new information, they announced years ago they were going to make expansions going up to get player characters up to level 100.

 

There is a difference between plans and reality but it really looks like they will try to get as much money as possible of WoW (which I understand but not like).
WoW is losing their customers, not as fast as other games but it is noticeable. In my opinion they focus too much on the casual gamer and made the game to easy. Their consumer base also gets older and the new, young players have a much greater number of games to choose from.
(I personally never played WoW but a lot of my friends did in the past.. now I know only one person who still plays it regularly and while some stopped playing MMORPGs many play now different games like Aion, Sw:ToR, LoTR etc... )

Like some of the posters before me I also don´t think that the new games of Blizzard were/are that great. Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 are just not on the level on modern games. If I compare Starcraft 2 with World in Conflict or C&C Tiberium Wars it loses in nearly everything... the campaign, the graphic, the innovation.

 

I gave up on WoW in 2005 after they changed the characters around so many times in the first 8 months of launch that I got aggravated and said fuck it. And I echo the statement about Blizzard making money hand over fucking fist off WoW and doing nothing with the goddamned money. D3... looks like shit, plays like shit, been in development forever. New MMO, no way they're self financing it, and even if they were 100% out of pocket, it wouldn't suck up all their revenue for even 2 months. Expansions to SC? Oh you mean using the same units, and just writing a new story? Oh yeah, and their DOTA game they keep getting pissed off at Valve because Valve's actually bothering to make it instead of talking about making a game like that.

Blizz could be doing so much more, instead they're milking WoW for all they got. Easy money, but I'd expect better from them.

 

I agree with you. Blizzard's games since Diablo 2, have honestly gone into the fucking toilet. I already mentioned it before, though.

In all honesty, SC2's graphics are just barely above "Mediocre".

They really could have done better with their later games. And it took'em quite a few years to even start thinking about creating Diablo 3 (or even SC2) simply because they're being greedy jackasses with WoW, and ruining their game with new stupid expansions. They should have left it alone with the Lich King expansion.

 

Who cares about graphics?

The gameplay is all there, and that's what matters.

Anyway as far as I can tell it's impossible for blizzard to actually do well because everyone is unhappy that they aren't the customer that blizzard is making games for (boo hoo).

 

My point was that they could do a lot better with all the fucking money they get every month. Instead they decide to go mediocre. Hell, they already fucked up big time just making Diablo 3 multiplayer only without singleplayer (which means you probably can't mod the game). Unmoddable games, to me, are boring as shit beating it the first or second time.

 

But when have mmorpgs been about quality instead of "how many people we can suck in our game"? I can't safely say I played all mmo's out there, but I did my fair share of time-wasting on them(Still do, in fact). And I haven't seen anything new in ages. It's a shitload of lvling(Which Rift did the best job of imo, what with invasions and stuff) followed by either raiding or pvp at max lvl, both exactly the same in every game out there.

Edit: One of the reviews in the article made me laugh:

 

WoW ended for me when we cleared 25 man Icecrown Citadel. At that point, I had nearly every piece of BiS aff lock gear, my 3's team had sufficiently dominated, and much of the lore that I cared about had come to a nice, fitting end.

I'm so glad I stopped before Cataclysm and didn't get sucked in again, A) because I heard it was terrible and they broke BC's gameplay beyond recognition, and B) because this Pandaria expansion looks fucking retarded. It has absolutely nothing to do with Warcraft. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard sheds another 2 million subscribers before their 5th installment rolls around. And by god, if the 5th isn't Emerald Dream and the 6th isn't Sargeras, then they're definitely going to keep losing people.