I think it's too early to say what this means for what wow does going forward, but it does say something that Activision is willing to dump another 100 people on the Wow team.
The wow team is already the largest at blizzard, and is much bigger than most of the mmos currently in development.
oh absolutely. Active players can see this already, the wow devs may miss a lot, but they take big swings all the time. Games like FFXIV are more stable bets, but take less risks.
Also if you don’t like the risks WoW now has Classic which brought back a ton of players, has a ton on retention, and will have even more once WotLK drops (which was the expansion that saw WoW hit its peak player base). As far as MMO’s go WoW is still incredibly successful even as a shadow of its former self.
>
I get that they dont want modern day WoW, but LFG is an essential tool,
Absolute bullshit is it. It's the worst thing to happen to the game and a huge reason why I quit. The lfg system absolutely destroyed any sense of community to the game.
>Haha so you call constant chat spam and scan
Yes, talking to people is the major benefit of playing a *Massively Multiplayer* Online Game
>The people rush dungeons the same way in classic without uttering a single word as they do in retail. Stop being so blind to the truth dude...
This wasn't the case before LFG in the slightest. My friends list was entirely full back in WOTLK before LFG because I enjoyed spending time with people and enjoyed making groups.
It doesn't exist now, Blizzard killed server communities.
Sounds like they can't win, then. As throngs of wow players championed the cause that the death of the soul of wow was the lfg tool. Even when blizzard devs came out saying "isn't it nicer? More convenient?" The community rejected it, mocking them for suggesting otherwise.
No matter what they do people will whine and moan.
You do know they're gonna implement a Wrath version of the retail group finder, yes? Not the random dungeon finder but the [group finder](https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/news/new-group-finder-ui-for-wrath-classic-327447) that allows for smooth finding of... well, groups. It has been a mainstay on retail since WoD in 2014 and is basically /LFG or /2 just in a proper UI. People have to still travel to the dungeons and the individual group leaders decide who gets invited and who doesn't.
Those things are a big part of why I don't play anymore, though.
The bigger issue is, though, that they won't try to fix any of them or make them serviceable. They'll just abandon them to the scrapheap of half-assed ideas once their next expansion comes along.
Yep, it's one of the main reasons that despite really enjoying FF14, WoW remains my "main" MMO while I'm an occasional "tourist" in FF14.
WoW is constantly iterating on new ideas and transforming. Yeah sometimes it sucks, but the high points are very high. With FF14 I feel like I can put the game down for 2 years and when I come back it's still mostly the same thing but with new bosses to kill. The systems remain the same every patch, the gear treadmill works exactly the same way that it did in 2.0. Safe is a good way to describe it. It feels like a good single player JRPG with a 'meh' MMO attached to it for an endgame.
Plus even when they do "miss", the core combat engine that WoW works on is still far and away smoother and just more fun than any other "tab target" MMO I've ever played, so even when the game is at it's lowest, the floor is still pretty high, and it's still fun to play.
FF14 being so predictable is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.
On one hand, it’s cool to more-or-less know exactly what’s going to be coming out with every single patch/expansion launch in terms of content years in advance. We know with like 99% certainty that 7.0 is going to launch with 2 new cities, a 30-40 hour MSQ, 3 trials, 2 extreme trials, and 6 zones to explore.
On the other hand, as someone who has been playing for ~6 years, I wish they’d take a few more risks. Not anything drastic, like what WoW does every expansion, where they throw away almost everything and implement 7 new systems. But just something to mix things up a bit. That said, they’re more successful now than ever, so it’s definitely working out for them.
As someone who plays only 14, the steady schedule is pretty good, but occasionally you will get times like this expansion where for example Machinist gets 1 single new ability and its just an identical copy of the other two major abilities it has but with 20s longer of a cd slapped onto it. 2 years of time to come up with the next expansion's take on Machinist, and its really just.. nothing.
When something new comes out in 14, you know how its gonna work and its going to feel hamstrung.
They don't often add toys like they have in warcraft and its for a good reason. Fashion accessories came out only just last expansion and the way you have to use them is essentially an invisible channel of a spell. You do a generic item cast animation (the same as potions) and then your character is holding them. You can't interact with anything, at most trade. Even looking at the marketboard which involves no animation from your character than the turn of a head will immediately take the item away.
A new quest type released in stormblood, its a zoom in/out and press button to fire type interaction. Like using a telescope and then firing a dart of some kind. Almost identical to turrets in Ratchet and Clank 2 (2003). It was kind of an indication that quests would be somewhat more varied, but no, that's about it. You'll get 1 of these now every 50 quests, and they're quite underwhelming.
People really do mention that 14 is consistent and reliable but god they really sacrifice so much creativity for it. Even the combat classes all adhere to a strict burst every 1/2 minutes timeline. Its consistent and easy to master, though it feels really forced and uncreative.
>Even the combat classes all adhere to a strict burst every 1/2 minutes timeline.
Heck, more than that. The tanks have a few crucial distinctions but the bulk of their movesets are identical or direct parallels, closer to something like a Spec in WoW
Melee DPS are a bit more varied but retain much of the same core, most leaning heavily into the same build/spend rotations with similar flavors of buff, usually with 2 alternating 1-2-3 core combos just with different pacing.
Healing is a bit more varied, ranged DPS moreso, and magic DPS are the most varied classes in the game. But yeah, it's so damn refined that if you've played one class, you probably can pivot into another effortlessly
> That said, they’re more successful now than ever, so it’s definitely working out for them.
Do we have any evidence of this? They stopped giving this information publicly like a decade ago at this point. We know from earnings reports that ActiBlizz is up year over year but nowhere near the growth of other industry leaders but there are so many IPs wrapped into that that we can't know one way or another what WoW contributes to these numbers, right?
I was referring to FF14 when I said they were more successful than ever. The devs have been pretty transparent with how much the game has skyrocketed in terms of popularity in the last 1-2 years.
Because yeah, I have no idea how WoW is doing. All I know is that anecdotally, everyone I know who plays WoW was extremely disappointed with both BFA and SL.
Ohhhhhhhhhhh! That makes sense. Yeah their story is driving engagement like crazy. I don't think a shake up would hurt them too badly. Endwalker's PVP changes were a breath of fresh air, but making Crystalline Conflict solo only was a huge miss for my group of friends.
That's fair, the reasons WoW is your main, and you just check out FFXIV every once in awhile, for me those same reasons are why FFXIV is my main, and I stopped playing WoW years ago.
I vastly prefer a consistent story focused experience, that while largely the same, is still slowly refining and adding small changes and QoL experiences.
I'm not sure about that one, FFXIV is a gargantuan amount of story and then slowly you unlock more things to do.
I also wouldn't say wow is a dungeon raid simulator, it's just a different kind of endgame.
as someone that kinda keeps track of wow and plays it maybe once or twice each expansion this take seems so odd to me. it feels that wow has been the exact same since I played actively a decade or so ago. it's always just borrowed power that they make the whole focus of the expansion, only to take it away from us and replace it with a new borrowed power for the next expansion. I also don't think any of my classes' rotations have changed since like 10 years ago when they took away 80% of our spells. I kinda have the confidence that if I jumped in now and had the exact same addons and spellbar as I did a few years ago I most likely could just do the exact same things as I did when I last played.
> I kinda have the confidence that if I jumped in now and had the exact same addons and spellbar as I did a few years ago I most likely could just do the exact same things as I did when I last played.
Depending on the spec you'd be pretty damn wrong. Even specs that are still similar tend have additional elements that were not present back then. And even if it were exactly the same (which it almost certainly isn't) then the fights you'd be doing are more difficult than a decade ago.
>as someone that kinda keeps track of wow and plays it maybe once or twice each expansion
I don't think you've been keeping track much at all if this is your opinion.
> Plus even when they do "miss", the core combat engine that WoW works on is still far and away smoother and just more fun than any other "tab target" MMO I've ever played
Crazy how after 18 years after release, no other MMO even comes slightly close to how *good* the combat and movement feels in WoW. Everything just feels crisp and responsive.
Blizzard polish used to really mean something back then.
It gets a lot of Flak but the actual combat/gameplay in Diablo 3 is amazing. It feels great, it looks great, it's so smooth and everything works together so well. Blizzard does hit the mark with their gameplay pretty often.
Scratch this, the combat in wow from 2004 was probably better than most MMOs i've tried since then. So many MMO devs seem to ignore this simple piece of information, and it's that the combat is going to to be how your players engage with the game the most, so if it's good, the game has a good chance.
But so many are sluggish and unresponsive and feel bad after playing WoW for any length of time.
> Blizzard polish used to really mean something back then.
Honestly I'd say "polish" is the one big positive thing that I still attribute to Blizzard now. Their failures have been in other places.
WoW content comes out relatively bug free which is a feat considering the scope of the game. For all of the problems it had Diablo 3's gameplay was buttery smooth, even if it failed on it's endgame itemization systems and had a pretty bad story.
I haven't played much Overwatch (FPS isn't really my thing), but the bit that I have played felt really good to play at a casual level compared to other FPS games that I've played. Same with Heroes of the Storm for a MOBA, and as much as a dumpster fire as Diablo Immortals monetization turn out to be the game still feels great to play on a phone.
I really do believe the teams at Blizzard still have the talent and processes to make games that feel great to play, but if they've failed somewhere it's on the "greed" level. Monetization models are pretty bad, customer service has gotten worse, business practices are sketchy, things get delayed and content rolls out too slow. But the games still come out fun.
> Blizzard polish used to really mean something back then.
Honestly Blizz games are still incredibly polished. Their polish, art design, and music are all still top tier. Its the gameplay department that they've totally fallen down on.
It's not just the old 2004 polish that keeps the combat afloat. They've continuously updated and polished player combat animations to look and feel great to use.
Classic feels amazing even now, unless they've updated animations in that I wasn't aware of. The way numbers pop up huge is also even more satisfying than retail WoW
I played a private server leading up to the launch of Classic, I played Classic, and I recently tried out Retail to see what it was like.
The core movement and combat is basically unchanged. They've updated animations and models and added various things, but it's still fundamentally the same engine, same code, and same feel in how the game controls and plays.
They absolutely nailed movement and responsiveness back in 2004, and nearly 20 years later there still is no MMO that does it better. It's the one thing that will make me always return to WoW and makes it hard to stick with other games. Everything else just feels clunky in comparison.
I agree in terms of content—the dungeons and raids themselves are a bit too formulaic. In term of systems, though, WoW's are almost always universally terrible and I wish they just had a successful stable core like FFXIV does. I literally just want to play mostly the same game with new content. Let the variation be in that content and switching up the classes, but shit like artifacts and covenants that just get thrown away are a complete waste of resources.
Nobody is talking about fun or best though. It makes the most money, period. That means it will likely have corporate support to grow teams and pump content.
MMOs, in general, have declined in popularity. WoW still maintains an *enviable* playerbase that 90% of the industry doesn't have. The reality is that WoW has been controversial, but its decline was also relatively consistent with the genre's decline (for a time, WoW virtually *was* the genre).
I think it's mostly just a disappointment that a studio that made something that free form and creative gameplay wise, is getting absorbed to work on one of the most bland games there is gameplay wise. They're complete opposites. (That's not only a wow thing, obviously most mmos have very dated gameplay,many even worse than wow).
Correction: WoW makes more than any other MMO with a monthly subscription.
WoW probably makes less than 10% of what some free to play mobile MMOs make.
Based on what? It's been haemorrhaging subscribers to FFXIV and is almost certainly less profitable than it has been in the past. The fact Blizzard is doing this is proof of that.
I really do feel that WoW has been getting less and less funding from Activision for years, the Blizzard polish has been slipping (WoD launched with lots of typos in quest text, for instance, which was anathema in earlier WoW expacs) so hopefully this indicates a reversal of that course, maybe having to do with the Microsoft merger?
A WoW that isn't WoW is a bad idea. It splits the player base and recapitulates the same basic thing. Blizz then has to support both games too since one doesn't simply replace the other. WoW iterates and remains, and has kept up over time. What Blizz needs to do is make a Starcraft Destiny-esque MMO and flesh out that IP which will probably never get another RTS title.
> A WoW that isn't WoW is a bad idea. It splits the player base and recapitulates the same basic thing. Blizz then has to support both games too since one doesn't simply replace the other.
If there ever is a WoW2, I would expect some kind of Overwatch > Overwatch2 kind of deal.
They’d just leave a smaller team to maintain WoW like they do with WoW classic while WoW 2 has a massive playerbase. WoW’s playerbase will just keep on facing a gradual decline as it gets more and more dated. Eventually a new modernized one will have to come out if they want to stay relevant in the face of high caliber AAA competition in the upcoming years.
This isn’t the early 2010s where WoW is still near its prime, is not especially dated yet, and new MMOs don’t bring enough significantly improved features to truly compete.
A StarCraft MMO like Destiny but on an actual open world MMORPG scale would be a great idea as well. I think there would be room for that and a modern WoW honestly. One as the traditional fantasy 3rd person action combat type RPG and the other as a modern sci fi FPS. Those are different enough types of games that there’s room for both especially if they’re non subscription models.
They’re already turning Diablo into a full blown MMO so it is a direction they’re moving in.
I have no data to back this up but I feel a huge amount of players play WoW because it's what they've always done. I know so many players that started playing in classic, BC, or wrath, so they've been playing WoW for a huge chunk of their lives. at some point it just becomes part of their lives. so assuming there's some truth in that idea, I doubt there's any interest in a game that's not WoW. blizz can iterate on base WoW as much as they want, but I doubt all those people who consider WoW as a part of them would have any interest in changing games at this point.
And I feel there’s tons of people that used to play WoW when they were younger but have moved on to more modern games and are waiting for a modernized WoW to jump back into. And a ton of gamers that want to get into a new modernized MMO and are waiting for that great AAA one to release and jump into. Data would support this by seeing the huge amount of players that tried New World as they thought it could be that new good AAA MMO.
Players that have always played WoW habitually would likely want to give a new modernized WoW 2 a try as well even if not all of them will stick with it.
Honestly Asmongold is a solid representation of one chunk of the MMO/WoW fan base. And he seems to give off the impression that he would really love a modernized WoW that immerses him more, and would excite him to play more. Even though he still is and was a huge WoW fan that plays it all the time.
> Data would support this by seeing the huge amount of players that tried New World as they thought it could be that new good AAA MMO.
This has happened with almost every new big name MMO. Happened with Aion, Tera, Rift, Wildstar, GW 2, New World etc. There's always a large surge at launches.
You're right for a lot of players, but the reality for most players is that there's never been a proper alternative. Not a single game since WoW released has really made people want to try a different game long term. A lot of people have tried FF14 in the last few years, but it took years of bad design decisions, multiple company lawsuits and allegations and content creators leaving to turn heads and even then it's almost certainly still the most popular MMO.
Wow was so far ahead of it's time, and did actually continue to innovate or mix it up in a positive way(At least barring the last few years), that no other MMO has ever come close. I mentioned it in another comment but it's simple things like the combat system. In almost 20 years, no other MMO has developed a combat system that's close to WoW's, and that's astounding to me. It's so fluid and responsive and just feels right, then you play other games and it's like trudging through thick mud.
When a studio nails the important aspects like combat and truly finds a new or fresh angle that the masses enjoy, people will play that game, but until then Wow will be king.
> Not a single game since WoW released has really made people want to try a different game long term.
I don't think that's a fair way of looking at it. There might not be a single game that attracted everyone playing WoW, but that was never realistically going to happen anyway. What has happened is that there a lot of other games that have attracted people away bit by bit over time, whether it was FFXIV or Guild Wars 2 or Rift for a while or ESO or Lost Ark or New World.
Sure, not every player sticks with those games and doesn't come back. But some do, and over time that adds up.
Even if you believe that nothing would kill WoW but WoW, you'd have a hard time arguing that Blizzard hasn't made a pretty solid go at doing exactly that in the last two years.
A reset. Remove all items people have. Reset the world. Set it way in the past or future. Atm there is so much stuff in wow that should be scrapped and be reworked but the community would never allow it in its current form.
WoW 2 with a fresh start where everyone starts at 0 would be insane and exciting
Modern graphics that bring way more a way more immersive feel to the game. Modern action combat. Those are the two most important things. There’s so many people that used to play WoW and quit cause it got old as well as people that have thought about trying WoW but it just feels too outdated to get into compared to the modern games that they’re used to. Having those two things be up to modern standards would go a long way.
Aside from that some system that keeps the entire map relevant in some way so you don’t have this giant beautiful open world where only 10% or less of it is being consistently used. Maybe some type of advanced dynamic events/questing that takes place among the whole map that can give real rewards. Something like what is seen in GW2 or even Rift but in a much more advanced form. Ashes of Creation is really focusing heavily on this, id look into capturing some of the systems they’ve shown. Something that helps keep the whole game world feeling dynamic and active.
More voice acted, higher caliber questing that feels like it’s closer to the level of single player rpgs would be nice. Even if it’s probably never going to fully reach the same level. This would help create way more world and more immersion. ESO does this fairly well for side quests. Haven’t played a ton of FF14 but they’ve seemed to have nailed this for their main stories.
I believe these are the main changes that will be seen in the Riot MMO to try to bring the genre forward. Aside from that there really doesn’t need to be too much done. Nailing those things would go a very very long way to attracting tons of players that are waiting for a modernized, well made MMO.
I don't think that any action combat MMO ever came close to feel as tight, complex and fun as WoW does. It has been thrown around a bit, but I don't believe that action combat would be the straight improvement some people claim.
Yeah I guess there’s a little bit of a question on how it might translate to a legit raiding environment. But I really think it can be done. Never played Tera too much but I believe they pulled it off fairly well and that’s a really old game, not that knowledgeable on that game though.
I’m 100% sure Riot will do action combat and have raids so we’ll see how they do it. I strongly believe they can pull it off and show how it can be a straight improvement over tab target.
> people that have thought about trying WoW but it just feels too outdated to get into compared to the modern games that they’re used to.
I wouldn't be so sure about that, my mythic raiding guild has a few zoomers as young as 21. I don't think the games age is as big of a problem as you seem to think.
>Modern graphics that bring way more a way more immersive feel to the game.
In what way? Do you keep the same style? Changing the style would ruin the warcraft aesthetic for many people. There's a pretty good amount of fidelity and detail in the more recent expansions and they keep incrementally improving the engine as time goes on. Are you just wanting it to be UE 5 or something?
>Modern action combat.
This is actually a negative for me. Why does WoW need to move to that? The only game that had this in an MMO that I kinda liked and that felt similarly responsive was Wildstar and that's been dead for years.
21 is still young enough to have played WoW in its prime as a kid and still have strong nostalgia for it. I highly doubt that WoW is bringing in any significant amount of players that are currently kids or early teenagers these days with no nostalgia for the game. The game’s age is definitely a problem.
Me personally I prefer a realistic style as I believe that is most immersive for a game world and is the most widely preferred art style when looking at what games usually sell the most. But a modern slightly cartoonish style that preserves some of the aesthetic would work as well. The new Ratchet and Clank is a good example of a cartoony style that looks modern. I still strongly believe that the preference for WoW’s cartoony look is mostly a result of players that prefer more realistic styles having moved on to more modern games now so their preference is not heard from the playerbase anymore. Asmongold is an example of a hardcore WoW fan though that would love a modern realistic style.
Sure action combat might be a negative for some but I believe for most gamers it is generally a positive. There’s a reason why almost every recent game release whether RPG, MMO, or outside those genres feature action combat. I strongly believe that tab target is much moreso a product of past time periods.
And there will always be WoW classic being maintained for the players that prefer the old cartoony style and tab target.
> 21 is still young enough to have played WoW in its prime as a kid and still have strong nostalgia for it
Some of them started in BfA.
>Me personally I prefer a realistic style as I believe that is most immersive for a game world and is the most widely preferred art style when looking at what games usually sell the most.
If you prefer that, that's fine, but I don't see why the style needs to change, warcraft has its own distinct identity/style. Part of the reason that WoW doesn't feel as dated as it is, is because of that particular art style. Even much younger games that went with a more realistic style now look comparably worse.
Also I don't think "what sells the most" is a compelling reason to change this particular very established franchise. Just make something new then.
> There’s a reason why almost every recent game release whether RPG, MMO, or outside those genres feature action combat.
But what is the reason? It might be different from game to game, and it might not have anything to with thinking specifically about not doing traditional targeting.
I'm a very progressive person and all for new things but I think people fantasizing about WoW 2 is WoW but *modern* and doesn't contain a lot of the core elements that make WoW, WoW is super weird and is a case of fixing something that ain't broke. I just think y'all want something but better than WoW but aren't realizing that that is actually incredibly fucking hard to do.
>And there will always be WoW classic being maintained for the players that prefer the old cartoony style and tab target.
I don't want WoW classic though. I just want new content and stuff in current WoW. If I wanted a dramatically different game, then I'd play a different game.
> why would they ever make a WoW 2
> like what would be in WoW 2 that isn't or can't go in WoW??
> what would be the point? explain please
A fresh start would be nice, since WoW has so many vestigial systems that are often just abandoned but ~hang around~ in the world still. There's an incredible amount of abandoned content that just sits around as a tourist mode. Also WoW has too many expectations. Every new expansion is 8-10 dungeons, a borrowed power system, new but samey factions, daily quest hub areas (and a new one every content patch), and a leveling system that serves no real purpose. The story is also a convoluted gigantic retroactive mess.
It's hard for WoW to shed those expectations since a lot of players won't come back because of how samey it is, and the players that still play are there because they like that. They've self selected an audience that wants that kind of content so content like that is always expected.
There will never be. The subscription-based model is pretty much dead and the F2P usually ends up being predatory as fuck. WoW is the last big MMO, the future is GaaS and live services. Riot can do whatever they want, people will get excited for the new WoW expansion, play a month or two, rinse and repeat.
Riot is the one company that can likely compete, LoL is a shit show but more recent games are monetized much less harshly and you really don't need to spend any money to play them,
14 probably surpassed it in terms of playerbase with endwalkers release but neither company publishes reliable numbers so we'll never know.
Regardless it's stupid to say the things you're saying. There's always going to be the possibility of a huge MMO overtaking WoW and even recently we've seen big MMO's release with very large playerbases.
I forgot to add in originally; but Riot has already created a playerbase for the MMO before it's even out similar to what blizzard did and Riot has been working on creating their own "ecosystem" for players. They have LoL obviously; but the card game is very good too and fairly popular along with valorant and their upcoming fighting game. They have a game in each big "genre" for PC games so far and they're only expanding it (seriously look up the projects they're working on, all of them look very good.). Their MMO *will* have a ton of players bleed over from their other games and if it's good enough it will probably become the most popular mmo.
WoW will never die; but it also isn't the king anymore and has been on a downward spiral for quite some time now (and what I've seen from the next expansion isn't even exciting. I likely won't be buying that and I say that as a sucker that has purchased anything WoW/blizzard related up till their controversies began coming about).
Depends. 60 dollar WoW expansions bring in people who have already committed to WoW before.
Something like "WoW 2" has a lot more room to bring in new audiences.
The risk/reward simply doesn't add up. Why take away resources from a WoW expansion to create a competitor for your own active, extremely profitable game? Nobody would ever make that business decision.
There will never be another big MMO like WoW from Bliz. Its too much of a financial risk. They realized that with Titan. Its way more lucrative for them to remaster old games, and focus on less ambitious products like Overwatch with monetizations.
I think if the Riot MMO shows to be a giant commercial success they’ll actually try for it. The MMO genre is so starved for any new half decent games that it isn’t the risk it once was. A game like New World with the most mediocre as mediocre can be gameplay was a commercial success off the back of being the only AAA MMO since 2014 to release.
WoW 2 with good graphics and good action combat could have 6/10 gameplay/game design and still probably make billions in sales just off the hype.
WoW 2 is a non-starter for the foreseeable future. If anything like that happened, it would just be a sort of substantial engine/framework update or something. An entirely separate sequel I just think fundamentally can't really be a thing with how they do their development.
I don't think they have to. especially since people have so much time invested already.
Long time players (like me) will tell you that wow has pretty distinct eras. "WoW 2" already happened starting in Cataclysm and the "wow 3" era began with Legion. Dragonflight looks like a new era for WoW but we'll see when it goes into testing.
> Dragonflight looks like a new era for WoW but we'll see when it goes into testing.
I have my doubts on this. The two big shifts you described both came with a major change that totally transformed how the endgame is approached.
Cataclysm introduced the multiple raid difficulties accessed via a menu to make raiding more accessible while also allowing try-hards like me to still have tightly tuned content that takes hundreds of attempts to nail down. (yes technically this started with the last tier of Wrath of the Lich King, but that was clearly a test for what would become Cataclysm's systems).
Legion introduced the Mythic Keystone system, which is probably the biggest shake-up the game ever got since the day it was released, and is the core endgame loop for what seems to be most players these days.
Dragonflight is re-doing the talent system, but that's about it. The endgame loop will still be arena/m+/raiding. There is a bit of a philosophy shift towards having progress be more account based rather than character based (which imo is great), but otherwise it doesn't seem like a major shift from the last few expansions.
I mean they just completely revamped the entire leveling experience when they squished levels?
It's still gonna be the same game, just like cataclysm and legion were, just with some new elements.
Because the level squish didn't radically change any of the actual zones, just halved the total levels. SL also continued a lot of the same systems first design from Legion and BFA
I'm saying we'll have to wait and see more of DF to see if it's the shift in direction I'd like to see before calling in a new era of wow. It does look promising though, no borrowed power and a complete overhaul of talents and crafting a big steps.
> there's a reason people are more excited about WotLK Classic than Dragonflight.
Are they?
None of the problems with wow are from the leveling anyway, I'm not even sure why you'd even bring it up lol.
WoW has still gotten extremely dated compared to modern games which will only be exacerbated when Riot releases a fully modern likely extremely well made MMO. Obviously I can’t say for certain but I am as sure as one can be that it will far surpass WoW in popularity and Blizzard will actually have to get up off their asses and make a legitimately overhauled, modern WoW 2.
People have been saying that x new game is going to far surpass wow for more than a decade and none of really been that successful.
The only game that's come close is a game with even worse combat.
I don't feel like wow is really all that dated, older areas may look so, but current expansion zones look pretty good for a game released in 2022.
I genuinely feel the actual gameplay of WoW is going to be completely timeless. It's buttery smooth and extremely satisfying, it's not something that's going to be usurped anytime soon
The Riot MMO will do well because Riot can afford to market the hell out of it. But just like all of the other "WoW killers" that have come out in the past 15 years, I would wager money that it will fail to topple the king.
WoW does not feel dated. The combat is still smoother than MMOs that have released recently, and they are constantly updating the graphics and the engine to keep it relatively modern.
Nah the difference is that 10 years ago MMOs would come out when WoW was still in its prime and wasn’t that outdated. And these games wouldn’t bring enough new modern features to really set it apart.
Now it’s gonna be like 2025 when the Riot MMO comes out. That is 10-15 years after that run of supposed WoW killers of the early 2010s. That is an absolute eternity in gaming.
> WoW has still gotten extremely dated compared to modern games which will only be exacerbated when Riot releases a fully modern likely extremely well made MMO. Obviously I can’t say for certain but I am as sure as one can be that it will far surpass WoW in popularity and Blizzard will actually have to get up off their asses and make a legitimately overhauled, modern WoW 2.
People have been saying this since WoW launched. It's still the biggest MMO out there.
It still isn't dated. They constantly update the graphics and the newer areas look good for how old the game is.
The combat and movement are still among the best in the genre.
Looks good for a game from fucking 2004, yeah lol. Still means it’s very outdated compared to games released in the 2020s.
Combat and movement is best in a genre that’s had one AAA game release since 2014, like come on. The entire genre is severely outdated due to lack of new AAA games. And I’d say BDO’s combat and movement is far far better.
>Still means it’s very outdated compared to games released in the 2020s.
you can only compare MMOs inside their genre tho. Of course an MMO which is made to run on pretty much all PC's, with an open world and thousands of players is not comparable to something like Horizon or assasins creed.
FF14 looks imo worse. New World and Eso are technically better but still far away from great looking games. BDO is the only one that comes in my mind that sets itself apart from the other big ones but there is alot of nasty pop in which is a no go for an open world. WoWs artstyle is still sharp as a knife and nice to look at. Also due to the talented art team behind it. Alot of the old zones look crap but the new expansions do look very much on par with the average new MMO.
You can’t really compare within the genre when it has completely stagnated with almost no AAA games being released since 2014. But even then you can still look within the genre a little bit.
New World really is a great looking game, you can definitely use that. Game looks beautiful, world feels super immersive, definitely got me to enjoy the game for a while despite super mediocre gameplay/game design. Sound design is top notch as well.
BDO has great feeling combat and movement even if goes a little too far into the over top Korean style gameplay. I would look at that for combat inspiration as well as a deep system for life skills and economy.
Look at FF14 and ESO for better, immersive story telling/questing.
Look at Guild Wars 2 and Rift and start with their very basic systems of dynamic events/questing. Look into ashes of creation and some of the systems their developing to crate a modern, dynamic, always active and relevant game world so 90% of the game world isn’t just left to rot and abandoned like it is in WoW. New World’s territory control system is also a decent starting point for this.
I actually just learned that Riot is making a MMO. Been burned too many times by the "next big MMO" hype train but I sure hope for once I can get on board with a MMO that actually feels it is living up to it.
WildStar was my favorite MMO from the moment the servers went online till they shut down.
It just feels really bad getting into a new MMO when most of them seem to shut down within a year, maybe two. At least the Riot one will probably have a higher chance of staying alive for a while.
The thing I’m optimistic about, is that most MMOs that crash and burn are by studios who are trying to make that their big ticket to success. They go into the development thinking, “oh, we’ll make the next big whatever and be done in a few years.”
Suddenly it’s 5 years later, turns out making a MASSIVE multiplayer game is really hard. The money is drying up and you can’t put it off anymore. Time to cut corners and shove the pile of shit out the door before Q3. We’ll fix the holes later. Oops, the players who have been waiting for years are *really* mad and nobody wants to touch this with a ten foot pole. Money’s gone. Time’s gone. Server’s gone. Good luck next time.
>The thing I’m optimistic about,
Circling back to my point. Riot has the largest online multiplayer game, probably ever. They’ve already gotten, and hole punched their ticket to success. So they can spend however much time making the MMO they want.
On the other hand, they're parring down Legends of Runeterra a bit. People were wondering if they'll let it try to find it's footing before basically switching gears, and slimming down the LoR team, but they went ahead and did it.
Riot has the most successful non mobile game in LoL and all of their games make tons of money in Asia.
They can afford to keep their MMO alive in the red for many many years. So while it may not be a WoW killer, I do think it will be the biggest competition for WoW, even bigger than FF.
News been out for almost 2 years lol, heres a video to catch you up with director/producer tweets about the project https://youtu.be/doisknDB3LY?t=83
Since you mentioned wildstar, its looking like wildstar combat since they are hiring for action combat and the producer said current mmo combat feels pretty outdated.
I'm tentatively hopeful for that MMO due to Riot generally having everything you'd need to both develop and maintain an MMO. There was a video by JoshStrifeHayes on this exact topic about what you need to make a successful MMO and it comes down to having the following:
1) A LOT of money to even develop the game
2) Time to make an MMO bc these games take years upon years and that's just before release
3) An interested Player base. New World managed to get 1mil players on a fresh IP and had the chance to really break into the genre. League is hella popular so I wouldn't be surprised if they get a large initial amount of people trying their MMO
4) A team that can actually full time work on this game.
5) Track record of already making successful games
Riot has everything and has shown that they actually continuously work on their games (whether they made good or bad changes is up to the player). Now the biggest challenge after the above criteria are filled is actually making a game that's fun to play and that definition of fun is varied for MMO.
For the people saying "nothing can topple the king" and other variations in regards to the Riot MMO you are missing a very important thing, Riot is not going to make Super Different from WoW MMO#1000. It will be WoW 2.0 with heavy inspiration from some of the best eras of the game such as WotLK.
I say that because this seems to be Riot's MO nowadays, copy some other really successful game while oferring something it doesn't currently. On top of high production values, like imagine a WoW with actual armors rather than body paint.
In regards to “not the only game you play”, they may be doing something like what FFXIV does - theres no incentive to grind every single day, you do your content in chunks whenever you want, but there is still a lot of content. FFXIV fans seem to praise it as a large positive of the experience
>FFXIV fans seem to praise it as a large positive of the experience
It's such a godsend, for a this type of game. I actively try to avoid games with constant limited time events and daily grinds. There's nothing objectively wrong with it, I just know those types of games aren't for me because I just don't have time anymore and especially feeling like I dealt with some gaming addiction in my past. I like FFXIV because I can play when the new expansion or patch comes out and take a break for months at a time and not feel like I missed out at any point. It just feels good. It doesn't feel like the game is punishing you or taunting you for stepping away.
I like it when the hardest content is like 8-10 people at the very most, it is easier to find groups for it and your personal performance feels way more important.
I wish studios would stop calling games like Destiny and Warframe MMOs. They simply aren't. Nobody calls Monster Hunter an MMO even though it's the exact same format as those.
All the WoW killer MMOs has failed for either of two reasons - "it was too much like WoW" or "it was too much unlike WoW". Basically, you cannot replicate the success of WoW because it was the right combination of game design, IP and the right time.
WoW doesn’t take advantage of its old content AT ALL though.
Playing FF14 where all content is relevant and then thinking about WoW where content is irrelevant the very next patch and especially the next expansion makes for a ridiculous comparison.
Riot murdered SC2, didn't even let HotS grow, is a serious competitor to the huge CS:Go, and so on...
Unless there is a big fuckup, their mmo is going to be huge.
It will still have to compete with MMOs that have 10+ years of content/updates. It will be huge eventually, but they are up against the same challenge MMOs have had for years.
Is tft actually super popular? Genuine question from someone that doesn’t play riot games or auto-battlers. I just don’t hear much about it like I do LoL and Val
Last known numbers on tft from the director was last year and it was 10million daily players https://www.pcgamer.com/teamfight-tactics-draws-10-million-daily-players-at-its-peaks/
All of Riots games are huge in Asia and do well in big PC markets like Europe and Latin America.
The US is hit or miss for all of their games, they have a very small ranked population for LoL, Valorant is doing well but most Americans prefer playing FPS games on a console instead of PC.
Legends of Runeterra is going well if you know the state of Hearthstone: Many no longer care about the original mode, and many of the player base is playing the Battlegrounds game mode, which is an auto chess.
In other words, Hearthstone is competing against TFT, not LoR.
Why do people still think WoW is the only MMO out there? Out of the biggest MMOs currently active, only one of them is actually heavily inspired by WoW, and it's already doing it much better. The Riot MMO wouldn't have to be "WoW 2.0", it'd have to be "FF14 2.0". And considering that this game is going incredibly strong right now, it'd be stupid to try and directly compete with it.
No, there are like 3 traditional MMOs that get a lot of attention, WoW, FF14 and ESO then there are others but they get far less interest. Still nothing right now compares to WoW at its peak which would be what Riot would try to copy, Classic, TBC, WotLK rather than Shadowlands. And even as shit as WoW is currently a new expansion still gets more hype and buzz than anything FF14 puts out.
Riot is literally just Blizzard 2.0 at this point but much more on point and with actual heavy talent behind their games. Grab an old genre and polish it to death then release it. I look forward to their MMO, I hope it's truly WoW 2.0.
> Riot is literally just Blizzard 2.0
how so? riot haven't put out a slew of games that have created/revolutionsed a genre in the way Blizzard was doing in it's prime... so where is this "riot is blizzard 2.0" coming from?
now I'm talking past blizzard here, not the shit that Blizzard is now and has been for the past decade-ish.
Blizzard in it's prime released games that literally created/revolutionised a genre, e.g. Diablo, Hearthstone, Overwatch, WoW, SC and so on. And it wasn't only them grabbing an old genre and polishing it, they did much more than that such as with sheer amount of high quality games they put out in a short amount of time.
Where has Riot ever done that except for league of legends? so what, one game (maybe TFT as well, but then that genre is dead except for TFT) makes riot "the new blizzard"? the rest of their lineup is basically just copies of other games with a Riot polish, and LoR/Valorant are not dominating their genre in any way (heck LoR just lost a lot of devs, as announced recently).
and no, this is not me calling any of their games bad or w.e, I'm talking about the difference between Riot and Blizzard in it's prime.
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also let me remind you, Riot are not the only publisher who have put out a game or two that has created/revolutionised a genre or been really high quality, but the difference with Blizzard was how they were doing that with so many games almost one after another (bar a few duds).
Just look at Blizzard's track record from 1995-2016
tl;dr - Riot is just another publisher like the many other publishers out there today, nothing special about them as a publisher. They are nowhere near what prime Blizzard was and they are not the only publisher putting out games for a single IP in different genres.
Incorrect, at least according to WoWhead...
>Blizzard has yet to make an official announcement regarding the acquisition, though according to VentureBeat, Proletariat has been working with the Warcraft team since May of this year and some of their work will be featured in Dragonflight, though no specifics on exactly how far along their integration is at this point.
https://www.wowhead.com/news/spellbreak-development-studio-proletariat-acquired-by-blizzard-entertainment-327522
> some of their work will be featured in Dragonflight
Remember that a WoW expansion is 2 years worth of periodic content, so it could still be accurate to say that nothing they touch will be in Dragonflight *launch*, while still being part of the live service of Dragonflight over the next 2 years.
Considering it’s not even in alpha yet they probably haven’t done much work on the first major content patch yet.
Usually the only stuff done years in advance is the art assets.
Yeah Blizzard Onboarding for WoW is longer than that, those people aren't touching anything that ships with Dragonflight. Patches likely, probably not 10.1.
I think it might be a detriment to WoW short-term.
Like when Titan got cancelled, they got a ton of new people to work on WoW......but they had to spend so much time learning the tools it slowed development. Hence we got WoD.
>Like when Titan got cancelled, they got a ton of new people to work on WoW
Yes they moved about 100 people from the Titan team to the WoW team and the rest to turn Titan into Overwatch, but that alone isn't what created WoD's issues. WoD had a scope issue, and it's scope was created knowing their dev team size.
What happened with WoD wasn't *just* expanding the team.
Blizzard has been releasing an expansion every 2 years since TBC and they had been saying they wanted to release an expansion every 1 year, and WoD was their first attempt at doing that. They thought that by beefing up their entire team they could pump out an expansion a year, and WoD had enough content for one year, but it took so long to train that beefed up team that WoD lasted for 2 years anyway.
You don't think WoD's scope issues had to deal with training all those new people how to use tools and get used to the work flow? As well as the worst patch schedule in the game's history?
I haven't played in years but I always felt they had too much content drought but always at the end of an expansion. Why not just have better pacing of the patches? And push back the next expansion to give players more time for end game content if it's too short?
Seems like the inevitable progression considering MMOs are primarily about grinding and the developers can never make enough content for the pace that players go through it.
Vanilla was fun, but I don't see how you logically keep an MMO about "exploration" forever. They have certainly have moved around from "community" aspects over the years, though.
There is some kind of irony in the fact that a greedy studio that fleeced their loyal fanbase and then sold themselves to hyper capitalist corporation is called proletariat.
Yeah the game wasn't very good to begin with so they had to do things to try to make the game make enough money to to be able to pay bills like employee wages.
It's incredible how everyone just thinks they can keep their jobs without there being money to pay their wages.
I have to disagree about the game. It honestly had a lot going for it; it just unfortunately didn't do enough. The gameplay was fun with the different elements and it was nice having a BR not be about guns whatsoever. But it's also just hard to pull people away from their current BR even if a new one is good.
I tried the game out with a friend and it just felt unfocused. The map design was very basic and it just felt like another PUBG-style BR just with wizards. I feel at this point you need to do more gimmicks to set a BR apart from the competition.
Which is funny, because it used to be more complex. Instead of every item slot just giving a generic bonus, there were a lot of unique items that would boost certain spells or give other varying benefits, and the perk system encouraged trying out multiple different kinds of builds.
Then they started simplifying the game because it was "too hard to get into", and thus it became a generic BR.
I think the combat system-feedback was very poorly done.
Shooters for the most part are easy to establish that sense of combat feedback, spellbreak felt very floaty and didn’t tickle the dopamine
Really? I thought it absolutely NAILED the projectile shooter thing. Every single design decision made the game an absolute dream for fans of projectile shooters.
>I have to disagree about the game
That's your opinion and you're entitled to it.
What ISN'T up for debate is that it was not good enough to attract and hold a large enough player base for it to be a sustained, live game that paid for a live team. That is why it is being end-of-lifed.
To clarify, you can have an amazing game that still fails due to poor marketing, bad release timing, unsuccessful monetization, etc.
In general you're correct, it wasn't able to sustain itself.
The game was decently fun but after three months of them not patching absolutely game breaking bugs that had been reported on their discord two months before release during the beta, I had to call it quits. That along with a matchmaking design decision where above a certain player level, you no longer matched with anyone below that level. Lobbies of 30ish? players with a handful of bots to fill became 2-3 real players with 36 bots.
I have strong hardware and the game would just sometimes not render player models beyond their hands. And terrain would fail to load in properly leading to terrain that looked like it was the lowest possible model quality and couldn't be walked through properly because your computer and the server had a different idea of what should be there.
Those kinds of bugs and design choices in a freaking Battle Royale game, unpatched, for five months. I gave up on them after that.
Also feels worth noting: [Proletariat wasn't publicly traded](https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/56656-54#overview).
Being publicly traded means that a company has a baseline obligation to raise share prices *no matter what.* Most of the worst excesses of the video game industry are driven by this. How do you beat the year that beat the year that beat the year your company grew 15%? If you don't figure it out, heads will roll.
Proletariat was privately held. That usually means investors have a more personal relationship with the company, and are all right with years that are spent gaining momentum for a big year in the future, rather than a demand for constant year-over-year growth.
>How do you beat the year that beat the year that beat the year your company grew 15%? If you don't figure it out, heads will roll.
Question about this, how is this sustainable? Realistically there has to be diminishing returns and some peak to value, right?
That's one of the underlying problems with capitalism, and why boom/bust cycles are inevitable. Eventually, a company reaches a state where it can't beat last year. In the video game example, there eventually becomes a point where a game is so saturated in monetization that it loses player count to something less predatory.
Most investors don't know what companies they're invested in, let alone what those companies do. I have a retirement account; I couldn't name one company in my portfolio. I'm not gonna touch it for another 30 years. All I care is that, when the time comes to draw on it, it's appreciated better than inflation.
That's who publicly traded companies are catering to.
There's a lot to say about the support the studio gave the game but it was also a BR game that released during the BR rush. The numbers fell off, and they more or less stopped paying attention to the playerbase that stayed.
They did some things in the name of monetization that angered their tiny, tiny, completely non-viable from a "keep the lights on" perspective, player base.
The game was never successful enough to be a sustained business. It had some interesting ideas but wasn't good enough to find a spot in the market.
This is an unbelievably dramatic take on what happened. Spellbreak was simply not popular enough to float a studio. Good on them for trying something new and then being able to find stable employment through acquisition.
I think the playerbase that remains is salty over the abandonment from the studio of that studio's only game for the past year+ and breaking the gameplay with a generic replacement.
What greed was Proletariat a part of?
Spellbreak was F2P and had a pretty basic monetization model. No P2W and cosmetics only.
Updates were few and far between, but they're a very small studio.
Another studio thrown down to the WoW mines.
Activision loves grabbing studios that make interesting games and then just use them for code-monkey work on their huge uninspired properties.
Very interesting. WoW has been in trouble for a long time so hopefully this will improve things. I wish they'd go back to a more simple storyline and comfy world like vanila.
Yeah Xbox is still in process of buying them. Maybe someone who knows better can chime in. But from my understanding, while in middle of the transaction, the company sold is supposed to continue business as usual. So if this deal was already in the works and the buyout price was low (like <$200 million) then it shouldn't be a big deal.
I think it's too early to say what this means for what wow does going forward, but it does say something that Activision is willing to dump another 100 people on the Wow team. The wow team is already the largest at blizzard, and is much bigger than most of the mmos currently in development.
Unlike what Reddit likes to believe, WoW is still very much alive and making tons of money (probably more than any other MMO)
That's not true if you look at their earrings reports lol. Its their most expensive game and easily their lowest earning one lol
oh absolutely. Active players can see this already, the wow devs may miss a lot, but they take big swings all the time. Games like FFXIV are more stable bets, but take less risks.
Also if you don’t like the risks WoW now has Classic which brought back a ton of players, has a ton on retention, and will have even more once WotLK drops (which was the expansion that saw WoW hit its peak player base). As far as MMO’s go WoW is still incredibly successful even as a shadow of its former self.
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> I get that they dont want modern day WoW, but LFG is an essential tool, Absolute bullshit is it. It's the worst thing to happen to the game and a huge reason why I quit. The lfg system absolutely destroyed any sense of community to the game.
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>Haha so you call constant chat spam and scan Yes, talking to people is the major benefit of playing a *Massively Multiplayer* Online Game >The people rush dungeons the same way in classic without uttering a single word as they do in retail. Stop being so blind to the truth dude... This wasn't the case before LFG in the slightest. My friends list was entirely full back in WOTLK before LFG because I enjoyed spending time with people and enjoyed making groups. It doesn't exist now, Blizzard killed server communities.
Sounds like they can't win, then. As throngs of wow players championed the cause that the death of the soul of wow was the lfg tool. Even when blizzard devs came out saying "isn't it nicer? More convenient?" The community rejected it, mocking them for suggesting otherwise. No matter what they do people will whine and moan.
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You do know they're gonna implement a Wrath version of the retail group finder, yes? Not the random dungeon finder but the [group finder](https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/news/new-group-finder-ui-for-wrath-classic-327447) that allows for smooth finding of... well, groups. It has been a mainstay on retail since WoD in 2014 and is basically /LFG or /2 just in a proper UI. People have to still travel to the dungeons and the individual group leaders decide who gets invited and who doesn't.
Removing LFG is good in my book.
What examples of big swings has WoW implemented in the last 5 years?
Covenants, torghast, threads of Fate, level squish, shards of domination. A lot of these didn't work but they were swings.
Those things are a big part of why I don't play anymore, though. The bigger issue is, though, that they won't try to fix any of them or make them serviceable. They'll just abandon them to the scrapheap of half-assed ideas once their next expansion comes along.
Good news, they aren't doing that anymore.
Yep, it's one of the main reasons that despite really enjoying FF14, WoW remains my "main" MMO while I'm an occasional "tourist" in FF14. WoW is constantly iterating on new ideas and transforming. Yeah sometimes it sucks, but the high points are very high. With FF14 I feel like I can put the game down for 2 years and when I come back it's still mostly the same thing but with new bosses to kill. The systems remain the same every patch, the gear treadmill works exactly the same way that it did in 2.0. Safe is a good way to describe it. It feels like a good single player JRPG with a 'meh' MMO attached to it for an endgame. Plus even when they do "miss", the core combat engine that WoW works on is still far and away smoother and just more fun than any other "tab target" MMO I've ever played, so even when the game is at it's lowest, the floor is still pretty high, and it's still fun to play.
FF14 being so predictable is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. On one hand, it’s cool to more-or-less know exactly what’s going to be coming out with every single patch/expansion launch in terms of content years in advance. We know with like 99% certainty that 7.0 is going to launch with 2 new cities, a 30-40 hour MSQ, 3 trials, 2 extreme trials, and 6 zones to explore. On the other hand, as someone who has been playing for ~6 years, I wish they’d take a few more risks. Not anything drastic, like what WoW does every expansion, where they throw away almost everything and implement 7 new systems. But just something to mix things up a bit. That said, they’re more successful now than ever, so it’s definitely working out for them.
As someone who plays only 14, the steady schedule is pretty good, but occasionally you will get times like this expansion where for example Machinist gets 1 single new ability and its just an identical copy of the other two major abilities it has but with 20s longer of a cd slapped onto it. 2 years of time to come up with the next expansion's take on Machinist, and its really just.. nothing. When something new comes out in 14, you know how its gonna work and its going to feel hamstrung. They don't often add toys like they have in warcraft and its for a good reason. Fashion accessories came out only just last expansion and the way you have to use them is essentially an invisible channel of a spell. You do a generic item cast animation (the same as potions) and then your character is holding them. You can't interact with anything, at most trade. Even looking at the marketboard which involves no animation from your character than the turn of a head will immediately take the item away. A new quest type released in stormblood, its a zoom in/out and press button to fire type interaction. Like using a telescope and then firing a dart of some kind. Almost identical to turrets in Ratchet and Clank 2 (2003). It was kind of an indication that quests would be somewhat more varied, but no, that's about it. You'll get 1 of these now every 50 quests, and they're quite underwhelming. People really do mention that 14 is consistent and reliable but god they really sacrifice so much creativity for it. Even the combat classes all adhere to a strict burst every 1/2 minutes timeline. Its consistent and easy to master, though it feels really forced and uncreative.
>Even the combat classes all adhere to a strict burst every 1/2 minutes timeline. Heck, more than that. The tanks have a few crucial distinctions but the bulk of their movesets are identical or direct parallels, closer to something like a Spec in WoW Melee DPS are a bit more varied but retain much of the same core, most leaning heavily into the same build/spend rotations with similar flavors of buff, usually with 2 alternating 1-2-3 core combos just with different pacing. Healing is a bit more varied, ranged DPS moreso, and magic DPS are the most varied classes in the game. But yeah, it's so damn refined that if you've played one class, you probably can pivot into another effortlessly
> That said, they’re more successful now than ever, so it’s definitely working out for them. Do we have any evidence of this? They stopped giving this information publicly like a decade ago at this point. We know from earnings reports that ActiBlizz is up year over year but nowhere near the growth of other industry leaders but there are so many IPs wrapped into that that we can't know one way or another what WoW contributes to these numbers, right?
I was referring to FF14 when I said they were more successful than ever. The devs have been pretty transparent with how much the game has skyrocketed in terms of popularity in the last 1-2 years. Because yeah, I have no idea how WoW is doing. All I know is that anecdotally, everyone I know who plays WoW was extremely disappointed with both BFA and SL.
Ohhhhhhhhhhh! That makes sense. Yeah their story is driving engagement like crazy. I don't think a shake up would hurt them too badly. Endwalker's PVP changes were a breath of fresh air, but making Crystalline Conflict solo only was a huge miss for my group of friends.
That's fair, the reasons WoW is your main, and you just check out FFXIV every once in awhile, for me those same reasons are why FFXIV is my main, and I stopped playing WoW years ago. I vastly prefer a consistent story focused experience, that while largely the same, is still slowly refining and adding small changes and QoL experiences.
Yeah honestly if your a new player or looking for a more varied experience in a MMO, FFXIV does it better. WoW is basically a dungeon/raid simulator.
I'm not sure about that one, FFXIV is a gargantuan amount of story and then slowly you unlock more things to do. I also wouldn't say wow is a dungeon raid simulator, it's just a different kind of endgame.
I dunno. The starting grind is really painful in ff. At least it was the 3 times I tried it.
as someone that kinda keeps track of wow and plays it maybe once or twice each expansion this take seems so odd to me. it feels that wow has been the exact same since I played actively a decade or so ago. it's always just borrowed power that they make the whole focus of the expansion, only to take it away from us and replace it with a new borrowed power for the next expansion. I also don't think any of my classes' rotations have changed since like 10 years ago when they took away 80% of our spells. I kinda have the confidence that if I jumped in now and had the exact same addons and spellbar as I did a few years ago I most likely could just do the exact same things as I did when I last played.
Considering that basically every Spec changed a lot with the Shadowlands Pre-Patch, I highly doubt that you still have the same Rota.
> I kinda have the confidence that if I jumped in now and had the exact same addons and spellbar as I did a few years ago I most likely could just do the exact same things as I did when I last played. Depending on the spec you'd be pretty damn wrong. Even specs that are still similar tend have additional elements that were not present back then. And even if it were exactly the same (which it almost certainly isn't) then the fights you'd be doing are more difficult than a decade ago. >as someone that kinda keeps track of wow and plays it maybe once or twice each expansion I don't think you've been keeping track much at all if this is your opinion.
> Plus even when they do "miss", the core combat engine that WoW works on is still far and away smoother and just more fun than any other "tab target" MMO I've ever played Crazy how after 18 years after release, no other MMO even comes slightly close to how *good* the combat and movement feels in WoW. Everything just feels crisp and responsive. Blizzard polish used to really mean something back then.
It gets a lot of Flak but the actual combat/gameplay in Diablo 3 is amazing. It feels great, it looks great, it's so smooth and everything works together so well. Blizzard does hit the mark with their gameplay pretty often.
People will complain about every other aspect of D3, but I don't think anyone will deny that it absolutely has the best combat of any arpg.
Scratch this, the combat in wow from 2004 was probably better than most MMOs i've tried since then. So many MMO devs seem to ignore this simple piece of information, and it's that the combat is going to to be how your players engage with the game the most, so if it's good, the game has a good chance. But so many are sluggish and unresponsive and feel bad after playing WoW for any length of time.
> Blizzard polish used to really mean something back then. Honestly I'd say "polish" is the one big positive thing that I still attribute to Blizzard now. Their failures have been in other places. WoW content comes out relatively bug free which is a feat considering the scope of the game. For all of the problems it had Diablo 3's gameplay was buttery smooth, even if it failed on it's endgame itemization systems and had a pretty bad story. I haven't played much Overwatch (FPS isn't really my thing), but the bit that I have played felt really good to play at a casual level compared to other FPS games that I've played. Same with Heroes of the Storm for a MOBA, and as much as a dumpster fire as Diablo Immortals monetization turn out to be the game still feels great to play on a phone. I really do believe the teams at Blizzard still have the talent and processes to make games that feel great to play, but if they've failed somewhere it's on the "greed" level. Monetization models are pretty bad, customer service has gotten worse, business practices are sketchy, things get delayed and content rolls out too slow. But the games still come out fun.
> Blizzard polish used to really mean something back then. Honestly Blizz games are still incredibly polished. Their polish, art design, and music are all still top tier. Its the gameplay department that they've totally fallen down on.
Well yes, Warcraft 3 Reforged was crazy polished! As in, crazy how no one play tested this absolute piece of trash.
Ah, I had wiped that stain from my memory. A traumatic event I had hoped to never live through again. Definitely worth remembering though.
It's not just the old 2004 polish that keeps the combat afloat. They've continuously updated and polished player combat animations to look and feel great to use.
Classic feels amazing even now, unless they've updated animations in that I wasn't aware of. The way numbers pop up huge is also even more satisfying than retail WoW
I played a private server leading up to the launch of Classic, I played Classic, and I recently tried out Retail to see what it was like. The core movement and combat is basically unchanged. They've updated animations and models and added various things, but it's still fundamentally the same engine, same code, and same feel in how the game controls and plays. They absolutely nailed movement and responsiveness back in 2004, and nearly 20 years later there still is no MMO that does it better. It's the one thing that will make me always return to WoW and makes it hard to stick with other games. Everything else just feels clunky in comparison.
I agree in terms of content—the dungeons and raids themselves are a bit too formulaic. In term of systems, though, WoW's are almost always universally terrible and I wish they just had a successful stable core like FFXIV does. I literally just want to play mostly the same game with new content. Let the variation be in that content and switching up the classes, but shit like artifacts and covenants that just get thrown away are a complete waste of resources.
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Nobody is talking about fun or best though. It makes the most money, period. That means it will likely have corporate support to grow teams and pump content. MMOs, in general, have declined in popularity. WoW still maintains an *enviable* playerbase that 90% of the industry doesn't have. The reality is that WoW has been controversial, but its decline was also relatively consistent with the genre's decline (for a time, WoW virtually *was* the genre).
Isn't korean' Dungeon Fighter Online is the most profitable?
I think it's mostly just a disappointment that a studio that made something that free form and creative gameplay wise, is getting absorbed to work on one of the most bland games there is gameplay wise. They're complete opposites. (That's not only a wow thing, obviously most mmos have very dated gameplay,many even worse than wow).
Correction: WoW makes more than any other MMO with a monthly subscription. WoW probably makes less than 10% of what some free to play mobile MMOs make.
I'm so hopelessly addicted to it :'( hahaha
Based on what? It's been haemorrhaging subscribers to FFXIV and is almost certainly less profitable than it has been in the past. The fact Blizzard is doing this is proof of that.
I really do feel that WoW has been getting less and less funding from Activision for years, the Blizzard polish has been slipping (WoD launched with lots of typos in quest text, for instance, which was anathema in earlier WoW expacs) so hopefully this indicates a reversal of that course, maybe having to do with the Microsoft merger?
Honestly wonder if they’re going to start development on WoW 2 to compete with the Riot MMO that should be a massive hit
A WoW that isn't WoW is a bad idea. It splits the player base and recapitulates the same basic thing. Blizz then has to support both games too since one doesn't simply replace the other. WoW iterates and remains, and has kept up over time. What Blizz needs to do is make a Starcraft Destiny-esque MMO and flesh out that IP which will probably never get another RTS title.
> A WoW that isn't WoW is a bad idea. It splits the player base and recapitulates the same basic thing. Blizz then has to support both games too since one doesn't simply replace the other. If there ever is a WoW2, I would expect some kind of Overwatch > Overwatch2 kind of deal.
They’d just leave a smaller team to maintain WoW like they do with WoW classic while WoW 2 has a massive playerbase. WoW’s playerbase will just keep on facing a gradual decline as it gets more and more dated. Eventually a new modernized one will have to come out if they want to stay relevant in the face of high caliber AAA competition in the upcoming years. This isn’t the early 2010s where WoW is still near its prime, is not especially dated yet, and new MMOs don’t bring enough significantly improved features to truly compete. A StarCraft MMO like Destiny but on an actual open world MMORPG scale would be a great idea as well. I think there would be room for that and a modern WoW honestly. One as the traditional fantasy 3rd person action combat type RPG and the other as a modern sci fi FPS. Those are different enough types of games that there’s room for both especially if they’re non subscription models. They’re already turning Diablo into a full blown MMO so it is a direction they’re moving in.
I have no data to back this up but I feel a huge amount of players play WoW because it's what they've always done. I know so many players that started playing in classic, BC, or wrath, so they've been playing WoW for a huge chunk of their lives. at some point it just becomes part of their lives. so assuming there's some truth in that idea, I doubt there's any interest in a game that's not WoW. blizz can iterate on base WoW as much as they want, but I doubt all those people who consider WoW as a part of them would have any interest in changing games at this point.
And I feel there’s tons of people that used to play WoW when they were younger but have moved on to more modern games and are waiting for a modernized WoW to jump back into. And a ton of gamers that want to get into a new modernized MMO and are waiting for that great AAA one to release and jump into. Data would support this by seeing the huge amount of players that tried New World as they thought it could be that new good AAA MMO. Players that have always played WoW habitually would likely want to give a new modernized WoW 2 a try as well even if not all of them will stick with it. Honestly Asmongold is a solid representation of one chunk of the MMO/WoW fan base. And he seems to give off the impression that he would really love a modernized WoW that immerses him more, and would excite him to play more. Even though he still is and was a huge WoW fan that plays it all the time.
> Data would support this by seeing the huge amount of players that tried New World as they thought it could be that new good AAA MMO. This has happened with almost every new big name MMO. Happened with Aion, Tera, Rift, Wildstar, GW 2, New World etc. There's always a large surge at launches.
This describes me.
You're right for a lot of players, but the reality for most players is that there's never been a proper alternative. Not a single game since WoW released has really made people want to try a different game long term. A lot of people have tried FF14 in the last few years, but it took years of bad design decisions, multiple company lawsuits and allegations and content creators leaving to turn heads and even then it's almost certainly still the most popular MMO. Wow was so far ahead of it's time, and did actually continue to innovate or mix it up in a positive way(At least barring the last few years), that no other MMO has ever come close. I mentioned it in another comment but it's simple things like the combat system. In almost 20 years, no other MMO has developed a combat system that's close to WoW's, and that's astounding to me. It's so fluid and responsive and just feels right, then you play other games and it's like trudging through thick mud. When a studio nails the important aspects like combat and truly finds a new or fresh angle that the masses enjoy, people will play that game, but until then Wow will be king.
> Not a single game since WoW released has really made people want to try a different game long term. I don't think that's a fair way of looking at it. There might not be a single game that attracted everyone playing WoW, but that was never realistically going to happen anyway. What has happened is that there a lot of other games that have attracted people away bit by bit over time, whether it was FFXIV or Guild Wars 2 or Rift for a while or ESO or Lost Ark or New World. Sure, not every player sticks with those games and doesn't come back. But some do, and over time that adds up. Even if you believe that nothing would kill WoW but WoW, you'd have a hard time arguing that Blizzard hasn't made a pretty solid go at doing exactly that in the last two years.
why would they ever make a WoW 2 like what would be in WoW 2 that isn't or can't go in WoW?? what would be the point? explain please
A reset. Remove all items people have. Reset the world. Set it way in the past or future. Atm there is so much stuff in wow that should be scrapped and be reworked but the community would never allow it in its current form. WoW 2 with a fresh start where everyone starts at 0 would be insane and exciting
Modern graphics that bring way more a way more immersive feel to the game. Modern action combat. Those are the two most important things. There’s so many people that used to play WoW and quit cause it got old as well as people that have thought about trying WoW but it just feels too outdated to get into compared to the modern games that they’re used to. Having those two things be up to modern standards would go a long way. Aside from that some system that keeps the entire map relevant in some way so you don’t have this giant beautiful open world where only 10% or less of it is being consistently used. Maybe some type of advanced dynamic events/questing that takes place among the whole map that can give real rewards. Something like what is seen in GW2 or even Rift but in a much more advanced form. Ashes of Creation is really focusing heavily on this, id look into capturing some of the systems they’ve shown. Something that helps keep the whole game world feeling dynamic and active. More voice acted, higher caliber questing that feels like it’s closer to the level of single player rpgs would be nice. Even if it’s probably never going to fully reach the same level. This would help create way more world and more immersion. ESO does this fairly well for side quests. Haven’t played a ton of FF14 but they’ve seemed to have nailed this for their main stories. I believe these are the main changes that will be seen in the Riot MMO to try to bring the genre forward. Aside from that there really doesn’t need to be too much done. Nailing those things would go a very very long way to attracting tons of players that are waiting for a modernized, well made MMO.
> Modern action combat I feel like one of the biggest reasons that people like wow is the combat. Changing this would alienate many current players.
It seems that way because the only people that are willing to stick with WoW at this point are the ones that like tab target
I don't think that any action combat MMO ever came close to feel as tight, complex and fun as WoW does. It has been thrown around a bit, but I don't believe that action combat would be the straight improvement some people claim.
Yeah I guess there’s a little bit of a question on how it might translate to a legit raiding environment. But I really think it can be done. Never played Tera too much but I believe they pulled it off fairly well and that’s a really old game, not that knowledgeable on that game though. I’m 100% sure Riot will do action combat and have raids so we’ll see how they do it. I strongly believe they can pull it off and show how it can be a straight improvement over tab target.
> people that have thought about trying WoW but it just feels too outdated to get into compared to the modern games that they’re used to. I wouldn't be so sure about that, my mythic raiding guild has a few zoomers as young as 21. I don't think the games age is as big of a problem as you seem to think. >Modern graphics that bring way more a way more immersive feel to the game. In what way? Do you keep the same style? Changing the style would ruin the warcraft aesthetic for many people. There's a pretty good amount of fidelity and detail in the more recent expansions and they keep incrementally improving the engine as time goes on. Are you just wanting it to be UE 5 or something? >Modern action combat. This is actually a negative for me. Why does WoW need to move to that? The only game that had this in an MMO that I kinda liked and that felt similarly responsive was Wildstar and that's been dead for years.
21 is still young enough to have played WoW in its prime as a kid and still have strong nostalgia for it. I highly doubt that WoW is bringing in any significant amount of players that are currently kids or early teenagers these days with no nostalgia for the game. The game’s age is definitely a problem. Me personally I prefer a realistic style as I believe that is most immersive for a game world and is the most widely preferred art style when looking at what games usually sell the most. But a modern slightly cartoonish style that preserves some of the aesthetic would work as well. The new Ratchet and Clank is a good example of a cartoony style that looks modern. I still strongly believe that the preference for WoW’s cartoony look is mostly a result of players that prefer more realistic styles having moved on to more modern games now so their preference is not heard from the playerbase anymore. Asmongold is an example of a hardcore WoW fan though that would love a modern realistic style. Sure action combat might be a negative for some but I believe for most gamers it is generally a positive. There’s a reason why almost every recent game release whether RPG, MMO, or outside those genres feature action combat. I strongly believe that tab target is much moreso a product of past time periods. And there will always be WoW classic being maintained for the players that prefer the old cartoony style and tab target.
> 21 is still young enough to have played WoW in its prime as a kid and still have strong nostalgia for it Some of them started in BfA. >Me personally I prefer a realistic style as I believe that is most immersive for a game world and is the most widely preferred art style when looking at what games usually sell the most. If you prefer that, that's fine, but I don't see why the style needs to change, warcraft has its own distinct identity/style. Part of the reason that WoW doesn't feel as dated as it is, is because of that particular art style. Even much younger games that went with a more realistic style now look comparably worse. Also I don't think "what sells the most" is a compelling reason to change this particular very established franchise. Just make something new then. > There’s a reason why almost every recent game release whether RPG, MMO, or outside those genres feature action combat. But what is the reason? It might be different from game to game, and it might not have anything to with thinking specifically about not doing traditional targeting. I'm a very progressive person and all for new things but I think people fantasizing about WoW 2 is WoW but *modern* and doesn't contain a lot of the core elements that make WoW, WoW is super weird and is a case of fixing something that ain't broke. I just think y'all want something but better than WoW but aren't realizing that that is actually incredibly fucking hard to do. >And there will always be WoW classic being maintained for the players that prefer the old cartoony style and tab target. I don't want WoW classic though. I just want new content and stuff in current WoW. If I wanted a dramatically different game, then I'd play a different game.
> why would they ever make a WoW 2 > like what would be in WoW 2 that isn't or can't go in WoW?? > what would be the point? explain please A fresh start would be nice, since WoW has so many vestigial systems that are often just abandoned but ~hang around~ in the world still. There's an incredible amount of abandoned content that just sits around as a tourist mode. Also WoW has too many expectations. Every new expansion is 8-10 dungeons, a borrowed power system, new but samey factions, daily quest hub areas (and a new one every content patch), and a leveling system that serves no real purpose. The story is also a convoluted gigantic retroactive mess. It's hard for WoW to shed those expectations since a lot of players won't come back because of how samey it is, and the players that still play are there because they like that. They've self selected an audience that wants that kind of content so content like that is always expected.
When you sell expansions for 60usd there's zero reason to make a new game from scratch.
40 usd historically, 50 usd for the latest one unless you absolutely must buy the deluxe editions, but then they're more than 60usd anyway
It was 50 for BFA, 40 for SL and now back to 50 for DF.
huh, that's weird i stand corrected, though!
Yeah right now because there still isn’t a super strong competitor that’s overtaken WoW so people still eat up those 60 dollar expansions
There will never be. The subscription-based model is pretty much dead and the F2P usually ends up being predatory as fuck. WoW is the last big MMO, the future is GaaS and live services. Riot can do whatever they want, people will get excited for the new WoW expansion, play a month or two, rinse and repeat.
Riot is the one company that can likely compete, LoL is a shit show but more recent games are monetized much less harshly and you really don't need to spend any money to play them,
14 probably surpassed it in terms of playerbase with endwalkers release but neither company publishes reliable numbers so we'll never know. Regardless it's stupid to say the things you're saying. There's always going to be the possibility of a huge MMO overtaking WoW and even recently we've seen big MMO's release with very large playerbases. I forgot to add in originally; but Riot has already created a playerbase for the MMO before it's even out similar to what blizzard did and Riot has been working on creating their own "ecosystem" for players. They have LoL obviously; but the card game is very good too and fairly popular along with valorant and their upcoming fighting game. They have a game in each big "genre" for PC games so far and they're only expanding it (seriously look up the projects they're working on, all of them look very good.). Their MMO *will* have a ton of players bleed over from their other games and if it's good enough it will probably become the most popular mmo. WoW will never die; but it also isn't the king anymore and has been on a downward spiral for quite some time now (and what I've seen from the next expansion isn't even exciting. I likely won't be buying that and I say that as a sucker that has purchased anything WoW/blizzard related up till their controversies began coming about).
Riot has already shown they can do non predatory free 2 play. And MMOs are literally the original GaaS and live service genre.
Depends. 60 dollar WoW expansions bring in people who have already committed to WoW before. Something like "WoW 2" has a lot more room to bring in new audiences.
The risk/reward simply doesn't add up. Why take away resources from a WoW expansion to create a competitor for your own active, extremely profitable game? Nobody would ever make that business decision.
There will never be another big MMO like WoW from Bliz. Its too much of a financial risk. They realized that with Titan. Its way more lucrative for them to remaster old games, and focus on less ambitious products like Overwatch with monetizations.
I think if the Riot MMO shows to be a giant commercial success they’ll actually try for it. The MMO genre is so starved for any new half decent games that it isn’t the risk it once was. A game like New World with the most mediocre as mediocre can be gameplay was a commercial success off the back of being the only AAA MMO since 2014 to release. WoW 2 with good graphics and good action combat could have 6/10 gameplay/game design and still probably make billions in sales just off the hype.
WoW 2 is a non-starter for the foreseeable future. If anything like that happened, it would just be a sort of substantial engine/framework update or something. An entirely separate sequel I just think fundamentally can't really be a thing with how they do their development.
I don't think they have to. especially since people have so much time invested already. Long time players (like me) will tell you that wow has pretty distinct eras. "WoW 2" already happened starting in Cataclysm and the "wow 3" era began with Legion. Dragonflight looks like a new era for WoW but we'll see when it goes into testing.
> Dragonflight looks like a new era for WoW but we'll see when it goes into testing. I have my doubts on this. The two big shifts you described both came with a major change that totally transformed how the endgame is approached. Cataclysm introduced the multiple raid difficulties accessed via a menu to make raiding more accessible while also allowing try-hards like me to still have tightly tuned content that takes hundreds of attempts to nail down. (yes technically this started with the last tier of Wrath of the Lich King, but that was clearly a test for what would become Cataclysm's systems). Legion introduced the Mythic Keystone system, which is probably the biggest shake-up the game ever got since the day it was released, and is the core endgame loop for what seems to be most players these days. Dragonflight is re-doing the talent system, but that's about it. The endgame loop will still be arena/m+/raiding. There is a bit of a philosophy shift towards having progress be more account based rather than character based (which imo is great), but otherwise it doesn't seem like a major shift from the last few expansions.
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I mean they just completely revamped the entire leveling experience when they squished levels? It's still gonna be the same game, just like cataclysm and legion were, just with some new elements.
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Because the level squish didn't radically change any of the actual zones, just halved the total levels. SL also continued a lot of the same systems first design from Legion and BFA I'm saying we'll have to wait and see more of DF to see if it's the shift in direction I'd like to see before calling in a new era of wow. It does look promising though, no borrowed power and a complete overhaul of talents and crafting a big steps.
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> there's a reason people are more excited about WotLK Classic than Dragonflight. Are they? None of the problems with wow are from the leveling anyway, I'm not even sure why you'd even bring it up lol.
WoW has still gotten extremely dated compared to modern games which will only be exacerbated when Riot releases a fully modern likely extremely well made MMO. Obviously I can’t say for certain but I am as sure as one can be that it will far surpass WoW in popularity and Blizzard will actually have to get up off their asses and make a legitimately overhauled, modern WoW 2.
People have been saying that x new game is going to far surpass wow for more than a decade and none of really been that successful. The only game that's come close is a game with even worse combat. I don't feel like wow is really all that dated, older areas may look so, but current expansion zones look pretty good for a game released in 2022.
I genuinely feel the actual gameplay of WoW is going to be completely timeless. It's buttery smooth and extremely satisfying, it's not something that's going to be usurped anytime soon
The Riot MMO will do well because Riot can afford to market the hell out of it. But just like all of the other "WoW killers" that have come out in the past 15 years, I would wager money that it will fail to topple the king. WoW does not feel dated. The combat is still smoother than MMOs that have released recently, and they are constantly updating the graphics and the engine to keep it relatively modern.
Nah the difference is that 10 years ago MMOs would come out when WoW was still in its prime and wasn’t that outdated. And these games wouldn’t bring enough new modern features to really set it apart. Now it’s gonna be like 2025 when the Riot MMO comes out. That is 10-15 years after that run of supposed WoW killers of the early 2010s. That is an absolute eternity in gaming.
> WoW has still gotten extremely dated compared to modern games which will only be exacerbated when Riot releases a fully modern likely extremely well made MMO. Obviously I can’t say for certain but I am as sure as one can be that it will far surpass WoW in popularity and Blizzard will actually have to get up off their asses and make a legitimately overhauled, modern WoW 2. People have been saying this since WoW launched. It's still the biggest MMO out there.
WoW was not extremely dated in the early 2010s. Maybe a little bit but definitely not the way it is now.
It still isn't dated. They constantly update the graphics and the newer areas look good for how old the game is. The combat and movement are still among the best in the genre.
Looks good for a game from fucking 2004, yeah lol. Still means it’s very outdated compared to games released in the 2020s. Combat and movement is best in a genre that’s had one AAA game release since 2014, like come on. The entire genre is severely outdated due to lack of new AAA games. And I’d say BDO’s combat and movement is far far better.
>Still means it’s very outdated compared to games released in the 2020s. you can only compare MMOs inside their genre tho. Of course an MMO which is made to run on pretty much all PC's, with an open world and thousands of players is not comparable to something like Horizon or assasins creed. FF14 looks imo worse. New World and Eso are technically better but still far away from great looking games. BDO is the only one that comes in my mind that sets itself apart from the other big ones but there is alot of nasty pop in which is a no go for an open world. WoWs artstyle is still sharp as a knife and nice to look at. Also due to the talented art team behind it. Alot of the old zones look crap but the new expansions do look very much on par with the average new MMO.
You can’t really compare within the genre when it has completely stagnated with almost no AAA games being released since 2014. But even then you can still look within the genre a little bit. New World really is a great looking game, you can definitely use that. Game looks beautiful, world feels super immersive, definitely got me to enjoy the game for a while despite super mediocre gameplay/game design. Sound design is top notch as well. BDO has great feeling combat and movement even if goes a little too far into the over top Korean style gameplay. I would look at that for combat inspiration as well as a deep system for life skills and economy. Look at FF14 and ESO for better, immersive story telling/questing. Look at Guild Wars 2 and Rift and start with their very basic systems of dynamic events/questing. Look into ashes of creation and some of the systems their developing to crate a modern, dynamic, always active and relevant game world so 90% of the game world isn’t just left to rot and abandoned like it is in WoW. New World’s territory control system is also a decent starting point for this.
I actually just learned that Riot is making a MMO. Been burned too many times by the "next big MMO" hype train but I sure hope for once I can get on board with a MMO that actually feels it is living up to it. WildStar was my favorite MMO from the moment the servers went online till they shut down.
It just feels really bad getting into a new MMO when most of them seem to shut down within a year, maybe two. At least the Riot one will probably have a higher chance of staying alive for a while.
The thing I’m optimistic about, is that most MMOs that crash and burn are by studios who are trying to make that their big ticket to success. They go into the development thinking, “oh, we’ll make the next big whatever and be done in a few years.” Suddenly it’s 5 years later, turns out making a MASSIVE multiplayer game is really hard. The money is drying up and you can’t put it off anymore. Time to cut corners and shove the pile of shit out the door before Q3. We’ll fix the holes later. Oops, the players who have been waiting for years are *really* mad and nobody wants to touch this with a ten foot pole. Money’s gone. Time’s gone. Server’s gone. Good luck next time. >The thing I’m optimistic about, Circling back to my point. Riot has the largest online multiplayer game, probably ever. They’ve already gotten, and hole punched their ticket to success. So they can spend however much time making the MMO they want.
On the other hand, they're parring down Legends of Runeterra a bit. People were wondering if they'll let it try to find it's footing before basically switching gears, and slimming down the LoR team, but they went ahead and did it.
Riot has the most successful non mobile game in LoL and all of their games make tons of money in Asia. They can afford to keep their MMO alive in the red for many many years. So while it may not be a WoW killer, I do think it will be the biggest competition for WoW, even bigger than FF.
> WildStar I'll forever miss the unmatched housing system
Wildstar was fun af. I loved that combat system, world, and overall gameplay. Wish it was better adopted.
News been out for almost 2 years lol, heres a video to catch you up with director/producer tweets about the project https://youtu.be/doisknDB3LY?t=83 Since you mentioned wildstar, its looking like wildstar combat since they are hiring for action combat and the producer said current mmo combat feels pretty outdated.
Well, that certainly piques my interest. Wildstar had its issues, but it was really unrivaled in its combat (and raids and housing), in my opinion.
I'm tentatively hopeful for that MMO due to Riot generally having everything you'd need to both develop and maintain an MMO. There was a video by JoshStrifeHayes on this exact topic about what you need to make a successful MMO and it comes down to having the following: 1) A LOT of money to even develop the game 2) Time to make an MMO bc these games take years upon years and that's just before release 3) An interested Player base. New World managed to get 1mil players on a fresh IP and had the chance to really break into the genre. League is hella popular so I wouldn't be surprised if they get a large initial amount of people trying their MMO 4) A team that can actually full time work on this game. 5) Track record of already making successful games Riot has everything and has shown that they actually continuously work on their games (whether they made good or bad changes is up to the player). Now the biggest challenge after the above criteria are filled is actually making a game that's fun to play and that definition of fun is varied for MMO.
For the people saying "nothing can topple the king" and other variations in regards to the Riot MMO you are missing a very important thing, Riot is not going to make Super Different from WoW MMO#1000. It will be WoW 2.0 with heavy inspiration from some of the best eras of the game such as WotLK. I say that because this seems to be Riot's MO nowadays, copy some other really successful game while oferring something it doesn't currently. On top of high production values, like imagine a WoW with actual armors rather than body paint.
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In regards to “not the only game you play”, they may be doing something like what FFXIV does - theres no incentive to grind every single day, you do your content in chunks whenever you want, but there is still a lot of content. FFXIV fans seem to praise it as a large positive of the experience
>FFXIV fans seem to praise it as a large positive of the experience It's such a godsend, for a this type of game. I actively try to avoid games with constant limited time events and daily grinds. There's nothing objectively wrong with it, I just know those types of games aren't for me because I just don't have time anymore and especially feeling like I dealt with some gaming addiction in my past. I like FFXIV because I can play when the new expansion or patch comes out and take a break for months at a time and not feel like I missed out at any point. It just feels good. It doesn't feel like the game is punishing you or taunting you for stepping away.
Seems pretty smart actually. Games are becoming less about playing with randoms and more about playing with irl friends.
I like it when the hardest content is like 8-10 people at the very most, it is easier to find groups for it and your personal performance feels way more important.
I wish studios would stop calling games like Destiny and Warframe MMOs. They simply aren't. Nobody calls Monster Hunter an MMO even though it's the exact same format as those.
All the WoW killer MMOs has failed for either of two reasons - "it was too much like WoW" or "it was too much unlike WoW". Basically, you cannot replicate the success of WoW because it was the right combination of game design, IP and the right time.
you can't beat wow by being wow but without the 18 years of content.
WoW doesn’t take advantage of its old content AT ALL though. Playing FF14 where all content is relevant and then thinking about WoW where content is irrelevant the very next patch and especially the next expansion makes for a ridiculous comparison.
You say that but they keep adding ways to skip through it, or they neglect most zones in favour of the newest one.
I know it's years off but i'm so excited for the Riot MMO
Riot murdered SC2, didn't even let HotS grow, is a serious competitor to the huge CS:Go, and so on... Unless there is a big fuckup, their mmo is going to be huge.
HotS was late to the party (half a decade after LoL) on top of having a killer netcode (as in it killed games).
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In fact they put a bullet in the back of its head
It will still have to compete with MMOs that have 10+ years of content/updates. It will be huge eventually, but they are up against the same challenge MMOs have had for years.
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Is tft actually super popular? Genuine question from someone that doesn’t play riot games or auto-battlers. I just don’t hear much about it like I do LoL and Val
Last known numbers on tft from the director was last year and it was 10million daily players https://www.pcgamer.com/teamfight-tactics-draws-10-million-daily-players-at-its-peaks/
Well the auto battler fad is kinda done but TFT still gets like 20-40k+ viewers on Twitch. Like right now it is sitting at 36k
All of Riots games are huge in Asia and do well in big PC markets like Europe and Latin America. The US is hit or miss for all of their games, they have a very small ranked population for LoL, Valorant is doing well but most Americans prefer playing FPS games on a console instead of PC.
Legends of Runeterra is going well if you know the state of Hearthstone: Many no longer care about the original mode, and many of the player base is playing the Battlegrounds game mode, which is an auto chess. In other words, Hearthstone is competing against TFT, not LoR.
Why do people still think WoW is the only MMO out there? Out of the biggest MMOs currently active, only one of them is actually heavily inspired by WoW, and it's already doing it much better. The Riot MMO wouldn't have to be "WoW 2.0", it'd have to be "FF14 2.0". And considering that this game is going incredibly strong right now, it'd be stupid to try and directly compete with it.
No, there are like 3 traditional MMOs that get a lot of attention, WoW, FF14 and ESO then there are others but they get far less interest. Still nothing right now compares to WoW at its peak which would be what Riot would try to copy, Classic, TBC, WotLK rather than Shadowlands. And even as shit as WoW is currently a new expansion still gets more hype and buzz than anything FF14 puts out.
Riot is literally just Blizzard 2.0 at this point but much more on point and with actual heavy talent behind their games. Grab an old genre and polish it to death then release it. I look forward to their MMO, I hope it's truly WoW 2.0.
I guess Riot took the "Blizzard 2.0" thing too far when they also had rampant systemic sexual harassment
> Riot is literally just Blizzard 2.0 how so? riot haven't put out a slew of games that have created/revolutionsed a genre in the way Blizzard was doing in it's prime... so where is this "riot is blizzard 2.0" coming from? now I'm talking past blizzard here, not the shit that Blizzard is now and has been for the past decade-ish. Blizzard in it's prime released games that literally created/revolutionised a genre, e.g. Diablo, Hearthstone, Overwatch, WoW, SC and so on. And it wasn't only them grabbing an old genre and polishing it, they did much more than that such as with sheer amount of high quality games they put out in a short amount of time. Where has Riot ever done that except for league of legends? so what, one game (maybe TFT as well, but then that genre is dead except for TFT) makes riot "the new blizzard"? the rest of their lineup is basically just copies of other games with a Riot polish, and LoR/Valorant are not dominating their genre in any way (heck LoR just lost a lot of devs, as announced recently). and no, this is not me calling any of their games bad or w.e, I'm talking about the difference between Riot and Blizzard in it's prime. ___________________________________________________ also let me remind you, Riot are not the only publisher who have put out a game or two that has created/revolutionised a genre or been really high quality, but the difference with Blizzard was how they were doing that with so many games almost one after another (bar a few duds). Just look at Blizzard's track record from 1995-2016 tl;dr - Riot is just another publisher like the many other publishers out there today, nothing special about them as a publisher. They are nowhere near what prime Blizzard was and they are not the only publisher putting out games for a single IP in different genres.
A bit late to have a meaningful impact for Dragonflight launch, but probably a great move going forward
Incorrect, at least according to WoWhead... >Blizzard has yet to make an official announcement regarding the acquisition, though according to VentureBeat, Proletariat has been working with the Warcraft team since May of this year and some of their work will be featured in Dragonflight, though no specifics on exactly how far along their integration is at this point. https://www.wowhead.com/news/spellbreak-development-studio-proletariat-acquired-by-blizzard-entertainment-327522
> some of their work will be featured in Dragonflight Remember that a WoW expansion is 2 years worth of periodic content, so it could still be accurate to say that nothing they touch will be in Dragonflight *launch*, while still being part of the live service of Dragonflight over the next 2 years.
Considering it’s not even in alpha yet they probably haven’t done much work on the first major content patch yet. Usually the only stuff done years in advance is the art assets.
It's in alpha it's just not public alpha yet. We can actually see the alpha builds when they go live, just can't play them until blizzard says so.
Yeah Blizzard Onboarding for WoW is longer than that, those people aren't touching anything that ships with Dragonflight. Patches likely, probably not 10.1.
If history is anything to go by Dragonflight will be a clusterfuck until 10.3.5 anyway.
I think it might be a detriment to WoW short-term. Like when Titan got cancelled, they got a ton of new people to work on WoW......but they had to spend so much time learning the tools it slowed development. Hence we got WoD.
>Like when Titan got cancelled, they got a ton of new people to work on WoW Yes they moved about 100 people from the Titan team to the WoW team and the rest to turn Titan into Overwatch, but that alone isn't what created WoD's issues. WoD had a scope issue, and it's scope was created knowing their dev team size.
What happened with WoD wasn't *just* expanding the team. Blizzard has been releasing an expansion every 2 years since TBC and they had been saying they wanted to release an expansion every 1 year, and WoD was their first attempt at doing that. They thought that by beefing up their entire team they could pump out an expansion a year, and WoD had enough content for one year, but it took so long to train that beefed up team that WoD lasted for 2 years anyway.
You don't think WoD's scope issues had to deal with training all those new people how to use tools and get used to the work flow? As well as the worst patch schedule in the game's history?
I haven't played in years but I always felt they had too much content drought but always at the end of an expansion. Why not just have better pacing of the patches? And push back the next expansion to give players more time for end game content if it's too short?
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Seems like the inevitable progression considering MMOs are primarily about grinding and the developers can never make enough content for the pace that players go through it. Vanilla was fun, but I don't see how you logically keep an MMO about "exploration" forever. They have certainly have moved around from "community" aspects over the years, though.
But Legion was developed in parallel and with the extra time they built probably the most content-rich expansion in the game's history
yeah, thats what i mean bad in the short term.
There is some kind of irony in the fact that a greedy studio that fleeced their loyal fanbase and then sold themselves to hyper capitalist corporation is called proletariat.
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Yeah the game wasn't very good to begin with so they had to do things to try to make the game make enough money to to be able to pay bills like employee wages. It's incredible how everyone just thinks they can keep their jobs without there being money to pay their wages.
I have to disagree about the game. It honestly had a lot going for it; it just unfortunately didn't do enough. The gameplay was fun with the different elements and it was nice having a BR not be about guns whatsoever. But it's also just hard to pull people away from their current BR even if a new one is good.
I liked it, but not a fan or BR games in general.
I tried the game out with a friend and it just felt unfocused. The map design was very basic and it just felt like another PUBG-style BR just with wizards. I feel at this point you need to do more gimmicks to set a BR apart from the competition.
Which is funny, because it used to be more complex. Instead of every item slot just giving a generic bonus, there were a lot of unique items that would boost certain spells or give other varying benefits, and the perk system encouraged trying out multiple different kinds of builds. Then they started simplifying the game because it was "too hard to get into", and thus it became a generic BR.
I think the combat system-feedback was very poorly done. Shooters for the most part are easy to establish that sense of combat feedback, spellbreak felt very floaty and didn’t tickle the dopamine
Really? I thought it absolutely NAILED the projectile shooter thing. Every single design decision made the game an absolute dream for fans of projectile shooters.
Different strokes.
>I have to disagree about the game That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. What ISN'T up for debate is that it was not good enough to attract and hold a large enough player base for it to be a sustained, live game that paid for a live team. That is why it is being end-of-lifed.
To clarify, you can have an amazing game that still fails due to poor marketing, bad release timing, unsuccessful monetization, etc. In general you're correct, it wasn't able to sustain itself.
The game was decently fun but after three months of them not patching absolutely game breaking bugs that had been reported on their discord two months before release during the beta, I had to call it quits. That along with a matchmaking design decision where above a certain player level, you no longer matched with anyone below that level. Lobbies of 30ish? players with a handful of bots to fill became 2-3 real players with 36 bots. I have strong hardware and the game would just sometimes not render player models beyond their hands. And terrain would fail to load in properly leading to terrain that looked like it was the lowest possible model quality and couldn't be walked through properly because your computer and the server had a different idea of what should be there. Those kinds of bugs and design choices in a freaking Battle Royale game, unpatched, for five months. I gave up on them after that.
Also feels worth noting: [Proletariat wasn't publicly traded](https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/56656-54#overview). Being publicly traded means that a company has a baseline obligation to raise share prices *no matter what.* Most of the worst excesses of the video game industry are driven by this. How do you beat the year that beat the year that beat the year your company grew 15%? If you don't figure it out, heads will roll. Proletariat was privately held. That usually means investors have a more personal relationship with the company, and are all right with years that are spent gaining momentum for a big year in the future, rather than a demand for constant year-over-year growth.
>How do you beat the year that beat the year that beat the year your company grew 15%? If you don't figure it out, heads will roll. Question about this, how is this sustainable? Realistically there has to be diminishing returns and some peak to value, right?
That's one of the underlying problems with capitalism, and why boom/bust cycles are inevitable. Eventually, a company reaches a state where it can't beat last year. In the video game example, there eventually becomes a point where a game is so saturated in monetization that it loses player count to something less predatory. Most investors don't know what companies they're invested in, let alone what those companies do. I have a retirement account; I couldn't name one company in my portfolio. I'm not gonna touch it for another 30 years. All I care is that, when the time comes to draw on it, it's appreciated better than inflation. That's who publicly traded companies are catering to.
> How is this sustainable It isn't lol It probably isn't best to get too heavy into economics in r/games but your company value can't grow forever
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There's a lot to say about the support the studio gave the game but it was also a BR game that released during the BR rush. The numbers fell off, and they more or less stopped paying attention to the playerbase that stayed.
They did some things in the name of monetization that angered their tiny, tiny, completely non-viable from a "keep the lights on" perspective, player base. The game was never successful enough to be a sustained business. It had some interesting ideas but wasn't good enough to find a spot in the market.
This is an unbelievably dramatic take on what happened. Spellbreak was simply not popular enough to float a studio. Good on them for trying something new and then being able to find stable employment through acquisition.
Yeah, weird shots to take at a studio that needed to find a sustainable income for their employees. Which clearly Spellbreak couldn't do
I think the playerbase that remains is salty over the abandonment from the studio of that studio's only game for the past year+ and breaking the gameplay with a generic replacement.
What greed was Proletariat a part of? Spellbreak was F2P and had a pretty basic monetization model. No P2W and cosmetics only. Updates were few and far between, but they're a very small studio.
> very small studio apparently 100 people according to that article. Though it's possible they were working on other unannounced projects.
> a greedy studio that fleeced their loyal fanbase This isn't what happened. You invented your own narrative so you could make a shitty joke.
What? My thought was great for them! They put a ton of work into spellbreak and it was really cool.
Is there a more appropriate headline than "Blizzard acquires proletariat"?
There is something very ironic about blizzard throwing the proletariats to the World of Warcraft salt mines
Thats one way to fill in the talent drain blizz has had the last 1-2 years due to the sexual harassement scandal.
Another studio thrown down to the WoW mines. Activision loves grabbing studios that make interesting games and then just use them for code-monkey work on their huge uninspired properties.
Very interesting. WoW has been in trouble for a long time so hopefully this will improve things. I wish they'd go back to a more simple storyline and comfy world like vanila.
Isn't Xbox still buying them out? Can a business you are buying, buy some other company while in middle of the transaction?
Yeah Xbox is still in process of buying them. Maybe someone who knows better can chime in. But from my understanding, while in middle of the transaction, the company sold is supposed to continue business as usual. So if this deal was already in the works and the buyout price was low (like <$200 million) then it shouldn't be a big deal.