World of Warcraft is one of those old, dogged titans that’ve been trudging on in the MMO industry for over two decades, now—and even in a genre where the success stories are mostly ancient, that’s some going. In its golden age, WoW was the game that all of its contemporaries were trying to dethrone. And even though it’s been through several severe wobbles in the past few years (see: Shadowlands), it’s not going anywhere any time soon.
But there is an alternate universe in which it might have at least diminished while its team focused on bigger and better things, per former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who has had a lot to say about the game recently after a disastrously buggy patch has put things on thin ice.
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Quick point of order—while I can see a continuation of Bolvar Fordragon’s story being interesting, I’m not sure the idea of focusing on that “core gaming audience” is necessarily the way winds have blown. Most successful MMOs, WoW included, have accepted that there’s not a hardcore vs. casual divide anymore, while the ones catering to hardcore audiences are either niche or killed in the cradle (rest in peace, Wildstar). But I digress.
He states, however, that he wasn’t necessarily able to make that happen—that would’ve been a call by current game director Ion Hazzikostas: “The President of Blizzard doesn’t pitch game ideas. He/She has little influence on the games themselves other than input at various stages and random ideation usually directly with the Game Director (who owns the creative vision for the game).
I mean, maybe. But when I look at the time period where a sequel would’ve made sense—probably 10 years ago—I can’t really think of a good stepping-off point. Either you’re ditching the game in some of its most beloved eras (Mists of Pandaria and Legion, respectively) or you’re moving on without any goodwill from the playerbase. Maybe you could’ve done it instead of revamping the old world for Cataclysm, I dunno.
Yes, it is a deeply inconsistent game, and its latest patch is a bit of a disaster. But it’s still here, ain’t it? In a genre filled with bloodbaths, WoW stands stubbornly profitable—at least, enough to cause Microsoft to spend billions on it. I don’t know if anything short of a meteor hitting Earth would put it down for good.
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