Are WOW's days numbered?

I hope not. I figure WoW is getting old and a lot of people are just moving on, but if they just made the game free-to-play I think more people would jump into it. Of course that probably wont happen, but we can dream right?

 

They donät need to make it f2p... and it's pretty clear that they want to keep it subscription based.

 

They said they've been developing another MMO. They said it's different enough from WoW to keep the WoW players stay, but also for people that are bored of WoW they can move onto it.

 

While I haven't heard about this I'm not surprised at all. Any links to the news?

 

It's old news. I think it's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Blizzard_Entertainment_project)

 

The only future that Blizzard has with WOW is to make WOW 2 or something similar to which the current WOW players can migrate. The WOW days are numbered because everyone is bored of the same grinding over and over and over. The game mechanics did't really change in the last couple of years. Nobody likes repetition.

 

Wow will never die completely, yes - it's dying but it's not going to shut down forever. A lot of people who work over at blizzard are going to loose their jobs, and blizzard will stop paying for servers, but I believe once it reaches ~5 million players, it will go free2play. Or they'll at least make the vanilla free for all. It would save loads and loads of players, while bringing old ones back.

 

Even though subscription numbers are going down, and people are starting to play the game a lot less, there are still a sheer amount of players continuing to play the game. While these people continue to play World of Warcraft will not die. It does not possess the complete control over the MMORPG genre like it once did but that's to be expected with all the new ones coming out. Though it may be shrinking, I doubt that it will die.

 

Nah man, my game cannot die. If I were to lose my warcraft I'll be one sad man. I know many people aren't fans of paid subscriptions, but sometimes that's life and developers need to make the money to keep things going. WoW has been around for a long time, and that's thanks to the gamers. Thing is, it's probably just because people are tiring of the game, we need new players to get into the game so it stays fresh. Lets get to recruiting players. How about it?

 

It's a lost cause. The game is a decade old, the gameplay and graphics are going obsolete and Blizzard needs something fresh. Back when I played vanilla there was a leak for their plans in the future. Everything turned out true so far, they planned out 5 expansions, diablo 2 and another MMO after wow. The MMO had a codename but I think it's safe to say they'll keep wow around, but eventually stop updating it and focus on the next big thing.

 

Think you've got it spot on. It's a business and a good one at that, why would they stop WoW while it's still making money. I am intrigued to see what their next MMO will be, I'm pretty sure it will have some awesome graphics and physics.

 

While the numbers are dropping I dont think we will see the death of WoW anytime soon. Games such as Everquest are still going strong after this many years on loyal fans and so will WoW. Its nearing the end of an expansion cycle and that always sees numbers drop. I do believe that the new expansion will be good for them though as many people fondly remember the outlands. Even my husband, who hasnt played since Wrath, is excited to go back to the Outlands. This might have been the best expansion choice Blizzard could have made to get those old players back, but only time will tell. Either way, WoW has enough subscribers even now to keep going for years.

 

+1

WoW isn't going away any time soon, the subscriber numbers may be falling - I think that most of the fall comes from the east though, where the game isn't as well liked. Hopefully subscriber numbers in the West will stay stable for some time - and the new expansion should help that.

 

I feel that P2P games are on their way out. I just don't understand that business model and personally have stopped playing every single one.

 

I don't think that they will be going anywhere anytime soon. Even if the numbers are dropping off, they still have millions of loyal players that will be spending that subscription fee every month.

 

Wow lost a ton of subscribers last december when a f2p game was released in china. that game took all of those cheap internet cafe wow players that were paying almost nothing to play. WOW lost like 20% of it´s subscribers in that one month, and yet their revenues did not drop much.. which indicates they were cheap players that were lost.

Since then, WOW has not lost nearly any players. Last quarter was something like 100k. If they continue to lose 100k subscribers every quarter, it will be another 5 years before they are down to 1M subscribers, which is still more than almost any other game.

WOW has at least 5 strong years left, followed by another 5 where it is on life support ( not much content released)

 

WoW is slowly dying. But all MMORPGs will have to end at some point, right? Well, maybe not. But WoW is following what happens to most MMORPGs.

I expect Blizzard to milk the rest of this game for all it is worth. The game probably has a few years left before it becomes unprofitable. However, it is kinda sad to see such a large game lose so much interest. It makes you wonder if there will ever be an immortal MMORPG, that is able to retain players even after it's initial peak.

Leroy Jenkins!

 

Yeah, I don't think WoW will ever die. There are too many people like me who have invested too much time into this game, and will never fully retire. Especially since they keep offering incentive to return, e.g I'm probably going to re-subscribe just to get the free level 90 when the new expansion drops.

 

If they announced that the game won't be going F2P "any time soon", I think it's a pretty clear indication that Blizz are doing well for themselves. Even with the amount of subscribers they've lost during MoP, it's still a pretty huge playerbase when compared to everything else. And one of the main concerns people had is that they made the game too "wonky", with the whole Kung-Fu Panda thing and "dumbing the game down".

If Warlords manages to be better and make old players want to resub to give the game another chance, I think they're set for another couple years.

 

I believe that WOW says are very limited. It is getting saturated extremely quickly. Just like runescape the owners are money hungry and will end up failing.