A few weeks ago, Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft’s subscriber numbers dropped by 1.1 Million in the last quarter. This may seem like a tragic loss, yet the game still has over nine million subscribers, way more then any other MMORPG competitor. As always when this news hits, forums everywhere pop up claiming “WoW is dying”. That is completely ridiculous notion to call a game with more players then any other competitor dying, yet it did get me thinking. What will kill World of Warcraft, and if there is anything Blizzard can do to stop this death of their beloved game.
I strongly believe the only thing that will kill World of Warcraft is Blizzard. The game may steadily lose subscribers, yet there are so many players who are so immersed in the game that Blizzard will most likely always have a good amount of subscribers. This means that WoW will die only once Blizzard has decided that it is no longer profitable to keep releasing new content.
But is the end of new content really the death of the game? Or can Blizzard continue to make people log in? This is a question I have been thinking about over the past couple of weeks and I have thought of a couple of ideas. The first is pretty obvious. If Blizzard stops releasing new content, they can still keep the servers live for PvP players. Unlike raiders, who depend on new content, most PvPers will still get enjoyment out of playing and the only sort of “content” Blizzard would be required to give them is reseting a season, and possibly adding new sets of armor, something that a very small team of people can do. This would ensure Blizzard was still able to milk money out of the players that are still in love with there game.
The other, more creative idea that I thought of was the idea of creating new servers that mimic how things were during different expansions. This is something many fans have asked for, yet Blizzard has explained that it would simply require too many resources to recreate these servers. However, if they were not releasing new content, the development team could recreate these expansions. I may be alone, but I know I would still pay for a monthly subscription even after WoW was done releasing expansions if it meant I could go back and relive some of my favorites or see the ones that I was not fortunate enough to play.
Now, these ideas are simply just thoughts I had when people say “WoW is dying”. I highly doubt to see anything like this implemented, and if it does happen, it will not be for many years to come. Even if subscriber rates continue to drop, I strongly believe Blizzard has created enough die-hard fans to keep World of Warcraft alive. As sad as it may make internet trolls on every gaming forum, the only thing that will kill World of Warcraft is Blizzard.
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