So I think by now everyone knows I hated the story, but what about gameplay?

[RetlocLive]

they're still raking in the dough from WoW.

They will always rake in dough from WoW...which is sad, because WoW is what killed any attempt for Blizzard to actually make a great game with at least a passable story. Too many casuals nowadays want their quick fix of entertainment over actually taking the time for the game to settle in and discover the epicness behind it all. Blizzard knows that as long as that quick-fix gameplay is there to satisfy the casual gamers for a few months before dishing out the next batch of game material, they wouldn't have to put work in anything else, and still end up making tons of money off this faction of people.

I tried returning to WoW last year...couldn't even last a week it's become so streamlined/easy/boring.

[NikoMyCousin]

They will always rake in dough from WoW...which is sad, because WoW is what killed any attempt for Blizzard to actually make a great game with at least a passable story. Too many casuals nowadays want their quick fix of entertainment over actually taking the time for the game to settle in and discover the epicness behind it all. Blizzard knows that as long as that quick-fix gameplay is there to satisfy the casual gamers for a few months before dishing out the next batch of game material, they wouldn't have to put work in anything else, and still end up making tons of money off this faction of people.

I tried returning to WoW last year...couldn't even last a week it's become so streamlined/easy/boring.

WoW has a brighter future with Ghostcrawler gone. I exclusively PvE'd because PvP became a joke.

I do think pumping out content every few months for 10 years has tapped out Chris Metzen's ability to come up with a sensible storyline, too. But I also want to believe that the criticism of his work hasn't been seen yet because of how long Blizzard takes to actually make a game. I think the internet really started pouring it on him with the comical death of the Lich King, yet when you look at the Heart of the Swarm leaked ending, dated April of 2009, it would appear that by 2010 (when that wing of ICC was released) that HotS was pretty much finished anyway. Of course he could've gone back to edited the dialogue a bit, but there isn't much you can do when there's already so much budget that went into the production of things like cinematics.

Yet, if I continue to wait for a Blizzard story that isn't cosmically embarrassing, I might have to institutionalize myself.

[DemolitionSquid]

One of my coworkers keeps trying to make me play WoW. I played it free until level 20 when that first started years ago, and haven't touched it since. It was terrible. I actually quoted TotalBiscuit to him and said, "why would I pay to play WoW when I can play the best parts of WoW as a free card game?" And quite frankly, while I'll admit Hearthstone is fun, I'm still 100 times more excited for Magic 2015 next month.

[TheEconomist]

I played WoW on private server with 4-5x the experience rate. I can't imagine people playing with less. Even at that speed, it was mindless grinding for hours and hours with my main reward being ONLY (albeit very beautiful) new scenery. Got tiresome fast. I would much rather grind in a SP RPG than an MMO.

[ragnarok]

Because a business venture of any kind must be diversified and they've already cracked all the other eggs in the other baskets.

Last I checked, despite the wear and tear of the WoW series, that series is still FAR from dust in the ground...

They will always rake in dough from WoW...which is sad, because WoW is what killed any attempt for Blizzard to actually make a great game with at least a passable story. Too many casuals nowadays want their quick fix of entertainment over actually taking the time for the game to settle in and discover the epicness behind it all. Blizzard knows that as long as that quick-fix gameplay is there to satisfy the casual gamers for a few months before dishing out the next batch of game material, they wouldn't have to put work in anything else, and still end up making tons of money off this faction of people.

I tried returning to WoW last year...couldn't even last a week it's become so streamlined/easy/boring.

That's the problem with HotS. For me, the story concepts themselves had potential, even the Zerus arc that shouldn't have worked so well, in accordance to the SC1 manual. But it could have been made to be much more acceptable, and Blizzard refused to carry it out the proper way.

[TheEconomist]

Last I checked, despite the wear and tear of the WoW series, that series is still FAR from dust in the ground...

Did you even read what I said?

[The_Blade]

Well, WoW will probably survive as a cult game, but it is no longer played as much as it was before. Newer, adaptive RPG MMOs are pulling the modern take on the genre and most are F2P. However, I fear the world doesn't want an MMO anymore, as much as it did WoW back in the day. Players are dedicating "less" time to games that give you the RPG but not the MMO in the MOBA/Brawler genre.

Guild Wars II is probably the best example. It's refreshing it's gameplay constantly and it's content shifts without allowing players to go back. However, each server became specialized in a single thing and there's few things to do that actually feel epic anymore. New players are sucked into Zergs for months and WvWvW will never be won by the server where the good PvP players have migrated to.

RIFT is the most promising MMO atm IMHO. Yet it fails to build a proper PvP experience.

[TheEconomist]

WoW still has 8 million subscribers, far ahead of anyone else. As someone who used to really keep up with Activision stock, it always made me laugh when people kept saying that the end of WoW was nigh and that because WoW had lost a couple of million subscribers, it's days were numbered. I've been hearing since since, like, 2010 or even earlier. Yet, it still reigns supreme (by far) and still makes a ridiculous profit. Losing a couple of million is nothing when that's only about 20% of your player base and the costs associated with the game go no where close to matching revenue from eight million subscribers.

WoW will be around for a really, really long time. There's been MMOs that have been up since the late 90's that didn't have 1/10th of WoW's player base at their peaks. No, sadly, and for reasons I can't comprehend, my children will probably still be hearing about the dominance of WoW but has its going to end any day now. <semi-exaggeration>

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=A...=ATVI;range=2y

If I were still investing in the stock, I could've doubled my investment easily simply by not listening to the doomsayers.

[NikoMyCousin]

I'd be shocked if plans for a transition to F2P wasn't announced at Blizzcon.

[RetlocLive]

^^^

Seeing Team Fortress 2 on that list really saddens me...its not surprising at all why Valve feels it's unnecessary to announce the next Half-Life let alone...actually complete the HL2 episodes when TF2 is such a goldmine for them. I'm sure Dota 2 will one day be on that list as well for them.

The Old Republic being on there surprises me though, I knew they were still making loads of money off micro-transactions, but I never would have thought it was above 100 million. Good save I guess since the game was such a bomb originally.

As for WoW, last I remember, it was down to 7.6 million subs a few months after MoP was released, but it got a huge boost when the Siege of Org patch came out so...8 million sounds about right. I will only truly think that WoW's time is starting to fade away the moment Blizzard starts closing off some of their servers. I have yet to hear of them actually closing off a server for WoW up to today, but I know they've been stalling the bleeding with the lesser populated servers with cross-realm zoning and whatnot.

I do think pumping out content every few months for 10 years has tapped out Chris Metzen's ability to come up with a sensible storyline, too. But I also want to believe that the criticism of his work hasn't been seen yet because of how long Blizzard takes to actually make a game. I think the internet really started pouring it on him with the comical death of the Lich King, yet when you look at the Heart of the Swarm leaked ending, dated April of 2009, it would appear that by 2010 (when that wing of ICC was released) that HotS was pretty much finished anyway. Of course he could've gone back to edited the dialogue a bit, but there isn't much you can do when there's already so much budget that went into the production of things like cinematics.

Half the content they don't even properly get into WoW before the expansions even release. I just remember Cataclysm being a clusterfuk of a bunch of "new" quest-lines that seemed cool and interesting at first, but were then left hanging halfway through a storyline because Blizzard released the game unfinished. I think the only one that I actually felt was a compete story was the remake of Stonetalon Mountains. Who ever remade Stonetalon is probably the only guy I'd pay to continue writing lore for Blizzard. At least when it comes to WoW's standards. From what I hear though, Mists of Pandaria's lore wasn't that bad apart from the Alliance lore after the patches started rolling in...then again, the Alliance has had little to no lore at all ever since WOTLK. And most of the lore they do get is nothing but Varian Wrynn wank...or the continued attempts to turn Jaina into the next Garrosh. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Jaina becomes a raid boss somewhere down the line.