The future of World of Warcraft. The End is Nigh!

Community General Discussion
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Greetings, citizen! :pouting_man:

I was going for a walk today and I was thinking about the future of World of Warcraft and Warcraft itself. And I felt like writing them down, because I enjoy doing that. You can read them if you want to, but it’s a devil of a post. :smiling_imp:

If you just want to post a reply, then here’s the question to ponder:
Looking a handful years ahead, to the end of The Last Titan, what future do you see for World of Warcraft and Warcraft beyond that?

Share your thoughts on that, if you please… :slight_smile:

And here are mine! :grin:

These quotes from Blizzcon keep coming back to me, and the more I think about them, the more they intrigue me.

“Today is a great day for Warcraft! This is the beginning of a bold new chapter that will take us through the next three decades, and beyond!”
– John Hight, General Manager Warcraft, Blizzcon 2023.

“…started to reveal a storyline. Something epic. How epic? Real epic! A storyline that in almost every way feels like the culmination of the first 20 years of our storytelling. A storytelling that will vector us into the next 20 years of adventure. We call this storyline The Worldsoul Saga! The Worldsoul Saga is so epic it cannot be contained within any single expansion. It is built to play out over multiple expansions over the next few years.”
– Chris Metzen, Executive Creative Director Warcraft, Blizzcon 2023.

The keen eye will notice that whilst John and Chris appear to be talking about World of Warcraft, then they’re not really talking about World of Warcraft. :face_with_peeking_eye:

They’re talking about what comes afterward. :exploding_head:

When Blizzard releases The War Within in 2024 and embarks upon The Worldsoul Saga, then – after 20 years of storytelling – the story finale of World of Warcraft will play out.

That is huge. Some of us have spent half our lives waiting for this to happen. :yawning_face:

This is the beginning of the ending. The climax to everything that has taken place for the past 19 years of World of Warcraft and 31 years of Warcraft. :partying_face:

According to Chris Metzen, then The Worldsoul Saga will take ~5 years.

And then what? :face_with_monocle:

John and Chris talk about decades. Do they mean decades of more World of Warcraft expansions? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Perhaps…

Or perhaps they mean the next big flagship Warcraft game. The next-gen. WoW 2. Warcraft 4 or 5. World of World of Warcraft. Whatever you think of it as.

It is that.

It is coming.

And The Worldsoul Saga is the springboard for that new game.

World of Warcraft, as a product, is nearing the end of its relevance. It is not a strong vehicle for the Warcraft franchise anymore. It is outdated. Something new is needed. And soon. :face_with_thermometer:

Blizzard have just increased the World of Warcraft development team from ~350 developers to ~700! Why would Blizzard double the size of a development team for a game that is decades old and losing popularity? To rush out The Worldsoul Saga in ~5 years? Why?! :upside_down_face:

So they can start transferring most of those developers onto their new development team, working on the next big flagship game for Warcraft. Because that will need many hundreds of developers. But not in the beginning.
So they get to work on some World of Warcraft expansions first whilst getting onboarded, and then slowly and systematically they get moved over.

Dragonflight has been an exercise in efficiency. How do you get the most amount of content out of the least amount of development? That is the essence of Dragonflight. It is a template for how World of Warcraft expansions can be made with a smaller development team after The Worldsoul Saga has concluded. When World of Warcraft becomes a Legacy game in all but name. Like Overwatch 2 in a way.
Blizzard don’t want to abandon World of Warcraft, but they do want to move beyond it.

And the ending of The Last Titan is the beginning of the new Warcraft game.
That ending will serve both as the story finale to the over-arcing cosmological story of World of Warcraft, and it will serve as the announcement, reveal, and advertisement of the next Warcraft game.

So…what is going to happen? :thinking:

Well, believe it or not, but Blizzard have actually concluded stories like these before:

So forget about Bellular, Taliesin, Pyromancer, Accolonn, and all their silly story & lore speculations. I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen.

Because it has nothing to do with story or lore. It has everything to do with Blizzard.

In Diablo II Blizzard does an open ending. Tyrael destroys the corrupted Worldstone and the citizens of Harrogath contemplate what the future will hold (spoiler: they die).
Blizzard wrote the ending this way because they were already planning the continuation in an upcoming Diablo III.

In StarCraft II Kerrigan becomes Xel’naga and ends the Infinite Cycle. She defeats Amon and peace is restored in the Koprulu sector. It is a happy ending, and it is a closed ending.
Why? Because it took Blizzard 10 years to develop the second installment of StarCraft and they knew they weren’t going to make a third anytime soon, so they wanted a concluded story.

There is another thing that holds true for both Diablo and StarCraft, for both the Worldstone and Kerrigan. They represent the same thing. They are the same instrument in the story.
Creation.
The Worldstone literally holds the power to create new universes, which is how Inarius and Lillith created Sanctuary.
Kerrigan being bestowed the essence from Ouros holds the power of the Xel’naga, the power behind the Infinite Cycle – creation of the universe.

Azeroth is Creation. Not because story or lore says so, but because it’s the storytelling mechanism Blizzard have always used to either continue their stories or to conclude them. And in the case of World of Warcraft, Azeroth has to be the mechanism that creates the new Warcraft universe. :open_mouth:

Because it will be a new universe.

There won’t be any murlocs, Titans, or Void Lords. Jaina won’t there and Thrall isn’t coming either. :cry:
It will be completely fresh and new and it will only be linked to Warcraft through its name heritage – because it was birthed from within Warcraft’s story.

Why will Blizzard do this? Because they desperately need to modernize the Warcraft franchise so that it is accessible to generation z and generation alpha. They don’t know who Jaina or Thrall is, let alone the Void Lords or the Titans.
Blizzard needs a fresh start. And Azeroth having the power to create anything anywhere can create Blizzard their new clean slate.
It is the only way by which Blizzard can combine their two interests: Continue the Warcraft franchise, and have a clean slate.

World of Warcraft can continue after The Worldsoul Saga – and it will – like StarCraft II had the Nova Covert Ops missions. The cosmic story has been concluded, but there’s still plenty of opportunity for down-to-earth stories to be told – in the case of StarCraft II it was the power struggles within the various races.
World of Warcraft can go on to have many more expansions about the Scarlet Crusade or the rebuilding of Darnassus, or the pirate attacks, or whatever, even if the cosmic story is all but concluded. It’ll still be there for the fans who want to continue playing it. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

But the future of Blizzard and the future of Warcraft lies with that next Warcraft flagship game. And we’ll know the name of it when we free or awaken Azeroth. :sleeping:

So what is that new game exactly? :thinking:

Well World of Warcraft was made in the early 2000s and it is a game that reflects that time. It’s a PC game that uses mouse and keyboard. It’s filled with pop-culture references that millennials will recognize, and it has the appearance, theme, design and gameplay that reflects the people who worked at Blizzard back in those days. These guys:

And those guys are nerds. They’re sweaty basement dwellers who made World of Warcraft based on their own passion for D&D, Warhammer, Lord of the Rings, EverQuest, and all that other nerdy fantasy stuff that folks born in the 90’s grew up with.

But that’s not the Blizzard of today. Now it’s 2023:

That’s a bit on the nose, but the point is that the company has evolved over the past 20 years – yet World of Warcraft is still a game that reflects the early 2000s, no matter how many fruit paintings it has now. :art: :paintbrush: :apple: :banana:
And if you look at Blizzard’s company profile, their developers and their initiatives, and even recent changes to World of Warcraft other games, and newer games like Overwatch and Warcraft Rumble, it is clear that this is a company that wants its games to reflect who they are.

So that’s what the new game will do.
There are many companies in the industry that make games about big sweaty muscular men fighting other big sweaty muscular men. Blizzard don’t want to be one of those companies anymore. :broken_heart:
They want to be a modern, progressive, value-based company that make inspirational games for young people with strong themes and messages of inclusion & diversity, climate awareness and social responsibility, and so on. :rainbow_flag: :earth_asia: :purple_heart:
That’s what the next big Warcraft flagship game will embody. And who knows, it may not even be called Warcraft! :scream:

Long rant, so I’m just going to summarize for the forum scrollers! :sweat_smile:
On November 23, 2029 World of Warcraft will have its 25th anniversary. If Blizzard gets it right, then people in World of Warcraft will get to free/awaken Azeroth and watch a cinematic that concludes the over-arcing story of World of Warcraft…and reveals the next big Warcraft game!
A modern game for a young and modern audience, available on all devices, with a design and theme that reflects the modern Blizzard.
That’s what John Hight and Chris Metzen were talking about at Blizzcon. And it’s coming soon. In 5½ years the ending for World of Warcraft will unfold and the next big installment of Warcraft will begin.

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Sorry I just don’t think that is going to happen.

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You think Blizzard’s product pipeline has 20-30 years of more WoW expansions planned?

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Maybe 10-15.

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So why does John Hight and Chris Metzen talk about 20-30 years of Warcraft and story?

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Well they may have outlines but realistically I think 10-15 before a major change again. I am not sure another WoW would be as successful. I would love to be wrong! I just don’t think at the end of the world soul saga they will do it.

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You’re shooting from the hip and you didn’t really read my post before you started writing. That’s fine, although I would welcome more contemplation. :kissing_closed_eyes:

Nevertheless, does the next Warcraft game have to be like World of Warcraft?

And what is “a major change” in your mind when you look those 10-15 years ahead?

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We’ve got at least 10 years of planned content, I’ll be 53 by that point. If it ends i’ll be ok with that.

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10 years? Metzen says ~5 for The Worldsoul Saga.

What do you imagine for the 5 years after?

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as long as there is money in it, i doubt they will cancel an already running established thing.

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You’re right, I read half then the tldr. I will now go read it thoroughly. Major change just means a WoW2 or Metzen retires for real. If they did RPGs that would be cool. If they did a Diablo like Warcraft that would be cool. However before I go read I just want to note they have essentially said that they have overhauled their perspective of the game for TWW and beyond. Modernised it. Let go of the original philosophies. So that is partly why I think they have a good chunk planned before they run out of ideas enough to make a new Warcraft themed game that isn’t just some mobile thing.

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Like I said, then they can have their cake and eat it too. I.e. they can have both games run in parallel.

I mean, veteran WoW fans are going to want to play WoW. So Blizzard will keep making expansions and patches and take their money happily.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t have another game alongside it that’s the flagship for the company.

A bit like Diablo Immortal versus Diablo IV.

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he said decade in the Blizcon presentation. that’s 10

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Who? John Hight? He said three decades. I wrote the quote above.
Metzen said storytelling that will vector us into the next 20 years of adventure, and that The Worldsoul Saga will play out over multiple expansions over the next few years.

No one mentions a single decade or 10 years.

They say a few years or ~5 years when talking about The Worldsoul Saga.
And they say 20-30 years when talking about Warcraft. Not WoW, but Warcraft.

So either that’s 20-30 years of more WoW expansions, or it’s 20-30 years of storytelling planned for a Warcraft game that isn’t WoW.

That’s my interpretation at least. What’s yours?

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Okay I have read the whole thing and understand now. Yes, I can see that happening but I am still not convinced it will. Be a major leap for them… also this new game would have to be another planet? A different time way in the future? Would it be an RPG or one like Diablo, or Warcraft 4? What exactly are younguns into these days because I think it is more games they spend only a few hours on and on mobile/i-pads. I don’t really know though.

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I’ll need to re watch the Metzen presentation, but I remember it as the next decade of story.

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Here you go:

Do point out any interesting detective nuggets. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

For now I’m holding on mine. The 25th anniversary for WoW is on November 23, 2029, and if The War Within releases in July/August/September 2024, then that’s ~5 years. And if Blizzard are just a little bit symbolic, and I bet they are, then they’ll want the ending of The Worldsoul Saga to be dropping on the day of the anniversary. In what more epic way can you celebrate that than by showcasing the end of the WoW cosmic story and the reveal of a new game?

They’re totally gonna do that.

I don’t know either (besides the theme and values I feel pretty confident it will revolve around). I’m no game designer. But obviously Blizzard cannot exist as a big game company in 30 years if they’re still only making WoW expansions for future pensionists like us. They have to make something for the younger generations. And their biggest franchise is Warcraft. They have to eventually (soon I think!) move beyond WoW.

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True. I suppose 30 years may be it.

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I think I’ll be closer to the target by saying that on November 23, 2029, you’ll know what the name of the next big Warcraft flagship game is called, because you’re going to see it in the cinematic after you free/awaken Azeroth.

And you probably won’t have any interest in playing it. :grin:

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It’s interesting to read your speculation, the same thing crossed my mind as a possibility when I was watching Blizzcon.

I’m not as sure as you tho, I merely see it as an option. With DF they’ve given me the impression of a soft reboot, and I could also imagine the next few expansions themselves will already be an attempt to reinvigorate and change the game up to the point where it’ll be appealing to the younger generations of gamers. If that’s a success, my guess would be they’ll stick with WoW for longer.

I do have a feeling the next few years will be a final attempt at making the population grow again. If that doesn’t happen convincingly, my guess would be WoW will go into maintenance mode and something new would have to be there as a replacement. And that takes time to develop, so I was going in circles with both options simultaneously until I decided I have no clue and time will tell :smile:

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