Nah.
My stance is that WoW will continue to be WoW and Blizzard will continue to support it for as long as they can make money from it.
Outside of WoW there’s a lot of change and innovation happening. Will Blizzard be part of that? I don’t know.
I do think they’re making a new major flagship game from the Warcraft franchise (but perhaps not part of it…). But what it will entail, I don’t know.
Oh wow will change. Once a new contender arrives to challenge wow for the throne same as ff14 did. But until then… they will stick with the formula that works.
One design space i see being in common between those two genre is the need to farm and the fact you’re rewarded properly for it (if we consider the older way to build an MMO). Farming and developping your techs in Survival games tend to have a similar vibe than leveling and farming your crafts in Classic. For those who likes those aspects of the game, it’s a great genre to gravitate towards in between content patches.
Yet, modern MMO’s are less and less grindy and tend to go on the opposite design space that’s rewarding for each micro-session of gameplay of 15-30-ish min, slowly turning away from long term goals and slow but constant progression, cause the audience is aging and have less time to play and the younger players tend to be accostumed from young age to this type of micro-session and tend to feel long term goals to be less rewarding and boring. Having a season based game, combined with less time to play when you’re older means you would not be able to achieve your goals. And this is one of the reason why so many people disliked Azerite in BFA, as it was percieved to be a farm so long they would not be able to keep up with the curve while its being required to achieve their goals.
Going the way of asking MMO players to farm again on long terms important goals for progression would only attract a portion of the older audience of the game that still have a lot of time to play and have knowned and liked older style of MMO/RPG farms.
Player Housing is the only thing i see being something that would be optional enough for the modern MMO player to not feel like devs are forcing farming over them, as by design, it should normally not impact your day-to-day gameplay at all. I suppose Blizz knows that and have heard the asking for it from the community. Yet it probably require a lot of technical changes to allow it with for an acceptable result, the way shadows are handled in wow on multiple type of settings being probably one of the first reasons it’s not an easy task to achieve without sacrificing graphical fidelity.
I think it’s a matter of time before we get it. They teased a ‘‘big thing people ask for for a long time’’ for Midnight, i bet it could be that.
I think a bunch of MMO players are gone on games like Genshin Impact. Gatcha have been growing those day and many tend to have an MMO vibe, better suited around casual gameplay (and collectionnor, which is a prominent type of player in the MMO space)
I don’t think that’s going to be the case.
WoW will remain as WoW for as long as Blizzard can make money off of it, which will be for as long as a sizable number of players will pay for it.
The size and scope of WoW will decrease over time. The content updates will get smaller and the monetization will expand, but the design formula will likely remain as is.
And I can easily see that go on for 10+ years in that format.
Fewer people will play it, less developers will work on it, but it’ll carry on none the less.
Exactly the same way that many other older games with a small but profitable operation do.
WoW is effectively a Legacy game already. It just makes money as well. But as far as business relevance goes, it has little.
Will there come other games that will contend WoW and try to dethrone it and snatch its players? Yes. That has happened dozens and dozens of times over the years already, and WoW has long since been dethroned as a juggernaut on the gaming scene, and every day is a day of death by a thousand cuts as it bleeds players.
It’s not a big game anymore and Blizzard seem satisfied to just appease the existing players for as long as they can maintain them, regardless of what other companies and games are doing.
Blizzard’s reponses to market competition and their own company success will come in the form of new games.
If Blizzard has any intention of being a relevant game development company in the future, then they have to start renewing their entire product portfolio today.
Within the next 10 years Blizzard needs a handful new modern & successful games that effectively replace their existing ones, preserve their current customers and expand into a wider appeal of gen Z, gen Alpha, and gen Beta, as well as a broaden the range of avaliable platforms.
If Blizzard can’t succeed with that, then they’ll start getting the axe from Mircosoft and their IPs will be given to other studios, because the company’s size is only justified if it produces successful products accordingly.
I am personal going to the doctor they poke me in this event , ask me what is wrong with me , they are rude . I get them back , they will not see it coming . They appear haughty with the degree of the medicine . Monkey degree !
Players are tired now Jito… And burned out and ready for something new… The old recepie and formula has worked for years and yes…
Blizzard will keep using it for as long as they can milk our money for it…
But as soon as a new mmo ‘‘re invents the weel’’? Warcraft will have too adapt.
We saw it happening in BFA and shadowlands… WoW lost a huge amount of players to FF14 Who where burned out by Blizzard.
“challenge” for fricking what? it’s entirely different games with different focuses on different elements, the closest to wow contender is gw2, and look where it is.
Guild wars 2 would of beat wow if it had added endgame content… Such as vertical gearing and m+…
However GW2 players didnt want that… they believed GW2 not having that. Was what made gw2 good.
But at the same time… Vertical character progression and gearing is what keeps people addicted and always coming back for wow… Love it or hate it. You cant deny it.
Guild wars 2 has so much world content and casual content… Everything a wow player wants… But it lacks that endgame progression that wow has.
i believe you 
Oi!!! Am i wrong!? Don’t you ignore me D:<
i just don’t care about ifs or woulds, it’s almost always much more complex and depends on diffrent factors, you can’t just “add” type of content and call it a day
WoW is an 80/20 game. 80% the same and 20% new. That holds true for every expansion and every patch, and it will be like that for years and years to come.
It pleases the existing playerbase, and that’s the only focus Blizzard has.
If some other MMORPG happens to pop up and be super popular and WoW starts bleeding players like crazy, then Blizzard will do a brutal cost/benefit analysis and invest the least amount of money to maintain the highest amount of players.
The only business purpose of WoW is that of a milking cow. Blizzard are not seeking growth, they’re not investing, and they’re not closing it down.
They’re just trying to maintain as much as they can, for as long as they can, with the least money spent.
That’s it. Nothing other companies or games do will change that.
You’re not going to see Blizzard come out and be like: “Okay boys, time to show these rivaling games how we do things around here!” and then put down a billion dollars and revamp WoW into a glorious modern game with huge popularity and superb quality.
No.
That’s not the way the cookie crumbles.
eh I personally find GW2 boring AF…
That game has failed completely at capturing my interest on any level, and I have even all DLCs for it bought…
Eh, something like you’re describing, a high-risk high-reward PvP element forced upon me in WoW would likely have me stop playing until it was removed again, lol. Granted, I’m one of those “old” millennials who are basically only playing WoW and no other games, and thus apparently, according to people in this thread, not clever enough to realise other games exist.
Thing is, I like WoW as it is. I love questing. I love listening in to the NPCs chattering. I love collecting transmogs and mounts. I love playing through old content to remind myself what the lore was again. I feel no need or desire to play other games. When I’ve tried, I’ve not particularly enjoyed them, or they’ve only engaged me for a short amount of time. Is that wrong, to not feel the need to play whole bunch of different games? I don’t think so.
PvP is fun once in a while. I even turn on warmode sometimes. But world PvP? Nah. When I started playing, I was playing on PvP server, and I clearly remember being ganked and camped and generally just feeling harassed while trying to level and do my quests. When my friends stopped playing and nothing tied me to that server, I headed for a non-PvP RP server and never looked back. PvP isn’t horrible, but to me it’s only fun in a team, with voice chat, working together.
High risk, high reward? Play hardcore. I did that for a short while, then was out again pretty quick when the frustration from starting over again got too much.
Or play something else. There’s nothing wrong with different games existing for different people with different preferences and playstyles.
I mean when I don’t enjoy WoW, I stop playing. Who’d play something they don’t enjoy? In my case interest inevitably returns eventually, but I’d be fine with it if it didn’t.
All that said, I like the idea about more open-world content. I think you’re right that WoW feels stale, but I completely disagree that it’s because of a lack of PvP and high stakes. I think it feels stale because it’s lacking in players actively engaging with each other and needing each other and having to work together. Having to communicate and help each other out. Grouping up with someone in the open world is basically in-out, hardly anyone even saying “hi” or “bye” let alone actually communicating. Open-world instances sound fun. Competing for resources sounds like frustration-inducing madness that I’d quickly abandon, though.
No. What’s keeps me coming back to WoW time and again is the universe and world that I love. I can’t stop myself from coming back and at the very least playing through the initial story content whenever a new expansion lands - I LOVE that part of the game, when there’s a new story and a new area to explore. On the other hand, you don’t see me getting PvP ratings, you don’t see me pugging m+’s, you don’t see me being competitive over anything whatsoever, because I couldn’t care less about any of that. What gives me MY rush in WoW is that sweet new mog or that shiny mount or that achievement I’ve been slowly working towards. It’s getting better at something, learning a new class. It’s the plot twists when questing through a zone for the first time. It’s messing around with my community and guild.
Everything FOMO, everything seasonal, everything competitive - those are the things I dislike the most about the game currently. To the degree that I hardly engage in that sort of content at all, sadly waving goodbye to the cool elite PvP sets and seasonal mounts. It ain’t happening. I hate it. I hate FOMO content. I hate pushing and rushing and stressing. It’s not fun. I ain’t doing it.
WoW’s playerbase is still massive, even if we’re talking 1 million players instead of 100 million players. 1 million players are 1 million PEOPLE with different playstyles and preferences, and while bringing something new on the table is always excellent, don’t talk like you know exactly what “all players” want and need. You only know what you yourself want. And that’s excellent. But anyone of a different opinion is allowed that opinion too. No one gets monopoly when it comes to opinion.
If I could decide what would get included in the game, it would be some kind of VR. Exploring the world from “inside” properly would be the next-level experience that I want from WoW. I would do much and pay a lot to see an open-world VR MMORPG in the Warcraft universe.
Well I was there… Gw2 actually came out on my birth day even. I didn’t even know about the game existing until it released…
We all leveled up too the max level and we where all like …‘‘what now?’’ We where all so used too the wow formula… None of us knew what character progression in gw2 was supposed too look like when we reached max level…
Guild wars 2 character progression comes in the form of class progression… World progression etc. You have too do allot of world content too unlock you class talents…
Your world abilities and your mount abilities etc… But guild wars 2 had no gear progression like wow had.
No m+ dungeons… It did have raids… But the gear in guild wars 2 is for the most part crafted ascended gear. Not raid or m+ loots.
But guild wars 2 offers soo much more world content than wow does… If wow had remotely done the same… WoW would have been the ultimate mmo
I don’t think that is the case… I think Blizzard will take in as much feedback as possible and try too invent something new for us all.
I dont think they will hunker down and only bet on those players you mentioned.
I am receiving huge replies and massive walls of text now. I am sorry if i cant get back to you all
What does that even mean?!
At the end of the day, then it’s a question of how much money the executive leadership is willing to hand over to the WoW development team to make a new expansion and operate the Live Service component.
And that amount of money isn’t going to get bigger. It’s going to get smaller.
That goes without saying, because the game is losing popularity over time. It has done so for years. It has no growth potential.
If WoW suddenly sees sharp competition or suffers loss of popularity due to its own failings, then the course of action is to invest the least amount of money possible to maintain the most customers possible. Because there’s no growth to be had there’s no return on investment beyond the minimum needed.
That’s just how it is.
short answer ? to daycare or after school acitvities to pick up their kids.
we are all grown ups now and kids/ teens are not interested in those kind of games anymore .
they ether play pvp lobby games or mobile auto battlers 
times change .
I am sorry I am stupid… But from a stupid fox view… It means they have too re invent the mmo genre to appeal to our young ones… the same way WoW appealed and was amazing to us when we first experienced it.
Thats what the Riot mmo wants too do. And the way I see it? Its a race
Who invents the next genre and the new mmo first? Blizzard on the throne? Or riot