Above: The Upper Blackrock Spire dungeon is just one of the things dramatically changing in World of Warcraft for the new Warlords of Draenor expansion pack. But some players look at it and say, “THAT again?”
“F*** Blizzard for not giving us anything new”
One player’s high quality standards is another’s timid way to run a business – or worse, a cynical way to stretch maximum dollars from a franchise that has practically printed its own money.
Even with a sharp decrease in subscribers – Warcraft has about 6.8 million active players now, down from 12 million at its peak — napkin math suggests they’re still minting close to $100 million a month.
“Blizzard, you just lost a customer,” wrote one anonymous commenter on GamesBeat’s previous story about the news. “WOW has been dead for years and is simply a chore to play … Grind, grind, grind, that’s the game. I barely play [StarCraft 2] and Diablo 3 any more. Your games are out-dated, out-played, and you’re failing to bring new content like Titan to market. It’s just sad.”
What’s notable about that comment is that it implies the gamer was still paying for WOW while he waited for the next best thing. He’s not alone, judging by other players’ thoughts.
“After StarCraft: Ghost, seven more years wasted for Titan,” one commenter wrote. “Blizzard can make great games, but they are also capable of failures of epic proportion.”
“Titan? Wasn’t that dead already?”
Some players took last year’s announcement that Blizzard was retooling Titan as confirmation that it was already dead.
“Facts don’t lie,” wrote a commenter on Wowhead. “When they put a project ‘on ice’ it just means it’s never going to see the light of day. In the entire history of this company they’ve never pulled back a project only to bring it back again at a later time.”
Some thought the announcement had already been made ages ago and questioned why the gaming media was covering it at all.
In either case, they were already looking ahead and speculating on whether future expansions of WOW will keep their interest or some other franchise might take its place.
For now, with no clear successors to the WOW empire, players must hash out for themselves what they plan to do next.