Usually, Activision-Blizzard investor calls are boring as heck and I wish I didn’t have to sit through all the Call of Duty and Candy Crush primping just to hear the Blizzard stuff, especially when some of the news is bad, as it was yesterday with news of Blizzard dropping another 2M MAUs, down 21% in less than three years. But there were some interesting nuggets about the future of World of Warcraft that deserve some extra attention this time.
For starters, during the call, Bobby Kotick explicitly said WoW Retail and Classic are due for “more frequent major content launches” in the future, while J. Allen Brack followed that up by discussing plans to expand the development teams and add “even more content” for the two halves of the game. But then, at the end of his spiel not-answering a question about the playerbase, Brack seemed to suggest that Blizzard is looking beyond the current version of WoW with its Warcraft plans:
“If we step back, we think of Warcraft as a huge franchise, and WoW is only a part of that. We’re always exploring how to express Warcraft with new experiences, and we’ve seen a lot of opportunity for growth there in 2021 and beyond.”
What specifically does he mean? I dunno. It could be anything or nothing. It could be WoW 2, a Warcraft battle royale, mobile WoW, World of Warcraft: The Virtual Reality Mess, or Warcraft IV. Or literally it could mean that they explored that opportunity and aren’t doing jack with it.
What do you think? What does the future of (World of) Warcraft look like?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
