The End of Warcraft as We Know It

Warcraft begun in 1994 with the release of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. Ten years later World of Warcraft was released to much fanfare and it quickly surpassed all other MMO’s. Unfortunately for fans of the franchise, the IP has passed it’s prime. From a fairly recent peak of over 12 million, subscriptions have now fallen to just over 10 million.

Now, notice I did not say that World of Warcraft had passed it’s prime, but rather that the IP had passed it’s prime. The reason for this is much more dire and it resides squarely with the latest announced expansion: Mists of Pandaria. I guess Mike Morhaime must have really enjoyed Kung Fu Panda, and who knows, maybe it was even originally planned to coincide with the release of Kung Fu Panda 2. If that wasn’t bad enough, Blizzard has decided to rip off Pokeman as well.

With subscription numbers already falling fairly heavily, Mists of Pandaria will surely hasten the decline. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. All good things must come to an end and when they do, they are often replaced by something better. WoW is obviously showing it’s age and while Activision Blizzard would surely be sad to see it go the way of the dodo, I think it would be fun and exciting to see where they would take Warcraft next. Unfortunately, the great IP will now forever be tarnished with a race of giant pandas. The best that could be hoped for is that whenever WoW finally does die, that this mysterious and unwelcome band of pandas is swept under the rug – that Blizzard would create some plot line that the entire race suddenly felt the call to return to their ancestral home which exists in a separate plane of existence that only pandas can go to. Blizzard could even spin this off into a seperate series of games and they could take the new Pokemon game mechanics with it.

I have played every Warcraft game to date. I was in elementary school when Warcraft: Orcs and Humans was released. When Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness came out, I practically lived at a friends house because while my computer could run the game alright, it couldn’t handle playing beautiful cinematics. An expansion, sequel, and another expansion later brought us to World of Warcraft. Love it or hate it, it certainly changed the game. I have signed up for, played with varying levels of intensity, and later cancelled a subscription to every expansion.

Now personally, the best thing that I could see happening with World of Warcraft would be to can the current iteration, put out a WoW2 with graphical improvements in addition to others, and put out a game that on face value looks like vanilla, but plays like the newer expansions. What I mean by that is that obviously all the improvements made to diversify questing and other things to help make the game focus more on story and character development are good, but that I simply enjoy playing in a fantasy universe devoid of people flying around on rockets and such. I’d love to see things get back horses that stay on the ground with weapons and armor that actually look like weapons and armor. Instead what we have now is a gummy bear world where anyone can be anything with minimal effort and as such there is nothing special about anything. Just got an awesome dragon mount? Sounds pretty impressive huh? Well all the other 10 million players have half a dozen as well.

So why this focus on pandas and pokemon? Well, I’m sure Blizzard has all kinds of data on who’s playing their game, who the new subscribers are, and who the returning subscribers are. My only guess is that this new expansion is designed to focus on the Asian market (aren’t pandas revered in some places?) as well us young gamers probably under 10-12. If this is where the money is and this is where WoW can continue to shine, then it’s probably a good idea for the company. It’s just always disappointing to see a great franchise be treated with such disrespect.