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World of Warcraft vows faster expansion development
Many Azerothian eyes are fixed on tomorrow's release of World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, but what happens after that? Will players face a severe content drought as they just did while they wait for expansion #6? Lead Game Designer Ion Hazzikostas said that the team is pushing to increase the pace of expansion development: "Our goal is certainly to release expansions a little faster than we have been... we've increased the size of our team, and we feel like we're in a place where we should be able to move faster than before." He also fielded the eternal question of a hypothetical World of Warcraft 2, saying that the team would need "a different vision" and mechanics that allowed for new types of gameplay. To help with your Warlords of Draenor countdown, Blizzard put out a few expansion-themed posters as well as an Age of Iron trailer that you can watch after the break!
The Daily Grind: What would you want in a World of Warcraft 2?
Your guess is as good as mine as to how serious Blizzard was being the other week when it floated the possibility of a sequel to World of Warcraft during an interview. After all, words are cheap, but development is crazy expensive. But let's have a little fun with this concept today, whether or not a WoW 2 is in the making. Assuming that there was one being brewed up, what would you want to see done with it? Would it embrace more sandbox features? Would it simply remake the current game or jet off on its own timeline? Would you even prefer a platform switch, such as a mobile WoW or a virtual reality-based one? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Gamescom 2014: Blizzard says World of Warcraft 2 is 'something we have talked about'
World of Warcraft fans are not the only ones who have speculated about a sequel to the hit MMO. Blizzard Game Director Tom Chilton gave a surprisingly non-evasive answer at this year's Gamescom about whether the company was thinking about creating World of Warcraft 2. "It's something we have talked about," Chilton said. "It's something we have talked about for 10 years. I think that there are a lot of challenges there in seeing how World of Warcraft 2 relates to World of Warcraft, do they live alongside each other, does one feed into the other, what is that product, etc. These are challenges that have to be figured out before that becomes a reality."
Smedley on EverQuest Next and defining the next generation of MMOs
The new design for EverQuest Next has recently been shared internally with SOE staff, bringing the game closer than ever before to being A Thing. SOE President John Smedley talked with PC Gamer about his hopes for the game. Two previous designs for EQ Next have been scrapped because they were too close to the source. Smedley said that "the previous designs [SOE] had for the next EverQuest were cookie-cutter, they were 'me too.'" He admitted to being nervous before showing off the newest designs to the staff but that in the end, he felt "vindicated" by SOE's warm reception. "We're not trying to make [World of Warcraft] 2 or EverQuest 2.5 -- we're making something that we think will define the next generation of MMOs."
Do we need a World of Warcraft II?
I read the forums. I do so because it's part of my job, because I like seeing what people are saying, and because sometimes a thread actually makes me think. This thread, asking people what they'd like to see in a sequel to World of Warcraft, did that and then some for me. First, the response from Vaneras that got me the most interested in talking about it. Vaneras - WoWII? I really hope they will do it some day, but if they do it, they won't do it sooner than 5 years, at least. The idea is basically the same game, but with way better graphics, new features, new NPCs/Items etc etc. It would be cool, because the skeleton would be the same, but the rest would be new. But that doesn't sound like something that would require an entirely new game though, but of course that is just my personal opinion. As I see it, these things could just as well be upgrades to the current game through patches and expansions, much like what we have seen already in the game's evolution from its release until today. I think something more would be required in order to rationalise the end of WoW in favour of WoW II :-) source When EverQuest II came out in 2004, its predecessor was the largest MMO in the world. One of the charges leveled at EQII was that it looked and felt so different from EverQuest itself that it split the player base and, since this happened just around the time that World of Warcraft was launching, left the door open for the upstart game to get a serious footing. It's possible that if it weren't for EQII, we'd have ended up with a smaller MMO scene where a game with a million subscribers was considered a rousing success. Now, I'm not arguing that it's always a bad thing to have a sequel to an MMO. There are MMO's out right now which run concurrently with a sequel and seem to be doing fine. The question becomes, does World of Warcraft need one?
The Digital Continuum: It won't be World of Warcraft 2
I love Blizzard, and not just for creating World of Warcraft. I've loved them since they were called Silicon & Synapse and created Rock 'n Roll Racing. But if there's one thing I've learned about the developer, it's that when making games they prefer to improve upon established models more than anything else. That statement may seem to run counter to my title, but stay with me here.When Jeff Kaplan announced his move to the company's next-gen MMO, I didn't wonder if World of Warcraft would suffer. I also didn't ponder why Blizzard and Jeff made that choice and if it would mean their second massively multiplayer online entry was going to effective be a sequel to their first. All I considered was which MMOs they were going to pluck ideas from this time, and how cleverly they'd could be implemented.
Breakfast Topic: How much are expansions changing the game?
Groups of Words' anonyomous blogger bought up a rather interesting theory regarding World of Warcraft expansions: They're actually more like sequels, in that they change a lot of the basic groundwork of the game and the classes to such a point that it feels like a completely different game. As evidence of this, he puts forth a large list things that have changed between original WoW and Burning Crusade. Being a semi-old-timer to WoW, I certainly recognized pretty much all of the changes, and thinking back, a lot of them have been doozies.
Blizzard is not even thinking about making World of Warcraft II
If you were hoping the next-gen Blizzard MMO currently in development would turn out to be World of Warcraft II, prepare to be disappointed. Blizzard's Frank Pearce told videogamer.com that the folks at Blizzard "haven't even started to think about a sequel" to World of Warcraft. So, we can knock one potential title off the "could be the next Blizzard MMO" list.We're not surprised. MMO sequels have had an uninspiring past. Ultima Worlds Online: Origin was canceled before it even reached the beta testing stage. EverQuest II and Lineage II have both been fairly successful but they've failed to attract anywhere near as many players as their predecessors. There's also the whole "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" thing. World of Warcraft is still growing in terms of global numbers (though that growth is probably mostly thanks to China). People numbering in the millions across all continents are still playing WoW. It might make sense to make another kind of MMO with a different sort of motif so as to expand your current base, but as for a sequel to WoW; what would be the point of spending millions of dollars to challenge your own throne?
