I'm not quite sure it's their biggest game tbh. I did read an article some time ago which said that it got replaced by Hearthstone but I'm not sure if it's just player base or actual income as well.
Yeah, you might be right. Hearthstone has gotten very big lately. And unlike WoW - it's growing every day.
Because it's really out-dated by now. And the faster it fades away, the sooner they'll have to come up with a new game-changer. Which will affect the stock much radically than a half-dead "king"
They've been working on WoW for 10 years now. How long do you think it will take them to make something as good and as profitable? They actually change in-game mechanics every expansion, but leave core elements untouched and people love that about WoW. And if by 'outdated' you mean visuals, then I assure you - your regular MMO player doesn't really care about that. I'm pretty sure we'll see more WoW expansions in future.
Many people are praising Legion for being the second coming of WoW. Can't really say anything about it since I haven't played since Cataclysm but I can see your point.
No, that's not what I'm talking about. By this I mean it has really outdated mechanics, from quest system to battles to world development. Take Guild Wars 2 for example - it has all of those features done right, in a modern way. I mean really, have your tried to play WoW after playing modern good MMOs? Doesn't it feel at least a biiiiit moldy? And I still believe that creating a brand new game will affect both the stock and a company in a much more healthy way than trying to reanimate the corpse with each expansion (even if they do this somewhat successfully).
There haven't been any rumors about Blizzard working on a new MMO, let alone official statements. Many believe that MMO is a dated genre and people nowadays prefer other things, something less time consuming. So, I'm afraid we're stuck with WoW here, maybe a couple more expansions after Legion.
Which really makes me sad -_- Well, I guess it's always easier to make monies with a clone of Magic the Gathering or Team Fortress 2 than to come up with a completely new game...
I'm not saying they aren't But really, wouldn't you want to see what Blizzard could come up with if they decided to venture into making something unusual?
Hell yes! But I'm just being a realist here. They always stay with genres they're comfortable with and that can be milked through microtransactions. I don't think we'll see anything unusual from them in years to come.
Yeah, this is the sad reality, tbh. It's a lot easier and more comfortable to stick to the mainstream instead of trying to come up with something new.
Well, they created that mainstream. No one really cared about RTS genre before they made StarCraft and WarCraft. No one really cared about MMOs until WoW got huge. No one really cared for card games on PC until Hearthstone and so on.
Well, to be fair there were already Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh. Definitely not as pretty and as contagious as Hearthstone but still. What Hearthstone did was giving impetus for all the mediocre card games that flood the market these days.
