Blizzard has been on a role the past couple years with the revival of Diablo, continued success of StarCraft II, and the wildly successful card-game Hearthstone. No one can deny Blizzard’s success to keep their audience captivated, but with all this success and all the hype rising up from games like Hearthstone, it appears that Blizzard’s classic game, World of Warcraft, has been left in the dust.
That’s a bit of an exaggeration if we think about it, however. The game’s popularity is still very prevalent and to this day, they are still boasting close to a 7 million player count. Unfortunately, this is nothing compared to the 12 million players they had a couple years back. This would lead us to believe Blizzard has gone scrambling for answers in order to compete against other popular MMOs, doing their best to lead WoW back to the state of prestige where it once was.
Tom Chilton, World of Warcraft game designer, has his own thoughts. He stated in an interview with MCV, “We really don’t know if it will grow again. It is possible, but I wouldn’t say it’s something that we expect. Our goal is to make the most compelling content we can.”
If the aim is as Chilton said, to maintain their audience and continue to produce excellent content, there is little room for doubt that they’re doing a fairly decent job. However, if they wish for their player count to rise, they’re going to have to dive into the age of free-to-play games. With League of Legends, Hearthstone, and several other popular MMOs now being free-to-play, the answer to growing their numbers is following the trend.
What do you think of WoW’s falling numbers? Have they lost the prestige it once held and does it have any chance to go back to the success it once experienced. Let us know what you think in the comments down below. For all things Blizzard and World of Warcraft, keep up with CPGaming.gg.
From PC Gamer