One of the most famous video games of all time, World of Warcraft, has stood at the top of the MMO charts for nearly 10 years. However, it has recently become one of the most boring and tedious games to play.
With outdated graphics, controls, and combat, and with the developers adding in new expansions too often, WoW has managed to slowly lose its player base. At the height of its empire, WoW had an active 12 million monthly subscribers. Since then, numbers have dropped to a nine-year low at around 5.5 million.
One of the many things causing WoW to lose players is its pay model. Being a monthly subscription game, it still tops the charts for subscription-based games by a landslide. But many other games have either changed or been released in other models, such as free-to-play or buy-to-play. These games, like Guild Wars 2, have a much larger player base.
One of the last hopes for developer Blizzard is their new expansion, World of Warcraft: Legion. Legion is set to come out later this year and features a new class, new weapons that can be changed into more powerful weapons, and a new map.
In addition, it’s safe to assume that Blizzard will be raising the level cap for players, since they do that every expansion.
If this expansion fails, it will mark the downfall of a giant in the video game industry. If this is the case, the death of WoW will make room for other games to grow in its place. The fate of the remaining 5.5 million subscribers and one of the world’s most famous games now rests in the hands and code of the developers.