How many people, besides WoW players, are excited to hear about WoW expansions in 2024?
They have become as predictable as winter.
Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 - the latter rewrote the rules of the RTS.
Then of course there was World of Warcraft, which really did seem to captivate the world.
But how long has it been since it can claim to have done that?
The future seems to have become about reliving the glory of the past.
It’s not just Warcraft that’s tiring.
Look across Blizzard more broadly and ask, “When was the last time it gave us something new?
Do we really have to go back toOverwatchin 2015 to find the answer?
What a renaissance moment for Blizzard productivity that was.
Where did that go?
Where is the new?
Then, it was rocked by layoffs.
Evidently a lot of really important structural work at the company has been done.
There’s also experimentation and risk being taken on existing projects.
Vital progress has been made.
But when is Blizzard going to excite us with something new again?
It’s as though, in being tossed around a bit, the company lost some of its nerve.
Reliving it over and over again in Classic isn’t the same thing.
But for how long is that sustainable?
Moreover, where do you find the desire and the appetite to take the risk?
What’s doubly worrying is that Blizzard does seem to have been trying.
But it was canned -canned aftersix yearsof developmentamidst Microsoft-mandated layoffs earlier this year.
It’s a shame.
But does it want to?
That’s the question.
I don’t want Blizzard to become a Greatest Hits band; I want to hear something new.
