The King Is Dead; Long Live The King?

Arthas has left the building, will WoW follow?

IncGamers' Bill Vaughan discusses a couple of reasons why the Lich King's demise could spell the end of WoW's long reign.

[Leord]

I like this line of thought. Or, at least it's interesting to explore.

[siliticx]

Butt from another standpoint, it could be reborrn even stronger.

Cataclysm could be like a fresh start. The king is dead. The end of the Warcraft 3 segment has finally arrived and could mean a stronger WoW that would lead the way into Warcraft 4.

[Medievaldragon]

There's always the possibility that Arthas gets resurrected by Bolvar Fordragon. It rises the question though. What's the next chapter for the Undead Scourge now that Fordragon is the new Lich King?

Will he become a new threat in a future expansion, or an ally?

[Fyzzu]

Not buying it. It might see a drop in the playerbase until Cataclysm turns up, but once it does, subscriptions will once again rise sharply.

[AndyA]

I doubt I'll ever get to face the Lich King anyway - wish I had the time to join a guild.

[Maticus]

Blizzard is likely to time Cataclysm so that it releases a few months before SW:TOR. Everyone will be absorbed in playing the new content to want to try anything else I reckon.

If SW:TOR was released now or next month, then there'd be trouble.

[Malfurion]

Never thought I'd be that interested in SW:TOR until I played Dragon Age. Huge BioWare fan now, so awaiting that game with massive anticipation.

[Baka-akaB]

What irks me with WoW , is despite it's obvious quality as a mmo , is how it sullied and destroy most active plotlines mmo guidelines .

multiple factions in a rts ? Destroyed and streamlined into 2 ... check
Long awaited and plotted return of multiple legendary foes ? Turned into a raid with boss kill ... check .

Always made me feel that Wow should have been in a distant past , or distant future of the warcraft universe instead .

[Maticus]

There are multiple factions, there's only two playable ones :P

The legendary foes thing is addressed in the article. The majority of WoW players don't have a clue about the game's lore, or care about it. Blizzard covers its bases by attempting to make the lore interesting, but keep the gameplay satisfying too.

[Baka-akaB]

I know they dont care , wich is why they shouldnt have muddied War2 and 3 anyway , and set the game in a parallel universe , or another timeline .

There is no way imo , folks who enjoyed the storylines featured in War2 , War3 and the first trilogies of books , could be really happy about how it turned out .

At least no one signed up for warcraft 3's epic campaigns , to see it unfold as vulgar end bosses no one will care about in the coming months

[Maticus]

Oh I agree completely, I think it's a shame how things turned out for them, as you say, a boss that no one will bother visiting after Cataclysm.

But the story goes on, they can't be these evil guys threatening Azeroth forever. And I think most people that play WoW now never tried WCIII anyway.

[The Great Melon]

Yeah, I know what your feeling. I played Warcraft I, II, and III and followed the story, but now things have happened that I don't know about. I hope Blizzard realizes that many who played the rts didn't play the mmo when they release Warcraft IV.

[champ21]

i played wow for a quite a while, i been playing this franchise back from the warcraft 2 days. its been great and the story in warcraft 3 was epic. It really got me into wow.

However most ppl play wow due to the social aspect. Many ppl joined wow due to word of mouth and how refined it was compared to other mmo's.

IMO Arthas going down might effect a very little part of the base, since most ppl dont know about the lore.

Those who want to be playing an MMO will stick to Wow.

[threepy]

I love the story of Arthas. Having only got into WoW with WotLK and having played Warcraft 3 because of the lore surrounding Arthas it's sad to see the story over. I don't think I'll get as interested in any other lore to be honest. However, as someone said above, so many WoW fans won't care about the lore so it's not a problem. Similarly, so many fans that will never finish the story for themselves (by defeating the Lich King) shouldn't be too put off either.

One point I would argue however is the claim that players will either be over geared for ToC (so doing ICC) or under geared and therefore doomed to failure.
People will do ToC for a while yet. For a start, it's so easy to get gear I'd be more worried about people gearing so fast that ToC is their first level 80 raid. Also there are weekly raids. And of course fun. ToC at least (not Ulduar) is easy and fast to complete if done right so is easily PUGable. It's easy to get gear, people will just progress through ToC onto ICC faster.

The thing that concerns me is that for those without a guild to do ICC in, you are limited with what you can do. If you can't do full runs, then PUG runs of the first quarter of ICC for example won't take much time up. For those without guilds, they may be spending less time on the game purely because with the ability to get gear faster, there's less to do...if you don't have a guild to raid with.

[ARMY_HAWK]

With Final Fantasy 14 online coming this year, as well as other MMO's I highly doubt WoW will stay on top

[Zuhk]

And if final fantasy 11 didnt do it to wow, what makes you think 14 will?

[ARMY_HAWK]

Final Fantasy was on top of all MMO's when it first released. WoW came a few years after FFXI thats why it never surpassed it. Now it's a different story, WoW is now outdated and it does not have the depth of a Final Fantasy game, and trust me I played both of them(FFXI and WoW) And when FFXIV comes out, it will surpass WoW, in gameplay atleast