Future Of Warcraft

[gobbly2100]

The Anti-WoW. An ever-growing proportion of gamers play nothing but World of Warcraft. Developers of other games face the challenge of luring them away, as well as competing with the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion, released later this year. The same applies to other MMOs -- will gamers want to give up an all-powerful character to start again in an unknown world?

So what do you think about that statement?

[Felix12g]

I think that after 3-4 months the players will finish doing everything in the expansion besides one or two bosses that will take a hardcore group 40 hours a week to even come close to beating. They will realize that there really wasn't much added with the expansion besides a couple new levels, the zones that are destined to be laggy as hell and more instance grinding.

Those that decided to stay and play during the last 6 months because of the ever present promise of an expansion "soon" will burn out again quickly and leave for greener pastures. I wouldn't say a majority of wow players, but many have grown tired of the gameplay and the lack of things to do. There is little to do besides badly designed PvP or spending way too many hours a night for the slight chance of another piece of gear while putting up with 39 other assholes that they hate.

So far nothing they have showcased in their expansion actually shows evolving gameplay. They didn't release any new classes into the game, they changed the player models of two characters and gave them to the opposite sides and allowed those sides to play the classes they have hated for years now. Which amusingly enough, most people have played both of them, yes shamans and paladins. So when you get beyond the novelty of a flying mount you can't use in most of the game and some basic functionality that a beginner programmer could put in (The arena tournament system) and the new instances to waste your life in, there really isn't anything new.

Novelty is what is going to drag people away from WoW. They may need to start over again to build their characters, but for alot of the hardcore gamers that is what they enjoy. Otherwise why would you make 3 level 60's? Or more?
With the trend of graphics over gameplay just showing glimmerings of change, I think that novelty and having new things to do will pull people away from WoW.