There was a really thought provoking article on WOW.com recently:

Breakfast Topic: How should WoW end?

A satisfactory end and a party would be a lot of fun, but I would like to see a darker conclusion to all of our efforts. What if we become so powerful, that we are like titans ourselves? The ensuing battle is one glorious free-for-all resulting in a cataclysmic event ending all life in Azeroth as we know it. Boom! Game over.
 

The article makes an interesting comparison to possible WoW endings, and the way Tabula Rasa Ended.

The End of Tabula Rasa - Server Shutdown Event
 

Anyway... something to think about.

How should WoW end?

How should MMOs end in general?
 

How should Everquest or Ultima Online end? WoW will go on for many years and will probably end closer to 2020 than 2010. Although it will probably end with the sub numbers going slowly down and servers being removed, then Blizzard releases a new MMO and most of the players from WoW will move there. Then you'll probably have a few 100k playing on a couple of servers for quite some years, then the game goes free to play for some time and then they shut down the last servers.

WoW will end with the death of the last evil god and then everyone will live happy forever after.

Actually I couldn't care less for the World of Warcraft lore since it's so corny and plagiarized from the work of better men.

I don't think that the creator of the World of Warcraft lore really cares for it and that should tell you something.

 I honestly think it will take decades before WoW dies. Ultima Online was released 10 years ago and is still up and running and it had a MUCH smaller playerbase to start with. WoW might survive all of us ;)

WoW may end, probably when it no longer has enough players for one server, but Warcraft will never end.

You don't kill off the most profitable IP in your company just because one of the games based on it is coming to an end. :)

MMO's do not "die", they super nova

Last day events should probably be planned as a thank you from the devs to its player base.  Like TR did in its last days, very classy bunch of devs in that game. 

Unlike SOE devs of old with SWG or anything to do with $medly; I suspect they would have just turned off the servers at midnight and refund those who paid for that month already...not because it was owed to them, but because they don't want to get sued for it.

Why are you worried about how WoW will end?  I'm will to bet that WoW is closer to the beginning of WoW than the end of WoW.  After all, this game has over 12 million ACTIVE (currently paying) subscribers.  WoW is going nowhere.   Folks, please.  Stop the doom and gloom posts about WoW.  If UO and EQ can still be around after all these years with the few subscribers they have, I'm sure WoW will be around for at least another decade or two.  Remember, WoW brings in more money to Blizzard in a year than all of Turbine's, SoE's, Mythic's, mmorpgs combined. 

You should be writing about what new classes and professions will be introduced with WoW's next expansion and what new races will we be able to play.  Think POSTIVE for once.

It should not die :)

it should be kept alive for the next 2000 years as a warning how a complete genre and more than half of the MMO industry can be drifted in the wrong direction by following the million flies that eat shit.

Anyway - that was the bitter version, i think as long as there are players who have fun in WoW it should not die at all. 

If at some point it does not bring any cash in anymore for blizzard they should bring out a WoW2 where you can start with burrying your WoW1 character in a newbie quest, giving him a statue or tombstone for everyone to see who you are in WoW. From this tombstone you should be able to log into WoW in "ghost-and-zombie-mode" and haunt the players who still play it then in undead battlefields ;)

Knitting WoW1 and WoW2 together like that would be hilarious fun i think :) Imagine you play your ex toon as a zombie har har.

Nuclear winter will kills all, but WoW and cockroach will  survive....

After eradicating every single known thread to Azeroth, and every single potential powerful race across the universe. The Alliance and the Horde have no reason to "team up" so to speak, also as such, all the races start veiwing themselves as all powerful.

All alliances brake down, and azeroth becomes a multifronted warground.

Originally posted by aleos

MMO's do not "die", they super nova

This. You just pull the plug. The end.

Slowly decaying as other MMOs, but I would add a buff called the Power of the Legend or something, that would be universal and become stronger as less people is playing. So right now it would multiply the stats by 1, but for instance when there are only 100 people playing per server, stats would multiply by a big numer and they'd be legends and *very* powerful.

Turn the FFA PvP switch on, so it becomes a final battle to the death.  Once you die, you die.  Let there be only one!!  No more new characters.  No nothing.  The final survivor is enshrined on Blizzard's website forever=)

 I would end the game that way:

Setting *all* items to the game to legenday, and adding 9 random traits.  And maybe spawming enemy monster in the citys, the most cool monsters, and some npc's that give great buffs there.

Originally posted by sandolainen

How should Everquest or Ultima Online end? WoW will go on for many years and will probably end closer to 2020 than 2010. Although it will probably end with the sub numbers going slowly down and servers being removed, then Blizzard releases a new MMO and most of the players from WoW will move there. Then you'll probably have a few 100k playing on a couple of servers for quite some years, then the game goes free to play for some time and then they shut down the last servers.

Sand's post is how most MMOs do end. Why? Because companies usually are turning a profit on an MMO that they keep running, even if it has only 30k subs and was launched a decade ago... so why WOULD they want to shut it down? Furthermore, these companies don't want to upset their fans, and even 10 years down the road there are still going to be people on the web that would rather play WoW than anything else.

That aside, god damn! Shutting down WoW at or shortly after the release of Blizzard's next MMO, and shutting it down with a BANG... wow. That would be a fantastic ending. Blizzard would earn some serious style points in my book, and probably in almost everyone else's too, if they pulled that off. Sure they'd piss off all the people who haven't had their fill of WoW yet. And they'd piss off all the people who want to keep playing WoW instead of anything else. But they WOULD be doing something that is truly novel and different and potentially oh, so awesome.

 massive apocalyptic battle, with the forces of evil winning.

and for WoW, possible a segway into this new MMO they are supposedly creating.....

According to some folks, everything including WOW ends in 2012.

But how?

Originally posted by Shannia

Why are you worried about how WoW will end?  I'm will to bet that WoW is closer to the beginning of WoW than the end of WoW.  After all, this game has over 12 million ACTIVE (currently paying) subscribers.  WoW is going nowhere.   Folks, please.  Stop the doom and gloom posts about WoW.  If UO and EQ can still be around after all these years with the few subscribers they have, I'm sure WoW will be around for at least another decade or two.  Remember, WoW brings in more money to Blizzard in a year than all of Turbine's, SoE's, Mythic's, mmorpgs combined. 

You should be writing about what new classes and professions will be introduced with WoW's next expansion and what new races will we be able to play.  Think POSTIVE for once.

 

Actually, once the China servers go offline for transition to new ownership, the game will be at more like 5-6 million.

As for WoW's end, it isn't going to happen for decades. Most players will be in and out several times, there will be many more expansions, and probably even graphical updates. There are too many horrible MMO's still running about to even get a proper estimate of its lifespan.

I'm on board with one of the apocalyptic endings, especially the FFA PvP battle, but we all know some rogue will just stay hidden, waiting for the last two people to duel, and then gank the winner when he's at 10%.

Otherwise, I could see them finishing off the Old Gods, then calling it quits, and making way for WoW II some years down the road.  Maybe with some single player RPG story telling games inbetween.

Considering the "lore" started with humans and orcs occupying the same territory, and has expanded to include "footnotes" such as Sargeras now being the incredibly powerful perpetrator of evil... I'm sure they could keep the story going for quite some time.