Blizzard plans on making 3-4 more expansions. They will all be released in 2014-2018 I assume. The graphics are starting to show their age though, they really need to update them. I hope with the next expansion, the character creation system and graphics will be re-done. Do you people think its likely? I think they have no choice, they have to since they wanna keep releasing more expansions while competing with other MMO's that will have better graphics.

Some of the character models need to be redone, but the gameworld is fine.  The zones from the expansions have aged rather well actually.  Pandaria is very impressive.

Nope.

I doubt they would do that since it's pretty much a sinking ship.

Most of their efforts are going to be concentrated on their 'Titan' MMO.

Originally posted by birdycephon

Nope.

I doubt they would do that since it's pretty much a sinking ship.

Most of their efforts are going to be concentrated on their 'Titan' MMO.

^This

EVEonline was the onyl game that I know of to ever get a Engine update. most mmo's are designed as non updateable peices of hardware you use once and then trow away once you burned all chips on it to push the max out of it

for wow panda land is about as good as it gets untill they finaly close it to make people play their new game :)

Did they "up" the number of expansions they are doing?  I thought the "planned" number was less.

 

Like other big entities relying on consumers, they will change only when revenues significantly drop.  When Wow drops down a huge amount, to say 8 mil, or 6 mil .. then they will do changes.  Blizzard isn't getting much income from China (the majority of their customers, but China pads their numbers), so the western population has the weight here.   Perhaps around 3 million western customers hold their strings.

 

Until they need money to stay afloar, it's business as usual for Blizzard.  Don't expect changes.

Will it increase subscriptions? No

Effecting subscription retention? No. Panda sold 2.7 mil  copies on release

Add to revenue base in any way? No

Originally posted by Cassius505
Blizzard plans on making 3-4 more expansions. They will all be released in 2014-2018 I assume. The graphics are starting to show their age though, they really need to update them. I hope with the next expansion, the character creation system and graphics will be re-done. Do you people think its likely? I think they have no choice, they have to since they wanna keep releasing more expansions while competing with other MMO's that will have better graphics.

Starting?  You are kidding aren't you because they were outdated when the game released.  The dated style and graphics haven't hurt them so far so why should they spend the time and money making a major update now?

They've made improvements to the graphics, but nothing very big. I'd suspect they'd keep the same strategy.  Their cash cow is getting weaker as time goes on, and they know that the millions of dollars it would take to revamp anything to a reasonable magnitude would not pay back as well as one would hope. It's better to just keep releasing content hoping to keep the existing subscribers as long as possible.

 

Honestly, how much effort do you think that Blizzard needs to put out to maintain their existing player base?

One of WoW's selling points is that it will run on just about anything. I've talked to people who are still playing the game on 10 year old machines. It's a common enough occurrence that any sort of major graphical upgrade would be shooting themselves in the foot.

Highly unlikely. I'd figure they would be focusing most of their efforts on whatever their new IP will be. 

They should at least redo the player models and NPC's, the game really needs a better character creation system to, tons of people look exactly the same. It needs an indepth one like skyrims after the player models/npc models/mob are re-done , if they ever do that.

Originally posted by eyelolled

Honestly, how much effort do you think that Blizzard needs to put out to maintain their existing player base?

Or, more cynically: "Turd on a plate? Rawr! Take my CC!"

I suspect Blizzard is comfortably set to milk this one as long as it lasts.  They haven't even plumbed the depths of SOE-style minimum maintenance costs, yet.

I have played just about all high end mmos graphic wise, but I prefer WoW's look.  Sure it is cartoonish, but I like it. 

All the animations are very smooth and the armor very colorful.  The landscapes can be breathtaking at times.

I wouldnt change a thing.  Just keep the content coming, that's all.

Originally posted by Karteli

Did they "up" the number of expansions they are doing?  I thought the "planned" number was less.

the announced number is *two* more planned

http://www.gamespot.com/news/next-two-world-of-warcraft-expansions-planned-6367729

 

but i think we all know that WOW will probably outlast Everquest and its 19 expansions

 

Well they better redo all the character models with the expansion. WoW can still look like a great game if you play on high settings with the graphics enhancing macro and possibly a graphics improvement mod. The only thing that looks dated in comparison with other MMO's is the player/mob/npc models, they all need to be updated.  I want a character creation system where I can actually change my facial features, something detailed like Skyrim.

But most people these days fill their Interface with tons of crap using their custom Ui's numbers all over the screen and clutter everywhere, just takes away from the beauty of the game. If I go back to WoW I will make sure I find a simple UI mod.

Originally posted by Imperator101
They should at least redo the player models and NPC's, the game really needs a better character creation system to, tons of people look exactly the same. It needs an indepth one like skyrims after the player models/npc models/mob are re-done , if they ever do that.

eeer...

they just made a new character creation system with MoP.

And yes, they have announced many times that they are working on updating the character models but it is a tricky business. EVERY time they updated a model, there has been MUCH whining from people that wanted to keep the old one, see Druid cat/bear form and the tree form too.

So when they make the new models, they need to make sure they are not pissing their paying customers off with it.

"so let's put it in as an option so who wants the new model can use them and who doesn't cannot" you say. And yes, it sounds great... but then think about it and you will realize this would mean you would have a world filled with old and new models going around. As the models are probably radically different skeleton wise, that means you now have to model each and every goddamn piece of armor for twice as many models as you did before (the old ones and the new ones).

You can see the progression in engine updates by comparing the graphics of the races and environment from an expansion to the other. Just get a human and a pandaren next to each other or compare Elwyn Forest to the Jade Forest and you will see the progress. It is quite noticeable but of course it is not like passing from Doom to Crysis.

Yeah, WOW would have at least a million, maybe two million subscribers if they only had done graphics like AOC or the Secret World.  You would think that WOW would look at the success and gameplay of those successful games and try to copy them.

WOW´s graphics are good.  The animations are fast, gameplay is fast, and most importantly the synch between your keystrokes and your characters movements is perfect.   I think people need to understand the difference between graphics and artistic style.  WOW doesn´t want to have realisitc graphics, they want more cartoony graphics with brighter colors.  Everyone raved about AOCs graphics, which were a perfectly done with every drab brown, olive green and dirt tone possible.  AOC looked perfectly realistic... like kansas in a drought.

Every expansion they have been updating the graphics, adding better textures and lighting systems.. but they are never going to move away from the cartoony look and make everyone look ´realistic´.   The environments in MoP are drastically better than the old ones before Catacylsm.   Character models for the new races also.   And has been mentioned, updating the older races is a risky business since a lot of people like the old system.  My main is a Tauren, there is probably like a 50% chance that if they upgrade the textures for Tauren, I will like the old ones better.  That is a lot of risk for not a lot of reward.

I'm sure they've made a lot of tweaks to the engine under the hood over the years, but those don't necessarily give you clear "before and after" differences in screenshots.

If you want them to redo all of the textures and character models, that would be very expensive for not much benefit.  Even for a game as popular as WoW, that likely doesn't make economic sense.  You can redo a few that you later decide are particularly bad, but not redo everything.

i actually like the graphics wow has.

 

always have always will (most likely? xD)

 

but on a serious note, i havent played much MoP but when i get the chance i will soon and give a more conclusive comment :3

Originally posted by Eladi

Originally posted by birdycephon

Nope.

I doubt they would do that since it's pretty much a sinking ship.

Most of their efforts are going to be concentrated on their 'Titan' MMO.

^This

EVEonline was the onyl game that I know of to ever get a Engine update. most mmo's are designed as non updateable peices of hardware you use once and then trow away once you burned all chips on it to push the max out of it

for wow panda land is about as good as it gets untill they finaly close it to make people play their new game :)

I believe DAoC recieved a graphics overhaul iiiiin... Trials of Atlantis? Maybe it was Catacombs...