Why World of Warcraft 2 Won't Happen

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About WoWcrendor
Professional nerd, mediocre comedian and expert non-content creator.

Wowcrendor

[Destinum]

Programmer here: "Game engine" is just a fancy word for "code framework". A game engine essentially is a bunch of pre-built functions so you don't have to do literally everything from scratch every time (i.e. physics, graphics rendering, etc.). Just like any other piece of code, they can (and are) absolutely updated, and changing certain aspects of an engine to fit the game being worked on isn't uncommon.

[griggins]

A rare video where it's not just someone saying "because the current devs can't, they suck now, they'd screw it up, etc". You're pretty much spot on that it's fragmenting the playerbase way too much, and it's not really worth the risk since retail is basically WoW 2 or 3 or whatever at this point.

[gdi]

100% agree with expansions can be a 'startover' point. They already are in terms of mechanics. Power creep is a problem in writer's heads. You don't always need to keep upping the ante. You can literally just stop at any time.

[MaMastoast]

The biggest reason for Wow 2 would be creating a fresh start. Reset the plot to something far more grounded, clean up the gameplay features to a solid foundation and work from there

[frantictoast]

They're already splitting it 3 ways. Classic Era, wotlk, retail.

[sinswhisper]

i want an expansion with Guy Hero and Grey Storm as the boss

[josephlink]

The studio can’t develop an upgraded version of their game right now it’s way outside the scope of their ability

[timesgoneby]

ok, so.. starting out on expansion.. i rolled a new character for the first time in Dragonflight.. went to timewalk Jade Forest, and saw a quest killable NPC banging on an outhouse door.. So there's that.. Don't need WoW 2.0 just need more of that.

[diddydoodat]

They should make Warcraft 4, another RTS game. It could be all the events that we played through in WoW

[StephenThuggin]

I think you mean 4. Classic, Classic HC, WotLK Classic and retail.

[bonestryke]

I LOVE the gear idea and think it should be done EVERY expansion as it would keep the old dungeons/raids alive.

[martinbennett]

Hey Crendor, as you requested here's my feedback as a software engineer who has worked on game engines for a very long time (and currently working on one of those you mentioned!). Engines cost as an absolute fortune to produce, and they are continuously changed over time by 10s/100s/1000s of programmers - it's not a new engine you get with each release of Madden or Fifa, it's the same one as before but with changes. To be honest WoW's engine is just fine, it's done a fantastic job for twenty-ish years. Creating a new in-house engine would be a stupid, pointless waste of money, they can just add functionality to the existing one. Most of the people who bang on about 'engines' have no idea what they're talking about.

[civildisorder]

I'll end up making a couple comments on this but wanted to get this thought out before I forget: People confuse graphics with art style a lot. WoW has a lot of the same graphics options other video games do, and maybe on stuff like shaders it won't go as hard, but WoW having a cartoon look vs realism isn't a graphics matter. It's an art choice. A great one! It looks distinct and it's probably the one thing WoW has held true to the old Warcraft games this whole time.

[GeorgeStokes]

Wholeheartedly agree about trying to take it back to basics. Going back and playing Classic when it was first a thing made me realise that's what I was missing from when I quit (around end of Pandaria time). I missed being a dude who didn't even have a horse trying to make a difference in the world. You become THE adventurer, not A adventurer. But I don't know how you reset it, in Cata I distinctly remember picking apples for a farmer whilst decked out in gear and weapons I got from slaying dragon aspects, lich kings and star gods. Felt like "dude do you know who I am?".

[Bradman]

I just wish the damn kids in Stormwind would grow up and making peace with the defilials. Kind of ticks me that after all this time debts aren't paid and orphans of war that was like 20 years ago in game would become adults and have a better life. Honestly, and this goes for all mmo's and more likely something that can't really work is that you never get to see the rewards of your hard work on the world. I mean every expantion change something in older areas just a little, so you can see that something has changed because someone killed the final boss of the last expantion.

[FratinandMadrik]

The engine argument is such a nonargument to me. The people who want a "new engine" seem to just look at Unreal Engine and think "Yeah, I want this, and they have a 5.0 version now, so we need a WoW 2.0 for it to work" when in reality, the engine is constantly being updated. It's the ship of Theseus theory: If you constantly replace small bits of the code and framework that make up the engine, are we ever really getting a new engine? Are we still on the same engine?

In reality, we're probably on the 3rd official incarnation of the WoW engine at this point. Things like increased render distance, allowing for larger or animated textures on things like armor or mounts, tech like Dragonriding or Zaralek Caverns, are all slowly being updated. The engine has technical limitations, but as Crendor mentions, I think the majority of the things we'd want are things that can be added in expansions and don't require an entirely new engine. If the game were to be suddenly updated to become a physics-based ARPG, then maybe it's easier to just start over in a new engine specifically made for that, but otherwise, just keep patching that framework so it fits whatever new stuff we need.

[baval]

They missed their opportunity for it. At the beginning of Shadowlands we were told we might not be able to come back from it. All they had to do was say "welp we were right, the heroes have to stay in the afterlife after saving the world" and then could have made WoW2.

[tableslam]

I can't be the only one who feels this way but I would love to see a "prequel" Warcraft MMO set in the same time period as Warcraft 1 and/or 2, or even WAY back in the past, like pre-sundering. And then that story would have a pretty conclusive end point since the Sundering would have to happen. So we'd be going into it knowing the "ending" so to speak, and that's okay. Lots of books/movies/shows/games are prequels of already existing media, and people still enjoy those even though they already know what happens afterwards

[rihasanatrofolo]

I think people want a number 2 to allow the developers to explore radically new ideas without restrictions.

Wow is currently stuck in a never ending loop of a new expansion every two years with +10 lvl cap, new quests, new dungeons, new raids, new pvp stuff and eventually a squish. This just repeats forever, the same stuff with a new coat of paint.

WoW as an universe has massive potential, what if it could be so much more than just this?

The world gets less cohesive because they just keep shoe horning in new stuff. What if they changed philpsophy to the whole world, not just new zones. Also a whole new action combat system would be cool.

If wow2 were to ever happen, it should drop their beloved formula and go all inn on radical new ideas. Drop quests, massive changes to raids, combat etc. Sky is the limit here.

[Lancor]

Yeah from a technical perspective we are already in WoW 2 or more. The engine was reworked so much. It looks and plays so much better than the 2004 release already.