Is Cataclysm the Next World of Warcraft Expansion?

ajs writes "There has been no official announcement yet, but a number of moves by Blizzard Entertainment seem to indicate that the next expansion for World of Warcraft could be titled Cataclysm. Speculation began when Blizzard trademarked Cataclysm recently, and then later when a test server briefly popped up with the word 'Maelstrom' in its name. If true, the name would fall neatly into the WoW lore and expected expansion list. The Cataclysm is another name for the Great Sundering, an event that created a swirling vortex of water and mystical energies (the 'Maelstrom') that has appeared on the world map in-game since release. There are also indications that early design work included some of the islands in this area, which has long fueled anticipation of a Maelstrom-based expansion involving the former Night Elf noble, Azshara, queen of the Naga and the Goblins whose main city is in the south seas."

Comments

Will Interest Wane?

[HalAtWork]

Will interest wane in WoW simply because it seems like just an extension to the treadmill? Are people getting tired of the aesthetic? These are questions from someone who doesn't see the attraction in the first place.

Re:Will Interest Wane?

[Kingrames]

Then you'd have been impressed by the latest expansion, which made all the questing very story driven, interesting, and added memorable moments to just about every quest.

One of the WORST quests in the northrend expansion has you free a storm giant, and ride his back while he runs around squishing legions of the undead and exacting revenge on his captors. Then you set him free, and unlike the old world quests, he's not back in the cage when you run around there later. He's actually free.

Then there's the dungeons, where you fight bosses with all sorts of fun abilities, like the one that renders the entire party insane - forcing you to kill your teammates twice, or the one that you ride a dragon to fight the boss, or the one that gores party members at random forcing you to play without a party member for a short while.

They've come a long way from the boring version of wow. Even though I did get burned out after the expansion hit, it wasn't because of the game, but the people in it. I think that makes it as much a success as any game can be expected to be.

It has a story?

[dj245]

I might be convinced that the game has a story, but it is presented in such a tedious and boring way that I could never be bothered to pay any attention. All I ever saw was "NPC: blah blah blah kill 20 other NPC's blah blah blah". I can think of many games with poor storylines, and many games with great storylines, but WOW is one of the only games in which I didn't care at all about the storyline.

Re:It has a story?

[blahplusplus]

"but WOW is one of the only games in which I didn't care at all about the storyline."

I think the problem is that the the storyline gets garbled because anyone who never played warcraft series (from the first on) won't have a damn clue WTF is going on. World of Warcraft is REALLY bad at what the RTS games were good at: Story telling.

I really think the MMO genre is not suited to storytelling unless you go the way of Guildwars. Guildwars with more story polish would have been an outstanding single and multiplayer game, even though it's primarily "multiplayer" because the groups are so small and everything is instanced.

Plus there's no rule saying you can't play the campaign by yourself, and they BOTS/NPC characters you can add to your party, and play in your own instance. Guildwars is pretty much one of the only games that got instancing dead on right out the gate.

WOW is really a crap MMO from a lot of standpoints outside the aesthetics of the cartoony graphics, I couldn't stand wow when I first played it. I forced myself to play it for 2 or 3 months and it still didn't hold a candle to Blizzards previous games like Warcraft and Starcraft in terms of fun and quality.

Most WoW'ers I suspect have really awful gaming tastes. I call it the "bottom feeders" MMO. If you're used to single player RPG's of yesteryear it breaks all the conventions and sticks in maddening things like extended travel time (instead of town portal like in say diablo 1+2 another blizzard game).

It seems in many ways MMO's are sabotaging all the lessons learned about making fun games to extend playtime for $.

Expansion List

[cyxxon]

Haven't seen this posted, so here we go... this list was "leaked" or whatever before TBC, AFAIK remember...

- Draenor Set

Azuremyst Isle - 1 to 10
Bloodmyrk Isle - 10 to 20

Eversong Forest - 1 to 10
Quel'thalas - 10 to 20
Hellfire Peninsula - 58 to 62
Zangarmarsh - 60 to 64
Terokkar Forest - 61 to 65
The Deadlands - 63 to 67
Nagrand - 64 to 68
Blade's Edge Mountains - 66 to 70
Netherstorm - 67 to 70
Shadowmoon Valley - 69 to 70

- Northrend Set

Borean Tundra - 67 to 70
Howling Fjord - 67 to 70
Dragonblight - 69 to 72
Grizzly Hills - 70 to 73
Crystalsong Forest - 72 to 75
Zul'drak - 73 to 76
Sholazar Basin - 75 to 79
Storm Peaks - 76 to 80
Icecrown Glacier - 78 to 80

- Maelstrom Set

Gilneas - 77 to 80
Grim Batol - 78 to 81
Kul Tiras - 79 to 82
Kezan - 81 to 86
Tel Abim - 83 to 85
Zandalar - 84 to 87
Plunder Isle - 86 to 88
The Broken Isles - 87 to 90
The Maelstrom - 89 to 90

- Plane Set

Pandaria - 1 to 10
Hiji - 10 to 20

Wolfenhold - 1 to 10
Xorothian Plains - 10 to 20

The Green Lands - 88 to 91
The Dying Paradise - 91 to 94
The Emerald Nightmare - 94 to 97
The Eye of Ysera - 97 to 100

Deephome - 88 to 91
Skywall - 91 to 94
The Abyssal Maw - 94 to 97
The Firelands - 97 to 100

- Legion Set

K'aresh - 96 to 99
Argus Meadowlands - 97 to 100
Mac'Aree - 99 to 100
Maw of Oblivion - 100+

Re:More useless content?

[kenp2002]

You are looking at total volume numbers. You need to look at the month to month and over a year for growth. a 2% growth rate, in general isn't growth. Inflation eats a certain % of new players. Given a 3% rate of inflation you need to clear at least 1.5% subscription growth per year just to cover inflation. So on a chart the first 1.5% is wiped out (inflation adujsted).

So lets say we have 100,000 subscribers for something in January. The next month we have 101,000 subscribers. That is 1% growth. The chart investors and executives look at shows +1000. They could care less about the total volume on a month-to-month report. Now for Febuary we have a total of 101,500 subscriptions. The chart now shows +500 (50% reductino in new enrollment). The next month we see 102,000. Again +500 (0% change).

That is the longevity of an MMO. The month to month change. What happened with EQ, Shadowbane, ... , DAOC, Warhammer, and AOC is that the month to month growth eventually tapers and hits 0 (no loss, no gain.) They dump the expansion and temporarily for the first 3 months or so they get +20,000, +15,000, +10,000 but rapidly decline back to 0. Then the problems start. the normal non-expansion month to months start to drop even more rapidly. Instead of +500, +480, +320, and such you get +500, +250, +80, -20, - 60.

Then you have to dump another expansion and Get +12,000, +8000, +250, -120, and so on.

The highs get lower and lower and the rate of decline faster and faster. After about the 4th expansion so far based on observation and analysis, you are litterally in the hole at all times save the expansions. There amount of content is too vast for new players to get in and STAY in.

Eventually the annual report comes out and your only up, say, 4% of the population.

Operation costs went up 6% and the mandate comes down to cut costs by 3% to bring it back to parity cost wise.

Devlopers then have to try and augment newer players with an easier experience in an effort to better control retention which alienates long term players more often then not (easy mode) which causes more of the long term month-to-month players to drop (they'll show up at the end of the year.)

Rentention number are important, just as much as new enrollment but the enrollment numbers tend to be inversly proportional to the volume of content. Too much and you don't get new players to hold on more then 3 months (They get lost in the content.)

Expansions breath new life in to a game that has become a grind for a large number of EXISTING players.

So either you don't play or you just lack any deep insight on what is occurring.

Neither. It's called statistical analysis based on their reported population and account numbers across all servers using regression analysis (specifically we used Autoregressive integrated moving averages [ARIMA]) using expansion release dates, reported populations, sales figures, and information provided in shareholder conference calls as well as quarterly reports as regessors.

I have no interest in insight or speculation, I'm interested in analysis.