WotC How new Wizards of the Coast head John Hight turned around World of Warcraft

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Interesting piece over on Polygon.

But Hight’s final graph slide showed an astonishing turnaround. When he was speaking in March 2024, World of Warcraft subscriber numbers were higher than they had been at Dragonflight’s launch, and climbing. Hight boasted “record post-launch stability and growth.” What went right? In the modern game, as YouTuber Bellular pointed out, Blizzard knuckled down and worked on the basics, providing a steady stream of updates and a popular revamp of gear progression. But it was Classic updates, starting in August 2023, that prompted Hight’s graph to start trending upward. It was Classic that presented two daring new ways to play the game that broke up the time-honored expansion-to-expansion schedule, and even contained new ways to structure a massively multiplayer online game.

With Hardcore and Season of Discovery, the Classic team made two bold choices. First, they decided that WoW’s design wasn’t sacrosanct, and they could mess about with its core ruleset if they wanted to. Secondly — and perhaps most significantly — they decided not to care about audience fragmentation. There are currently no less than five ways to play WoW Classic: the original game, the Cataclysm expansion, Season of Discovery, and two Hardcore variants. But the simplicity of WoW’s payment model — one subscription fee covers everything, except the latest expansion for the modern game — means it doesn’t really matter. As long as you’re engaged and playing, it’s all good as far as Blizzard is concerned.

What came next went much further. As a kind of palate cleanser between the end of the Dragonflight saga and the arrival of The War Within, Blizzard offered something clearly inspired by Season of Discovery: Mists of Pandaria Remix. Players were invited to create new “Timewalker” characters and replay an altered version WoW’s fourth expansion with new features, new abilities, accelerated leveling, and infinitely scaling loot that allowed them to drive themselves up an exponential curve of power. A monthslong event ending just before the release of the new expansion, Mists of Pandaria Remix has been a wild ride. As a different way to revisit a past expansion and a kind of power-leveling fantasy, it’s been a lot of fun, if arguably a less sophisticated and thorough reimagining than Season of Discovery. Still, it’s done the job, driving conversation and keeping players engaged at a time when the game would otherwise be slowing down, as players sat out the long gap between Dragonflight’s last update and The War Within’s launch.

It's probably not going to be a one-to-one carryover of lessons, but if Hight applies the same strategy of letting WotC games get more experimental, more creative and not worry about having a singular monolithic success that all customers have to buy into, that sounds like a very good thing to me.

 

[Reynard]

Interesting piece over on Polygon.





It's probably not going to be a one-to-one carryover of lessons, but if Hight applies the same strategy of letting WotC games get more experimental, more creative and not worry about having a singular monolithic success that all customers have to buy into, that sounds like a very good thing to me.

Come on AD&D 3rd Edition!

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Interesting article, I'm not sure whether anything from WoW necessarily carries over to DnD, but one of the lessons that could be relevant is how WoW made giant improvements recently by starting to actually listen to what players were asking for and actually doing it instead of always trying to convince their customers that "you think you want X but you really don't", and that the developers always knew better.

That might not change DnD as much since WotC has generally been more receptive to considering player opinions than Blizzard ever was, but it can't hurt.

 

[Reynard]

Interesting article, I'm not sure whether anything from WoW necessarily carries over to DnD,

Both are living games where a combination of subscriptions and regular expansions drive revenue.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

That was a nice read. It can be easy to get mostly negative news especially around certain companies that keep stepping on a field of rakes. But it is possible that history bodes well. I can imagine a lot of possible futures for D&D but I’m eager to see what might come.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Interesting piece over on Polygon.





It's probably not going to be a one-to-one carryover of lessons, but if Hight applies the same strategy of letting WotC games get more experimental, more creative and not worry about having a singular monolithic success that all customers have to buy into, that sounds like a very good thing to me.

I'd say that most WoW players have been satisfied or better with the way the Dragonflight expansion has gone. They even went really experimental in the normal end-of-expansion lull this time with Plunderstorm (which was... ok) and the Mists of Pandaria Remix (which was awesomely fun, both in my opinion of course). I do have to say that the real proof will be how The War Within goes, as it's due to be released in just a couple of weeks.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'd say that most WoW players have been satisfied or better with the way the Dragonflight expansion has gone. They even went really experimental in the normal end-of-expansion lull this time with Plunderstorm (which was... ok) and the Mists of Pandaria Redux (which was awesomely fun, both in my opinion of course). I do have to say that the real proof will be how The War Within goes, as it's due to be released in just a couple of weeks.

I think the PvP and battle royale nature of Plunderstorm were probably a big curveball for many existing WoW players, including the largely chill pet collector community, who suddenly felt compelled to go get curb-stomped in PvP for new pets. But the basic idea of "let's take these existing assets and do something fun and crazy with them" was a great idea.

And yeah, Remix was a huge hit. I'm hoping they do one of these at the end of every expansion.

 

[Scribe]

I think the PvP and battle royale nature of Plunderstorm were probably a big curveball for many existing WoW players, including the largely chill pet collector community, who suddenly felt compelled to go get curb-stomped in PvP for new pets. But the basic idea of "let's take these existing assets and do something fun and crazy with them" was a great idea.

I loved events in the past that forced non-PvPers to stick their neck out there and mix it up. Some of the most reserved and quiet healbots in my Vanilla raids, turned into bloodthirsty monsters...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I loved events in the past that forced non-PvPers to stick their neck out there and mix it up. Some of the most reserved and quiet healbots in my Vanilla raids, turned into bloodthirsty monsters...

My wife, who played a holy priest in vanilla, is still infamous in my server's PvP circles because a switch just flipped in her brain when battlegrounds were introduced. Crazy/hardcore.

 

[Tonguez]

Hmmm so regular DnD DLCs reframing rules for different styles of play and revisiting old settings, hmmm