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With Diablo 4 being right around the corner, a lot of people are wondering whether we’ll ever get the second installment of World of Warcraft — one of the biggest and most legendary intellectual properties in existence.
World of Warcraft, while certainly still enjoyable, is losing relevance. Its playerbase has, slowly but surely, been dwindling, and that, in no small part, is because the original game (and its many expansions) offers a very familiar experience — one which is no longer all that alluring.
When you compare World of Warcraft with many of the games released in the last decade, it’s easy to understand why fans have been clamoring for a sequel for so darn long.
Gaming as we know it has changed tremendously since the release of the original World of Warcraft, and many of the technological advancements which were brought into existence over the last few years would no doubt serve as a tremendous boon to one of the greatest and most beloved MMORPGs in history.
World of Warcraft 2 — Will It Ever Come Out?
The first obstacle in the road is the fact that World of Warcraft is a live service game. There’s always a brand new expansion every two or so years which not only brings new content but also keeps people reeled in.
And, despite the dwindling numbers, World of Warcraft is still in a fairly strong and healthy spot. It’s not as huge as it once was, but it is by no means a “dead” game, as some seem to be saying.
Building a sequel from the ground up would, naturally, require a tremendous amount of effort, to say nothing of the monetary investment necessary to bring it all into existence. It’s much easier for Blizzard to keep on building the world and its overarching narrative through expansions than to create something new altogether — an installment that would have to be built on an entirely different engine.
The benefits are plentiful, but it’s still a gargantuan undertaking.
That being said, Blizzard would be crazy not to embark on this journey. Everyone wants it. And, frankly, there’s no better way to get people talking about such an age-old IP than by imbuing it with new life.
Diablo 4 is the perfect example.
It’s been over a decade since the last installment and fans are hungry to once again step foot in Sanctuary and start looting and clearing out dungeons. And the visuals? Out of this world. Diablo never looked as good as it does now, and the sheer thought of World of Warcraft getting the same treatment is enough for us to start salivating at the mouth.
Its world is much more vast and beautiful than that of Diablo’s. Its characters, classes, NPCs, regions, everything — the sequel would do them all justice, and, without a shadow of a doubt, bring in record amounts of revenue.
Blizzard knows it has a winner on its hands and, most likely, isn’t going to let it go to waste.
And, frankly, if the following Unreal Engine 5 demo could be created by just a single (insanely talented and passionate) individual, then there’s really no excuse.
World of Warcraft 2 — It’s All But Guaranteed
If we had to take a guess, we’d say that Blizzard’s just waiting for the right “time to strike.”
Seeing how there are still no rumors of the game being in development, it’s safe to assume that a sequel of some kind won’t be released in the next five years — at the earliest. Blizzard began working on Diablo 4 back in 2014 so it obviously takes a while to get things into motion and actually build something worth talking about.
Moreover, World of Warcraft, as we all know it, is much larger and more complex than Diablo. That doesn’t mean that the sequel would have to be as large as the original game — it could grow and evolve over time through expansions and Battle Passes and whatnot — but it’d still have to be sufficiently gigantic for players to feel “right at home.”
And, naturally, it’d surely be a cross-platform release (much like Diablo 4) with support for cross-progression. Blizzard, much like any other developer, wants to maximize its profits, and there’s no better way of doing it than by offering their — highly anticipated, one should add — game on as many platforms (and, by proxy, to as many players) as possible.
Playing World of Warcraft on a PlayStation or Xbox might not sound all that alluring, but the entire industry is moving towards such a trend. Nowadays it’s less about having exclusives and more about offering one’s titles to as many buyers as possible.
Heck, if God of War and Uncharted could make the move from PlayStation to PC, why wouldn’t World of Warcraft? There’s also a very high likelihood of it not happening, but we nonetheless feel it would be a step in the right (and more lucrative) direction.
World of Warcraft 2 — A Sequel Makes Sense
Blizzard’s well aware that a sequel of some kind is not only warranted but perhaps even necessary. Whether we’re talking about World of Warcraft 2 specifically still remains to be seen. They could, by all means, create a totally different game that just so happens to feature some of WoW’s most prominent characters and “biomes.”
That way they’d keep World of Warcraft alive through new expansions — the “why fix it if it isn’t broke” approach — while also giving their customers something new and entirely different to experience. It’s a wholly viable route, all things considered, and it would no doubt generate record amounts of revenue.
In any case, they must be working on something. Whether that’s World of Warcraft 2 still remains to be seen, but we’re cautiously optimistic.