Breakfast Topic: Game over man! Game over!
by Matthew Unwin 
Mar 29th 2010 at 8:00AM
World of Warcraft has been out for over five years now and if you have been playing since launch it's probably hard to imagine a day where the patches stop coming. It's a scary thought that WoW would someday cease to exist. Sure Blizzard would probably launch World of Warcraft 2 and in that sense the World of Warcraft would still exist, but that doesn't give me any comfort with the idea that some day my current characters will basically be gone. All the time and effort, all the experiences, all the friends, guild mates, armor, addons, slash commands, everything that we have done, will one day end. I really don't like the idea of a world without the World of Warcraft for many reasons.
Sure there will be people saying, "It's just a game!" but this kind of thinking truly shows how emotionally connected we have become to something that is "just a game."
I am sure Blizzard will keep the servers up for years to come, but the content will one day stop and eventually the servers will go down. Maybe it's so far off no one will care, but right now the idea is sad and scary. Can you imagine that day? How do you feel about one day losing WoW? Could you handle it and just move to another game or do you want WoW to be around forever?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Meldrum Mar 29th 2010 8:06AM
I never want WoW to disappear, sure i go through levelling slumps, who dosen't? But the idea that i can no longer come home from college put my feet up and venture to Azeroth is a bad one. Long Live World of Warcraft!!!!
Ghrall - Earthen Ring Mar 29th 2010 9:08AM
^ Yeah I want WoW to be around forever.
The more I think about it, WoW is becoming more than a game. Its becoming a pastime, an institution. If Blizz is smart and doesn't screw up they could be the brand new owners of the electronic manifestation of Baseball/Basketball/Hockey/you get the point.
Never in human history has a video game gained the popularity WoW has. Who knows how it ends, but I bet it will be interesting.
Kira Mar 29th 2010 10:58AM
It occurs to me, that while it will eventually happen, it will be a long way into the future. Case in point, you can still play Diablo 1, Warcraft 2, and Starcraft on battle.net classic.
BigBadGooz Mar 29th 2010 11:08AM
Universe of Starcraft has a good ring to it my zerglings name is already made.
I will be know as crizpycritter
Micheal Mar 29th 2010 12:25PM
You realize that one day you will graduate from college, right?
unwin Mar 29th 2010 3:25PM
That's my thinking exactly! Thanks for the response!
-unwin
Kai Monture Mar 29th 2010 4:35PM
Without its master's command, the restless Nerds will become an even greater threat to this world. Control must be maintained. There must always be... A World of Warcraft.
Eisengel Mar 30th 2010 4:54AM
The end of expansion releases was only a setback...
PictoKong Mar 29th 2010 8:06AM
Better not to think about it, if you are sure the server will go down, you'll stop playing. Its like gearing up now: you know cata's coming soon(tm), so why raiding ICC, its going to be useless soon!!!
blackone Mar 29th 2010 9:50AM
Because you don't raid for gear, you gear for raids.
Manadar Mar 29th 2010 9:49AM
You raid for the fun experience, maybe? Not gonna be as fun downing LK HC in Cataclysm or even with the 30% buff.
windstalker668 Mar 29th 2010 11:17AM
@ blackone
That is the perfect statement to describe how raiding is supposed to be, not about the gear, about hanging with a group of people and doing something fun for a couple of hours, and seeing how the story unfolds around you.
On topic, I do my best not to think about it, I mean with any other game your characters are forever saved on memory cards or in save files, in WoW they could be gone tomorrow, and you have nothing more than a screenshot or two of your time spent, majorly depressing :(
jleech92 Mar 29th 2010 2:33PM
thats how raiding SHOULD BE, not how it is
with the ease of completing raids with fuck all trash and easy gear/bosses, as well as the increase in importance of gear with gearscore, most people that raid that i know of do it just for the soon-to-be out of date shiny purples, and because of lack of other things to do.
Asatherin Mar 29th 2010 8:06AM
FoReVeR aNd EvER!!!!!!!!!! haha i want it to last as long as they can even if it means milking story till it bone dry. =]
per.wa Mar 29th 2010 8:12AM
Carpe Diem, I say. Let's enjoy it as long as humanly possible and not think about the end of the World... of Warcraft.
Thyago Mar 29th 2010 9:08AM
Agreed. And your reference is even smarter, since it is indeed how we should look at our own lives, isn't it? Some of us are afraid of death, of the end, of the unknown.... the same thoughts for our beloved game =D
Is there life after World of Warcraft? I mean, I don't want to play Aion!
Microtonal Mar 29th 2010 2:11PM
Indeed. It becomes even more appropriate to the sentiment per.wa is trying to convey when you really look at Horace's Latin. That famous line is from his Ode I:11, one of the most beautiful poems ever written. If you haven't read the whole thing, I can't recommend it enough.
That verb "carpo" is commonly translated as "seize," but that would actually be "capio", which isn't quite the word that Horace used. Semantically related, but quite different, the verb "carpo" is better translated as "pluck" or "take hold of"; you'd use it to describe, for example, picking a piece of fruit off a tree. A much gentler image.
Samuel Reese Mar 29th 2010 8:08AM
The only way that WoW is going to be going anywhere is when Blizzard stops making a profit off of it. Seeing that games like Everquest and Ultima Online are still online now for so long, I highly doubt we'll see WoW shut down anytime soon.
With that said, by the time WoW does shut down, I'm pretty sure a bigger and better MMO would be around to influence such a change, and the game itself would need to be put down. While I've enjoyed my time playing the game, there are plenty of things that I'd like to see handled better gameplay-wise (PvP BGs immediately comes to mind).
Rob Mar 29th 2010 12:16PM
Exactly this, exactly this. There are two thoughts I have.
1) WoW is such a huge game with a huge fanbase that their overhead must be incredible, all the power, the servers, the infratstructure. Once the WOW population drops, the infrastructure prices are more or less fixed. Sure they can save power and bandwidth by consolidation, but you still have entire buildings (i imagine) of server farms, that's alot of real estate. Bottom line, they need to be pushing serious revenue, much more than the little guys like EQ.
2) There are people still tied into WoW on their side (administrators, GM, etc), that they could deploy to a more profitable area. Even if WoW was generating a nice ROI they could still use those guys more elsewhere. I'm not even talking about development, just support staff. Once they realize that a greater ROI can be had in another space ,kiss it goodbye. For example, lets say Blizz wants to be a mobile phone company. Well that generates more profit than WoW, so they could move all their GMs to be tier 1/2 support for mobile. In that case they'd have to shut down or greatly reduce their servers (that or just simply stop providing customer support, like Sony did for EQ).
Anyway WoW will probably go out with a wimper. I imagine the last few years will be very bad due the lack of support, lack of people, and general static nature of the world. I played EQ a few years back, and it was just horrid. No support, horrible people, dead worlds, on top of a very very old graphics engine. It was just a crappy game for this time period. Eventually WoW will hit that. But, i'd play WoW2 in a heart beat.
othragon Mar 29th 2010 8:43AM
It might be "just a game" but for someone who's been playing the warcraft series since the first release and grew this attached to WoW it will be a shocking day if they ever decide to terminate the game. It's not only the game itself that keeps us emotionally attached, it's the social aspect aswell.
Anyways, i'll be glad if we get to level our characters to 100, and even if content ceases to be released, i'm sure they'll keep most of the servers up for a long time... as for WoW2, the idea strikes me as an odd one, if Blizzard manages to keep the gam up to date graphic and gameplay wise (like they're doing with the older content in Cata), i don't see the need for a whole new mmorpg based on the Warcraft universe, this one is just fine! =)