Why We’ll Never See Two New Races in WoW Again
Posted on : 07-22-2009 | By : Molsan | In : General
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This post is a response to a question that Fimlys posed on Twitter and his blog today:
Would you prefer 1 new Hero Class or 2 New Races?
Obviously I’m asking this in relation to the next expansion pack to WoW.
Although I’d prefer to create a couple of alts with new races and level them through their starting zones, I don’t think Blizzard will ever introduce new races again. They would rather cater to the existing, long-time player, and I don’t think the majority of players are all that interested in starting new characters.
However, I think there are two ways they could do this and make it work: introduce at least one new class to go along with the new races, or let those of us with a level 80 character create new high-level characters somewhere around level 60.
We’ve been playing WoW for years now and have been asking if we can start new characters at a higher level. With the level cap at 80, starting new characters at level 55 seems reasonable, especially since we can create level 55 Death Knights anywhere we want. If they raise the level cap to 90 in the next expansion, it would be great to have the ability to start new characters at level 65. I could then finally have a Hunter higher than level 30! Blizzard could also justify not having to create new starting zones for each race by just dropping them into Outlands or Northrend directly.
Creating a new class or two along with new character races would lure more players into rolling new characters and leveling them up beyond just the starting zones. They did this in Burning Crusade, when they introduced the Blood Elf and Draenei as playable races. They gave each faction a “new” class to play: Paladin for Horde and Shaman for Alliance. Hardcore players power-leveled their new race/class combination and were in high demand among raid groups. I believe this would work again, even if they forced players to start a new class at level 1.
While new races, classes, or even hero classes are likely, is this in Blizzard’s best interest right now? Sure, introducing new races and new classes would increase the lifespan of the game, and create another time-sink for players. With new technology, new MMOs on the horizon, and other Blizzard ventures coming soon, though, I think they’d rather shift as many WoW subscribers over to another Blizzard property instead of keeping the same WoW — at its core — alive for 5-10 more years.
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Well, I’m not sure the post fits entirely with the title thereof, but I agree with most of what you said. But, most of what you said supports adding races rather than attacking it.
I don’t see how any of the points you made would persuade Blizzard to not introduce new races.
Sure, they will want players to pick up their newer games, but they also realize that a large number of people don’t like change. Look at how many people still play Diablo II. The game’s 10 years old and there are still hundreds of thousands of players.
Bringing out a new game isn’t going to take all the players away from the old one. And the ones that do leave for the new game aren’t necessarily going to quit entirely either. I stuck with Diablo II until last year, myself.
I think making additions to WoW, whether it be new classes, new races, new professions, or whatever, would be a solid and welcome addition to it.
Is everyone going to like the additions? Of course not. Is it going to put some people off of WoW? It wouldn’t surprise me with how many people are upset at various things already. Is it going to bring new players in and/or potentially revive players that are taking a break from the game? I’ll say with a fair amount of confidence that yes, it certainly would.
That’s my two copper on the subject though.
@Psynister
Thanks for the reply! Me feeling that Blizzard will now focus all of their efforts on existing players and not new players was my basic premise.
Introducing new races is not in the best interest of the game because I think that existing players in general don’t want to be bothered with starting a new character at level 1.
Assuming there is no new starting zones, what would be the point of starting a level 1 Worgen Warrior? A level 1 Goblin Mage? Meh…
Now, if you throw in a new class or two… maybe a new profession (Woodworking?) and new starting zones… then you’ll have piqued players’ interest.
However, I don’t believe that this is the direction Blizzard is taking the game. Over time, more and more “end game” content is what they will focus on, because the majority of us are level-capped. We just level our main(s) 10 levels with each expansion.
I feel that WoW itself is going to have a rather long lifespan, in the vein of Everquest, which is STILL going strong. So yeah, they’ll introduce new classes and races up until they think it’s oversaturated and balance becomes too much of an issue.
There is enough lore content and talent at Blizzard to pump out stuff to keep us entertained until the “next big thing” comes along.
However, I do think that soon something’s going to come along and topple WoW off of its throne. Will it be Aion? No, for reasons that I won’t go into here. Champions Online? Maybe. I doubt it. Star Wars: The Old Republic? Depends, but Bioware seems to be going in a direction that none of us foresaw (us being me): Massively Single Player RPGs. An extention of Guild Wars (without instanced lands) where each player is taken on a story and can include others in on it if they wish, but it’ll be soloable.
But I don’t think that’ll kill WoW. What’s going to bring WoW down won’t even be a PC game. It’ll go down the way of Dark Age of Camelot and Planetside (which is still chugging along, too) when a well funded, fun MMO comes out for consoles.
Maybe not this Generation, but for the X-Box 720 or Playstation 4? I think then WoW will have met its match.