Is another "Warcraft" game even possible any more?

[Crossroads Inc.]

We all know the great linage. WC-I, WC-II and WC-III. Along with the expansions we had a rather nice line of Story, 'lore' and a world set up that followed the development of characters and races.

By the end of WC-III, both Horde and Alliance were in a growing truce with one another, the word seemed fairly stable (aside from the whole Lich King business) And Life seemed ok...

And then.. "WoW" came out. And immediately began to skull-fuck both story lines and continuity from the previous three games. By the first End game at lvl 60... Things weren't that bad, You could have conceivably made a WC-4 based on events in early WoW and the end game content involved. But heading into first the BC expansion, and then Frozen Throne, one has to ask is the 'world' of Warcraft from a game perspective fucked?

If you tired to set up a "Timeline" of major Events transpiring from the end of WC-II and then going through WoW, Is there anywhere left you could put a RT game like the original WC games? I mean, as of the end of the current expansion, "Azeroth has witnessed:

Lvl60
*The Elimination of Troll and corrupting forces in 'Dire Maul'
*The Death of Onyixia, downfall of a huge power bloc in Alliance government.
*The Death of Blackwing + The death of Ragnaros, Effectively clearing out Black Rock Mountain, both above and bellow of 'badguys'
*The 'Death' of Kel'Thazod' in Naxxramus over the ruins of Stratholme.
*The Death of "Hakkar" the blood god in Stranglethorn and the release of several Troll clans from mind control.

Lvl70
*Clearing of all Orc forces in "Hellfire Citadel" leaving an immense fortress open for use.
*Clearing of all evil forces in "Auchindoun "
*Clearing of all evil forces in "Coilfang Reserve"
*Death of "Lady Vashj"
*'Overthrow' of 'Kael'thas' and the clearing of Tempest Keep"
*'Overthrow' of Illidan and clearing of Black Temple"

Lvl80
*Death of Kel'Thazod, again,
*Death of Malygos and clearing of Blue Dragonflight forces in Northrend.
*Elimination of most Titan Remnants in "Uldur" and banishment of 'Yogg-Saron'
*Seige on Icecrown and "Death" of the Lichking.

When oyu stop to look at the sheere amount of world change events, each one something that should have totally reshaped the political landscape between Horde and Alliance, all the way up to IceCrown, is there anywhere Blizz could go with another WC game?

[Serafina]

Sure, just declare that WoW happened in an alternate universe and you can just ignore everything that happened there.

[Civil War Man]

At this point any additions to the Warcraft universe is best done through WoW. The game now has a rather effective monopoly on that IP. The best time to create a Warcraft IV is when the WoW servers are shut down for good, but that will only happen when all future storyline potential is exhausted.

It's better that Blizzard sticks with IPs like Starcraft, Diablo, or something new from the creative department for non-MMO games.

[Ghost Rider]

For Warcraft? Easy. Declare it's XXXX years later. Make it more then a few decades and just gloss over what you don't care.

Will they ever do it? When WoW is dead and buried and they think they can make money from the lesser of their RTS franchises.

[Spekio]

I played about a month of WoW when it was new. Hated it, as every MMORPG I've ever played, you didn't impac the world at all (or really rolleplayed).
But I still sometimes play StarCraft, WCIII and DotA.

[Darmalus]

Another possibility is to make a WarCraft game that details one of the events players participated in, and show what really happened. The cartoony and disproportionate style of WoW would be very helpful, zones you can cross in a few minutes while mounted could be expanded and detailed to their "true" size, Blackrock Spire alone could be an entire game, from securing supply lines to the mountain from you base, taking control of the main lava chamber, and fighting your way up to BWL or down to MC, you could have tons of fantasy city/cave combat, huge corridor battles, and so on.

Or you could explore what happened in between the end of the WC2 expansion when alliance forces were cut off, and when TBC reopened the portal. Lots of possibilities.

[Stark]

What would the point be? All that effort to make a fraction of what WoW pulls in a month, once.

[Darmalus]

Same reason to make StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3, even one time profit is still profit (unless they plan to charge for BattleNet access). I was just going with the premise of "If they did, what would it be about?"

But you are right, it would make more sense to go for the vanity item market, which should be insanely profitable as long as they avoid over saturating it.

[Stark]

Theyre making Sc2 to grab money off the Korean comp scene, and D3 will sell far more than WC would, while being a different IP/team. It's pretty cynical.

[Oskuro]

And if they really wanted to make another Warcraft game, they just need to declare they are making a "re-telling" and release Warcraft 1 again with a different story, improved graphics, dramatic shadows and claustrophobic martian environments and.... wait, wrong re-telling.

[ArmorPierce]

How could they do it? Just make up some more random shit up. The story is already been getting heavily convoluted and retcons have occured due to pure forgetfulness (admitted to by maker of the wow history). Remember, Azeroth can't catch a break.

[Highlord Laan]

There's also the Emerald Nightmare and Argus to deal with. The burning legion isn't going away until it gets chased down to the last world it inhabits and eliminated, culminating with the destruction of Sargaras, Kil'Jaden, the Eredar and the Dredlords. The Twisting Nether is pretty much Blizzard's knockoff of the Warp, so there's threats everywhere. And since, as it was already said, Azeroth can't ever catch a break, after Deathwing and whatever other beings end up as wall trophies there will almost certainly be another world-destroying menace with Azeroth in it's sights, or the Horde and Alliance will be at each others throats again.

Barring all that, the Titans could come back, and Azeroth's mortal population gets to start killing gods for fun and profit. Warcraft: Salvation War? Yikes.

[Molyneux]

I played about a month of WoW when it was new. Hated it, as every MMORPG I've ever played, you didn't impac the world at all (or really rolleplayed).
But I still sometimes play StarCraft, WCIII and DotA.

If you want an MMO where you can truly impact the world, I think your only choice is EVE Online.

I think that doing a game XXXX years later is the best choice - the problem with doing something based on current-time is that they would have to essentially split content between the two games. MMO players wouldn't get to experience it unless they played the RTS.

Although...it might be interesting to incorporate a time-skip in the MMO itself, and have the events of the timeskip covered in a new RTS. Everyone in WoW sees the aftermath of the events, but to actually see everything that happened in the five-year-or-so time in-universe they need to play the RTS.

[Gil Hamilton]

I'd echo Ghost Rider and say that as long as a Horde exists and an Alliance exists, you can make another RTS, just set it a bit in the future. Eventually the Scourge are going to be a problem again, since Bolvar isn't going to be able to keep dormant forever, there are still Old Gods doing crazy shit (I assume the next one will be nose themed, probably named Shub'nasallus), the Burning Legion is still out there since Sargeras and Kil'jaeden are still kicking it. I'm not convinced you can actually kill Ragnaros, since the first time he pretty much just rolled out of bed and you kicked him back into bed, which only made him mad.

Yeah, the Black Dragonflight is probably toast though and the Illidari are gone. Well, except for Kael'thas; whose previous two deaths were merely setbacks. There are no doubt other Nerubian or Silithid kingdoms other there, probably under Old God management, but we don't know about them.

There is alot to be done. And there is nothing that says they can't make up shit.

[Teleros]

Going back to the OP a minute, the beginnings of WoW were set in "The Frozen Throne" expansion to WC3 with the horde campaign set around Rexxar. Even then though there are other events going on that haven't even been referenced in the game yet (Knaak's book "Stormrage" being a prime example). Often the reason low-level quests aren't done by the army from Stormwind (hello Westfall) is due to the army being deployed elsewhere for example. As for known big bads left to face, we have:

• Queen Azshara
• The Emerald Nightmare (not totally defeated as per the end of "Stormrage")
• A few Old Gods
• Kil'jaeden (again)
• Sargeras

Not to mention Garrosh Hellscream . Unresolved plot lines also include the island of Deathwing's Lair from WC2:BTDP, Turalyon & Alleria (from the same), Kul Tiras, Pandaria ( ), Argus (draenei homeworld), K'aresh (ethereal homeworld)... oh and apparently Ner'Zhul's story STILL isn't quite over despite the defeat of the Lich King (whom they might still bring back anyway...). Oh and if you kill all the Old Gods you'll destroy Azeroth, or so the Titans & their servants believed.

As to what Warcraft 4 will be like... "Ten years have passed since [insert event from WC3 to present here]. Now the prison of Lolzathoth, last of the Old Gods, has broken, and [insert more blurb as to why Alliance fight Horde again]." Cue a big pile of missions dedicated to smacking the other faction around a bit, then defeating the big bad guy without blowing up the planet, followed by an expansion pack for more money .

[ArmorPierce]

When you guys point out xxxx years, do you mean some thousand years? let us not forget that rifles, missles, tanks, motor cycles and air planes (and spaceships apparently) are already available in present warcraft timeline. Realistically, how should some thousand years in the future look like? I guess we can excuse it and keep current tech, justifying it by saying that all the demon invasions stagnated technology.

[Gramzamber]

When you guys point out xxxx years, do you mean some thousand years? let us not forget that rifles, missles, tanks, motor cycles and air planes (and spaceships apparently) are already available in present warcraft timeline. Realistically, how should some thousand years in the future look like? I guess we can excuse it and keep current tech, justifying it by saying that all the demon invasions stagnated technology.

And nuclear reactors too.
Though I suppose they can dance around the issue by saying that most of that technology is the sole domain of the Gnomes/Goblins, and they keep blowing themselves up/irradiating themselves/letting their cities be overrun by troglodytes

[CaptainChewbacca]

I can imagine some war/starcraft fusion where you're battling with spaceships over worlds in the twisting nether, or orbital bombardment of the ruins of draenor.

[Civil War Man]

I still have to echo my last post in this thread. The first question that pops up when someone presents an idea for Warcraft 4 is usually "Why not do that in WoW?" And so far the only answer I can think of that would make sense would be "Because we are shutting down all the WoW Servers."

Then the ideas that involve an arbitrarily large number of years passing raises the question of "Why attach it to the Warcraft franchise?" For that, the only answer I can come up with is branding, but Blizzard has several successful IPs they can use as a setting for a game, including one that could already be considered Warcraft set an arbitrarily large number of years in the future. And that's discounting the fact that since this is Blizzard, they could do a completely new setting and it would still have that branding boost because they can put "From the company that brought you World of Warcraft" on the box.

[Teleros]

The first question that pops up when someone presents an idea for Warcraft 4 is usually "Why not do that in WoW?" And so far the only answer I can think of that would make sense would be "Because we are shutting down all the WoW Servers."

Well Blizz are already working on a brand new MMO to take WoW's place as #1 in a few years' time, and I'd be surprised if we get any higher than Level 100 in WoW. Assuming 2 years for 5 levels (and that may well change of course) per expansion pack that means late 2016 will see the last WoW expansion out.

[Civil War Man]

Well Blizz are already working on a brand new MMO to take WoW's place as #1 in a few years' time, and I'd be surprised if we get any higher than Level 100 in WoW. Assuming 2 years for 5 levels (and that may well change of course) per expansion pack that means late 2016 will see the last WoW expansion out.

Even so, my point is that by the time they reach the point of shutting down the servers permanently, they most likely will have exhausted most of the story potential. Even if more raid bosses are defeated in open-ended ways (like Kil'Jaeden or the Lich King), there are only so many times you can bring an enemy back only to have them defeated with a hearty "I'll get you next time, you meddling kids heroes!" And even if they have the drop dead level cap at 100, WoW has long enough legs that it could keep going on its own inertia for quite a while.

I just personally don't believe that Blizzard has anything to gain by continuing the Warcraft game franchise outside of WoW, especially since they are now getting back to reviving some of their dormant franchises like Starcraft and Diablo for non-MMO games.

[Teleros]

Even so, my point is that by the time they reach the point of shutting down the servers permanently, they most likely will have exhausted most of the story potential.

Have you seen how the Warcraft story's evolved since WC1 came out?