For WoW's Next Expansion, Blizzard Must Learn From Shadowlands' Mistakes

Since its launch in 2004, World of Warcraft has been the undisputed king of the MMORPG genre. Its influence on gaming can be seen everywhere, from newly released MMOs like Lost Ark to Bungie's popular Destiny franchise. But as the spirit of King Terenas Menethil II once told his son Arthas in one of WoW's most powerful story moments, "No king rules forever, my son."

The popularity of WoW has waxed and waned dramatically over the years. That's only natural for a game that is now almost two decades old. Player numbers always go up with the release of a new expansion, only to go back down a few months later. While WoW's current player numbers are a far cry from the over 12 million active subscribers the game boasted back in 2008 during its Wrath of the Lich King expansion, there's long been the assumption that a significant number of players will always come back for a new expansion. Shadowlands, the game's most recent expansion, sold more than 3.7 million copies in its first day when it was released back in 2020, breaking a new day-one sales record for the game.

Flash forward to 2022, after the release of the final content patch for Shadowlands and what can only be described as a year of reckoning for Blizzard, and the assumption that players will always come back may no longer be true. Mired by ongoing sexual harassment and discrimination controversies, two wildly unpopular expansions in a row, and more competition in the MMO space than ever before, the throne long occupied by WoW seems ripe for the taking.

It is a problem of Blizzard's own making. Despite impressive sales numbers, players quickly became unhappy with Shadowlands, an expansion that transported players to an entirely new realm of the universe and featured appearances from fan-favorite characters like Uther, Garrosh Hellscream, and more. On paper, it should have been a home run.

Unfortunately, Shadowlands proved to be a colossal disappointment. While WoW's core gameplay is as snappy and satisfying as ever, it's become increasingly bogged down in systems that seem intent on sucking the fun out of the experience. The roguelike-inspired dungeon Torghast quickly became a lengthy chore that players needed to complete week after week. Story content was locked behind doing daily and weekly checklists for weeks on end. Players felt locked into choices like Covenants and restricted by systems like Conduit Energy, with calls from the community for change seeming to fall on deaf ears for too long. Changes to those systems did eventually come, but far too late to matter.

Shadowlands followed the same formula of endgame world quests, reputation grinds, and Mythic+ progression that the game's popular Legion and subsequently unpopular Battle for Azeroth expansions did. While those systems worked in Legion, where it was fresh and new, all but Mythic+ had worn out their welcome in Battle for Azeroth. When those systems then came forward into Shadowlands for the third time, it felt like Blizzard had simply run out of new ideas. In Shadowlands, WoW felt less like a game to be played and more like a checklist to complete on a daily and weekly basis.

Not helping matters was the fact that new content updates were few and far between. Most expansions in WoW's history see at least three major content patches. Shadowlands, on the other hand, received two, with its most recent and final content patch having only arrived recently. Having only two major patches puts Shadowlands in the same company as 2014's Warlords of Draenor expansion, which was another historic low-point in the game's history. The fact that WoW still requires a $15 monthly subscription to play makes the seven-month waiting periods between Shadowlands' content patches even more egregious. The pandemic no doubt had some effect on content production and workflow, but that doesn't make the lack of new things to do in-game an easier pill to swallow for players. With the recent Eternity's End update being the effective end of new content for Shadowlands and a new expansion not even yet announced, it will likely be another long wait before any kind of new content makes its way into the game.

None of the above even mentions the story of Shadowlands, which has been another major point of contention for many longtime fans. With Shadowlands, Blizzard introduced a new villain, the Jailer, as the ultimate mastermind behind not only major events of the past few expansions but also lore-shaping events dating back to Warcraft III. The Jailer was intended to be a brilliant schemer who had been hatching his plan to rewrite the rules of reality for eons. In actuality, his plans made little to no sense, and he never had anything more interesting to say than lines of the stereotypical "prepare to die, mortals" variety. Fans lambasted the villain, jokingly referring to him as playing a game of 4D chess that not even Blizzard fully understood. As revealed at the end of the final Shadowlands raid, the Jailer ultimately proved to be less a character and more a plot device, existing only to tease a previously unheard of universe-endangering threat. In the process, Blizzard cheapened decades' worth of lore and character development for beloved franchise icons like Sylvanas and Arthas, all in service of a throwaway villain who added almost nothing of substance to the game's universe other than the admittedly powerful ability to make everything he interacted with worse.

Taken all together, to call Shadowlands a major letdown--especially coming off the disappointing Battle for Azeroth expansion--would be an understatement. Many players have simply lost faith in Blizzard's ability to put out content players care about. The question now is this: Will one-time WoW players shocked by Blizzard's alleged past treatment of women and disappointed with recent expansions give the company, and the game, another chance?

That remains to be seen. There have never been more options when it comes to other MMOs for players to dedicate their time and money to. Korean free-to-play MMO Lost Ark (published and localized by Amazon) recently broke Steam concurrent player records. Square Enix's MMO Final Fantasy XIV has seen a huge resurgence as of late, with its newfound popularity actually forcing Square Enix to temporarily halts sales of the game and its free trial in order to combat server login queues. While it's still years away, Riot's in-the-works League of Legends MMO no doubt has its sights set to eventually become the king of the genre WoW helped popularize.

While little about Shadowlands invoked what fans of the long-running MMORPG have come to love about WoW, there are some reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the game's future. In the wake of the state of California's lawsuit accusing Activision Blizzard of fostering a "frat boy" culture of harassment and discrimination towards women, the WoW development team took a hard look at the game and began removing or altering some of its more questionable content in service of creating a more inclusive world. The game's 9.1.5 patch saw Blizzard listen to the community's feedback and bring about sweeping changes to unpopular systems, like the ability to freely swap Covenants and the removal of Conduit Energy, alongside changes to make the game friendlier for players with multiple characters. Blizzard formed a WoW Community Council, meant to represent a wide range of players, in order to speak more directly with the wider community and gather feedback. It was announced (to positive feedback from fans) that Horde and Alliance players will soon be able to participate in group content together, breaking down a long-held barrier that has existed since the game's inception. Patch 9.2 introduced a new zone, raid, and activities that have been generally well-liked by the community, and the patch's testing cycle saw Blizzard make numerous positive changes based on player feedback.

All of the above is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, many of those changes (specifically in regards to Shadowlands) are too little, too late. It should not take half of the expansion's lifecycle to listen to community feedback and make changes to almost universally hated systems. Ideally, those kinds of systems shouldn't have made it into the game in the first place, and wouldn't have if Blizzard had listened more closely to its community in the months leading up to Shadowlands' release.

The reveal of WoW's next expansion is right around the corner on April 19. What's in store for players is currently unknown, but it's clear that Blizzard cannot take the same approach to this new expansion as it has for the past two. Given the amount of time usually reserved for public playtesting, Blizzard's previous cycle for expansion releases, and the ongoing complications that come with working from home due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, chances are high that this new expansion won't be released in 2022, but will instead come in 2023. Should that be the case, it would be the first time in the game's history that an expansion took more than two years to arrive.

That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Blizzard could use a longer-than-normal period between expansions to implement more player feedback and work on content for future patches, hopefully shortening the time between content updates. WoW doesn't have to continue on the same disappointing trajectory it has been on for the past four years. It can, should, and hopefully will, be better. Given everything that has transpired in recent years, whether "better" will be enough for disillusioned fans to give WoW another chance is a different question entirely.