World of Warcraft : Speculation on Blizzard's Next Move

Blizzard Entertainment is arguably the "king of the MMO hill" right now. In a new column, we take a look at potential next steps for the gaming giant. See what you think and then add your comments to the mix. Love 'em or hate 'em, those guys and gals at Blizzard are still the incumbent monarchs of the MMORPG realm. World of Warcraft is now heading into its eighth year of existence, and with a few minor bumps on the road of subscription, the game is still holding firm with just under ten million loyal players.

I think Blizzard will continue to try and shore up its user base by skewing the game toward younger players and Asian cultures, The teens who took up WoW eight years ago have now come of age, are looking for more mature fare and handing down older gaming rigs to younger siblings or kids of their own. The success of WoW and failure of SWTOR shows that the audience for mass-market MMOs is broad but shallow; there probably isn't capacity for another WoW-sized game to achieve the same level of success, and certainly not one based on the subscription pricing model. The best Blizzard can hope for is to staunch the bleeding until the inevitable hot next-generation MMO appears to cannibalize what remains of WoW's subscriber base. Ideally, I'm sure they'd like that game to come from Blizzard itself: WoW2, or World of Starcraft, perhaps.