Since its launch in 2004,World of Warcrafthas been the undisputed king of the MMORPG genre.
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.
Now Playing:World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Story Trailer
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It is a problem of Blizzard’s own making.
On paper, it should have been a home run.
Unfortunately, Shadowlands proved to be a colossal disappointment.
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.
Changes to those systems did eventually come, but far too late to matter.
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.
Many players have simply lost faith in Blizzard’s ability to put out content players care about.
That remains to be seen.
Korean free-to-play MMOLost Ark(published and localized by Amazon)recently broke Steam concurrent player records.
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.
The reveal ofWoW’s next expansion is right around the corner on April 19.
That doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.
It can, should, and hopefully will, be better.
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