World of Warcraft is not dead, and it’s not dying anytime soon — so stop saying it is

I have been playing World of Warcraft since 2004. In that time, I’ve seen it pronounced dead approximately 55,321 times, give or take a few hundred. Every hotfix, every new patch, every new dungeon or raid, any PVP changes, and each new expansion has been “The Death of WoW” over the years. Every departure of a person who works on the game. Every change in the game’s story. Every character death. Every content drought. To listen to some people, World of Warcraft has been dying a very long death over the years.

So, when I see that Battle for Azeroth just sold 3.4 million units in the fastest-selling expansion launch ever, I muse about this dying game.

How did we get here, in August of 2018, talking about the seventh expansion to an MMO that, if you listen to the naysayers, has been dead since whatever expansion they decided it died on? How is it that this expansion sold faster than any expansion that preceded it? Is World of Warcraft undead? I mean, Sylvanas is front and center this expansion — maybe that’s the secret.

The game that lived

My sarcasm aside, the fact remains that this is not a dying game. It’s not even close. Frankly, at this point, it’s probably safe to say that World of Warcraft has at least three more expansions worth of life in it, maybe more. We could easily still be playing this game in 2024, the 20th anniversary of its launch. We may well still be talking about World of Warcraft in 2034, at this rate. Even in an age where games like Skyrim get re-releases and remasters and so on, the longevity of World of Warcraft is an impressive thing. And although it’s not the oldest MMO by a long shot, it’s almost certainly the oldest MMO still capable of moving over three million units this quickly on release.

Of course, game sales aren’t everything, and there are a lot of different ways you can look at the health of a game or its community. And just as clearly, the game peaks for certain people at certain times. Moreover, sometimes those reasons are more to do with them than the game itself — when you discovered it, when you were happiest playing it, when your felt the most accomplished, when you had a solid group of friends and players, and so on. For me, there were several different golden ages of WoW and I’m still pretty happy with the game, but I recognize that some people say “WoW is dead“ when what they mean is, “WoW is dead to me.”

In the end, though, the death of World of Warcraft has been greatly over-reported.

Rumors of its demise

I get it, when there’s something in the game we don’t like — and I’m not immune, plenty has happened in World of Warcraft that I haven’t liked — we can be a touch emphatic. But I think it’s time to stop framing every decision we disagree with, every content lull and raid fight and expansion, as the death of WoW — because at this point WoW has died so many times it’s getting ridiculous. This is a game that’s died more times than the Hammer Films version of Dracula. This is a fourteen-year-old game that just sold over three million copies in the first day of the new expansion release.

There are a lot of brand new games that would like to die to the tune of three million sales in a day.

So sure, complain about WoW. Talk about what you don’t like about it. Discuss how you feel decisions are bad for the game. Talk about other games you think do gameplay ideas better than WoW, like Wildstar or Destiny. But let’s remember that a lot of games have been said to be WoW killers over the years, and a lot of decisions were called the death of the game, and yet here we are in 2018 and Battle for Azeroth is definitely showing signs of life.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, those World Quests won’t do themselves and I have a Mythic dungeon to get ready for.