Blizzard's former president wanted there to be a WoW 2 rather than 'the same WoW 1 expansions over and over re-skinned'
World of Warcraft is one of those old, dogged titans that've been trudging on in the MMO industry for over two decades, now—and even in a genre where the success stories are mostly ancient, that's some going. In its golden age, WoW was the game that all of its contemporaries were trying to dethrone. And even though it's been through several severe wobbles in the past few years (see: Shadowlands), it's not going anywhere any time soon.
But there is an alternate universe in which it might have at least diminished while its team focused on bigger and better things, per former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who has had a lot to say about the game recently after a disastrously buggy patch has put things on thin ice.
Ybarra took to X to write that, during his tenure at Blizzard—which ended when the company was acquired for $68.4 billion from Microsoft in 2024, leading to 1,900 layoffs across Xbox and Blizzard and the closure of several studios to help foot the bill—he had quite a few ideas about the direction WoW should take.
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This includes a "WoW that is about WAR" and an expansion "about how there is always a Lich King" after Arthas' dethroning at the end of WoTLK. He also advocated for "spending far more time on raids and new ideas for the CORE gaming audience vs. the casuals."
Quick point of order—while I can see a continuation of Bolvar Fordragon's story being interesting, I'm not sure the idea of focusing on that "core gaming audience" is necessarily the way winds have blown. Most successful MMOs, WoW included, have accepted that there's not a hardcore vs. casual divide anymore, while the ones catering to hardcore audiences are either niche or killed in the cradle (rest in peace, Wildstar). But I digress.
The biggest eyeraise is that Ybarra was also apparently advocating for a sequel to WoW: "WoW 2 instead of the same WoW 1 expansions over and over re-skinned."
He states, however, that he wasn't necessarily able to make that happen—that would've been a call by current game director Ion Hazzikostas: "The President of Blizzard doesn't pitch game ideas. He/She has little influence on the games themselves other than input at various stages and random ideation usually directly with the Game Director (who owns the creative vision for the game).
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"The President is just one channel of input they can completely ignore if they choose. Ion did not ignore [me], he balanced a lot of things and ultimately decided where he wanted to take the game."
MMO sequels aren't entirely a crapshoot. Final Fantasy 11 and Final Fantasy 14 both co-exist in their own spheres of success, while Guild Wars 2 was a solid move for ArenaNet. But would it have worked with WoW?
I mean, maybe. But when I look at the time period where a sequel would've made sense—probably 10 years ago—I can't really think of a good stepping-off point. Either you're ditching the game in some of its most beloved eras (Mists of Pandaria and Legion, respectively) or you're moving on without any goodwill from the playerbase. Maybe you could've done it instead of revamping the old world for Cataclysm, I dunno.
But otherwise, would Blizzard have been able to convince its subscribers that WoW 2 is a good MMO to hop to during the content droughts of Warlords of Draenor, the systems headache of Battle for Azeroth, or the catastrophes of Shadowlands? Probably not. And you can't stay sticking with WoW didn't work out.
Yes, it is a deeply inconsistent game, and its latest patch is a bit of a disaster. But it's still here, ain't it? In a genre filled with bloodbaths, WoW stands stubbornly profitable—at least, enough to cause Microsoft to spend billions on it. I don't know if anything short of a meteor hitting Earth would put it down for good.
