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While many players are already fatigued with the current World of Warcraft expansion, it looks like it could be quite some time before they see any relief. Today, a leaked pre-order advertisement suggests that the next expansion, World of Warcraft: Legion, may not be released until as late September 21, 2016.
WoW still dominates the MMO market, but the game has started to show its age in recent years. Earlier this year, its subscriber base plummeted to its lowest number in over a decade. While the release of an expansion always sees a massive spike in players followed by a steep drop off, the decline after Warlords of Draenor was particularly quick, and the game’s subscriber numbers have continued to fall over the last few months.
With no major content patches planned for the foreseeable future, it seems likely that the game’s subscriber base will continue to shrink, which may explain why Blizzard recently announced that it will no longer be sharing those numbers.
According to the pre-order image, Legion will offer an instant level 100 boost for one character, making it easier for new or returning players to jump into the expansion, but this also means that there is little reason for current players to spend time leveling new characters. Couple that with the fact that old gear is almost instantly made obsolete with the release of a new expansion and Blizzard will have a difficult time holding onto subscribers for the coming months.
While September is certainly a long way off, Legion may come much sooner, as previous pre-order ads listed dates that were several months later than the actual release. Still, with the current game content already stale, Legion can’t come soon enough for many players.
“I’d be upset if we had to wait until June, let alone September,” one player wrote on the WoW subreddit.
Other players made similar statements, and several expressed disappointment at the expansion’s $50 price point. Warlords of Draenor, which many consider to be one of the most disappointing expansions, was also priced at $50, but all previous expansions had been priced at $40.
“I’m disappointed that they’ve set the price to $50 again,” one user wrote. “I knew they would, I 100 percent knew they would, but a small part of me was hoping they’d drop it back to $40 as a ‘sorry that WoD killed WoW.’ ”
Blizzard is expected to reveal more information about the upcoming expansion this week at BlizzCon.
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