Vince Russo's The Brand

(Warning: For anyone here who plays World of Warcraft, this blog contains spoilers pertaining to the upcoming expansion titled-LEGION. If you don’t want to be spoiled, please cease reading at this point.)

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft actively since early 2007, right around the time that their first expansion entitled “Burning Crusade” had come out. From that point to now the game has gone through so many changes from mechanics to story to graphics to designs to just about anything and everything right down to the game’s very core.

These last few years however haven’t been as kind as they were during the time period of Burning Crusade and their second expansion Wrath of the Lich King which saw them see their highest paid subscription numbers. Ever since that peak it’s been a steady decline of paid subscribers. Sound familiar?

However with the upcoming release of the newest expansion titled LEGION that’s expected to drop sometime between June and September, some information has come out of Alpha/Beta testing that shows that Blizzard is really serious about trying to turn the game around and are doing big, big things to turn the franchise on its head.

Probably the biggest changes they’re doing is in regards to the storytelling as it’s been seen that there are major moves being made in regards to some of the major characters in game. We all know that Illidan Stormrage is returning this expansion and based on what’s been gathered so far, it appears he will be against the Legion in spirit, even if his body is being used for nefarious purposes as his soulless corpse is the key to summoning the Legion’s leader to Azeroth.

Varian Wrynn is being pronounced dead even though no body has been found yet and his son Anduin has been promoted to the position of King of Stormwind and one of his first decisions is putting Genn Greymane in charge of the Alliance military.

And of course as it’s been shown countless times in the Warcraft universe, just because you’re dead doesn’t exactly mean you stay dead. I guess the writers are fans of Dragonball Z. Even people who died during the beginning of Legion’s story will find themselves brought back to fight, such as Tirion Fordring who alongside other fallen characters, will be brought back as part of the Death Knight storyline as a new Four Horsemen to serve the Death Knight player with the other three characters being Sally Whitemane, Thoras Trollbane, and former Horde General Nazgrim.

Which brings me to another major overhaul they’re doing in which it seems, for this expansion at least, they’re putting more focus on the classes banding together, tired of the faction squabbling between the Horde and the Alliance and deciding to do things their own way. It’s a neat concept that will no doubt be a departure from how things are normally run but I’m sure they’ll still have some things going along Horde/Alliance lines to keep the PvP aspect going.

These are just a few examples of how World of Warcraft is changing and trying new concepts out in an attempt to not just retain their current playerbase, but also to bring back old subscribers that may have given up and give them something new to try out and see if they like the changes made.

How does this tie in to the WWE? It’s simple. They need to start making these kind of major changes to their product, shake things up, do things that make people want to enjoy discussing the next morning at the water cooler, or have it be a topical and interesting conversation between friends and fans. Last night’s Raw, judging by the reports I’ve read, was a step in the right direction. If they can fix the flaws and consistently put on exciting shows, then there’s no telling what heights they might be able to reach.