The End of the World

...of Warcraft...

is not going to happen in the near future.

Why am I making such a bold prediction? Have I discovered information about the Mayan calendar or interpreted a Nostradamus Quatrain? Have I studied eschatology in the books of Daniel and Revelation? Nope.

It's because of masks.

Yup, masks.

The discovery of female and male goblin and worgen masks caused a significant amount of clusterfudgery. Everybody went nuts making assumptions about the next expansion. Are these the new races? Is Cataclysm part of the name of the next expansion? Is the Maelstrom related? We have to know!!!

I'm fairly certain the UN had an emergency meeting on the topic.

Let's face it, a game on its last legs wouldn't cause that much commotion over a couple of files that relate to a holiday event. If WoW was close to dying, that discovery would have invoked a meh reaction that would have been forgotten in a day or two.

WoW's getting old, no question about it. Newer MMOs have much better graphics that make WoW look dated. Does that mean it's over? Nope.

Blizzard could lose half of its subscriber base and still own the internet. They've done what they do better than anybody else, and they'll be just fine for at least two more expansions. We'll see a couple of races and at least another hero class before they shut the servers down for the last time.

Don't jump ship yet, boys and girls. There's still plenty of WoW left.

Let's see what kind of insanity the inevitable big BlizzCon announcement inspires.