by wampuskitty » Tue Apr 12, 2016 6:09 pm
Yeah I'm sure many have wondered that.
Creating all the required game assets - which I assume is what blizzard is mainly protecting through copyright action, so is really what needs to be created for the new game - would take a very long time - many man-years of effort for a game as complex as world of warcraft [though perhaps less nowadays with the high level of skin re-use]. So - textures, models, npcs, decisions on class and spells/buffs/etc, all the quests, and pvp too... awful lot of effort.
Presumably also need to write a new client too. Making that run smoothly on a wide range of hardware.
So - awful lot of work, for no certain gain. WoW benefitted hugely from the warcraft games - and maybe other blizzard franchises like diablo. And I'd reckon that buy-in is critical to getting people involved and wanting to play. Not saying colours and sounds and fun gameplay aren't important, but the backdrop was a huge factor in wow's success [and nostalrius success] for some.
Having said that, I guess DOTA2 is an example of what can be done - but I'd also think it's nowhere near as much work to set up as a WoW clone.