Looking back at my 2018 prediction post, two things jump out. One, pretty accurate. And two, pretty sad. CrowFall, Camelot Unchained, and Star Citizen. Those are the three titles mentioned. None of them launched. None of them had a major release milestone (open beta or something similar), and I feel about the same regarding those titles as I did at the end of 2017; meh.
Looking back at 2018, I did play Life is Feudal for a large chunk of time, and had a great go of it, mostly because of the guild and it’s members, but the game itself wasn’t bad and is a few design changes away from being actually great. I didn’t play FFXIV or any serious EVE though, and nothing else in the genre caught my eye enough to even bother.
So let’s talk 2019 predictions.
The big one for me personally is going to be the release of WoW Classic in the summer. I’ve had a LOT of people ask about running a guild, and I’m 99% certain I will. I expect the guild to do well in terms of numbers, and I also expect we will eventually get sucked into bashing our faces into the end-game. I welcome the pain.
I’ll also predict that WoW Classic will be bigger than current WoW in terms of popularity. Since there won’t be two different prices or accounts, likely the only metric to go off of might be server counts or more ancillary stuff like size/activity of Sub Reddits or something like that. Not an exact science, and I highly doubt Blizzard themselves will come out and state it.
More of a hope than a prediction, but I think/hope Crowfall or Camelot Unchained launches. I know Star Citizen won’t. I’d love to be surprised by either title in terms of quality and engagement, but I have my doubts. That said, it might be a horrible time to actually launch if everyone and their mother is playing WoW Classic anyway.
I predict something major to come from Amazon with Brave New World, like a significant beta. I haven’t followed that game much, but I wouldn’t be shocked if come beta/release, its surprisingly good. Seems everything Amazon touches is better than expected, and if someone is going to run the world, I’d rather it be Bezos then President Bozo.
Wildcard: I’ve had my eye on Gloria Victis for a while now (Steam wishlist), and recently a friend started playing and reports good things. There is a decent chance I jump in at some point to try that out as well.
Hardcore Casual 
Preview of my own 2019 predictions: WoW Classic is going to be 2004/2005 all over again, with Blizz getting caught flat footed with queues and new servers and server splits for special basket case servers. It is just going to be like watching the original film, only running at about 4x speed.
Critical information: Horde or Alliance?
Would be great to see a Supreme Cream WoW guild.
Leaning Alliance, as I was mainly a Horde player so I want ez-mode this time when it comes to end-game, and because I honestly feel the Alliance zones early-game are straight-up better.
Yeah, you’re probably right about Alliance zones. Paladins >> shamans back in the day, iirc.
I have to strongly disagree on the ‘meh’ on Crowfall. It is still marching along, there’s steady technical progress, and they’re the only game developer out there showing some ambition right now.
I haven’t loaded it in a few months, but the last time I did, it did feel meh. The movement/combat doesn’t instantly leap off your screen like Darkfall did, the graphics at this point are very average, and there was still nothing to actually do. I get its alpha or whatever they are calling the current state, but its been years and there isn’t much to show other than a tech demo.
I think you are wrong about WoW Classic becoming bigger than the current version of WoW even if you mostly meant that the current version of WoW will nosedive and winning over it will be piece of cake. I don’t think it is useful to rehash specifically why I think you are wrong – that’s ten pages of talk easily and a good part of it wouldn’t be anything you didn’t hear before. So, let’s just wait and see what happens.
I’ll offer this as some light food for thought: we recently had a remade version of Starcraft 1 and it went nowhere at all. Despite the hype and despite South Korea still holding championships in SC1 to this day, the remake did absolutely nothing and people stopped mentioning it mere months if not weeks after it went live. They have another remake in the works currently with WC3 and I think it will go more or the same route. The new WC3 is going to stop being relevant a mere month or two after it launches, all current talks about omg custom maps and omg certainly another esport nonwithstanding. People will buy it, play it for a couple of evenings, complete some campaign, then put it onto a shelf and forget all about it. And it’s the same with WoW Classic, although there are notable differences in that WoW Classic is an MMO. I think the general arguments about why remakes fail — which apply in spades to why the remake of SC1 went nowhere and why the remake of WC3 will also go nowhere — will overpower the differences between an MMO and an RTS.
But let’s see what happens.
I’d say you are really underselling the difference between a remake of an RTS and basically a relaunch of the largest MMO ever. But yes, we will see later in 2019 and beyond.
You could still play SC1, the entire time since its release, the official game. Wow classic servers have not been officially available since BC came out, over a decade ago.
You are comparing a graphical redesign to the rerelease of something not officially available. This is an absolute failure of an analogy.