Hogwarts Legacy 2 update has ‘instantly killed’ fan excitement for the Harry Potter sequel

While a sequel to Hogwarts Legacy hasn’t yet been announced, it’s all but confirmed to be happening. Several job listings have alluded to the project, with Warner Bros. Games’ head expressing his excitement about the future of the Hogwarts Legacy franchise.

Before then, of course, Hogwarts Legacy’s PlayStation exclusive Haunted Hogsmeade quest is set to land on other platforms this summer, and the game will receive several mysterious ‘features’ and ‘updates’, as teased by devs. When the sequel does eventually roll around though, what will it look like? I think it’s fair to say that we’d all love to see the depth of Hogwarts Legacy’s open world improved. The game may offer a huge map, but when all it’s filled with is copy and paste caves and ruins, it soon grows tiresome. Perhaps we could visit the Ministry of Magic or Diagon Alley. What nobody has asked for is for the game to go live-service.

Enjoy a tour of Hogwarts’ four house common rooms below.

For some reason though, Warner Bros. seems to think that’s what people want. Hogwarts Legacy was easily the company’s biggest gaming success of 2023, going on to become the industry’s top-selling game worldwide. This is a stark contrast to recent Warner Bros. live-service release Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League which, after a lacklustre release, already has a rapidly dwindling playerbase.

You’d think the conclusion to take away from this would be that players want rich stories and open-worlds, not games as a live-service but that’s not what Warner Bros. has assessed. As reported by WCCFtech, CEO and president of global streaming and games at Warner Bros. Discovery JB Perrette recently commented on how disappointing the launch of Suicide Squad was, going on to add, “Live services [...] Rather than just launching a one-and-done console game, how do [we] develop a game around, for example, Hogwarts Legacy that is a live service where people can live and build and play in that world on an ongoing basis?”

You’ve got an immensely successful narrative RPG, an underwhelming live-service game and you want to turn the successful RPG into, checks notes, a live-service game …. Make it make sense. “They just instantly killed by excitement for the sequel,” one fan wrote, while another added, “I hate online games. Guess they’re not getting my money next time around.”

That’s not to say that Hogwarts Legacy 2 will be entirely live-service but from this, I think it’s safe to assume that Warner Bros. will be thinking of how they can introduce live-service components or create a live-service spin-off. Either way, it’s not at all what fans had in mind.