Did Activision ruin Blizzard?

[Pann]

He instead wants them to focus more on squeezing more revenue per user out of their fans, even if that means a smaller share in the mmo-space.

It is quite clear from the sub data from around the time of the merger that WoW's growth was beginning to slow down so I do not think his comments were unreasonable.

[Deficineiron]

His are sarcastic remarks, but it's easy to be fooled, he's good at it.

Reference: His various "forum logic" rants

I am honestly and sincerely flattered you noticed Forum Logic enough to remember and quote it!!

[Jtbrig7390]

Good and Bad is subjective.

There is many who finds WoW to be great and others that think its shit.

The fact blizzard is still in business clearly shows they are doing something right and making a product someone enjoys while making profit. Activision didn't ruin anything and good chance they are apart of the reason why blizzard is able to fund more IP's.

[Deficineiron]

It is quite clear from the sub data from around the time of the merger that WoW's growth was beginning to slow down so I do not think his comments were unreasonable.

Agreed on slowing growth rate of subs. Good argument that possible that without move from the9 to netease, wotlk may have closed out lower than it started on worldwide subs. western subs I can make a good argument they WERE lower than in e/y 2008.

pertinent to the topic but lacking all kinds of critical data for us to review are how the tuning changes immediately post-merger 3.0.x impacted retention patterns. it is the proverbial 64,000$ question.

[Osmeric]

pertinent to the topic but lacking all kinds of critical data for us to review are how the tuning changes immediately post-merger 3.0.x impacted retention patterns. it is the proverbial 64,000$ question.

I think we can agree they didn't have an obvious positive effect, since they tried reverting that tuning philosophy.

It could be that subs would have done even worse without 3.0.x tuning, though. I know I personally would have bailed out from WoW had Wrath been BC all over again. Most of the people I played with in Wrath bailed out when it looked like Cata was going to be pretty much that.

I suspect those in charge may have interpreted the slowdown of growth in Wrath as a repudiation of the "make it easier" philosophy, and designed Cata accordingly. If so, this was a mistake.

[NMX-]

Correlation != causation. Activision is not responsible for the mechanics of World of Warcraft, no matter how much you might think it to be true.

Truth. Activision lets Blizzard act on their own in virtually all operations.

[Pann]

I think we can agree they didn't have an obvious positive effect, since they tried reverting that tuning philosophy.

It could be that subs would have done even worse without 3.0.x tuning, though. I know I personally would have bailed out from WoW had Wrath been BC all over again. Most of the people I played with in Wrath bailed out when it looked like Cata was going to be pretty much that.

I suspect those in charge may have interpreted the slowdown of growth in Wrath as a repudiation of the "make it easier" philosophy, and designed Cata accordingly. If so, this was a mistake.

I wonder if they planned to retain players by getting more them into raiding with easiness of Naxx and then increase the difficulty throughout the expansion only to find that the people who tried raiding were put off by the difficulty of Ulduar.

[Slythan]

Blizzard is a corporation, it is not your favorite Uncle.

I really don't get some people's stubborn insistence that Blizzard can't possibly be responsible for any of its horrible mismanagements, it must be EVIL activision. Conveniently anything good they do must be because the amazing saints at blizzard sneaking something by their corporate Overlords.

Pretty much every ex-blizzard employee said the opposite. As in they were left alone. Can't we just accept that corporations do not deserve to be placed on a pedestal and the bad and the good of blizzard in the last decade was entirely because of their own ego, complacency and greed?

[stgeorge78]

Mike Morhaime made a critical mistake very early on, instead of getting a loan from a bank to keep his company afloat, he sold it to some company who then Sierra bought and then Sierra got bought by CUC who then turned into some other company after an Enron style scandal and then they got bought by Vivendi who then bought Activision and smashed those two companies together and then Activision bought it's way out of Vivendi. But that early critical mistake cost Blizzard everything. If Mike just had a little more faith, he would be richer than Zuckerberg and have full control over his own company's destiny...

[Osmeric]

I wonder if they planned to retain players by getting more them into raiding with easiness of Naxx and then increase the difficulty throughout the expansion only to find that the people who tried raiding were put off by the difficulty of Ulduar.

That fits into the narrative I've constructed, and may even be true.

[Deleted]

He and a group he led bought a part of vivendis stake at a discount not available to the public. That is a problem, even though he got away with it.

Didn't see Panns old response but his answer is friendly put nonsense, because the subject he talks about is a different one than I talked about. It just happend to occur under the same circumstances.

Kotick didn't actually get away with the lawsuit I refered to. It was settled out of court (internal legal battles obviously hurt reputation) with a deal at loss of Kotick. In simple words Kotick and Kelly where forced to pay back Activision Blizzard $275 million for basically selling Activision Blizzard to himself and partners at a discounted price offered exclusively to themself at effective loss of Activision Blizzard and all other investors. The result of that agreement is a defacto lost battle for Kotick. Just without a curt ruling forcing him that would be all over the news shaming Activision Blizzard executives and shy away investors.

[Deficineiron]

Didn't see Panns old response but his answer is friendly put nonsense, because the subject he talks about is a different one than I talked about. It just happend to occur under the same circumstances.

Kotick didn't actually get away with the lawsuit I refered to. It was settled out of court (internal legal battles obviously hurt reputation) with a deal at loss of Kotick. In simple words Kotick and Kelly where forced to pay back Activision Blizzard $275 million for basically selling Activision Blizzard to himself and partners at a discounted price offered exclusively to themself at effective loss of Activision Blizzard and all other investors. The result of that agreement is a defacto lost battle for Kotick. Just without a curt ruling forcing him that would be all over the news shaming Activision Blizzard executives and shy away investors.

how much /share was the payment to atvi for shares they bought?

if it was just to market price, I would still argue it was a steal. No way to buy that much stock without jacking it through the roof in open mkt.

[Deleted]

Correlation != causation. Activision is not responsible for the mechanics of World of Warcraft, no matter how much you might think it to be true.

Ah OK, so its purely Blizzards fault this has gone from the best game ever to an over convenient pile of shite with barely any RPG elements left with a crappy shop selling bollocks to delusional fanboys and gold and boosts that undermine game integrity. I'm surprised, you usually pass the blame onto anyone BUT Blizzard.

[Thirstblood]

They made it garbage... very garbage-y!

[Darsithis]

Ah OK, so its purely Blizzards fault this has gone from the best game ever to an over convenient pile of shite with barely any RPG elements left with a crappy shop selling bollocks to delusional fanboys and gold and boosts that undermine game integrity. I'm surprised, you usually pass the blame onto anyone BUT Blizzard.

I've highlighted all of the personal opinion parts of that. Since I don't agree with any of those things, I have no one to blame. You can feel free to have that opinion of the game, of course, but objectively the only person you can blame would be Blizzard, yes. They're autonomous.

[Unholyground]

seems to be that years ago they realized WoW was getting old and that new subs were going to stop coming in and that attrition was going to happen with the current subs so they smartly reorganized and expanded their offerings so that WoW wasn't their biggest focus. Games have a limited life cycle and 10 years is pretty far beyond that.

Going on year 12, I am predicting that subs will easily go back up to like 9 million.

[Plutarch78]

Ah OK, so its purely Blizzards fault this has gone from the best game ever to an over convenient pile of shite with barely any RPG elements left with a crappy shop selling bollocks to delusional fanboys and gold and boosts that undermine game integrity. I'm surprised, you usually pass the blame onto anyone BUT Blizzard.

Correct. That tin-foil around your head is a bit too tight methinks.

[Osmeric]

Ah OK, so its purely Blizzards fault this has gone from the best game ever to an over convenient pile of shite with barely any RPG elements left with a crappy shop selling bollocks to delusional fanboys and gold and boosts that undermine game integrity. I'm surprised, you usually pass the blame onto anyone BUT Blizzard.

If it is possible for someone other that Blizzard to make a decision, why would it be impossible for Blizzard also to have made that decision (ignoring your opinions there on the value of the decisions)?

[IxilaFA]

Why do people think that Activision has any control over Blizzard? And do these same people not realize that Blizzard has always been under the thumb of a parent gaming company, formerly Vivendi? Just because Blizzard is a subsidiary of a parent company doesn't mean the parent company controls every change the company makes. Activision has their own gaming division to worry about, I doubt they pay much attention to Blizzard's activities beyond approving projects and maybe checking up to ensure that everything is running smooth and is generating a profit.

I bet it would surprise most of these people to know that a lot of companies in the world are under the thumb of a larger parent company. Most of the newspapers and radio stations in the USA are owned by the same four companies. Almost all of the billboards you pass by on the freeway are controlled by the same company. Nestle owns probably half of the chocolate production in the USA. And so on and so forth. Just because a parent company owns a subsidiary does not mean they are taking part in the everyday running of the operations and choosing how the company should produce content.

[Osmeric]

Why do people think that Activision has any control over Blizzard?

You mean, aside from Kotick having the power to terminate anyone at Blizzard at whim and control over all money Blizzard makes?

It's a puzzlement!