An honest question to Blizzard fans

[Derpling]

This is a textbook JAQing off thread, but the answer is: they make video games. I enjoy their video games. People taking video games too seriously are a cancer on society. The end.

[risingforce]

So my question is, with overwhelming evidence that the game is in a brutal decline, why do people still go out of their way to defend Blizzard and the current product?

Overwhelming evidence?

I notice you didn't cite any overwhelming evidence, because it's purely in your head. And don't talk to me about subscriber figures, I'm a marketing consultant and the least of your worries is the last published subscriber numbers. Blizzard Activision's doing just fine, and the WoW Token was a pretty decent product that adds a model to the fanbase and (this is an important one) serves to take business away from the third-party / bot sector.

You say 'defend', I see most people just getting on and (a) enjoying the Blizz portfolio and/or (b) waiting for Legion because (b1) they've reached their goals within this expansion and/or (b2) they've reached their personally set quota of playtime, or rather, they feel the expansion has given a return on investment == they paid, they played, happy to move on / see what comes next.

Customers do have an obligation to want the best from their provider, but asinine posts like yours are simply self serving.

You'll find that Blizzard has managed to serve a huge playerbase (WoW), expand it's portfolio, year on year increase revenue and over time every single product and expansion offers more content and more things to do.

Here's a few explanations for what you might be misinterpreting as 'overwhelming evidence':

• People better connected than ever, but more isolated than ever. Leads to comparison, leads to insecurity. Forums, games, any kind of disconnect can become a great place to communicate but too often insecurities and negatives are what comes out. A discussion often leads to opinions being polarised instead of reaching a middle ground.
• WoW is an old, old model. It's an MMO. There aren't many long lasting MMOs around anymore with the financial model, legacy and investment of WoW. Do you appreciate how difficult it is pushing a legacy format? The comic you posted could as well be specific to "MMOs in 2016". People want more accessible (mobile ready) games, quick transactions and accessibility. An MMO is pretty much the antithesis of the most popular games right now. Someone from Blizz asked a rehtorical question, probably about Clash of Clans -"it should be acceptable that a player can spend $10k in CoC" -but WoW by comparison is a very old model; it's quite simply a long term investment, and a social game.
• It is a social game, and from everyone I have ever played with (Raid or casual) has enjoyed the game as a social experience: WoW is reciprocal -it gives back what you put in if you're socially adept. Should WoW try and rectify that? Maybe. Maybe not? WoW in an MMO, the Multiplayer experience should be pillar of the game, but more often than not (personal opinion) I see most people's problems stem from lack of social investment or lack of players to share the game with.

I think your original post is as self serving as the rest of the 'general' vocal complaints: asinine. I'd love to talk psychology and demographics but you don't want to hear that. Simply put, people don't often defend the game because ya know why? those people have better things to do == they're playing the game, or they're hanging out on TeamSpeak or getting on with other things waiting for the next Expansion.

Hopefully you'll find your happy place too, be it in or out of Blizzard's portfolio. Best of luck!

[Hexian]

There are people on these forums you are never going to reach...ever. They have never spoken ill of Blizzard, never will, and will defend any Blizzard action to the bitter end. Blizzard could literally hand them a pile of shit and they would praise Blizzard for the amount of corn it contained.

They know who they are, we know who they are, and it is just best to move on.

[Tirilka]

Because I very much enjoy World of Warcraft, and I don't see the "problems" that people are blabbering about as "problems".

- Other people unsubbing have absolutely zero effect on me and my enjoyment.
- I don't see gutting of class mechanics; if I didn't read the forums at all, it wouldn't even pop in my mind. I still remember WotLK (and BC, but I don't remember it as vividly) and I strongly believe that all that we have now is better than that. Hell, some specs just weren't viable at all in raids. And I don't mean the modern definition of unviable, when 10-20% less dps is the end of the world.
- Class identities? The hell is that, and how was it even ruined. Removed skills - some were removed, some were added. So what? I miss the ability of mages to mount up while moving, but that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the rest of the game. It's all minor.
- Class halls are not garrisons, you gotta be really shallow and dense to think that, especially after all the clarifications made.
- Oversimplified feel of the game is bullshit. I don't see oversimplification in Mythic raids, in new boss mechanics, in new profession content, in new quests or dungeons or challenge modes. The only place I see it is in minds of whiners.

It's brutal decline of the game only for people who don't like the game. I like how it currently unfolds, and I don't like when people shit on my favorite game. Especially when their arguments hold no weight, in my opinion. So I defend it (rarely, it's rather pointless and a waste of time, I'd much rather play another game of HotS than write multiple posts to oppose the whining on these forums) because Blizzard has done muuuuuuuuuch more good than they've done bad. I don't skim over the good stuff and focus on the bad.
Nobody can honestly say that nothing is wrong. But that 'wrong' doesn't matter much, because there isn't much 'wrong' compared to how much 'right' there is.

[ceall]

They defend it, cuz legion looks promising so far. WoD looked promising too, when it was in beta, but legion gets billion times more love than WoD did. The devs communicate with the players much more than last time.

And to clarify: class halls may look like garrison 2.0, but there's only bare bones of garrisons left. You'll do like 2-4 missions a day, which will award you with quests afterwards, so YOU can go out in the world. Resources are spent on player power (class hall tiers eventually opening the 3rd relic slot and the newly introduced artifact knowledge, which wants you to go out in the ENTIRE world, finding tomes to increase the speed of gaining AP) and are solely acquired by actually PLAYING the game.

And if you take away the "new expansion spike" with subs being active for 2 months max, WoD doesn't look all that bad. Without that spike, the game lost around 2m subs until Blizz stopped releasing sub numbers. And that's by far not "half of the playerbase". Never underestimate the masses that only play the game for leveling and dungeons at the beginning of an expansion.

[Deleted]

Every game, ever - and I truly do mean ever, is in decline from the moment it comes out. It may improve, it may become more popular but it's the very nature of a game it has a finite life span. A game isn't something that will carry on, that one day your son/daughter will inherit your place in. At this point in time games aren't deemed equivalent to books, right now your child won't come home one day and tell you today in English they studied the Mass Effect franchise like they have Shakespeare.

The gaming industry itself is what 40-50 years old now, WoW has been there for 20-25% of that time and is still going and at a far higher level than Everquest.

No one knows what to do with WoW because there is no model for success at this point. Vanilla in comparison was easy, there was a tried and tested MMO pattern you could follow. Who do you look to for inspiration? Who has the answers? On the whole people are idiots (and of course I include myself in this statement) we focus on what we want things to be in the short term and what best suits us. People can be vocal and can force other peoples hands to get what they want in life, but it doesn't necessarily mean it will be the right thing - and sadly we'll never know for sure either way if the original plan was better or not.

Overwatch can be released, have a fantastic 3-6 months and it may well be a resounding success. The vast majority of successful games actually achieve this, some others like CoD tend to last 12 months. People may come back to games after a while away, but on a day to day basis how many people still even play games 2 or 3 times a week from over a year ago? (Please note, saying "I do" in response to this point isn't a valid or relevant response, unless you're on the tip of about 800,000 replies coming in saying I do)

I don't necessarily agree with how things go, and I don't play any other blizzard titles besides WoW (I absolutely hate the Diablo games - and for one entirely stupid reason, I can't get on board with that camera angle in games) but they've earned the right to try and carve their way forward as they see fit with games like WoW.

Ultimately its doomed to end, whether that be an end as a game that millions play and it drops to the thousands/tens of thousands who are merged onto a single server or completely with the servers being switched off.

[Deleted]

Before this gets insta locked or i get reported again or banned, this is not a troll thread or me starting a flame war, i genuinely wan't to try and understand this.

The past xpac has universally been panned as their worse, massive drops in subs, gutting of the game mechanics, removing a lot of skills and class identities, going into the legion it doesn't look much better with class halls(Garrison 2.0) and the general oversimplified feel of the game, even as someone who has bought every xpac at launch who has been pissed off at the company for a long time, i feel no inclination to buy legion.

So my question is, with overwhelming evidence that the game is in a brutal decline, why do people still go out of their way to defend Blizzard and the current product?

I usually see the usual "You're just bored of the game" or "X people like Y because of Z" but it really seems like there's very little going forward for WoW at the moment but a lot of loyal people to the company(Don't know why you're loyal to a company) Seem to act and speak like absolutely nothings wrong, everythings going as planned and we're somehow wrong? I just want to try and understand this mentality because at the moment the current active wow community reminds me of this picture.

I would like to know why you think Legion is going to be WoD 2.0. Everyone acts like they can't make good finished expansions anymore because of 1 expansion that wasn't. Class halls =/= Garrisons, i play the alpha and there's a lot of stuff, dungeons look amazing, the newest one is awesome with the special event near the end and the second boss. Mythic+ dungeons, the pvp system, professions need a lot of time because you need to actually go out in the world to get ranks up. You need to go out for world quests in general. There are world quests that require you to form groups because they mobs will kill you too fast. And there is still more than this, so i don't get the whole ''wod 2.0''.

[Shiroh]

Because I actually enjoyed WoD. More than I did TBC and Cataclysm. I'm sorry to disappoint you. And once I felt that I started to get bored back in January I decided to unsub. Like I did in every previous expansion.
So I'll come back for legion and play it till I get bored and quit again.

[WowIsDead64]

Honestly WoD wasn't as bad as the internet makes it seem. The story was laughable and the content was light, but it wasn't the equivalent to a groin punch like some of the hyperbole considers it. It's cool if you dislike it, because that's totally allowed, but I think they still put out a pretty decent expansion alltold. Just wish it hasn't lasted as long as it has. That's probably my biggest complaint, really.

I agree. When I think about this "Garrisons are bad" stuff and start biasing towards this idea, that may be it's bad, that I have to run them on every character, but...then I just ask myself a question: you're altoholic - what else do you want? Isn't it the best content possible for casual altoholic? You have been asking for alt-friendly content for ages. Isn't alt-friendly content - is content, where effort is minimal per character, so you have time to play them all every day? You need to log in on every character - not just abandon it after completing your goals forever. Is it bad?

WOD isn't bad - as always, it's xpack, that has good idea, but terrible execution. No flying solely made this xpack unbearable for me.

[Eroginous]

Before this gets insta locked or i get reported again or banned, this is not a troll thread or me starting a flame war, i genuinely wan't to try and understand this.

The past xpac has universally been panned as their worse, massive drops in subs, gutting of the game mechanics, removing a lot of skills and class identities, going into the legion it doesn't look much better with class halls(Garrison 2.0) and the general oversimplified feel of the game, even as someone who has bought every xpac at launch who has been pissed off at the company for a long time, i feel no inclination to buy legion.

So my question is, with overwhelming evidence that the game is in a brutal decline, why do people still go out of their way to defend Blizzard and the current product?

I usually see the usual "You're just bored of the game" or "X people like Y because of Z" but it really seems like there's very little going forward for WoW at the moment but a lot of loyal people to the company(Don't know why you're loyal to a company) Seem to act and speak like absolutely nothings wrong, everythings going as planned and we're somehow wrong? I just want to try and understand this mentality because at the moment the current active wow community reminds me of this picture.

Here's the problem with people like you and threads like this: you only see things from a very narrow perspective where everything has to be one extreme or another. Nothing can ever be 50 shades of gray with you and that's why threads like this get locked. Blizzard is a gaming company. They have made several games that have been popular over the years. Things change. One or more of their games are no longer as popular as they used to be. Shit happens.

None of this means that Blizzard is doomed, that they are in dire straits, that they need to make some massive changes or have a moment of clarity about Wow as a product. What it means is a combination of things:

1. You look at the wrong things as a measure of success for Wow.

2. Your expectations are too high (which is pretty common for gamers).

3. You don't understand the reasons for Blizzard's behavior (or the way the operate as a business).

Maybe instead of questioning Blizzard and Wow, you should start questioning why you care so damn much. Move on if you don't like Wow. How is that any different from anything else?

[Deleted]

I rarely see people say nothing is wrong with wow. I also rarely see valid criticism of wow. So then someone like myself gets called a fanboy ...

Gee I wonder why...

[Cosmoz]

There are people on these forums you are never going to reach...ever. They have never spoken ill of Blizzard, never will, and will defend any Blizzard action to the bitter end. Blizzard could literally hand them a pile of shit and they would praise Blizzard for the amount of corn it contained.

They know who they are, we know who they are, and it is just best to move on.

Well said.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

They aren't hiding anything

subscription numbers are meaningless because it doesn't actually indicate whether people are playing or not

They're hiding their sub numbers.

You made that up, and it doesn't make any sense.

[DanThePaladin]

For me personally I think it comes down to me not just wanting to get upset over a videogame anymore.
Sure there are things I don't agree on that Blizzard has done in the past - and in the Alpha as it is. But for me to sit and voice that.... I just can't be bothered man.

I play the game because I still enjoy it, have I not enjoyed it, I have taken breaks. And when I do not enjoy it at all anymore I will simply close my account.. I see no reason to voice my reasoning behind or be mad about it... It's just a game...

[fumper]

Lore, and PvP

[Mekh]

Because I still enjoy it. That's it. I like the game and the direction it's going because it fits my playstyle. Call me a filthy casual, or a newb (although I've played since late Vanilla), but I still enjoy the game. I don't need to explain why, I just do. I defend Blizzard because, again, I like the way the game is progressing. That's my opinion, and that's all that matters to me.

Word for word of this, tbh.

Also: This slow boil metaphor some people here keep using, also in relation the P2W and whatever, only works if it's at least fast enough that neither the cook nor the frog die of old age.

[Deleted]

going into the legion it doesn't look much better with class halls (Garrison 2.0)

Stopped reading here.

They share the mission table and follower system, that is all. Done right it's not an issue, it's a nice little mini-game.

[Marston]

Because it's a game. I still like to play it. If I have enough and get I just pause the game. I have done that since vanilla release. I probably took at least 2 breaks of several weeks each before my first character reached max level because I got bored during leveling. I paused again at max level. I paused during TBC for several months. I paused in Wrath. In Cata. In MoP. And also in WoD. I just came back 2 weeks ago after a 7 month break. And I am having fun again. It's been like this since the game released and each time new content comes around or my break has been long enough, I want to play the game again.

Why do some people simply not understand this?

[Mekh]

Stopped reading here.

They share the mission table and follower system, that is all. Done right it's not an issue, it's a nice little mini-game.

In all fairness: It is 2.0. A new version of it and hopefully an improvement over and a fix to the old system. You know what would be way worse? Garrisons 1.1.

[Deleted]

Stopped reading here.

They share the mission table and follower system, that is all. Done right it's not an issue, it's a nice little mini-game.

And you think it will stay that way? I bet a shipyard is just around the corner