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  1. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemonpartyfan View Post
    Have they actually said this, or are you positing that just from their inactivity?
    They say it every time cross realm mythic before the next router is brought up

  2. #42
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    Realms are less relevant than they used to be but still provide a frame for larger populations of players. Apart from that there are groups that center around friends and family, different sorts of guilds and a lot of people who like to go it alone, sometimes with a friend or two. If you desire a 'community' experience it won't be the realm level except possibly on some RPG realms.
    "...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

  3. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by otaXephon View Post
    Blizzard makes almost zero income from server transfer fees. They exist mainly to inhibit players from guild hopping every fucking week just because they can. I agree that there are plenty of God awful shit servers out there and Blizzard should do something about them but removing server transfer fees would do more to harm the Mythic raiding community than help it.
    Source? Citation? Anything?

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemonpartyfan View Post
    Have they actually said this, or are you positing that just from their inactivity?
    Blizzard very rarely, if ever, talks about realm population. Seeing how incredibly easy it would be for Blizzard to open up everything cross-realm, it stands to reason the reason they haven't is because this does mean something to them.

  5. #45
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by otaXephon View Post
    Because it's the fucking truth and you're absolutely fucking insane if you think that Blizzard is making any substantial amount of money from this service. But no, God forbid anybody on this forum try to utilize critical thinking skills and come to the conclusion that Blizzard does or doesn't do something "because fuck you."
    I did actually read their SEC filings from the time before Hearthstone when it was still possible to make sense of their "digital sales channels" reporting.
    They made an absolute killing with the services. I can't imagine it being any different these these days - the ROI from the development has been earned long time ago, now it just makes them free money by flipping couple of bits in the DB.

    There's also additional evidence - The Instance podcast mentioned that there was considerable internal push against implementing the token and battle net balance because the digital services make them so much money. It's totally anecdotal of course, but those guys are fairly well connected to Blizzard people.

  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordfish Trombone View Post
    I did actually read their SEC filings from the time before Hearthstone when it was still possible to make sense of their "digital sales channels" reporting.
    They made an absolute killing with the services. I can't imagine it being any different these these days - the ROI from the development has been earned long time ago, now it just makes them free money by flipping couple of bits in the DB.

    There's also additional evidence - The Instance podcast mentioned that there was considerable internal push against implementing the token and battle net balance because the digital services make them so much money. It's totally anecdotal of course, but those guys are fairly well connected to Blizzard people.
    I think it was at lowest reported subs of MoP that the report announced that services offset sub losses and again during the roughly three million subscription drop in WoD. Services continued to hold WoW up throughout WoD all before the introduction of tokens. I have not payed attention this expansion though.

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by otaXephon View Post
    Blizzard very rarely, if ever, talks about realm population. Seeing how incredibly easy it would be for Blizzard to open up everything cross-realm, it stands to reason the reason they haven't is because this does mean something to them.
    Thats a really strong conclusion from a really weak premise. "Inaction" is rarely ever proof of anything.

  8. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by Deja Thoris View Post
    Source? Citation? Anything?
    If you compare cyclical income from subscriptions to what they make from server transfers, it's a drop in the bucket. Even with a conservative approximation of 1% of the playerbase transferring every month, the profit margin is extremely low. Blizzard isn't sitting around laughing at people who cannot "afford" server transferring, the service has a cost to give the act of moving your server have a more tangible impact than just pressing a button and waiting to move.

  9. #49
    Honestly we have the technology to make one single realm like ESO now. We 'don'"t need realms anymore. Make this a poll!

  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordfish Trombone View Post
    I did actually read their SEC filings from the time before Hearthstone when it was still possible to make sense of their "digital sales channels" reporting.
    They made an absolute killing with the services. I can't imagine it being any different these these days - the ROI from the development has been earned long time ago, now it just makes them free money by flipping couple of bits in the DB.

    There's also additional evidence - The Instance podcast mentioned that there was considerable internal push against implementing the token and battle net balance because the digital services make them so much money. It's totally anecdotal of course, but those guys are fairly well connected to Blizzard people.
    Hearthstone is a very different beast than WoW. That game sustains itself with microtransactions where WoW obviously utilizes a subscription model. I just don't see server transferring -- a completely opt-in optional service -- is somehow even remotely comparable to what they surely make from subscription fees.

  11. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by otaXephon View Post
    Realm population is a very real concern but I simply don't think removing realms from the equation is the best answer. Server merging is a better solution but Blizzard is seemingly apprehensive towards this after the "connected realm" idea they had was met with almost universal backlash.
    They will get over it. I've still got a bunch of toons over on Icecrown-NA (we were merged with Malygos). After our merger, there used to be some really nasty and heated arguments between the two realms. However, by WoD, people came to accept it and just moved on.

  12. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Laerrus View Post
    They will get over it. I've still got a bunch of toons over on Icecrown-NA (we were merged with Malygos). After our merger, there used to be some really nasty and heated arguments between the two realms. However, by WoD, people came to accept it and just moved on.
    I don't think connected realms are the worst solution but I think Blizzard envisioned them to be a way to solve this issue in concept but in execution found it to be much less well-received. If you read the initial announcement for connected realms it was pretty positive but by the time they'd actually been rolled out it was much less so. And the fact that they haven't further connected realms in the two- to three-year period since leads me to believe they likely don't view it as the best way to tackle this problem.

  13. #53
    Deleted
    Yes, realms are still important.

    First, I like being on a smaller realm. Its not a dead realm, but its far from being a highly populated one. It has many benefits.

    I know a lot of the guilds on my realm, some of them for years. I know people from those different guilds. People know my guild, since it has been around for years (and will be for years to come). There is a nice, friendly competetion going on with regards to progress. Recruitment is a bit harder, but we still manage to get good people. The AH is better.
    You know the people on your realm who really excel in their class.

    And the trade and general chat are crowded, but you can actually read them. I once had an alt on a crowded server, and those channels were a nightmare. I don't like it if they scroll so fast that I can barely read anything.

    And I never have to deal with "Realm is full, XXX In queue".

  14. #54
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by otaXephon View Post
    Hearthstone is a very different beast than WoW. That game sustains itself with microtransactions where WoW obviously utilizes a subscription model. I just don't see server transferring -- a completely opt-in optional service -- is somehow even remotely comparable to what they surely make from subscription fees.
    You misunderstand. I said reports before Hearthstone existed. These days it's very hard to know how that "Digital channel" actually breaks down - but if you go read the reports from 2008 or so, you can get a better "guess" - they're on the ATVI investor site - have a look.

    Also - as mentioned above, during MoP/WoD they actually reported that services helped to offset the subloss revenue. I'm quite sure the money they make from services is a non-negligible amount. The fact that value-added services are even mentioned separately in the Q-filings is a very good indication of how important revenue stream it is. All the evidence I've seen points to it being important part of WoW revenue stream. Most of the evidence is freely available in their quarterly reports.
    I'm not sure what you base your argument on as you seem to think the opposite? Care to elaborate with some sources?

    They have a clear strategy around it. This is why they've been so slow to implement things like virtual/connected realms.
    Last edited by mmoc0e47cbaaf5; 2017-03-27 at 07:54 AM.

  15. #55
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Darth Dracula View Post
    I'd be all for them making 4 mega realms
    That would require a game design that diffuses the players much more widely in the content. Today's design forces everyone into the same, small piece of content, which wouldn't scale to mega realms. But if they did figure out a way to make all content relevant all the time - thus spreading the players across the entire world - mega realms would be awesome.

  16. #56
    Deleted
    Yes, realms are still important.

    First, I like being on a smaller realm. Its not a dead realm, but its far from being a highly populated one. It has many benefits.

    I know a lot of the guilds on my realm, some of them for years. I know people from those different guilds. People know my guild, since it has been around for years (and will be for years to come). There is a nice, friendly competetion going on with regards to progress. Recruitment is a bit harder, but we still manage to get good people. The AH is better.
    You know the people on your realm who really excel in their class.

    And the trade and general chat are crowded, but you can actually read them. I once had an alt on a crowded server, and those channels were a nightmare. I don't like it if they scroll so fast that I can barely read anything.

    And I never have to deal with "Realm is full, XXX In queue".

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by Spotnick View Post
    The minute Blizzard try to solve realm population, you have people complaining about having too much people on their realm and having to compete to kill rares, quest mobs or get rare mounts.

    There is just no way to win on this one.. some people want to play on dead realms for some reason.
    People wanting to play on dead realms should be ignored and big population worlds should be the objective. That kind of competition is something you have to cope with in an MMO.
    Yes, some players would complain. It's Blizzard's job to ignore complains of people who don't know how to make a fun game and would rather see it butchered by low difficulty and no interaction whatsoever with other players.

  18. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordfish Trombone View Post
    You misunderstand. I said reports before Hearthstone existed. These days it's very hard to know how that "Digital channel" actually breaks down - but if you go read the reports from 2008 or so, you can get a better "guess" - they're on the ATVI investor site - have a look.

    Also - as mentioned above, during MoP/WoD they actually reported that services helped to offset the subloss revenue. I'm quite sure the money they make from services is a non-negligible amount. The fact that value-added services are even mentioned separately in the Q-filings is a very good indication of how important revenue stream it is. All the evidence I've seen points to it being important part of WoW revenue stream. I'm not sure what your information on this is, you seem to think the opposite? Care to elaborate with some sources?

    They have a clear strategy around it. This is why they've been so slow to implement things like virtual/connected realms.
    Ah, my bad. I try to avoid talking about the investor reports because nothing in them is relevant to us on a consumer level. If we knew exactly how much server transfers in particular contributed to Blizzard's bottom line, I'd say otherwise. But since this information isn't shared with us for very obvious reasons, all we're doing is trying to make correlation/causation arguments over information we'll never get the chance to see. You say that Blizzard dragging their feet means they have a financial motivation behind it; I see it that they don't have a good solution for it and leaving it the way we have it has less impact than opening the floodgates.
    Last edited by Relapses; 2017-03-27 at 08:05 AM.

  19. #59
    The Insane Aeula's Avatar
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    Realm transfers are a way for blizzard to make money whilst doing fuck all. It's why they put the prices up recently.

    We should be down to four servers per language per region with modern tech (PvE, PvP, RP, RPPvP) but blizzard won't sacrifice their baby cash cow like that.
    Last edited by Aeula; 2017-03-27 at 08:11 AM.

  20. #60
    Elemental Lord callipygoustp's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by otaXephon View Post
    Blizzard makes almost zero income from server transfer fees.
    In what world is a $25 charge for an automated service NOT pure profit? That service most likely paid for itself within the first month or two of being available. Since then, pure profit.

    With regards to the OP:
    Are realms even relevant anymore?
    No, they are not.

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