Activision Blizzard Earnings Call, World Quest Assistant, Tweets, FinalBossTV #138

[Toblat]

wow armory is known for not working or loading undated information. so maybe use something a little more solid next time.

Is wowprogress solid? How about warcraftlogs?
Just checking for a friend.

[Grimalkin of Old]

But wouldn't you agree that world quests are way better handled than dailies?

Actually no, because you have no clear goals and the rewards don't offer enough incentive. And that is very unfortunate combination.

[Deleted]

Shocked. A LOT of work went into Legion. This could spell the end for WoW. I wonder if the next expansion will finally be the last 'proper' one.

HAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAW
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA

no.

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= Failure.

2nd quarter, wod had 7.5 mil. how is that a failure?

[Deleted]

It was fun, because the community was much different. Nowadays its more like a singleplayer with mmo aspects. Dungeonfinder/Raidfinder destroyed the community completely.

Agree with that . And once you tried stepping outside off that you encountered the biggest bunch of entitled a-holes on the planet .
Back in the days classic was fun because almost nobody knew how to do stuff and it was fun to figure things out in group .
These days you have to deal with the most vicious and venomous community in the history of MMO land .

[Fjordkeeper]

Actually no, because you have no clear goals and the rewards don't offer enough incentive. And that is very unfortunate combination.

Over the rewards we could debate, but on everything else I strongly disagree.
Dailies felt like a chore to me, while world quests simply offer something I can do if I want.

[Demonidze]

WoW is an old game. old game in a constant decline, no matter what they did since wrath game kept on declining, actually its a miracle they managed to pull off a grows in WoW at this point, only shows how great Legion is. the game will continue to decline because its god damn old. imho WoW 2 is needed, with new engine, new game play and new lore.

[Deleted]

WoW is an old game. old game in a constant decline, no matter what they did since wrath game kept on declining, actually its a miracle they managed to pull off a grows in WoW at this point, only shows how great Legion is. the game will continue to decline because its god damn old. imho WoW 2 is needed, with new engine, new game play and new lore.

People forget this. The game is over a DECADE old, of course it's not on the incline... I think there's a lot of players who are bored of the game, as a result they assume it's a total fault with the game and nothing to do with them not enjoying it anymore.

I take the game with a pinch of salt personally, I've literally played since release and I fully understand the fact that the game is old as fuck. It's amazing I still enjoy it after all of this time, that's a testament to how good the game really is. I honestly can't think of any other game I could put in 973 days+ (edit: had to actually check my /time on each character after posting this) of game time and still look forward to logging in to.

[HordeFanboy]

So slightly ahead of what WoD had at this point in its lifecycle is like 6-7m subs. Thats pretty decent tbh. I dont get the doomsaying. Do you guys never get tired of shouting nonsense?

More like 3-5m subs

[Siglius]

More like 3-5m subs

WoD was never below 3m. Stop trolling. And definitly not after 6 months into the expansion.

[randomnamegenerator16]

Here we go, 2017 and people shit at Watcher exactly the same as they did with Ghostcrawler and for idiotic reasons. Boring.

[HordeFanboy]

WoD was never below 3m. Stop trolling. And definitly not after 6 months into the expansion.

Wod was 3m in late 6.2.

[Deleted]

Legion being slightly ahead in performance, it doesn't necessarily mean subs. Look at WoD how many store mounts and pets they pumped out all the time, this expansion has had barely any, gotta remember that those mounts and pets generally sell around a million each, which is around 20-25 million dollars missed in profit, per fiscal quarter, to put that in perspective it's the same financial value of around 1.1 million subs after taxes (It's actually more profitable than subs because unlike the game because it requires much less times and resources to patch it into the game).

As for subs declining, let's be honest we know it would happen, wow has never been a stable subscription game past wotlk. It's always a very high peak at the start and it gradually drops down to about half of that number. Does it mean the game is dead? No, if you learnt anything, WoW has a very stable veteran club which doesn't really fluctuate much, they aren't going to quit over the things that the regular players quit over, because they have nearly a decade of time invested in WoW and that's worth more than the flaws, so they ignore the flaws most of the time.

Though just when I look at my friend list, I have a lot of players that came back for 7.2 but they are the type of players that do a few things for a few weeks and quit again until the next patch.

Which makes sense, there's so many players that do not have the time to play on daily basis, let alone play multiple hours per day to stay equal on a competition level, and most will actually quit simply because of the fact that they can't keep up anymore. So they just sub to test the new stuff for a bit and then they go play other games until the next cycle of content.

To my experience all the friends I've seen quit over this expansion has been more about the legendary rng or ap grinding, or they hated the class changes. Personally I could see myself quitting over the class, because I think that the MoP playstyle of all classes was the best it has ever been and WoD/Legion are both the worst it has ever been (excluding one button vanilla rotations). Though I probably won't.

I do see a problem or a trend with blizzard devs. They go full opposite compared to the previous expansion :

Cata had nothing to do -> MoP was overloaded with dailies.
WoD had nothing to do -> Legion overloaded with grinding
Next expansion will have not much to do.

Going from one extreme to another extreme doesn't do anything good it creates a sort of resentment towards the current expansion and homesickness towards the previous, until the next expansion where it entirely flips around again, they'll wish it was the previous expansion and not the current.

Though the AP grinding is sort of fixed now. It scales so out of control... there's gonna be a point you won't have enough time in your life to invest into getting more traits. For example everyone that's grinding now, is literally burning themselves out, yes you'll have your titan trait faster, but when people reach AK40 (2-3 weeks before ToS opens up) they'll get from let's say 45 traits to 52 traits within 102 dungeons. Whilst those other guys probably did around a 1000 for the same progression. A lot of players are playing so much they burn themselves out and end up quitting because of it.

Another lesson that blizzard needs to learn is that gating by extreme values hasn't worked and will never work, you will always have the kind of players that will go beyond their own limits to make it happen, although, at the currently scaling of AK, there's going to be a point where you literally have be alive for 90 years to even get one trait done, but even then, there's still gonna be those that would try it (even though they physically can't).

[randomnamegenerator16]

Wod was 3m in late 6.2.

Yeah because you have data that totally confirms it. :v

[Deleted]

Why so salty? It's proven that MMO-Champ doesn't reflect the game's standard-players - hell, the MMO-Champion community is in fact pretty hardcore. So please don't take your skill level as an indicator for other people's gaming ability. WoW is NOT an easy game. I'm playing it since release and switching between characters takes a lot of effort (rotations, procs, gearing etc.), even for experiencend players. Then there is this crazy ass complex world with myriads of tasks and time sinks. I think the classic MMORPG isn't really appealing for today's audience anymore.

Overwatch, for example, so absurdly easy to learn.

WoW is too complex for people to understand who don't know where to get additional information, guides etc. And it's not a new problem. I have met mages in classic who had strength and dexterity items - not only because poor itemisation back then, but also because they thought that they could be more effective with their swords like that. Now, if you don't know the weight of secondary stats and their importance for your spec, you go for item level and probably equip the wrong pieces if you don't have a guide or addons which tell you what's best for your class and spec. And this is just this fraction of the game. Constant tweaking of classes and skills does not help with this at all.

[Nerovar]

wow bad game
/10chars

[Deleted]

Over the rewards we could debate, but on everything else I strongly disagree.
Dailies felt like a chore to me, while world quests simply offer something I can do if I want.

Except that with dailies, you were done after reaching exalted and buying all things you needed from the vendor. If you returned to them later, it was only because you needed the currency/gold. Now, you are NEVER done as long as you still don't have all legendaries or need AP (which you will need for a long time, because this grind never ends), or still miss paragon reputation rewards. This is a receipt for burnout.

[randomnamegenerator16]

Legion's overall performance is slightly ahead of the prior expansion.

Anyway, this is just too vague. We don't know what exactly they mean, therefore any discussion about it is basicly pointless because we won't reach any conclusions. And they will surely not tell us what they meant and I doubt that we have any investor here, willing to share the information.

[Sencha]

What did you expect from wod 2.0?

So much this ^

[Deleted]

WoW is too complex for people to understand who don't know where to get additional information, guides etc. And it's not a new problem. I have met mages in classic who had strength and dexterity items - not only because poor itemisation back then, but also because they thought that they could be more effective with their swords like that. Now, if you don't know the weight of secondary stats and their importance for your spec, you go for item level and probably equip the wrong pieces if you don't have a guide or addons which tell you what's best for your class and spec. And this is just this fraction of the game. Constant tweaking of classes and skills does not help with this at all.

Exactly. Even as an experienced player, you actually can't perform well without the help of class-guides, spreadsheets, tell-me-when-addons, dbm and other "fun stuff". The gap between a beginner and a pro is so gigantic, that it overwhelms even loyal and skilled players from time to time.

Most of today's players just want to hop in and out, play a few rounds and rank in some sort of ladder. That's clearly impossible for a game like WoW which requires a MASSIVE commitment to time management and team coordination, even if you play it casually.

[Niwes]

as a lot of ppl mentioned here too that the mainstream thing not working:

when do blizzard finally learn that they should stop catering to the mainstream/masses and instead cater to the mmorpg wow crowd ?

the masses leave after 2-3 months, regardless how good that xpac is...

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Legion is better than WoD, but eventually people move on. WoW isn't a game I consider noob friendly. You could almost consider the design hostile to anyone that's only played popular games created in the past several years.

yep. this. mmorpgs just isnt a genre for that ppl. so blizz should finally stop catering to them and focus on mmorpg players. they would earn over a longer period than 2-3 months (i.e. 1 year) more money. because mmorpg players are longterm customers. they dedicate to the game and invest time. masses will never do that.

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its kind of inevitable that the game is getting that low.. there is no advertising or trying to pull people into the game. wow is not mainstream

yep. exactly this. because it just isnt meant for them.

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Sad?
He's been the worse thing happening to WoW ever. Since thee minute he took the job the game went super sh*t.
Once Blizzard realize they have to fire him, maybe the game will be back to be decent again.

he is responsible for the best raids in the last 6-8 years. you realize he was lead raid encounter designer for over a half decade ?