WoW will be at 10 to 11 million, not below that. You heard it from me.
I'd love to have his job, personally. The reason why he falls flat every time he says "NEXT XPAC WILL FIX IT" is because he doesn't stray too far from industry ideologies. He takes little risk and ends up wasting time fixing those little risks he took (rep grinds come to mind) that made the game worse. It's happened every xpac since he took over. In the meantime the glaring issues that have been at the forefront of every expansion remains. I'm sure the feeling of every class essentially being the same hasn't helped the numbers.
That GC may not do such a good job at balancing classes doesn't mean the rest of the game is shit.
Respectfully disagree. Even if WoW's major contribution was polish, innovations in design, UI/UX, accessibility and packaging are still innovations.
The only real area where they blatantly steal ideas is in lore, but lets be honest. Who doesn't steal from Tolkein when it comes to the Fantasy genre?
Last edited by ro9ue; 2013-02-07 at 03:26 PM.
Oh Oh Oh. that argument again...
Cross server game play - Cross server LFD tools - Phasing in the open world techniques (and just to let you know ... farms would be IMPOSSIBLE without this seamless technique - Cross realm play in open worlds - ...)
I won't go further into the picture, but I still don't see elemental things like owning personal flying mounts over continents without a loading screen in sight in other games.
I think that's the argument that has been debunked already years ago ...
Last edited by BenBos; 2013-02-07 at 03:37 PM.
The will mention their development has begun on their next expansion.
I believe GC does the best job he can. He seems like a reasonable dude, and he understands there are millions of people who want his job so he's very thoughtful on his decisions. Would I do things differently? Sure. But I guarantee just as many people would hate me, if not, more.
They already mentioned that last Quarter Release
---------- Post added 2013-02-07 at 10:27 AM ----------
Yet everyone takes ideas from everyone including WoW, sometimes the whole game is put in the so called "WoW Style" that some people call it. You gotta admit alot of games have taken ideas from WoW and put them in there games aswell, Nothing is safe.
I don't always hunt things, But when I do, It's because they're things & I'm a Bear.
Not to derail the thread but since the next expansion popped up I just want to throw in that I think an announcement of a burning legion expansion would bring back a lot of old players and I think that they are actually strategizing around that. When numbers are showing a sure decline, it's time to bust out the dreadlord expansion.
I don't always hunt things, But when I do, It's because they're things & I'm a Bear.
"If I recall correctly I just posted that this topic is not to be discussed any further." -Ensidia Fanclub Founder
I would be shocked if the Burning Legion wasn't in the next one honestly. Well the amount of Lore they could throw into that expansion is big as they have hinted at it for along time. So many old lore figures.
---------- Post added 2013-02-07 at 10:40 AM ----------
Agree with you there
Last edited by Arbs; 2013-02-07 at 03:42 PM.
I don't always hunt things, But when I do, It's because they're things & I'm a Bear.
Yes I can see how the bold statement connects, how you form your opinion. In my opinon you've been asleep for the past few years. PS2 is a MMOFPS btw. There's tons of other innovations but I won't discuss them in this topic. (We can discuss them in the GW2 forum ) because I don't see the relevance to this topic.
"you subscribe to something you have a certain service attached to it, usually unlimited." Time is not unlimited, hence, logically, a timecard of X amount if time, is irrelevant. They are subscribed to the game at X period of time which the 10 million stat is based on. I work in the billing side of the industry and all customers are called subscribers no matter the period of time they allow because they all have individual accounts.
As for why they dont call it "players", well, "players" is not a business-anchored/related word and it would not be appropriate for the group of people they are relaying the news to.
Right now, Blizzard does need a massive ideology change. Ghostcrawler's attitude towards people disliking Cross-Realm Zones, is a huge example of what not to do in a business model. He insulted the customer base, telling them they only want a single player game, when the majority of the complaints was about the game breaking bugs, like the 2-seater mounts, the flashing of the characters, which can cause a headache after a while, the hangups. And with Blizzard CM's now deleting all CRZ threads, even if they are being civil and not breaking any rules. I normally would not wish for firings, but I think such actions are in order, especially with Ghostcrawler, and his attitude towards their customers.
The old Blizzard used to be about "It will be released when it is ready" but CRZ in its current incarnation, was never ready for release. Especially when these same bugs were reported IN the beta, and it still went live and remains unfixed even to this day. If something can't be fixed, then turn it off and come up with a new idea. Insulting the customers only makes people quit. And I predict we will see the result of the trash talking ghostcrawler has done.
Yep, that's why I returned. I missed my friends who are still playing. So rather than deal with CRZ, I been dungeoning it up and working on getting my characters to 85 and away from CRZ. Only time I have to put up with it, is during RP meetings.
That is a really generous number. Me, I am going to say around 8.5M. Too many people were insulted by Ghostcrawler. Too many posts cropping up about how low pop realms are now going completely empty with maybe 3-4 other people around in the cities. It's all pointing to a rather heavy hit to Blizzard's subscriptions.
Yep, vanilla and bc were pretty grindy. I remember farming hours the scourgestones to get the rep up with argent dawn. My paladin still has her scourge stone finding trinkets. However, the grinds still felt optional. End game, people still had a wide range of choices for gameplay. The rep grind factions weren't mandatory to gear up. They were side things that you could choose to do. In vanilla, my options when I hit 60 were:
Farm Lightforge (That gear was a blast to collect)
RP
pvp (I remember the original alterac valley, how the fights were really epic)
Each patch brought forth a major story and event, and farming for the AQ gate opening was pretty rewarding.
Professions
In BC, that was the first time I ever unsubscribed, and that was just before the sunwell. Only because I was burnt out. But the options were there for me just like vanilla. I even got to raid Kara (though at that time, only got past the opera event). But I had options.
Wrath, gave me even more options. Things were easy. At the time I thought too easy, because my tauren druid was able to solo 10 mobs at once. And I didn't like the 1-70 XP nerf. But I felt like I had a lot more to do. I even would slip on a tabard for rep.
Cataclysm was a decent expansion, but definitely not a good one like vanilla-wrath. For one, raids were way too hard. The guild I was in, would hop in wrath raids for fun during the day and could advance quite far. But in cata's first raid, we couldn't even get past the first bosses in them raids. The story was good, the remade world was nice. But the newest race for the alliance had started out with an amazing story which cut off. And if you wanted a zones entire storyline, you had to play through the alliance version and the horde version would finish it. So the horde bias was definitely prevailant in that expansion so I wasn't surprised to see the numbers go down as they did.
But this expansion, they did away with rep tabards altogether and people have to do the dailies if they want to advance. Operation Shield Wall, is a good example, where they decided they'd lock the main story behind a wall of dailies. And CRZ is so widely unpopular. That's why I think we will see another drop in subscription numbers.
There's a fine line between doing ones job, and being an ass about it. He was doing a good job up until this expansion. Now, I think he needs a major attitude adjustment for sure. Lose his job? I'm mixed on that. Of course he could of just been doing what he was told. But I definitely think something needs to change.
Nope, because you assume GC does everything. I also said when you compare it to the WoW killers, if you compared it to Wrath I would definitely disagree. Good state means just that, good, not amazing or its best. All the other things I mentioned are still valid as well.
---------- Post added 2013-02-07 at 03:50 PM ----------
lolwut, that's like saying because a car has 4 wheels the manufacturer should pay royalties to the first company to ever make a car. WoW improved on the most basic things and made them awesome, they didn't directly copy them.