I normally would come to bat for Ghostcrawler. I don't think he is a bad guy. However recently a lot of things he has said makes me want to call him an idiot, but then I would be wrong as well. The issue is similar to that of the so called Presidential Bubble most American Presidents find themselves inside once in office for a while. With Ghostcrawler this is the Blizzard Bubble. Ghostcrawler is surrounded by developers and is separated from the general player base for the most part.
The Blizzard Bubble is filled with developers that have been there so long and in a dated system that clearly can’t cope with the challenges the current gaming environment is facing. At least in a timely matter. The gaming demographics once again are changing as well.
Until all the yes-developers and I use developers in the most vaguest sense possible here, are either replaced or a massive injection of new blood occurs, we should expect much of the same. Those of us outside the Blizzard Bubble can see the problems while those inside do a pat on the back and say everything is awesome will just have to either cancel their sub and go elsewhere or deal with the game. I have leaned towards canceling as I have stated in previous posts because of the realm population issues killing my server, my guild, and driving my friends to quit.
I have been chosen by the big metal hand in the sky!
How do we know what the goals of those game companies were? Their goals might have been to just take a segment of the Warcraft audience. Blizzard managed to make a game where 10+ million people played it. They did it by catering to several different demographics. In order to keep pleasing everyone they also had to make the game increasingly generic. This has clearly upset some as we have seen over time on every fan site the continued gripe-fest.
By making a product generic, when something slightly better comes around with a comparable price people tend to switch. More bang for your buck.
In addition have you ever heard of a death by a thousand cuts? We maybe witnessing this with Warcraft. Each new MMO that comes out seems to be more focused at a particular gaming segment rather than a dev null catch all. China is showing us now that with the Age of Wushu Blizzard is vulnerable in the selected segment market.
As for the subs. I would not be surprised with patch 5.2 release being in that data caused a slight uptick. Even if it was 100k-200k subs. It looks better to say 1.3 mil lost rather than 1.5 mil lost. Another note Blizzard said they expect to lose more before the expansions end and we must remember this data is already 2 months old.
As for Blizzard monitoring players... just because you can watch what they are doing doesn't mean you understand why they are doing it. That is why focus groups observe then go in and ask questions. Blizzard is really only observing and then trying to infer what the player wants.
As for you claims of $150k a year. I would love to see sources and numbers. That seems a bit low.
Last edited by majesta; 2013-05-28 at 11:09 PM.
I have been chosen by the big metal hand in the sky!
Don't think you understood my post.
I was giving an example. I am saying that unless you can show that the majority of people quit due to class changes, you can't say that class changes are the reason for sub losses. I respect your anecdotal experience that people quit due to class changes, but my experience has been the total opposite.
As to the rest of your post, I've already said that in my view, the main cause for any sub loss was the dismantling of normal 25 man raiding guilds which were thriving communities in Wotlk (and arguably TBC, though a lot of people here will claim too much poaching was going on)
{I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. }
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
{I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. }
The game is 9 years old, people get bored playing the same game for 9 years /thread
never said the game was bad, i've been playing wow on and off since week 2 of EU release. When i find myself bored to play, i know its time to stop and move to onto another game. Every now and then i come back to WoW, they add updates all they want, but its still the same game
Closing this necro. Please don't necro old threads to post pointless posts