"Blizzard is a business"

[Raelbo]

I'm talking about the direction they're going now with every mount with a unique model being a store mount (while raid drop mounts are tired remodels of scorpions and wolves) and actual gameplay items like the level 90 boosts being available.

Does it make any sense at all for a shop mount to be of a non-unique model? I mean if they put some recoloured thundering cloud serpent on the shop would anyone honestly care to buy it? So maybe they should put a recolour of something rare, like say, the Kor'kron Juggernaut (Garrosh's Invincible)? But then that would totally devalue the genuine article and piss off the people who actually went to the effort of obtaining it. No, I just can't think of any scenario where it makes sense to add an existing model to the shop, so logically speaking, every shop mount needs to be something "new".

Now if they were making "new" shop mount models at the expense of "new" ingame mount models, then I would agree that this is reason to get upset. But you can't go about assessing this by looking at how many new shop mounts there are and then extrapolating that if it weren't for the shop, those mounts would've been available in the game. You have to look at how many new mount models you can get in game and decide whether that number is decreasing. They can add 50 new mount models to the shop for all I care, but as long as the number of new in-game obtainable mounts stays consistent or better than the historical precedent, you cannot argue that the shop mounts have come at the expense of stuff you should have got with just your sub.

And if you look at MoP, I hardly think you can complain about the number of new mounts (ie mounts which are distinctively different from anything from previous expansions) they have introduced:

1) Cloud Serpents
2) Flying Disk
3) Galakras
4) Garrosh's wolf
5) Dragon Turtle
6) Skyscreamer
7) Direhorn
8) Mushan
9) Astral Cloud Serpent
10) Pandaren Phoenix
11) Primal Raptor
12) Yak
13) Scorpion
14) Sky Golem
15) Kor'kron Juggernaut
16) Jewelcrafting panthers
17) Geosynchronous World Spinner
18) Depleted Kyparium Rocket
19) Riding Goat
20) Grand Wyvern

Now you can nitpick that some of these are "just" reskins or whatever, but my feeling is that MoP has offered more new and interesting mounts than any other expansion to date.

The more they can get away with without appropriate player backlash the more they're going to do.

But is it appropriate to initiate a backlash for something that you simply fear will happen? I don't believe so. Let Blizzard know what the line is that should not be crossed and respond when they make obvious overtures that they are approaching that line. Blizzard have long expressed the view that their game will not go pay-to-win in the foreseeable future. If/when they declare otherwise, (and at the time it remains something that we don't want - a lot can change in 10 years after all), then by all means, respond accordingly. But really, punishing them for something like shop mounts, a feature that many players actually like, on the basis of an untested theory that they are lying is simply escalating an issue that should rather be left alone.

[raviadso]

How is it worse to sell cosmetic items in a game that you are actually playing than to say, design and sell a t-shirt or a plush toy?

How is one new revenue stream worse than others?

Yall keep saying that Blizzard is a business as if that is an interesting assertion. Of course they are. Y'all are trying to imply instead that they are a BAD business (or perhaps so deluded that you think that Blizzard is a live-in-caretaker for you personally), but I fail to see how what Blizzard does even puts them into the average company category. They don't make missiles to kill babies. They don't pour chemicals on puppies. They don't f@$k with your internet/phone bill. They don't pay their workers substandard wages in order to make billions. They are an ethical company that makes good products that added one new revenue stream.

Keep things in perspective please.

[Mechar]

How is it worse to sell cosmetic items in a game that you are actually playing than to say, design and sell a t-shirt or a plush toy?

How is one new revenue stream worse than others?

Yall keep saying that Blizzard is a business as if that is an interesting assertion. Of course they are. Y'all are trying to imply instead that they are a BAD business (or perhaps so deluded that you think that Blizzard is a live-in-caretaker for you personally), but I fail to see how what Blizzard does even puts them into the average company category. They don't make missiles to kill babies. They don't pour chemicals on puppies. They don't f@$k with your internet/phone bill. They don't pay their workers substandard wages in order to make billions. They are an ethical company that makes good products that added one new revenue stream.

Keep things in perspective please.

Unethical business is subjective at a certain level. There is no bad reason for choosing to stop supporting a company if you conclude it's not worth it, or there is foul play going on. Consumer A cannot, and does not have authority over costumer B to say your concerns aren't valid for a particular issue. Especially when said consumer has no business ties with the company other than being a fan. If a consumer feels betrayed, or cheated. Then that's his right and his right to express it. If an abnormal amount of complaining on a certain situation arises. Then in some cases the company could be mistaken.

[Raelbo]

Y'all are trying to imply instead that they are a BAD business...They are an ethical company that makes good products that added one new revenue stream.

Keep things in perspective please.

Their cardinal sin is that they made a product that got a lot of people passionate about it. Then they went and changed the game. Some people regard this as a heinous betrayal.

The reality is though that a game like WoW has to change or it will die. And with the number of subscribers a game like WoW has, every change will rub some of them the wrong way. Some people have difficulty understanding this and take it personally when they are the ones not getting what they want.

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If a consumer feels betrayed, or cheated. Then that's his right and his right to express it.

And if said consumer chooses to express such an opinion on a public forum, and if said consumer is unable to express this opinion in a logical manner, or if said consumer's opinion simply defies logic, then said consumer should expect to face rebuttal.

[rda]

Their cardinal sin is that made a product that got a lot of people passionate about it. Then they went and changed the game. Some people regard this as a heinous betrayal.

The reality is though that a game like WoW has to change or it will die. And with the number of subscribers a game like WoW has, every change will rub some of them the wrong way. Some people have difficulty understanding this and take it personally when they are the ones not getting what they want.

No, that's not it. There are changes and then there are changes. The changes that Blizzard are looking into concentrate on charging extra for this and that and that other thing, as much as possible. No wonder people complain. Here's an example of a good change: how about delivering an expansion a year, which they've been boasting they want to do for so long? If you deliver expansions faster, while keeping the level / quantity of content the same, you'll get to charge for them more often, and people will pay (sure, a couple might complain about that, but the majority likely won't, because, again, the level / quantity of content is the same), no? But noooooo, we can't have that, we will go paid mounts and paid character boosts and continue milking server transfers, etc, and will do "microtransaction strategy" on top. It's stupid to be rationalizing that by "people will complain whatever they do", that's a non-starter.

[n0n3]

Haven't played WoW for a year or so but if they added a shop ingame they could lower the sub fee.

[Mechar]

Their cardinal sin is that they made a product that got a lot of people passionate about it. Then they went and changed the game. Some people regard this as a heinous betrayal.

The reality is though that a game like WoW has to change or it will die. And with the number of subscribers a game like WoW has, every change will rub some of them the wrong way. Some people have difficulty understanding this and take it personally when they are the ones not getting what they want.

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And if said consumer chooses to express such an opinion on a public forum, and if said consumer is unable to express this opinion in a logical manner, or if said consumer's opinion simply defies logic, then said consumer should expect to face rebuttal.

As the sentence describes right above it. Consumers do not have authority over each other. To what might be illogical to one may make perfect sense to another. It is subjective. There is no omni-ethical consensus that all players share.

[Tharkkun]

You have to be blind not to see that the public image of Blizzard as a company that makes top-quality games has been badly bruised recently. Thanks to WoW and classic D3 (ROS is better, but not enough better).

Going forward with the image, Hearthstone is, I think, a net positive, even though it doesn't make much money. HotS will likely be something like that, too - not a lot of money, but polished enough to count as a positive, especially if you don't play it yourself. And WoD... I am not sure it's too much quality. All I see is unnecessary tinkering with things that haven't been broken too much.

Quality is subjective. Sales numbers would make you look like a fool. Continued sales after the first year makes you look even less informed. If a Blizzard product is so bad why does it continue to sell year after year? Because the quality stands the test of time.

The gaming market in general expects you to play, complete and throw away a game while moving onto the next adventure. If you played a game after 6 months or even a year or purchased an expansion you're saying it's a good game.

[AzazeltheRuthless]

No, that's not it. There are changes and then there are changes. The changes that Blizzard are looking into concentrate on charging extra for this and that and that other thing, as much as possible. No wonder people complain. Here's an example of a good change: how about delivering an expansion a year, which they've been boasting they want to do for so long? If you deliver expansions faster, while keeping the level / quantity of content the same, you'll get to charge for them more often, and people will pay (sure, a couple might complain about that, but the majority likely won't, because, again, the level / quantity of content is the same), no? But noooooo, we can't have that, we will go paid mounts and paid character boosts and continue milking server transfers, etc, and will do "microtransaction strategy" on top. It's stupid to be rationalizing that by "people will complain whatever they do", that's a non-starter.

I don't see why a cash shop is such a big concern for any of you. They put a couple mounts in it to buy, if you don't want it don't buy it. If it is some grievous thing they did, then unsubscribe. Their isn't a big deal about putting in mounts and items in to a so people can chose to buy it if they want to have it. Mounts don't provide you stats, the mounts aren't faster than other mounts, heck you still have to buy the flying in game just to use a majority of them. It's an optional thing.... Pets....so what...they don't help you down raid bosses any better.

It's not like Blizzard is selling Heroic 25 Man Garrosh kills on the website. The boost? The only mistake they did was release it before MoP was over, they shoudl have waited to WoD, so they had 10 levels to still gain and learn to play the class. Still not the big of a deal. Hell a lot of my guildies have bought 3 or 4 boosts and they are 14/14 H Garrosh, so they paid to win, because they didn't want to spend another 4 days of their life to level a character.

I mean put this into perspective, your paying to skip content. So for $60, you get to skip 3-4 days of levelling, so about 72 to 96 hours. That breaks down to about $.66 and hour, so your evaluating how valuable your time is to you......

Server Transfers are completely optional and should never be free, if you want to play on another server, their isn't a single Blizzard representative, that says you can't roll a new level 1 and level it to 90...that doesn't cost you anything extra....oh wait, their comes that time thing...


In the end all business TIME = MONEY.

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Quality is subjective. Sales numbers would make you look like a fool. Continued sales after the first year makes you look even less informed. If a Blizzard product is so bad why does it continue to sell year after year? Because the quality stands the test of time.

The gaming market in general expects you to play, complete and throw away a game while moving onto the next adventure. If you played a game after 6 months or even a year or purchased an expansion you're saying it's a good game.

Blizzard has 7 million people, paying $15 a month,....that's $1 Billion dollars a month, and in case rda struggles with the math that's $12 Billion a year. I think Blizzard is pretty ok with that mathematical figure, that even theoretically they are ok, releasing a couple games that don't "sell" very much. Also from what I have heard, Hearthstone is projected to make $100 Million a year....but naw, that isn't a lot of money.

[ACES]

But Blizzard IS a business and the goal of a business is to make money. If they lose your sub but gain more store mount/pet/etc. purchases then they don't care that they lost your sub.

[Osmeric]

Blizzard has 7 million people, paying $15 a month

No, they don't. WoW players is large parts of the world pay nowhere near to that.

[Noctifer616]

Blizzard has 7 million people, paying $15 a month,....that's $1 Billion dollars a month, and in case rda struggles with the math that's $12 Billion a year. I think Blizzard is pretty ok with that mathematical figure, that even theoretically they are ok, releasing a couple games that don't "sell" very much. Also from what I have heard, Hearthstone is projected to make $100 Million a year....but naw, that isn't a lot of money.

7 million * 15$ = 105 million a month.

Not only is your math wrong, you also forget that not everyone pays 15$ a month. In fact, the revenue WoW makes can be found in their financial reports. In Q1 this year WoW has made 201 million USD in revenue. This number includes money generated by online subscriptions, box sales and other game services (digital sales, realm transfer, shop items etc.).

[Deficineiron]

No, they don't. WoW players is large parts of the world pay nowhere near to that.

7m x 15$ is one of the more common financial misperceptions of the entire wow business model. I have read and found useful a 1/6 to 1/7 revenue ratio china vs. us average sub. (aggregate revenue, value added included).

I tried to work out, from blizzard's and netease's financials in late 2009, how much they were getting a quarter from netease, and I want to say I concluded 25-40m/qtr (at that time). Some variables I don't/didn't know are timing on royalty payments vs. quarterly revenue share.

[AzazeltheRuthless]

7 million * 15$ = 105 million a month.

Not only is your math wrong, you also forget that not everyone pays 15$ a month. In fact, the revenue WoW makes can be found in their financial reports. In Q1 this year WoW has made 201 million USD in revenue. This number includes money generated by online subscriptions, box sales and other game services (digital sales, realm transfer, shop items etc.).

Yeah after I typed it, I double checked and realized I put the comma in wrong spot, but still 105 Million a moth and they made. Still in quarter 1 of 2014, they made 293 Million total as a comapny, and have Cash equivalent of 4.3 Billion...they are a company far from trouble...

[Deficineiron]

Yeah after I typed it, I double checked and realized I put the comma in wrong spot, but still 105 Million a moth and they made. Still in quarter 1 of 2014, they made 293 Million total as a comapny, and have Cash equivalent of 4.3 Billion...they are a company far from trouble...

non-deferred revenue was 227m for q1 from wow and cod elite (do they still get revenue from that??). Interestingly, gaap revenue was 26m lower; - I wonder what the impetus for such a huge push-out of recognition from q1 revenue was?

[Noctifer616]

non-deferred revenue was 227m for q1 from wow and cod elite (do they still get revenue from that??). Interestingly, gaap revenue was 26m lower; - I wonder what the impetus for such a huge push-out of recognition from q1 revenue was?

CoD Elite has been closed a few weeks ago I think, it stopped making money quite a while ago (2 years maybe?).

[finskee]

Not to try to take away from Finskee's attempts to get reactions from the people he slanders, but anyone with a basic clue about either 1) math or 2) my posting would know what my standard response is when folks go asking 'when is wow going f2p?'

But yes, some of us are actually interested in the business aspect of wow (versus, say, perusing a business thread while not having any interest in at all....)

As a badge of successs, Finskee now joins Vesselblah and Xanzul on my permanent ignore lists You are in exalted company, Finskee!

Lol doesn't bother me one bit, this guy always ignores what he doesn't want to hear. The ability to rationalize his viewpoint and discard all others is basically PERMANENT IGNORE on the truth.

I once had a discussion with him a long time ago. He never listened. I'm tired of his ridiculous responses and happy to be ignored in this case.

The fact is he hasn't played in MOP at all and cannot even tell us how many mounts were available in game in MOP. He has no idea... is it more than previous expansions or less? Is there a mount in the game that you have to grind out by killing mobs and getting 10 shards that are rare rare drops, that most people in game haven't taken the time to even go get yet? Is there a rare mount on the timeless isle that is about a 1% drop that most people still don't have, or another on the timeless isle you can only get from grinding rep for days on end. He says he cares about the business, but he also admits he doesn't like what wow has become (called it mcdonalds), even though he hasn't played in years, so there is a biased agenda for all his posts. And yet he pretends to be here to have a discussion. It's the same with all these guys. They don't listen to anything that goes against their opinions. No amount of logic can help them.

Then they wonder why you don't want to try to actually converse with them. I don't know... I guess I'm just here to slander everyone! Nevermind the fact that you whiners are just slandering wow up down left right and straight up the youknowwat. Because why? You want more content.

[Osmeric]

non-deferred revenue was 227m for q1 from wow and cod elite (do they still get revenue from that??). Interestingly, gaap revenue was 26m lower; - I wonder what the impetus for such a huge push-out of recognition from q1 revenue was?

Pre-sales of WoD? That revenue must be largely deferred.

[a1derful1]

Clearly if your reasoning was right, there would still be a substantial cooldown. The pricing is set because that is what they thing they will bring in the most (very high margin) revenue from.

Not necessarily...a few months for a cooldown was kinda ridiculous. With the fees as they are and a few days cooldown, it keeps people from ping ponging from server to server day in day out. If they didn't make it somewhat prohibitive, I dunno if they could keep up with all the requests....and no one other than Blizzard could definitively say the contrary.

Same goes for the character boost. If it got dropped to $10-$15 a pop....I shudder at the thought...lol...better off keeping it at the more significant price! I know a few people that level toons to max lvl, decide they don't like them, then delete them...and that's after they spent the time they did lvling. A month or three down the road, they decide they wanna try that toon again and get it restored and eventually delete a different toon that later on gets restored and on and on. I don't know how prevalent that is in the game, but I could see a lot of headache if even a fraction of the WoW population did that with a character boost service that had a low price tag.

[Pann]

Not necessarily...a few months for a cooldown was kinda ridiculous. With the fees as they are and a few days cooldown, it keeps people from ping ponging from server to server day in day out. If they didn't make it somewhat prohibitive, I dunno if they could keep up with all the requests....and no one other than Blizzard could definitively say the contrary.

Same goes for the character boost. If it got dropped to $10-$15 a pop....I shudder at the thought...lol...better off keeping it at the more significant price! I know a few people that level toons to max lvl, decide they don't like them, then delete them...and that's after they spent the time they did lvling. A month or three down the road, they decide they wanna try that toon again and get it restored and eventually delete a different toon that later on gets restored and on and on. I don't know how prevalent that is in the game, but I could see a lot of headache if even a fraction of the WoW population did that with a character boost service that had a low price tag.

The notion that a company, any company not just Blizzard, would spend time and money developing a service and then not only ignore the optimal price to generate the most profit but price it more expensive is, quite frankly, ridiculous.