Do you think blizzard is under performing?

[Quincey]

I wouldnt call myself a Blizzard apologist by any stretch BUT

Everyone bitches that Call of duty or Fifa is pumped out every year. Why then are you complaining that Blizzard is taking the time to do an expansion Right? (as a player from beta I can tell you this is probably the best expansion so far) Contrary to popular belief you do not have to stay subbed, MMO champ keeps you up to date with any and all changes, You could just resub as soon as new content is released.

but maybe thats just me.

[Alopex Major]

Things like not updating holidays, , anniversaries, brawler's guild do strike me as somewhat lazy. Though I think there are some minor changes to holidays, I've had my violet since 2009 and haven't really had any reason to touch them since then aside from mount attempts. They could just do a lot more.

The 10 year stuff seems very cool though, hopefully a change in the right direction.

[Darsithis]

Things like not updating holidays, , anniversaries, brawler's guild do strike me as somewhat lazy.

That I can't disagree with. I was really disappointed when I found out Brawler's Guild Season 2 is really season 1 randomized.

[Tyraena]

Activision did not place any restrictions on Blizzard and does not control World of Warcraft.

So the public story goes. But if they didn't have need of Activision, they wouldn't have entered into any agreement with them. And those agreements always have strings, even if we never see or know about them.

I am not one of those Activision-hating gamers out there. But I have seen, in my 10 years playing WoW, how significantly things changed following the agreement/acquisition/merger. I don't mind the store, it has it's place for people with excess money, and hasn't sold itself out with any endgame changing offers, but in general the overall quality and feel of the game just doesn't feel the same.

To be fair, that could be ten years of playing talking as well, maybe I am just used to it, or jaded. I still love the game, and love what's in Warlords to come. But everyone is right in that, for what is in it, and the price, the balance seems backwards. It is missing the wealth of new things that marked each previous expansion as so significant/expansion defining, while upping the price.

My example for this would be Everquest. They knocked out new expacs out every 9-12 months or less, for upwards of some 17+ expansions. They only ever bothered promising new content and class tuning and fixes, so when extra cool stuff like a race or class was added, it was a bonus. WoW, on the other hand, took longer for each expac, but loaded them FULL of stuff - something for every type of player, and stuff for creating new types of player. Races, classes, game types, game modes, locations, art assets, etc.

And now we have come to Warlords, which is the first expac to feature almost none of those things. Like I said before, what it does offer sounds fine to me, but with an increase and price, and compared to what Blizzard itself included which helped define how the value of an expac was determined, it has changed noticeably in the expacs whose bulk on content-to-value was determined post-Activision.

[Deleted]

They stopped stealing good ideas and make them better. Nowadays they still steal an ideas, but they make it worse than original (GW2 example with timeless isle, Diablo loot system implementation, new models lacking customization and so on).

[DeadmanWalking]

Well a new continent would have required more from a creative team $$$

I hate to be that guy i am very open to the idea of purchasing level 90's but the price of a level 90 costing the same as an expansion also irritates me, and i get even more irritated knowing people who have made this transaction multiple times.

Maybe I am just mad at Blizzard.
This is a totally different company than the Diablo 2 days

The reason they make character boosts so expensive is that they don't want everyone to do it. Certainly you could make more money by charging far less for it as everyone would do it. Its there if you want but a week or two worth of leveling really isn't worth that much in my book. If it cost $20 they would make more money than charging $60. If you feel a few days worth of leveling is worth it and you have that much in expendable cash then feel free, personally I would never spend that much when I have every heirloom and 3 potions of +300% exp which makes leveling super fast. It took me 5 hours to get a DK from level 55 to 85.

[Bullettime]

They are either over-promising or under-performing. One of the two or a bit of both. We don't help much in that by parsing every syllable that anyone says and inscribing it in stone as something that will happen guaranteed.

But realistically, this last year since Blizzcon is full of stuff that didn't quite get there or Blizzard not hitting their intentions. I won't call them promises exactly. But when they say then intend to do this or that and then consistently don't (shorter expansions!) that's a problem.

Doing a lot of the former (over-promising specifically or by implication) can easily lead to the perception of under-performance.

Pretty much. I wouldn't necessarily say that they're underperforming, but Blizzard has a really bad habit of trying to overhype their products and then launching them in a subpar state compared to what they were advertising.

I've had a hard time taking Blizzcon panels seriously for example as it's chock full of stuff, and sometimes even intentional misinformation such as the Karabor/Bladespire debacle, to help sell the product but very little every comes to fruition or them having any intention of actually doing it.

Their games are fine, but Blizzard needs to stop overhyping their shit and then being forced to eat their words later on. Or when they overhype their products and then have people like Bashiok, Lore, and Zarhym insulting our intelligence when trying to backstroke (Ashran.) It's understandable for an every now and then or for just a couple things, but Warlords, despite being solid, is a shell of the product they were advertising it to be.

[Wildtree]

almost voted wrong....... tricky mother OP...

Do I think Blizzard is under performing? Yes, definitely.
Do I think they stopped caring? No, definitely not.

[Tenjen]

It is not "Outland looking different". That's utter garbage. It's not re-used assets. The only parts of it that are even remotely related are Nagrand and the concept behind the continent, as it takes place in the past. Everything else was designed fresh with all new assets.

Blizzard isn't underperforming. I'm not happy with the huge delay in the expansion but I'd rather have a stellar Warlords patch than see development time from there being pulled into making content for the expansion we're walking away from.

pretty much. we even have access to comparison shots of all the zones and people keep saying that "reskinned outland" crap.

Nagrand went through the least damage and is quite similar, but even THEN there are vast differences. the AU Nagrand is much more imaginative and the cliff structures and arches are amazing.

[ponies]

The reason they make character boosts so expensive is that they don't want everyone to do it. Certainly you could make more money by charging far less for it as everyone would do it. Its there if you want but a week or two worth of leveling really isn't worth that much in my book. If it cost $20 they would make more money than charging $60. If you feel a few days worth of leveling is worth it and you have that much in expendable cash then feel free, personally I would never spend that much when I have every heirloom and 3 potions of +300% exp which makes leveling super fast. It took me 5 hours to get a DK from level 55 to 85.

Do you really believe this? that a company would release a feature so that people "won't" purchase it?
But again this is another conversation this thread should not turn into.

[Hellrime]

Answer lies in merge of Blizzard and Activi$ion. It's a wonder that WoW is still up and alive (though it definitely feels like it is on life-support...). Activi$ion, as a publisher, was notorious for destroying quite a number of games (in other words - cash-milk the game developers).

Red signal for many was the introduction of cash shop stuff shortly after the merge and replacing Lower Karazhan raid with Naxxramas 2.0 (as well as 1 "surprise" raid (probably Gundrak or Ahn'Kahet), which never managed to "surprise" us as it was replaced by ToC).

It isn't a secret that players were looking towards Azshara/N'Zoth expansion, Emerald Dream Expansion, Burning Legion expansion, even Ner'Zhul expansion (as he is still active and controls the current "lich king"), there is unexplored Xoroth out there, there is Chromatus undefeated, etc., etc., etc.. Out of all this, they chose the worst move used in soap-operas: completely new, entirely non-interesting and absolutely irrelevant (due to "time-travel" stuff) storyline. Developers called MoP as a "filler" expansion, WoD is "filler" expansion too, is it too much to not expect 2 "filler" expansions in a row?

Kind of off-topic, where is everyone seeing Ner'zhul is controlling the current Lich King Bolvar? Pretty sure Arthas consumed Ner'zhul so he is no more.

[Packing an i5]

flood of blizzard apologists thread closed.

[Nefastus]

Under performing for sure. They lost their touch a while ago unfortunally.

[Deleted]

Yes but my frustrations isnt(only) towards WoW. I am starting to get really mad that Heroes of the Storm hasnt even gone into beta yet and they are doing only doing skins for the game when they should put more effort into actually getting the game out. I feel like nothing has changed with that game since last blizzcon

[Gelhiss]

Kind of off-topic, where is everyone seeing Ner'zhul is controlling the current Lich King Bolvar? Pretty sure Arthas consumed Ner'zhul so he is no more.

He isn't. Ner'zhul is gone. IIRC, it was at the end of the Arthas book that it happened. There was also a blue post at some point that stated it as well.

The degree to which the Wrath-era LK constructed his identity could be somewhat misleading, though. There was that early quest in Howling Fjord where you wander around a Vrykul villiage as a spirit and Arthas is just chilling in front of Utgarde. He mentions that he recognizes the magic and remarks "I was a shaman, once." I think it's things like this that lead people to believe that Ner'zhul is still hanging around, but everything that has been stated is that he's dead and gone. Bolvar is all alone up in Icecrown, keeping the Scourge from running wild.

To the topic at hand, I don't think they're underperforming, it just seems to be that the audience is far more critical of the product now. I'd like to see the third chapter of SCII, I'm interesting in Heroes of the Storm, and I'm really excited about WoD. I don't think this makes me an "apologist," but I'm also not arrogant enough to think that Blizzard answers to me or any of us as customers. I disagree with decisions that they've made and directions that they may take, but the products are theirs and if the changes are so bad that I'm no longer interested in them, I simply won't buy them. For now, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because they've generally fixed what were large problems in what they've produced.

[Jokerfiend]

Activision did not place any restrictions on Blizzard and does not control World of Warcraft.

Yeah, like the United States and South America!

*rolls eyes*

That is a bunch of hog wash and you know it. Activison certainly does have a say in Blizzard, like it or not.

While, they might not have "direct" creative control. When you put the head of Activision, as the head of Activision-Blizzard(who owns 25% of Activision-Blizzard), then suddenly Activision has no say?

Sorry, but to put in perspective, in Civ5 analogy, Blizzard is a City-State. While it operates on it's "own", there is "direct" influence to do as others want. Much like real world issues and politics, like the United States and South America!

[Deleted]

They're not underperforming. The problem is back in the days they only had WoW, few patches for Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo 2 to focus on. Now they have a shit-ton of different things to focus on. WoW, HoS, HS, SC and the Warcraft movie. And people expect them to throw out new content all the time and they're having a hard time keeping up to expectations. And just untill recently they also had Project Titan

[Jingoism]

Blizzard as a whole throughout all of their IPs has become markedly less capable to provide quality content and service. It's pretty damn clear they're under performing.

[Tucci]

In Diablo, yes. In WoW, maybe. Not sure. I guess we'll see.

[Stacie]

If they were not BlizzCon this year would been awesome with 10th anniversary, SoO would have not been over a year long and content would have been pumped out faster like they said in Cata.. They are under performing and its fairly clear to see. They have even said they were slow at doing stuff, things they want added to WoD won't be due to time and stuff.