Is Warlords of Draenor actually a success?

[Tomana]

I suspect the board-room bean counters consider it a major success but the B-team that's been keeping WoD scraping by on crumbs, facebook games and time-gating is pants-shittingly worried about their medium to long-term future.

If that B-team stopped making retarded design decisions, they wouldn't have to worry about their future.

[Spiral Mage]

Some hilariously wrong and cynical commentary in this thread.

Is WOD a success? I'm sure the DEVs realize it isn't. There's far too much negative feedback for any sane person to think they did a good job on it. Never the less, I'll keep saying .. WOD is fine. There's the usual count of dungeons, dailies, and raids that we've come to expect from them. The fights in each of the raid instances have been extremely well received by raiders from what I've seen and read. The "lack of content" is a myth that doesn't exist. There's so much to do infact, it's pretty much unreasonable to even be on long enough to do everything you *could* do in a day. I've given up on trying.

The reality of the situation is two major faults that will make WOD look extremely bad.
-1- The long, drawn out and in the end .. pointless .. struggle about flying. They removed a system we've worked hard to earn rewards from for 4 expacs .. to "add to immersion" .... how? No one knows .. and to add: "more open world end-game content" .. which .. is .. where now? Again, no one knows .. So we lost a system we've had for years, to gain ........... nothing .. and lose ... a lot .. And now, to add insult to injury, at the "theoretical" end of the Expac. NOW they add Flying back in? Ironically, right as they add in Tanaan Jungle which may the first time they got "open world end-game content" right ..

-2- We all know there were going to be raids in 6.1 with Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry. Then it was no secret that BLIZ had no intentions of adding a raid in with 6.2 .. this meant there'd be no new raids from 6.1 to 6.3, which would be a near year long gap. So instead, they puke up HFC to fill that gap and "surprise us" by adding it into 6.2 ...... which is great news for them, no content gap .. but then .. they follow it up with the announcement that there's going to be no 6.3 raid now? .. What? -- So now, we're facing an even longer "end of the expc" content game, on an expac that's been out just about a year now .. and they won't announce a new expac probably, or release it atleast .. until 2016 .. so what's going to keep people playing WOD for another close to a year .. ? Hell, you can outgear HFC Normal just by doing Tanaan Jungle every day, I imagine most everyone has done that already on atleast one character if they wanted to. So, for PUGers and non-hardcore raid guilds, that leaves only Heroic HFC and we know groups are gonna fail horribly at that on average.

WOD has featured two of the worst and most baffling moves BLIZ has ever made. That is true. But "lack of content" most definitely is not. There's plenty more of the same thing we've always had, if people are getting bored of that, that's fine but saying it isn't there is ridiculous.

Edit: Also, making Tanaan daily gear better than Mythic Dungeon gear was also pretty confusing. Gear is the only real motivator most people have, the challenge is fine too but when you're dealing with a PUG, which most of us would be .. the challenge just becomes a source of frustration that makes the whole thing not worth doing in the end, especially when dailies can get us better gear .. (especially since you can effectively keep "rerolling" stats until all your gear has your best secondaries.)

[Thimagryn]

Last I checked, Blizzard was only a partner company with Activision and was not a part of CoD or Skylanders. So profit from games outside of Blizzards development have no impact on profits Blizzard is making.

That's not how earnings calls work. The earnings are cmpany wide since they are the same holding company, not separate entities. There aren't multiple earnings calls for each subsidiary.

[rda]

OP, you are kidding or what? WoD is not a success, it's a disaster. Look at (a) content, (b) subs, (c) forums. Financials aren't that great either, remove box sales and they are declining.

[Deleted]

OP, you are kidding or what? WoD is not a success, it's a disaster. Look at (a) content, (b) subs, (c) forums. Financials aren't that great either, remove box sales and they are declining.

Read the OP please.

[MoanaLisa]

The expansion has not been much of a success for me personally. But the misses are just that: Garrisons were a great idea that was a letdown in the long run. Dungeons in this expansion were pretty good but the reward system made them irrelevant too soon. Apexis dailies were OK for a change of pace but would have been better if they were balanced with more traditional dailies. Leveling was really good but probably too short.

Raids have been good but after a certain point that is reached rather early they've been pretty much the only thing to do. Tanaan is an improvement and a nice enough zone but like garrisons probably isn't going to wear well over the longer term.

There are a lot of good ideas in the expansion but execution has been sloppy, garrisons were much too passive in nature and in the end proved that Blizzard knew their own limitations when they've talked about why they never went ahead with player housing (no gameplay in them is the short version).

And the endless and in the end pointless business with flying soured a lot of people unnecessarily.

Note that none of these things except for maybe the garrison design were a complete miss in terms of content--even garrisons started off being pretty popular until they were finished--but a lot of stuff ended up not having the legs that expansion content has had in the past. I'm not counting flying as content but that was and still is an unforced error.

So maybe a success for a month but less so over a longer term. I think the biggest mistake was to bet the entire expansion and player retention being carried on the backs of raids. If the Top Minds at Blizzard HQ learned anything I hope they learned that if that's the game they want to design--and that's their call--a lot of people are going to say no thanks and not hang around for months on end.

[rda]

Read the OP please.

Did that. Sorry for shooting from the hip (I overreacted to the title).

[Farath]

As said by mostly everyone else, from Blizzard's standpoint, yes. From a players, no.

[Deleted]

This income increase is just hypothetical.

You must see the xpac as a whole and theres a looooong way to the next xpac...so if you just look at Q1-Q2 of the xpac you are making the wrong analysis.

Lets see the 2016 Q1-Q2 when people are sick of no content(because thats part of the revenues of Wod too!).Yeah,mount stores and such...does it compensate losing 6-8 millions of subs (random number I poped out of my ass) that pays every month?

As I said theres no really way to evaluate the financial sucess of WoD at this point.Theres a lot of moving factors that will play on the next year.

[Morthulo]

Successful in terms of money, but when it comes to the satisfaction of the player base, it's been a complete failure.

[MoanaLisa]

This income increase is just hypothetical.

You must see the xpac as a whole and theres a looooong way to the next xpac...so if you just look at Q1-Q2 of the xpac you are making the wrong analysis.

Lets see the 2016 Q1-Q2 when people are sick of no content(because thats part of the revenues of Wod too!).Yeah,mount stores and such...does it compensate losing 6-8 millions of subs (random number I poped out of my ass) that pays every month?

As I said theres no really way to evaluate the financial sucess of WoD at this point.Theres a lot of moving factors that will play on the next year.

I don't believe there's any doubt though that with the success of box sales the expansion paid for itself and continues to make a profit every month. If I were Blizzard I would consider that a success. However there are degrees of success and clearly it hasn't done very well in the retention department. But success? Absolutely. They'll need to lose nearly everyone for it to not to be profitable on a monthly basis.

[SkyTides]

it was a good video - like me some Az chats.

As he mentioned though, there is a plateau at which 'Value added services' cannot outweigh the drop in subscriptions - due to there being less players who are buying them

[Wildberry]

Look guys..I get it if you are all excited for a new company with a new product, but you have been complaining about slow content patches and shitty content for at least..oh wait..since I joined this forum in 2008. One thinks you should have learned by now....

So instead of complaining about people complaining instead of leaving... why not just leave?

[Spunt]

As long as the next expansion loses more subs that it gained in the first month, blizzard will chalk that up as a success and use their freemium games to pad their bottom line. They have already proven minimal effort + extremely content light patches spaced really far apart + higher price than previous expansion = great success. Why would they bother working any harder than they have to when people will throw money at them regardless of the piece of shit in the box? Path of least resistance.

Expect the same from now on.

[Gilian]

Short answer, yes. Blizzard will see this as a success because they're making money hand over fist with as minimal effort as possible. They released an expansion that, in the end, has half as much content as any other expansion, and yet they have the audacity to charge more for the expansion. Additionally, we're seeing more and more things like the cash shop and the new token system, which is solely designed to take away from the game, while increasing profits for Blizzard. Every token sold is $5 more a month that goes into their pockets. They'll keep handing out gold like candy, because by doing so, they can ensure that more and more people will have the gold on hand to buy a token, therefore making it so one more token is sold. For every 100,000 tokens they sell a month, Blizzard sees a $500,000 increase in profits. If only 10% of the player base, which is roughly 700,000 people, continue playing WoW by buying a token for gold instead of quitting, Blizzard sees an extra $3.5 million a month in profits.

Frankly, Blizzard has moved on from being a company that designed games first and foremost for the players. Instead, they're now a company focused on profits and how they can do the least amount of work for the biggest payout.

At the end of the day, yes, WoD was a success for Blizzard, but at what cost? How many of their long time loyal customers now see them in a different light, and no longer are willing to blindly follow them, trying out their products because the Blizzard name was on it? I know that I, for one, no longer trust the products put out for Blizzard, something I couldn't say just 5 - 6 years ago. I bought WoD on sale for $35, and frankly feel like as little as it offered compared to every other expansion to date, that I was truly ripped off. I've had an active sub on WoD for a whopping two months, and chances are, I will never resub to WoD, let alone WoW again, especially not for cash. Sure, I might hop in towards the end of WoD to see how they fucked up the changes again for the next expansion, but chances are, I won't do it for money, but instead using the gold for play time method which I hate so much.

Exactly. But people kept insisting that tokens and the shop had no impact on the game or our gameplay at all.

Let's all just pirate the Warcraft movie instead of going to the theaters.

[Raelbo]

Subscriber numbers are down, but revenue is up.

Down from what? If you had projected sub numbers as they would have been without WoD, they would be a lot worse. WoD has kept WoW going for a few more years. I'd count that as a success (even if you might argue that it could have been a significantly greater success)

Now I've had this feeling for a while now, that things like the mountstore actually soften the blow, when it comes to subscriber losses. That it actually disincentivizes them to put effort into the game and produce more content. After all, why do that, when you can produce minimal content, like 6.1 and 6.2 and you actually make more money.

This is not a logical argument, based on a ridiculous premise, namely the "lack of content" myth/meme/flavour of the month notion that is actually bullshit.

WoD's failing has nothing to do with a lack of content. It has nothing to do with laziness, or lack of effort, or committment on the part of Blizzard, and just because an echo chamber full of WoW haters keep repeating these things on some forums does not make it so. WoD's failures are to do with getting the players to engage in the content that is there, not about the non-existence of content.

How many times have we seen on these forums complaints about Ashran? If you look at Ashran, do you honestly believe it just took a few coders a few days to string it together? No of course not. Ashran involved a monumental effort to create. Just because it wasn't a hit with the players doesn't mean this was due to laziness or lack of effort. Garrisons are another case in point. Much criticism has been levelled at garrisons, but you would have to be ignorant to not be able to recognise that, whether or not you like the feature, it did take a lot of work and effort to create.


Now, as to your notion that the mountstore disincentivises them from making quality content: That is absurd. Did you ever stop to think who it is that buys items from the mountstore hmm? It's players. The more players you have playing the game, and the more satisfied they are with the game, the more money you'll make from the mountstore. It's not rocket science. Secondly, this idea that just because they are making money from the mountstore, suddenly they will have no incentive to make even more money from subscriptions is idiotic. Why would a company elect to not try and capitalise on all their revenue streams as much as possible?


Imagine you own a pizza restuarant. It's doing fine and then one day you get this bright idea to sell cupcakes alongside your pizza. This works out quite well because 10% of customers see the cupcakes when they buy pizza and decide to buy some for dessert -resulting in a 10% boost in profitability for you. In what world would it make any sense to stop putting effort into your core activity of making pizza though?

And it's not just the mountstore. It's paid level boosts, server transfers and the WoW token that contribute to that. Every player paying his sub through the WoW token actually makes them more money, because it comes at an increased price.

Each and every one of these revenue streams is positively affected by having a happy playerbase.

So what I'm wondering is, does Blizzard actually consider Warlords of Draenor a success, despite the outrage of the community at the lack of content, the minimal number and size of patches and the probably still planned plan of having yearly expansions. Is it actually possible Blizzard will continue forward with this model?

I'd imagine they do. The reason for this is that it is easy to imagine how much worse things could have gone for them, and I am far from convinced that any expectations of greater success are based in any kind of realism.

Let's face it, WoW is an old game. It's going on 11 years. Despite this fact, it is still the biggest and most successful MMO by a massive margin. With 11 years you are going to pick up baggage, among that the disgruntled player. It's just a fact of life.

Re: The "outrage": It is my opinion, having read reams of text spouted by the "outraged" that these represent a group that, by and large, will choose to be "outraged" no matter what Blizzard does or says. I see them as a fact of life. If you want to sell burgers, you are going to always have animal rights activists who are outraged at you. Sometimes you just have to accept that you can't please everyone all the time.

What Blizzard can do better is deal with people who have reasonable demands and who respond to their dissatisfaction with certain elements of the game in a more reasonable manner. There is no point in trying to placate those who will never be satisfied at the expense of those who can. A great example of this was the flying in Draenor issue. Once Blizzard became aware of how the playerbase actually felt on the issue, they made the smart choice and enabled a feature that will be met with approval by the vast majority of their players. Yes, there are still those who feel outraged about Blizzard's "betrayal" on this issue, but seriously, it would be idiotic of Blizzard to accede to their demands of keeping the expansion non-flying just to try and placate them, because the cost of (maybe) saving that minority would be the certain loss of a great many more.


Yes, I get that you, and others, feel outraged about this expansion. As a bystander I personally think the level of outrage is not commensurate with the actual state of the game, nor do I believe that your level of outrage is as universal as you seem to think it is.

[MoanaLisa]

Why would they bother working any harder than they have to when people will throw money at them regardless of the piece of shit in the box? Path of least resistance.

People say this crap all the time like it's some sort of fact. There is another approach which is to set the bar higher next time out and genuinely try to do better because next time you might keep another million or two players around for a couple of months longer.

That's why they would work harder. We don't know if they will--well you do obviously but most of us have no idea--but it's not a given that they'll pop open a bottle of wine and decide to do nothing and be profitable when they could do something and be a lot more profitable. Personally I think there's a huge amount of work put into this expansion. It's simply misdirected into content that functionally didn't last very long. Raids are the exception here in terms of longevity and I'm pretty sure there were more than a few at Blizzard HQ that are True Believers in thinking that raids can save everything. I think that some of them can learn from this expansion but only time will tell.

[Mosotti]

I only have 2 problems with WoD. The no fly thing and the motherfucking piece of shit garrison. Now the first on was fortunately reverted after a really huge cry out, but I would like their stupid "we know better what you like" heads on a spike too. The Microsoft retard that told people that always online is set in stone and "#dealwithit" was canned, I find it amusing that some "lead developers" that alienated like half the player base and lead to tens of millions of dollars loss to still be happily in charge.

But the real problem is the garrison, because the way it's been integrated into the expansion is like an inoperable cancer. Of course many people love that shit simply because it's an incredible money making machine, albeit a very boring one. Well, maybe next expansion...

[glycerethe]

I wonder what else can they implement/cut cost to make their profits go even higher from now on, they pretty much squeezed out every single drop of juice that is left in the game.

[Packing an i5]

I have a friend thats constantly reminded me when Im sour towards wow and its latest expansion or quick to point out a decline in subscribers that revenue is up for Blizzard entertainment every single year.

The in game shop items saved wow and Wow is already preloaded ready for a f2p switch all they would have to do if the sky actually falls and 5 million people quit around the same time is add more crap to the store maybe even gear and New Races only for purchasable unlocks and some people would go wild for that shit.

Swtor survives today and continues to release expansions because of the Cartel Market and Cartel Coins system and switch to a free to play, preffered, Subscription model.