Conspiracy of WoW ending?

[Deleted]

Income isn't decreasing, just subscriptions. They have found multiple ways to get money out of the player base going beyond subscriptions alone.

Income from WoW subscription is decreasing. Yes they have other games, but specifically for WoW everything is going down slowly. Other game sectors are promoted very well like Hots and Overwatch. Blizzards bread and butter.

[papajohn4]

Assuming the game will stop devlopment. They will keep the servers up and running for at least 10 years.

This.. look at FFXI for example.. at some point I do believe that Blizzard will make wow 2.0 but wow 1.0 will continue to exist for long time.. maybe as f2p or b2p

[Lochton]

They lose subscribers.

They have lost way too many customers past years. Perhaps you can't imagine what this means for the business where income is decreasing in such a short time?

I'm not saying it is actually a plan for them. Of course it's not logical to concentrate for lower incomes in the future but this is what is happening now. They lose people.

(The bold part most importantly)

This, I just wanted to point out so badly. Unlike small companies, where massive income fluxes can mean their success or doom, this isn't the same for Blizzard. Thanks to the shared money bag at Activision-Blizzard, they'll not experience fluxing income where a deep wave can suddenly mean turning the key. They might feel a stretched budget when they get low enough (which I have a feeling, they haven't yet) where they then have to start developing side projects to assist as well as, expand.

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Income from WoW subscription is decreasing. Yes they have other games, but specifically for WoW everything is going down slowly. Other game sectors are promoted very well like Hots and Overwatch. Blizzards bread and butter.

As long as 1 player buys a token, there's 2 players payment. Just, throwing that out there.

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This.. look at FFXI for example.. at some point I do believe that Blizzard will make wow 2.0 but wow 1.0 will continue to exist for long time.. maybe as f2p or b2p

Even if they did turn the key on development, Blizzard is a company that doesn't stop the heart beat, they would most likely start a brand new project while the servers would be buzzing on their last beats.

[K4sk]

True. They will not shut it down right away.

Fan base is so huge that Blizzard cannot be socially responsible company. As a company they have to bring some responsibility of their customers.

There are plenty of examples how families are suing companies because some tragic accident has happened with their representative that used it.

This is story of addiction where players can end their lives because product they own will not be available.

When people will lose interest of the product slowly, all the addiction will go away naturally.

By lowering risk factor of these customers company will be more safe.

Holy shit the stuff you post.. Do you truly believe in all of this or is it just a troll? Hard to tell!

[ComputerNerd]

There is no making sense there.
Only a far-fetched theory that like others blames the sub declines purely on blizzard.

[Niwes]

I don't know if someone else has ever thought about this, perhaps..but..

What IF Blizzard is preparing most hardcore and loyal players/fans lose interest of the game?

I mean it sounds actually so strange and even insane and at the same time makes sense.

What would actually happen if they would close the game instantly? ''Sorry all,we are not able to provide development of this game any more, we are shutting WoW down now. Bye! '' How many would lose their minds and start to judge the company of such move. Still compared to other MMOs WoW used to have and even now have a LOT players!

Population of WoW players are decreasing each year since Wrath of the Lich King. Perhaps that's the plan, kill game slowly so people don't go insane?

Your thoughts?

as many mentiined here, ofc that will not happen in reality. but i slightly agree from the folowing point of view:

this conspiracy dont exists by blizzards managers, etc. but since years i have a strong feeling that the developers at blizzard HATE wow.

because it is made with c++, build as a monolithic pile in 2005, build without modern (or any) sw architecture in mind, horrible bad extendable, and so on. or in short: no developer want to work with this giant pile of shit.

you can literally see how all the developers want to code in c# with unity and such things. all the devs want to be in ther HS team, the Overwatch team, etc. Literally noone wants to be in the wow team. as sw dev i am in the same boat and can totally understand this. and i know how much of a problem this can be. so, as a sw dev, you can feel this happening at blizz very strong.

so, when a conspiracy exists, then at the sw dev base, which wanna see wow dying to have the ability to work with the cool new shit instead that old giant pile of shit.

so, in some way, i agree to the conspiracy.

[Luxeley]

I don't believe they are purposely trying to kill the game. Although sometimes, when I ponder some of their choices and overall direction, I think maybe they do want WOW six feet under.

Wow's decline started when activision and blizzard merged during WOTLK. Around the same time, Blizzard introduced LFG and the Blizz store popped into existence. This is the same time when Blizzard started making decisions about features and direction based on $$$ and not what is innovative and fun. This is when they started catering and tweaking the game for casuals and as a result WOW's substance and complexity weened away. Some of the good changes had unforeseen negative results and some of the bad changes had unforeseen positive results. Every new feature whether good or bad, fun or boring comes with a long time counter result. For example: BC flying - awesome new feature. Long term counter result - the world seems much smaller and less grandiose.

Blizzard used to heavily consider these consequences and now they just don't give a fuck. Wow is still a huge $$$ cow, but it's not something they're willing to put a lot of time and effort into fixing. They could've gone in the direction of upgrading WOWs game engine long ago. Instead they decided to be smart and develop new titles like HOTS, Hearthstone and Overwatch. Diversity proved to be the right direction from a business standpoint.

And here's why: Wow's game engine is over 15 years old. It starts with the original Alpha, not the initial launch. If you owned a 15 year old car with 300K miles on it that's worth maybe $2K and the transmission goes kaput will you replace the transmission if it costs $3K to fix or buy another car?

[Deleted]

What would actually happen if they would close the game instantly?

They would get a angry community that would quit supporting there company.

Also before that time the game will first go free to play and alot of items will get on the online story to make sure they can keep making content for wow and keep the funding going. When at that point the game will not generate profit anymore they stop content dev for it but servers will keep running for years to come.

[Deleted]

I mean it sounds actually so strange and even insane and at the same time makes sense.

Your thoughts?

I have to say... that sentence makes no sense. No, if its insane it doesn't make sense by definition.

[pfbe]

People seem to keep missing the modern economic dynamics of WoW, even though a lot of the gaming industry already operates on similar patterns.

WoW is not kept afloat by individuals paying money for their own subscriptions. WoW is kept afloat by whales, players with an excess of money they're willing to pump into game tokens, which are then bought for gold by a lot of "active subscribers", as well as into fluff items in the game shop. Just the other day, we had a thread either on mmo or on the official forums where some guy was whining that something Blizzard was doing with tokens was going to (paraphrasing) "stop eastern european players from playing the game", because of how widespread the "gold for subs" thing is in eastern europe - according to that guy, in any case.

There are a lot more individuals playing the game than there are individuals paying real-life money into the game, and that means that at the end of the day, Blizzard only needs to keep pandering to those whales to keep their bottom-line. This is the same across most of the industry, tbh, even if it doesn't reach the ridiculous levels it does in the mobile market where teams of marketers will hunt through the facebook, twitter and other social media profiles of their whales to find ways to milk them for more money.

[ImmersiveGaming]

Death to WOW, Rise to stacraft mmo

[Dartz1979]

I'll never abandon world of warcraft ever.. also im sure blizzard has plans to pass the torches to the next generation opportunists eager young kids turning young adults ready to get the next generation of the mmo and keep it going for many years to come... so yeah it won't be kille doff die some but never killed off totally.

[Deleted]

What would actually happen if they would close the game instantly?

Every shareholder would jump at their thoats.
5 Seconds later the game would be online again.
End of Story.