Is there less pressure to address content droughts because of the ingame store?

[Deleted]

All of the Shas have been defeated, Garrosh is imprisoned awaiting trial, the Horde are recouping after SOO, and the Alliance/Horde have a temporary truce for the time being. What new content could you really add without it feeling forced at this point? I'm actually genuinely curious.

All the open plotpoints.

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Fair enough.
Much respect for posting that - revising ones own opinions in that manner is very rare in these forums.

Thanks man, there comes a point where even I would cringe at my own words if I defended something I don't even believe myself.

[Pann]

The vast majority of those customers were from the eastern market, which isn't nearly as much in lost revenue as some would like you to believe. The subscription model for the eastern market is much different from our model. That said, even with the declining customer base, World of Warcraft has significantly more subscribers than any other MMO on the market using a P2P model. Hell, it has significantly more subscribers than a lot of MMOs using a F2P model. In addition to all of that, there is always a decline in customers during the final tier of the current expansion. However, so far, there has always been an increase in customers when the new expansion is released as well. If you think World of Warcraft is dying, there's nothing I can tell you to change your mind but that's hardly the case.

The vast majority of losses being in the east is an assumption on your part that you have no way of backing up. Online subscriptions was reported as $912million last year contrasted to $1357million in 2011, $1230million in 2010, $1233 in 2009. The fact it has more subscribers than other games is completely irrelevant to my post that you quoted. When MOP launched in Q3' 12 it managed to attract 31% of the customers lost throughout Cata to return and by the end Q4 '12 losses were equal to 44% of the total of returning players by Q1 '13 not only had the subscriber gains been wiped out a further 800k were gone. It is likely that WOD will,also, not be able to make up for the losses in MOP and there is a chance that it will also not be able to hold onto any gains made.

[Deleted]

What lack of content?

The in-game store is fine.

Amount of content is fine.

One year without anything new is fine?

[Luxeley]

I don't believe the Blizz store is the sole reason for the snail pace of delivering new content, but I am 100% confident it is a contributing factor.

[fengosa]

One year without anything new is fine?

Yes. If you disagree unsub and come back for wod...or don't. Either way I'm not that concerned.

It's also worth noting that TBC was the last expansion without store content and all it added for content was voice chat, sunwell and ZA. 2 of those things got very little use from the average player.

[Deleted]

Yes. If you disagree unsub and come back for wod...or don't. Either way I'm not that concerned.

But if everyone does that...

[fengosa]

I don't believe the Blizz store is the sole reason for the snail pace of delivering new content, but I am 100% confident it is a contributing factor.

If you look at something like the skyreaver mount it's similar to the rylak mobs found in Draenor. They were already designing that skeleton in game before it was made into a store mount. It was essentially work in progress that served multiple purposes and making a mount out of it wasn't that much work compared to the overall amount.

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But if everyone does that...

Everyone doesn't though, some people do unsub and some people don't. I imagine a good percentage of subs are fluctuating players rather than constant subscribers.

[Deleted]

Yes. If you disagree unsub and come back for wod...or don't. Either way I'm not that concerned.

It's also worth noting that TBC was the last expansion without store content and all it added for content was voice chat, sunwell and ZA. 2 of those things got very little use from the average player.

TBC had more raid and dungeon content at release than any other expansion and it also added Black Temple in a patch and the Isle of Quel'danas. That's three additional raids after launch and a daily quest area. And the gap between Sunwell and Wrath was only 8 months, which is still bearable. Time between raid patches is often 6 months, so 8 months isn't that terrible. It's only gotten longer over time. Now we're almost at a year and it will likely be over a year.

[Deleted]

If you want to point a finger at some auxiliary revenue source as a root cause for Blizzard being lazy - I'd thinkk that the so called "value added services" would be the obvious target.

I don't have numbers and I'm far too lazy to even try to look through historical Q-reports, but server/name/race change services must be a goldmine for Blizzard.
Producing that service is completely/mostly automated and very low impact (change of flags in db) - it must have made them far more money than any sparkly pony ever has.

[Deleted]

If you want to point a finger at some auxiliary revenue source as a root cause for Blizzard being lazy - I'd thinkk that the so called "value added services" would be the obvious target.

I don't have numbers and I'm far too lazy to even try to look through historical Q-reports, but server/name/race change services must be a goldmine for Blizzard.
Producing that service is completely/mostly automated and very low impact (change of flags in db) - it must have made them far more money than any sparkly pony ever has.

That's very possible.

[shoc]

So you're saying, that if they allocated the resources required to create less than a dozen new models (that most of the time share a skeleton with something else anyways) we would have more playable content? Genius, we need to tell someone at Blizzard right away, they could release the expansion tomorrow.

[Astalnar]

I agree completely. This is something I warned about when the store was first implemented. I personally hate it. It is double-dipping, and that is plain rude of Blizzard in my opinion. But then again, we can do nothing about it, we can huff and we can puff all we want, it is not likely they will change it anytime soon.

[Pann]

So you're saying, that if they allocated the resources required to create less than a dozen new models (that most of the time share a skeleton with something else anyways) we would have more playable content? Genius, we need to tell someone at Blizzard right away, they could release the expansion tomorrow.

No he is not saying that at all.

[Raiju]

No he is not saying that at all.

That is exactly what the title says

[Zoneseek]

I love it. Let blizzard milk all these wow players for everything they're worth, put that money into a new game that I will be excited to play.

[Pann]

That is exactly what the title says

It is not but reading slightly more the thread title before posting can help avoid these kind of foot in mouth situations.

[M1r4g3]

I love it. Let blizzard milk all these wow players for everything they're worth, put that money into a new game that I will be excited to play.

thing is they will keep making games with those features cause they work sadly

[Raiju]

It is not, it is a question for starters, but reading slightly more the thread title before posting can help avoid these kind of foot in mouth situations.

"The ingame store is responsible for the lack of content" isn't a question, foot in mouth wut?

[Pann]

"The ingame store is responsible for the lack of content" isn't a question, foot in mouth wut?

If you notice I had edited my post to remove this prior to your post as I had assumed that as the OP was willing to take on board the opinions and knowledge of others that he was asking a question but I agree that it is not written as a question. However the title of the thread does not say that allocating resources away from the store would result in more content as was claimed.

[Biggles Worth]

With my experience in modeling, they can apply one skilled modeler to make an in store item with the tools they have at their fingertips. Items are not added to the store often. The amount of time needed to finish 1 of these in store items shouldn't take much time at all. The amount of money spent on paying this one person or persons to make a model in the amount of time they do given the amount of money they end up making we should have a fucking shit load more content more often than we do now. Not the inverse of what you are implying.