Activision Blizzard Q3 2012 Earnings Call

[Ferocity]

Yet in both cases, you could not really "successfully" raid without doing so in TBC whereas you can now in MoP.

Karazhan quest-chain could be done on normal (read - don't need to do heroics for entry raid content at all). Gruul and Maggy had no attunement. T5, which would crash you if you would skip t4, required Slave Pens hc, with Cenarion rep being very easy to get to revered in one day especially with armaments hand-ins, and Arcatraz hc, with their rep being easily "reverable" by running Botanica normal in 1 day. That's even if you didn't do much quests or instances during leveling. A lot of quests were awarding this or other rep, so hitting honored was trivial. And if you did instances during leveling, you were having revered as almost granted.

Few more words about dailies: some roles aren't really viable to do them. More on dailies subject would derail this thread too far again.

[Seranthor]

Repeating your signature is got old ages ago. Don't you have anything else to say except "unsub"?

Yes... I'd like to see the verifiable proof of your claims, not ancedotal evidence, but REAL evidence.... and I DO find it utterly comical that those that are unsubbed are continuing some vendetta against their ex. Whats wrong? are you just THAT unhappy that folks are still enjoying the game and not really interested in your rage?

[ZenX]

Here I was thinking dailies were optional. Your whole speech aside it still doesn't change the overall fact that this expansion IS NOTHING LIKE THE BURNING CRUSADE AT ALL. Doing dungeons for rep and gear, "double dipping" in other words made the rep grinding process less painful than it is now. Much less.

I may have forgotten to add "in the least painful way" at the end of it.

Still, WoW is an MMO; it as optional and mandatory as you want it to be translating into the "time you want to spend on it". If you are a bleeding edge raider with some bad luck then Klaxxi and Golden Lotus exalted rep is mandatory for you to balance your VP to not get the neck from QM and get your second ring from along with the neck as quest rewards.

[Seranthor]

It is indeed simply false and it's a shock to see how ignorant people are about TBC. You didn't need to have every heroic dungeon key to get into the raids. We got into karazhan far before that point (in fact in blues and greens in many instances) as the heroic dungeons required revered at the start and the crafted gear filled a few slots early. Yet they protest in this ignorance that MoP is tbc like when it couldn't be further from the fucking truth.

---------- Post added 2012-11-08 at 01:22 PM ----------



Oh really? they aren't? I guess your not happy with them game then? How absurd are you people. Can you not see the fucking forest for the trees? WEREN'T ALL THESE SAME ARGUMENTS MADE FOR CATACLYSM?

you see.. I have multiple screens... I can play Wow at the same time as I sit and laugh at your tantrum... I would so desperately love to tell you what I truly think, however, I'm quite mindful of the forum rules. Truth is, I'm having a wonderful time in Wow... been playing all night and laughing at the forum tantrums...

[Cybran]

A single run of Hellfire Ramparts, Blood Furnace and Shattered Halls rewarded you a total of ~2.8k rep on normal and even if you had done normal quests tied to Honor Hold/Thrallmar to make it to Honored, it did require you to complete this trio approximately four times to get to the revered. That is 12 dungeon runs you need to complete to access their HCs.

Except you could buy the keys for heroic at Honored not Revered.

Then you needed to repeat this for:
Coilfang series (3 Dungeons)
Auchiondun series (4 Dungeons)
Keepers of Time series (2 Dungeons)
Eye series (3 Dungeons)

Fixed that for you.

It was a grind so are the dailies that consume much much less time.

The only difference is in those dungeons you needed a group to carry your weight as well while with dailies it is all you making it much more accesible.

What I would want to see would be to tie both together as how LFD now removes the main hassle back then for doing those dungeons.

You may dismiss the daily grind as being probably trivial, however, it is not the FoM for the difficulty of content, it is only the key portion of the end-game.

Single player content shouldn't reward raid quality gear. The dailies are long and boring, but they are not challenging and do not warrant a epic raid quality reward. Valor needs to be limited to Latest raid and 1/day random hc dungeons. Group PvE content should reward raid gear/rep/etc

[Ferocity]

Except you could buy the keys for heroic at Honored not Revered.

It was changed later in TBC. But keys for Honored were meaning that you didn't even had to run almost any dungeons except CoT at all due to quests awarding rep. Still Revered wasn't hard to get.

[Glorious Leader]

I may have forgotten to add "in the least painful way" at the end of it.

Still, WoW is an MMO; it as optional and mandatory as you want it to be translating into the "time you want to spend on it". If you are a bleeding edge raider with some bad luck then Klaxxi and Golden Lotus exalted rep is mandatory for you to balance your VP to not get the neck from QM and get your second ring from along with the neck as quest rewards.

Telling people something is optional is no excuse for it being poorly done. The simple fact is that reputation granting through dungeons has worked THROUGHOUT THIS GAMES ENTIRE HISTORY and is not currently working for many of us in MoP. Saying this game is like TBC is just flat out FALSE. I know you guys want to think that because MoP was supposed to revive the game after cataclysm but at this point cataclysm is a better game. The simple truth is that being bored of the content is more or less the same even if it results from two different things. In the case of cata it was lack of in the case of mists it's quality of.

---------- Post added 2012-11-08 at 01:35 PM ----------

It was changed later in TBC. But keys for Honored were meaning that you didn't even had to run almost any dungeons except CoT at all due to quests awarding rep. Still Revered wasn't hard to get.

Especially with the turn ins. Coilfang armaments and such. I did it on 3 toons actually at revered and it was sooooo much less painless than it is now. Primarily because dungeons were granting me gear and rep. It made dungeon content really rewarding and the grind much less grind like. Now to get rep I have to go out of my way to do this mind numbing tedious buillshit I hate doing and it's limited to once a day by and large and it's gets me no immediate gain like actual loot so it just feels like this big drawn out affair. Double Dipping is the best thing this game ever did and has always done to one extent or another.

[mosely]

you see.. I have multiple screens... I can play Wow at the same time as I sit and laugh at your tantrum... I would so desperately love to tell you what I truly think, however, I'm quite mindful of the forum rules. Truth is, I'm having a wonderful time in Wow... been playing all night and laughing at the forum tantrums...

Enjoy your time then while you've still got people to play with. Please don't forget to turn out the lights when you leave.

[Glorious Leader]

You could get rep from all 5-mans in vanilla? I thought it was only scholomance / stratholme for the Argent Dawn.

I seem to recall getting Thorium Brotherhood rep from dungeons as well. It wasn't every 5 man though your correct. The raids also featured rep. I went back and cleared trash in ZG with another mage buddy for Bijous for turn ins at lvl 60 because I had the damn token but not the rep for the chest piece. What I said remains quite accurate though. To some degree or another in one fashion or another you got rep from dungeons IN EVERY ITERATION OF THIS GAME except for mists. One of these things is not like the other...

[Malackai]

Except you could buy the keys for heroic at Honored not Revered.

Fixed that for you.

These keys are purchased from the faction quartermaster of the faction corresponding to the instance once reaching honored. At introduction the keys required revered, but this was reduced in later patches to allow easier access to the heroic modes.

There you go :3

now back on topic seeing Mop came out a couple of days before the end of Q3 i dont think we see much difference in sub gained or lost tbh i think we will see more difference in Q4 or Q1

[Glorious Leader]

you see.. I have multiple screens... I can play Wow at the same time as I sit and laugh at your tantrum... I would so desperately love to tell you what I truly think, however, I'm quite mindful of the forum rules. Truth is, I'm having a wonderful time in Wow... been playing all night and laughing at the forum tantrums...

Feel free to send me a message sparky. I'm glad your having a wonderful time but let's be honest if they changed wow at all, made some allowances for the current crop of legitimate grievances would it affect you? would you come on these forums screaming and yelling at blizzard? is their ANYTHING they could do to turn you away as a customer within reason?

[Deleted]

They're going obviously good with a lot of stuff stil coming, gaining back 900k subs was more than I personally expected.

[Cybran]

As i said more than 2 months ago the real losses will show in February.

Once people get their chars decked in LFR and are too sick of dailies on Alts the fall will be huge. We can expect some Scroll promotion tied with 5.1 around Christmas to bloat the sub figures.

[Kelimbror]

Single player content shouldn't reward raid quality gear. The dailies are long and boring, but they are not challenging and do not warrant a epic raid quality reward. Valor needs to be limited to Latest raid and 1/day random hc dungeons. Group PvE content should reward raid gear/rep/etc

Blizzard has disagreed with you for about 5 years now. So clearly your viewpoint doesn't mesh with the design of the game. No amount of elitist prattling will change that.

Newsflash: doing everything in this game should reward gear. You know why? Because that is what their customers want. It doesn't have to be the same gear, or have to look the same, but purps/transmog items should be busting out of everywhere.

This isn't the beginning of MMO development. This is a decade into being programmed that gear is the highest form of reward and thus the most satisfying to most people. Games are trending towards rewarding your account for your overall actions and not limiting you to a minute and specific set of activities. You may personally disagree, but like I said: Blizzard thinks differently. Other companies are pushing these boundaries and they are only going to get more open.

Any MMO would be much better for it as well.

[Seranthor]

Feel free to send me a message sparky. I'm glad your having a wonderful time but let's be honest if they changed wow at all, made some allowances for the current crop of legitimate grievances would it affect you? would you come on these forums screaming and yelling at blizzard? is their ANYTHING they could do to turn you away as a customer within reason?

In fact, I'll share with you an email I got from Blizzard a while back,

We are contacting you today regarding your multiple in-game ticket submissions
to the Customer Support team over the past few months. We have noticed a
troubling trend in these submissions, reaching a point where we must ask
explicitly for your future compliance.

A lot of the tickets you’ve submitted have been complaints about game design
choices, changes or current support workflows/policies. Our Game Masters are
here to help, but must focus on assisting players with true support needs,
rather than respond to complaints about the decisions made by our development
team.

That being said, Blizzard is open to feedback on design decisions. Please post
your suggestions or concerns about these items in the appropriate World of
Warcraft forum on our community site:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/

In summary, our Game Masters will happily support you if something is preventing
you from playing the game as it is designed. With that in mind, this pattern of
tickets is affecting our ability to manage our ticket volume; it needs to stop.

Please note: should you disregard this letter, the account(s) you are using will
be temporarily suspended. Further violations will result in more severe actions
being taken, up to and including closure of the account.

We do not take these actions lightly and we do hope for a positive support
relationship with you in the future. Thank you for your time.

So, yes I have complaints, but I've learned that raging in forums doesn't do anything.

[Glorious Leader]

As i said more than 2 months ago the real losses will show in February.

Once people get their chars decked in LFR and are too sick of dailies on Alts the fall will be huge. We can expect some Scroll promotion tied with 5.1 around Christmas to bloat the sub figures.

Who the hell want's to just run lfr once a week though? it's so shitty to have just that as your primary pve source for gear. Putting the gear behind nothing but rep and dailies is the dumbest thing in the universe. It basically means I log in once a week for LFR and Sha and that's it. Don't have the care to pvp or the apptitude for it. Don't want to run dailies. Have the majority of crafting gear available to me and have all ilvl 463 so now what? If you stop doing dailies you start to see how sparse the progression content is in this game. It is literally do dailies or that's it for your outside of a raid.

[Deleted]

Who the hell want's to just run lfr once a week though? it's so shitty to have just that as your primary pve source for gear. Putting the gear behind nothing but rep and dailies is the dumbest thing in the universe. It basically means I log in once a week for LFR and Sha and that's it. Don't have the care to pvp or the apptitude for it. Don't want to run dailies. Have the majority of crafting gear available to me and have all ilvl 463 so now what? If you stop doing dailies you start to see how sparse the progression content is in this game. It is literally do dailies or that's it for your outside of a raid.

So you don't want to:
1)Raid normal/heroic
2)Run LFR
3)Do dailies
4)Do PVP

And somewhat expect to get the best gear possible... doing what, precisely? Spamming LFD?

[Glorious Leader]

Blizzard has disagreed with you for about 5 years now. So clearly your viewpoint doesn't mesh with the design of the game. No amount of elitist prattling will change that.

Newsflash: doing everything in this game should reward gear. You know why? Because that is what their customers want. It doesn't have to be the same gear, or have to look the same, but purps/transmog items should be busting out of everywhere.

This isn't the beginning of MMO development. This is a decade into being programmed that gear is the highest form of reward and thus the most satisfying to most people. Games are trending towards rewarding your account for your overall actions and not limiting you to a minute and specific set of activities. You may personally disagree, but like I said: Blizzard thinks differently. Other companies are pushing these boundaries and they are only going to get more open.

Any MMO would be much better for it as well.

Blizzard isn't rewarding people for every activity though and they likely never will. They don't reward people for epics with fishing. Dailies have always had SOME reward behind them but never as much. I'm okay with them having reward they just don't need to have this much reward and they don't need to have so much more reward than dungeons. If Blizzard genuinely feels what you outlined then they should have dungeons more rewarding. The playstyle I had grown accustomed to over the years is now bankrupt.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

So, yes I have complaints, but I've learned that raging in forums doesn't do anything.

Whoa!

Now that's a first I've seen of that!

But, yeah, GMs can't change what Blizzard does and that's not the venue for it, though. It's the forums, IF, you're not banned...yet.

[Glorious Leader]

So you don't want to:
1)Raid normal/heroic
2)Run LFR
3)Do dailies
4)Do PVP

And somewhat expect to get the best gear possible... doing what, precisely? Spamming LFD?

Best gear possible is a clever euphemism. I never got the best gear possible from doing lfd but I got the best gear available to me outside of the raid lfd (more or less). For instance I never had 403 in cata at the end but I did have lots of valor gear and it made the activity I liked to do rewarding as hell. Now the best gear I can get outside of the raid is doing dailies.