Blizzard's poor excuses

[Stir]

Or "angry fanbois attack anybody that criticizes Blizz like a pack of rabid dogs".

OR it could be summed up with 'People with a clue on how things work get really angry with the amount of bullshit other people spout for no other reason than justifying their spite.'
I'm not a WoW fanboy. I don't even play the game anymore. I used to love it, time is past, and I now only debate in this section of MMO-C because I want to keep tabs on the MMO gaming community, popular opinions, and new developments.

Blizzard can absolutely do wrong. After all; I quite playing the game because I no longer enjoy it. At the same time, it's not so easy to be spiteful about decisions made by devs if you know what the work entails.

[Vankrys]

Amazing for a MMO is an understatement. No other paid MMO has broke 5m subs let alone 10

http://mmohuts.com/editorials/most-popular-free-mmorpgs

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Chinese F2P MMO did. Then again, having a 1 billion+ market helps. In EU/US, probably not.

chinese MMO market nearly reach 12 billions dollars last years.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-05-02-chinas-online-game-market-to-hit-USD11-9-billion-this-year

[Ausr]

Always amazing to watch some of the people whine in this thread. Saying "hire more developers!!" is easier said than done, especially when you need quality people. $5 says if Blizzard took your approach, hired Joe Schmoe developers and ruined the game, you'd bitch that they should fire those people now.

[Deleted]

http://mmohuts.com/editorials/most-popular-free-mmorpgs

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chinese MMO market nearly reach 12 billions dollars last years.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...lion-this-year

1 billion+ people, not dollars.

Regardless, nice that someone gives a little perspective to all those WoW fanboys that think WoW is the Holy Grail of (online) gaming.

[Deleted]

I'm not going to bother reading through this thread because I can already tell its going to be full of fanboy apologists, but I am going to agree with OP. It is pretty pathetic when Blizzard, a company that makes money other developers can only dream of, claim they dont have the resources to both release a content patch and work on an expansion which is shaping up to have less content than any of the previous ones.

The reality is that Blizzard are testing the waters to see how little money they can spend/work they can do and still have people subscribe.

[Vankrys]

1 billion+ people, not dollars.

Regardless, nice that someone gives a little perspective to all those WoW fanboys that think WoW is the Holy Grail of (online) gaming.

don't get what you are trying to say, i link the article that clearly said 11.9 billions dollars.
i understand that Tomana talked abot 1 billon potential consumer (though he didn't give a quote for that statement), i was just giving a complement information on his statement (with reference)

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The reality is that Blizzard are testing the waters to see how little money they can spend/work they can do and still have people subscribe.

you can't really blame them for that, it's up to us consumer, to say what is acceptable and what is not ... with our wallet.

[Deleted]

Being a programmer myself I facepalm on the regular at their "well that would be really hard to code".... The latest being a feature that has already been in the game coming back - "really hard to code man"


That and "well would take time away from developing cool stuff" - "Here is a store and store stuff and more store buttons"

Reminds me of the bullcrap Notch became infamous for. Claiming that a certain feature would be impossible to code, only for someone else to create a mod with it. That and constantly wringing his hands over a mod API because then he wouldn't be able to charge for future content updates like he planned.

[Sarevokcz]

In what reality does "JUST HIRE MORE PEOPLE" and "YOU GOT LOTS OF MONEY" make good arguments?

Like the most oversimplified muppetry ever.

To be completely honest, they use this excuse for years and years, they even got most of the Titan crew back to WoW, but cant seem to do anything faster, in fact plenty of things are dopne slower than before. So its kinda fair question, why, after the years of excuses, dont they have larger team capable of handling more stuff, churning out content faster (as they are promising since what, halfway through WotLK) ?

Even simple, lower priority stuff that could be done by new hires or interns, like the low level pvp numbers or the new model presentations, are using "not enough people" scapegoat phrase. It gets really old, really fast.

[Pann]

you can't really blame them for that, it's up to us consumer, to say what is acceptable and what is not ... with our wallet.

The problem with that is consumers have been telling them what is unacceptable to the tune of over a million customers voting with their wallets each year for over three years yet nothing has changed and it seems that it just causes Blizzard to step up their search for additional revenue streams to exploit.

[Deleted]

don't get what you are trying to say, i link the article that clearly said 11.9 billions dollars.
i understand that Tomana talked abot 1 billon potential consumer (though he didn't give a quote for that statement), i was just giving a complement information on his statement (with reference)

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you can't really blame them for that, it's up to us consumer, to say what is acceptable and what is not ... with our wallet.

Still, its depressing to see a company you used to love who put real art into their games developing such a cynical attitude, making their games as mere products..

[Vankrys]

To be completely honest, they use this excuse for years and years, they even got most of the Titan crew back to WoW, but cant seem to do anything faster, in fact plenty of things are dopne slower than before. So its kinda fair question, why, after the years of excuses, dont they have larger team capable of handling more stuff, churning out content faster (as they are promising since what, halfway through WotLK) ?

Even simple, lower priority stuff that could be done by new hires or interns, like the low level pvp numbers or the new model presentations, are using "not enough people" scapegoat phrase. It gets really old, really fast.

which make me think, Titan is probably a long long way off now, probably many years from now. I don't what were their release plan, but as it stand, it is in their best interest to do anything in their power to redress wow's continuous sub decline.

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Still, its depressing to see a company you used to love who put real art into their games developing such a cynical attitude, making their games as mere products..

true that. money corrupt everyone and everything i guess.

[Deleted]

which make me think, Titan is probably a long long way off now, probably many years from now. I don't what were their release plan, but as it stand, it is in their best interest to do anything in their power to redress wow's continuous sub decline.

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true that. money corrupt everyone and everything i guess.

That or Activision

[Raleina]

yes, i stuff iwant would keep the game good, and make it better. pet battles havn't, item shop hasn't, and no models won't either.

Pet battles is the only reason im still logging in each month fyi and i pay money for wow subs aswell just as you do, who are you to decide what people like or dont like.

Some people log in for doing Arena others for raiding other people just log in for the social aspects of the game and then you have the group of people that log in just to level alts and collect battle pets or do old content and collect achievements. All these people want to be kept happy and satisfied and if Blizzard is focussing on that moment on a part of the game that doesnt suit you then it doesnt mean they dont care about you.

There is so many people to satisfy it takes time to process it all and make plans for design teams on how and what to add or change. Just look at the Blizzard forums NA and EU so many people that are demanding different things that they would enjoy to have in the game, you just cant cater to everyone at the same damn time.

In the past they have also added enough content to keep the whiners happy and once they have it you wont hear any gratitude from them just the complaints and whines.

gg

[Vankrys]

That or Activision

i don't think blizzard are saints either. i think mike morhaime , frank pearce, bobby kotick or chris metzen very much like money liek everyone else.

[Tomana]

chinese MMO market nearly reach 12 billions dollars last years.

Clarification: by 1 billion I meant the population, not the revenue. Sorry, it wasn't that clear
Also, yes, I'm aware that not all of it is a potential market (esp. rural areas), but it was used as more of an image than anything else.

[adorich]

See, this is just the kind of hyperbole that's ridiculous.

You look at only one factor that can be measured and see its a negative trend. Must be bad!!! Management must be shit!!!

The thing is you fail to acknowledge even more factors. 10 years takes the shine of everything. How many of you buy 10 year old mobile phones, appliances or cars when you can get the latest and greatest?

Yet Wow is 10 years old and still holding its own, that's pretty fucking amazing. Theres a thousand other factors counting against wow, f2p competition / world economy / console success and so on that aren't even mentioned.

Carry on looking at one factor and giving trite one liners that backup your opinion, it just shows how blinkered you are.

There's nothing about Pann's post you quoted that is hyperbole.

Losing almost 6 million (nearly 50%) customers is never a good thing. So many people on these forums minimise this "one factor." Like Blizzard, they bring up tons of other excuses that absolve Blizzard of any responsibility for the massive subscription loss.

The massive changes to healing, tanking and dungeon difficulty at the start of Cata was a horrible decision. Literally millions quit and Blizzard's response was a smarmy, sarcastic letter from Ghostcrawler. At some point Blizzard needs to admit things aren't working and put some people in place that will at least stabilize sub numbers. With the people coming back from Titan and Street's departure, maybe Blizzard has done that.

Watching subs continue to decline and saying Blizzard is doing a great job is rather biased, short sided and neive.

[Deja Thoris]

Watching subs continue to decline and saying Blizzard is doing a great job is rather biased, short sided and neive.

The game is 10 years old and in decline. Anybody who thinks that any change they make will magically increase numbers is stupid. I'm not absolving them of responsibility but I can accept a reality when I see it. I'm surprised a 10 year old game still has such a large following and that's why I think they are doing an ok job. It's a reasonable standpoint. Watching subs decline and saying "Blizz management is shit" without factoring in all circumstances isn't a reasonable standpoint.
I'm not saying I'd give them an A+ on a report card but I probably wouldn't fail them (like my opinion matters anyway)

Also, at the risk of going off topic, cata was too hard, queue the QQ. MoP was too easy, queue more QQ. You can't please everyone can you?

[mehow2g]

WoW's decline is due to casualising the game, the game becomes dull after a while when you make everything easy and accessible for everyone.

I think gaming is changing in demand, people are demanding more challenging games especially games that are played online. The MOBA is proof of that those games do take skill and some co-ordination to play and getting better at the game is very enjoyable, but in WoW when everything is giving to you you only rely on expansions to keep things alive expansions are just another reset of stats and other content changes.

I'm very impressed that people have stuck to WoW this long the game did not deserve this much love for such a long time it really is a mediocre product and the decline started in the 2nd expansion even the art was reused gimmicks like the flying mount were introduced then Blizzard started the milk from there and the customers let Blizzard get away with it.

Blizzard's disgusting attempt on fixing the drop rates in Diablo 3 to feed and maximise microtranactions was disgusting I cannot believe such blatant greed was attempted.

[Deja Thoris]

WoW's decline is due to casualising the game, the game becomes dull after a while when you make everything easy and accessible for everyone.

Hang on, a guy a couple of posts up attributes a lot of the decline to stuff being too hard. You're saying they are quitting because its become too easy?

Seems everyone has their pet theory and its not based on the truth or logic, just their own pet peeves.

[mehow2g]

Hang on, a guy a couple of posts up attributes a lot of the decline to stuff being too hard. You're saying they are quitting because its become too easy?

Seems everyone has their pet theory and its not based on the truth or logic, just their own pet peeves.

Who do you believe whats your personal opinion? to me the game basically hand feeds you if you stay online enough.