Your guess on WoW's business direction based on what we know so far.

[Queen of Hamsters]

It is not WoW that's being played among teenagers anymore, and we know that

Hate to be that guy, but no. You don't know that, nobody on these forums know how things are looking with stats for this game in terms of returning players, new players, old players etc etc.

That's just conjecture, usually with a heavy dose of bias.

My "guess" in regards to WoW's business direction is as useless as anything else on these forums. All I know is this:

1. I still enjoy the game
2. It's by far my cheapest hobby despite all the hours spent
3. It's still alive, having new content produced and future expansions planned and running billion-dollar revenues*.

As long as all 3 of those ring true, I'm good.




* Which is why it's so hilarious when randoms on a forum sit down and seriously believe that they've got a clue as to the business side of things. Yehah, a team getting billions out of a 13-year old title, should totally move over to F2P models coz reasons...

[druenos]

I think you missed the part as to where this policy is brand new and didn't exist until BfA. Previously you could get a refund on the pre purchase without any complications.

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Changing a policy mysterious without explanation to limit the amount of refunds you have to give is a direct correlation to a need for increased revenue aka greed or a declining revenue are the only two possibilities. I have numerous degrees in areas like statistics, mathematics, businesses administration and economics. I know how these things work.

I think you will find that even though it's a pre order, you can play some of the content now ie Allied races so it's entirely fair to refuse a refund request if you have already unlocked and played allied races.

[endersblade]

Milk as much money as they can!

It's pretty much this.

I'm not trying to be a 'WoW is dying!' person, but that's really what it's looking like. Think back to the 'prime' of WoW, and how as a company, Blizzard supported its players. Hell, back in Vanilla GMs would actually appear on servers and do shit. They were really in touch with their players. They really seemed to have a focus and all was well.

Fast forward a few years, and now it seems like Blizzard realizes they' re on a sinking ship and are just pandering to the best of their ability to get money from us as fast and hard as they can before the ship finally goes under. It feels like EA all over again. They've stopped trying to reinvent the wheel, and instead just give us the same wheel with a different color or pattern. Their GMs don't give two shits about the players anymore, they hand out ban hammers like they're going out of style. Customer service is about as useful as an umbrella in a shit storm. Even the people working there, all the big names we remember, are not just moving onto something different, they're ABANDONING Blizzard all together.

[druenos]

If I buy a game from gamestop or many other respectable businesses and I play the game, I can bring it back whether or not I've experience the game..

Really, is this correct. In the UK if you open a game you won't get a refund because it means you have already played it, or it was the last time I bought a physical disc many years ago.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I think you missed the part as to where this policy is brand new and didn't exist until BfA. Previously you could get a refund on the pre purchase without any complications.

Pretty sure previous pre-purchases also came with "complications", such as you having used a boost = the character that used it would become locked.

Also: Allied races. If someone pre-purchases and doesn't use the boost + unlocks the Allied races, he/she can get a refund just fine.

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Really, is this correct. In the UK if you open a game you won't get a refund because it means you have already played it, or it was the last time I bought a physical disc many years ago.

Think it's just his own delusion. Whenever I bought physical copies, they'd explicitly state that the game would have to be in its UNBROKEN, original packaging to qualify for a refund.

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It's pretty much this.

I'm not trying to be a 'WoW is dying!' person, but that's really what it's looking like. Think back to the 'prime' of WoW, and how as a company, Blizzard supported its players. Hell, back in Vanilla GMs would actually appear on servers and do shit. They were really in touch with their players. They really seemed to have a focus and all was well.

Fast forward a few years, and now it seems like Blizzard realizes they' re on a sinking ship and are just pandering to the best of their ability to get money from us as fast and hard as they can before the ship finally goes under. It feels like EA all over again. They've stopped trying to reinvent the wheel, and instead just give us the same wheel with a different color or pattern. Their GMs don't give two shits about the players anymore, they hand out ban hammers like they're going out of style. Customer service is about as useful as an umbrella in a shit storm. Even the people working there, all the big names we remember, are not just moving onto something different, they're ABANDONING Blizzard all together.

You're saying the same old "WoW is dying!"-kind of things all the same, that I've seen out here for the past 9 years and no doubt others have seen since way further back than that...

I think the people out of touch, are the ones thinking that WoW's in dire straits over subjective points such as Willie Wang "not feeling immersed anymore" or Tony Tackle "not having any friends that play these days". Meanwhile, in the real world: The game has received more development than ever before, the team working on the game is bigger, they still provide GM support, they can still show up in-game to help with issues etc etc.

You don't "milk" a cow by starving it to death. The cynical might want to say that WoW's being milked for all it's worth but that has resulted in a pretty damned large step-up in terms of development. I guess they realize that keeping the cow fat and happy, is better than whatever it was they did during WoD.

WoW is a subscription game, 14 years old, raking in billion-dollar figures and people believe it "has" to change to F2P to survive? Or it "has" to change in "remarkable ways" when it so clearly only needs to put out content that people want to play at a good enough speed?

Sorry, but no. The only time this game was in a very bad position, was during WoD. And people firmly set in the belief that they didn't turn it around with the release and continued support of Legion, are just desperately biased against the game.

[SoulSoBreezy]

I don't buy into the conspiracy theory on slower leveling to increase boosts. I have no doubt that allied races and the leveling changes did cause an increase, but that was a convenient byproduct of their intentions (make leveling feel more worthwhile, IMO it mostly nailed it).

ANYTHING Blizzard adds to their franchises affects WoW in a small way thanks to the WoW Token. Every new HS expansion, OW season and WoW expansion sees a small spike in Token activity.
But I think adding more cosmetics to WoW's cash shop is one of their more lucrative wells to tap.

[MoanaLisa]

I don't really think its a proper assessment to say that they're not getting new players.

I know of very few teenagers or even adults that are ok with the idea of signing on to a game they've never played before with an initial investment of around $60 and $180 a year on top of that.

There will always be a few of course but we haven't quite yet gotten to the place where World of Warcraft is in the same market niche for new signups as subscription services like Netflix, Audible, Spotify or Texture (magazines).

If anyone could do that though it might be Blizzard. So I'll throw this out there:

Buy a battle.net subscription for $X amount per month and have full access to all games, expansions and bonus material that they could generate. Funny but this is the first time I've seen any speculation like this. It would make a certain amount of sense though.

I'll have to think about this. Too soon to do anything like this now but someone in Irvine has to have thought of it as a future revenue model. People that think that WoW is dying don't have enough imagination.

[RobertoCarlos]

Milk the remaining whales through race changes/character boosts.

WoW doesnt pull in many new players. They probably have data to suggest the inflow of new players has stagnated.

And they stand to make millions off of people race changing to allied races/ buying the next expansion. So they will keep running that model until it is no longer profitable.

[Onikaroshi]

Think it's just his own delusion. Whenever I bought physical copies, they'd explicitly state that the game would have to be in its UNBROKEN, original packaging to qualify for a refund.

Was going to say about the same thing, pretty sure gamestop, and other stores, policy is once its opened it's exchange or store credit ONLY.

[Nnyco]

My biggest concern is Blizz will overstretch with their releases & plans and overspend, and if the money stops coming in because of a spending reduction by the general public not wanting to pay for old games then Blizz will collapse with massive debts growing.

Going completely free to play might save Blizz but I doubt they are interested in that path.

thats alot of "ifs" that are all kinda made up though

[Al Gorefiend]

The thing OP hasn't mentioned is that MMORPGs are not fixed upkeep and Blizzard is fully capable of maintaining a profit on WoW until they and they alone decide to pull the plug. There will never be a day when a Blizzard bureaucrat wakes up to the news that WoW didn't break even on a quarterly report and power the game down.

To ease your mind that such a thing is not possible, look at EverQuest and EverQuest 2. I cannot fathom that both games COMBINED have more than 50k players. Hell, 20k players?

And EQ2 is coming out with a new expansion at the end of the year.

Also, WoW has the benefit of being a glutton for the MMO playerbase. Nobody who plays and enjoys MMORPGs haven't heard of or at least trailed world of Warcraft. Games like Aion and Wildstar never stood a chance because they couldn't break off even a sizable chunk of the WoW playerbase because it's almost synonymous with MMO playerbase.

10, 15, 25 years from now when WoW becomes a distant nostalgia, Blizzard will still have it up and running, possibly still making small, simple little 1-2 zone sized expansions every 6 months or so (more akin to patch content) or keep it in maintenance mode for the >100k addicts still remaining. 1.5m a month is no small stack.

Edit: BTW. For a game that Blizzard spends next to zero time or money advertising, WoW is still making good figures. If Blizzard felt their current playerbase couldn't provide the income to fund their projects, they'd take a page from Every-Business-Literally-Ever-101 and start advertising. Which, I don't see much of any WoW ads anymore.

[RobertoCarlos]

Edit: BTW. For a game that Blizzard spends next to zero time or money advertising, WoW is still making good figures. If Blizzard felt their current playerbase couldn't provide the income to fund their projects, they'd take a page from Every-Business-Literally-Ever-101 and start advertising. Which, I don't see much of any WoW ads anymore.

Are you really saying blizzard/activision dont spend any money on marketing?

Are you just conveniently forgetting all the TV ads and conan segments? Blizzcon's / gamescon's and all the other expo's. All those posters/wall papers/stands dont pay for themselves

[Al Gorefiend]

Are you really saying blizzard/activision dont spend any money on marketing?

Are you just conveniently forgetting all the TV ads and conan segments? Blizzcon's / gamescon's and all the other expo's. All those posters/wall papers/stands dont pay for themselves

I meant more like viral marketing. I don't think BlizzCon's purpose is to attract new customers. No I haven't seen TV ads or conan segments, Did Legion and WoD have TV ads? I saw a WoD ad on front page of PCGamer. But no I have not seen a WoW TV ad in a few years, not here in the US.

[RobertoCarlos]

I meant more like viral marketing. I don't think BlizzCon's purpose is to attract new customers. No I haven't seen TV ads or conan segments, Did Legion and WoD have TV ads? I saw a WoD ad on front page of PCGamer. But no I have not seen a WoW TV ad in a few years, not here in the US.

Every expansion has had tv ads



the conan segment was just for warlords of draenor

[Rukario]

I think the many expansion packs make up a huge barrier for new players...it's not just about the money but the fact that they are sold like that(fragmented) makes for bad marketing.

They should just make it so the latest expansion comes with everything.

[Al Gorefiend]

Every expansion has had tv ads



the conan segment was just for warlords of draenor

Wow I never saw that one. Interesting choice of an ad, I guess.

[Onikaroshi]

Funny thing is people think the game isn't profitable at a certain point, hate to break it to them but WoW will be profitable at less than 5mil, less than 1 mil, hell, less then 500k. Most MMOs can hold profitability at 100k subs.

[lockybalboa]

It's like they've lost hope of gaining new players and are in retention mode right now.

[Onikaroshi]

The EU has fairly strong consumer laws, but you can't do that here.
You are allowed to return of cancel your purchase within 14 days without justification - but it does not apply to following:
- sealed audio, video or computer software, such as DVDs, which you have unsealed upon receipt.
- online digital content, if you have already started downloading or streaming it

Same here, only return policy that's ANYTHING like what that guy mentioned is steams return policy. You can refund anything as long as you haven't owned it for over 14 days or played it for more than 2 hours. Try returning an open game to gamestop and all you'll be offered is exchange and store credit.

[Rogalicus]

I think the many expansion packs make up a huge barrier for new players...it's not just about the money but the fact that they are sold like that(fragmented) makes for bad marketing.

They should just make it so the latest expansion comes with everything.

Um, it's already like this. Basic version of WoW is called Battle Chest and includes everything up to current expansion (obviously excluding current expansion).