When is enough enough?

[Lillemus]

Sadly Ion's probably not on the chopping block just yet.

BfA sold more day one copies than any other expansion, so why would they let him go?

[Khaza-R]

Almost like then they laid off hundreds in 2012 and 2016.

But yeah, "death of the company blargh, blargh, blargh". Whatever fulfills your retarded head fantasy.

[Wyattbw09]

As someone who used to play nearly all the Blizzard games, right now I’m playing zero Blizzard games. Honestly, I think the fact that I still come to MMO Champion has more to do with habit after years to checking it daily then anything else. D3 is stale, BFA is just bad and boring, Overwatch has not changed or added anything meaningful since launch, and Hearthstone, I didn’t think it was possible for a development team to take what started out as a great game and just run it into ground.

[Tomana]

BfA is in the top 3 expansions in terms of content

WAT? How? Why? O_o

[Mnemicmustdie]

Focusing on Micro transactions/loot boxes and mobile games to piss off gamers for being treated as sheep to appease shareholders doesnt work who knew.

[Thorbalt]

WAT? How? Why? O_o

Its pretty obvious to anyone who hasnt permanently lodged their head up their ass

[Tomana]

Its pretty obvious to anyone who hasnt permanently lodged their head up their ass

Well, if you learned how to count on your fingers at school, then you have WOTLK, MOP and Legion being much better than BFA.
Yes, each of these packs had its share of problems, but nowhere as significant as BFA. So, BFA is at best 4th, and most likely 5th, just before the even bigger pile of horse manure called WOD. And even about that I'm not sure - at least WOD allowed me to get massive amounts of gold in garrisons.

[MasterMirror]

Yeah, another original thread on MMO Champ. Doomsayers never die, but if I say so then I'm a white knight, right?

[lolpve]

With the sad news that hundreds of people will be losing their jobs very soon, i have to ask myself something: When will the diehard fans who blindly white knight all things Blizzard FINALLY accept what many (and i really do mean MANY) have been saying for a while now - Blizzard have lost their way, their trademark high production values are long gone, and they are in serious trouble.

Why do you care what those fanboys think? Would it change anything if they weren't delusional? No it wouldn't. Just ignore them.

For me this is 3 different issues that are all inter-related; the failure of blizzard's design philosophy, the failure of activision's management of the developer group, and the failure of the game development industry in general and a growing pushback against a lot of things it has been doing the last 5-10 years. I think it's inevitable that things are going to get worse and we haven't hit rock bottom yet.

I read some fanboys argue that this is part of a natural economic cycle, which is a strange argument given the health of the economy compared to 5 years ago.

[Leih]

With the sad news that hundreds of people will be losing their jobs very soon, i have to ask myself something: When will the diehard fans who blindly white knight all things Blizzard FINALLY accept what many (and i really do mean MANY) have been saying for a while now - Blizzard have lost their way, their trademark high production values are long gone, and they are in serious trouble.

Just curious but what difference does it make to the situation, you or anyone whether people who are enjoying Blizzard games at the moment "admit" that actually they're not enjoying it and "yes you were right all along, WoW sucks!!!"?

If you're concerned that Blizzard is dying and want to help, trying to convince people to turn on them is not the way to do that.

Or if you think they're doomed and dislike them, then take this news as a form of validation, smile, and continue moving on with whatever it is you're doing in your post-WoW life.

But posting this topic trying to convince people to get on board with your point of view just reeks of someone who's still addicted but is desperate for some form of validation. Either that, or someone who gets their jollies from troll baiting.

[Faesroll]

Just because players don't hate on the game as a full time job and circle jerk each other on the forums doesn't make them white knights. You guys just can't accept that there's something in between white knighting and blind hate for the game.

[Thorbalt]

Just because players don't hate on the game as a full time job and circle jerk each other on the forums doesn't make them white knights. You guys just can't accept that there's something in between white knighting and blind hate for the game.

oh, it was circle jerk a decade ago. now its full blown human centipede, except it starts with a biiiiiiiiig fat one in the "screamer streamer" and goes from there

[Lillemus]

Why do you care what those fanboys think? Would it change anything if they weren't delusional? No it wouldn't. Just ignore them.

For me this is 3 different issues that are all inter-related; the failure of blizzard's design philosophy, the failure of activision's management of the developer group, and the failure of the game development industry in general and a growing pushback against a lot of things it has been doing the last 5-10 years. I think it's inevitable that things are going to get worse and we haven't hit rock bottom yet.

I read some fanboys argue that this is part of a natural economic cycle, which is a strange argument given the health of the economy compared to 5 years ago.

How did Blizzards design philosophy fail exactly? I don't know much about their other IPs outside of WoW (but since this is under the World of Warcraft part of the forums rather than general I'm assuming that we're talking about WoW unless specifically stated otherwise), but BfA sold the most day one copies of any of World of Warcrafts expansions, so all things considered WoW is relatively healthy - and ultimately probably has very little to do with these lay offs.
Edit: I just noticed that the article mentions that Overwatch and Hearthstone are providing disappointing numbers, which begs the question why this is posted in the WoW section and not the General Off Topic, Hearthstone or Overwatch parts of this forum.

I'm not sure which "natural economic cycle" you are referring to but ActiBlizz stock has almost been cut in half over the last 4 months, it's a pretty natural knee jerk reaction (I'm not saying I'm agreeing with it, but it is normal) to make immediate cuts and changes in an attempt to appease investors.

[legendaryusername]

Blizzard hasn't lost their way ... the game is just 15 years old, people who do anything for 15 years get bored and leave.

BfA is in the top 3 expansions in terms of content, but it is still an expansion to a 15 year old game.

But im still enjoyin counter strike like i did back in the day.
defend wow/bli$$ard to end you shall huh

[smityx]

Something people seem to forget or are to young. WoW is a exception to the rule. It may have millions and has lost millions. But you got to remember prior to WoWs explosion a MMO with even 500k subs was considered wildly successful and profitable and probably would be today as well. Between then and now WoW has distorted things so much everyone thought they had to be a WoW killer with WoW numbers to be even worth the effort. Mainly the non gaming shareholders 'm sure. WoW probably wouldn't be profitable with 500k or even 1 mil at this point since I'm sure they still have all the infrastructure for a game with 13+ million and refuse to consolidate/merge down to more reasonable levels.

[Lillemus]

Something people seem to forget or are to young. WoW is a exception to the rule. It may have millions and has lost millions. But you got to remember prior to WoWs explosion a MMO with even 500k subs was considered wildly successful and profitable and probably would be today as well. Between then and now WoW has distorted things so much everyone thought they had to be a WoW killer with WoW numbers to be even worth the effort. Mainly the non gaming shareholders 'm sure. WoW probably wouldn't be profitable with 500k or even 1 mil at this point since I'm sure they still have all the infrastructure for a game with 13+ million and refuse to consolidate/merge down to more reasonable levels.

I highly doubt that they have the infrastructure for those kinds of numbers, I was sitting in a login queue the other day, that shouldn't happen if they have the infrastructure. I am also experiencing a fair amount of lag on the servers, so I don't think they have the infrastructure in place for that either.
Other than that, I think you are right, WoW is an anomaly and has distorted the entire MMO scene, which has backfired horribly since investors are fidgety beings and believe that everything should grow infinitely.

[Jibjub]

---

My question is how many of those jobs could have been saved if they didn't recently give the new CFO a 15 million dollar sign on bonus. Or have we forgotten they did that already?

Probably just a few?

[smityx]

I highly doubt that they have the infrastructure for those kinds of numbers, I was sitting in a login queue the other day, that shouldn't happen if they have the infrastructure. I am also experiencing a fair amount of lag on the servers, so I don't think they have the infrastructure in place for that either.
Other than that, I think you are right, WoW is an anomaly and has distorted the entire MMO scene, which has backfired horribly since investors are fidgety beings and believe that everything should grow infinitely.

They may be able to spin up or down login servers as needed but the servers to run the f-ton of realm servers have to run 24/7/365 whether it has 100 people actively online or 20,000. And that equipment is being constantly upgraded and replaced on a set time schedule which costs $$$$$. Multiple data centers all over the world, etc... And that's just the hardware. Not mentioning all the other resources/personel to keep all that stuff running.

- - - Updated - - -

Probably just a few?

Yeah. Would probably pay the salary of ~60 people for a year and they would still need to find a new CFO somewhere that would be decent and work for peanuts.

[Jibjub]

Yeah. Would probably pay the salary of ~60 people for a year and they would still need to find a new CFO somewhere that would be decent and work for peanuts.

I would estimate fewer than that (unless they are also cutting benefits, too)--and like you said, for just one year. AND if they hired some nobody as CFO without a big bonus, their stock likely would have plummeted even more.

[Gaidax]

When video game developer does not develop video games bad things happen.

Blizzard is effectively having 3.5 games now - WoW, Overwatch, Hearthstone and HoTS (0.5 with all the shit they did) and all of them have gone stale. No upcoming new games of note, no real news about old franchises like Diablo or Starcraft.

I know that Mike Morhaime is the patron saint here nowadays, but he has really failed Blizzard these couple last years - whatever happened to Starcraft and Diablo is his responsibility, as well as lack of any new games and IP in the roadmap.