Y'all need to stop blaming Activision for everything.

[Zequill]

Ya ya your right the fact that the first in-game store mount only shows up weeks after Activision come's in is only a coincidence

Activision Blizzard was founded in July 2008
Celestial Steed was release on April 15, 2010.

Yep, about just 100 weeks between the two...

[yomammyass]

Ya ya your right the fact that the first in-game store mount only shows up weeks after Activision come's in is only a coincidence

Blizzard had paid services pre Activision Blizzard.

In mid 2006, Blizzard Entertainment began the Paid Character Transfer Service, which is sometimes referred to as PCT. The Paid Character Transfer feature allows you to move characters to other realms as well as between two accounts where you are the original registered owner, subject to certain restrictions. The cost of each paid character transfer is $25 / 20€ / £17 / ₩24,000.

At that time, I have played WoW, and I remember the same cries I see now. "oh I pay sub, why I need to pay extra" "$25??? whattt nooo way, not worth it"
All blamed blizzard and now Activison, perhaps it was Blizzard's decision for in-game store mounts...

- - - Updated - - -

Activision Blizzard was founded in July 2008
Celestial Steed was release on April 15, 2010.

Yep, about just 100 weeks between the two...

In mid 2006, Blizzard Entertainment began the Paid Character Transfer Service, which is sometimes referred to as PCT. The Paid Character Transfer feature allows you to move characters to other realms as well as between two accounts where you are the original registered owner, subject to certain restrictions. The cost of each paid character transfer is $25 / 20€ / £17 / ₩24,000.

Pre Activision pre wotlk

[yomammyass]

Activision-Blizzard are the managers.

Managers are responsible for everything.
Especially if morale is low and they (dev teams) feel like they lack resources or projects they would like to do are rejected because they dont match the risks / investment / product models management would like to pursue.

Well yes, the are in charge of few gaming development studios. If game's sales are on par with their expectations then nothing will change for the game dev studio, but it if declines, then what? wait and not take charge? people sometimes are soo anti-business that logic is no where to be found.

[Usagi Senshi]

Nah, fuck them when they fired 800+ people when they didn't need to and fuck them for this subpar expansion and limp dick last patch.

[A Chozo]

People are weird.

They buy WoW, they complain that it's WoW, blame Activision instead of understanding that their love for a company like Blizzard means almost nothing, then buy WoW again.

"Can't wait for Shadowlands!"

[Usagi Senshi]

People are weird.

They buy WoW, they complain that it's WoW, blame Activision instead of understanding that their love for a company like Blizzard means almost nothing, then buy WoW again.

"Can't wait for Shadowlands!"

Womp womp.....

[Iceman9725]

Uhh no. Activision had the best fiscal year in their history, and then turned around and said "Well it still wasn't good enough." and fired over 800 employees, a high percentage of which came from their quality assurance department. When it comes to WoW, yes, Activision is directly responsible when they do things like this.

Also, everyone needs to stop pretending like they know how many active subs WoW has. They haven't released that information for quite some time.

[Master Factician]

There's so much misinformation here I don't even know where to start.

[yomammyass]

Uhh no. Activision had the best fiscal year in their history, and then turned around and said "Well it still wasn't good enough." and fired over 800 employees, a high percentage of which came from their quality assurance department. When it comes to WoW, yes, Activision is directly responsible when they do things like this.

Also, everyone needs to stop pretending like they know how many active subs WoW has. They haven't released that information for quite some time.

They also show reports every quarter to bring on more investors, but every report shows that WoW is not doing so great as they expected, hence you see lay offs. Normal thing to do.

[Laqweeta]

First of all, it is even ignorant to state "Activision" as a single entity. Activision and Blizzard merged, so it is Activision Blizzard. One company, but different development teams and different games that get all of the profits as a single Business.

Blizzard was always in a partnership with bigger companies in the past, Vivendi. I don't know the exact contracts, but it mostly works that if Blizzard makes money from their games, then the bigger company will leave them alone, but if they have major losses, then it is up to the bigger company to take lead and figure out on how to move forward.

There were major f*** ups at Blizzard (Development team)overall.

Let's talk about World Of Warcraft. When Activision Merged with Blizzard, it was at the start of WOTLK, which had the highest Sub numbers 11.9mil+
after that over the years this declined and it is not a loss for you as a player, because you don't care, but it is a major loss for a Business.

from 12 mil to 2mil (being generous here) is a major loss.
You may argue 'oh, but 2 mill is still big', well no, for a shareholder when he invested, he wanted the subs to grow not to decline.


Overwatch was a success and still is.

Diablo 3 had great profits at the start, but due to bugs, bad decision making, lying (no pvp) made longevity of the game to bad levels.


Hero of the storm was pretty much a f** up, everybody knows this.


Hearthstone was and is still a success.


So overall, World of Warcraft, D3 and HoTs needed major changes, hence the firing of 800 employees, cutting content, not releasing nothing for other games like d3 etc.


In conclusion, I blame the Blizzard Dev Team for their f**k ups and I blame ex-wow, diablo players for un-subbing and letting Blizzard games to go on a decline mode.

So no, Activision did not happen.

Activision wasn't able to do anything with WotLK because the majority of it was already completed. You can tell exactly when Activision took over because the RDF was introduced.

[Usagi Senshi]

Activision wasn't able to do anything with WotLK because the majority of it was already completed. You can tell exactly when Activision took over because the RDF was introduced.

Eh, that one was all Blizzard because in an old interview back in late 2006 or early 2007 they stated interest in trying to make a dungeon and raid version of the Xrealm battlegrounds.

[Master Factician]

Here is the document showing the February 2019 layoffs:

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/401389...zsTyPm8t95vdMf

You can scroll down to page 35 to see the 11 QA positions that Blizzard cut out of 337. They're currently hiring more QA positions than they cut:

https://careers.blizzard.com/en-us/o...ance/all/all/1

[Terongor]

First of all, it is even ignorant to state "Activision" as a single entity. Activision and Blizzard merged, so it is Activision Blizzard. One company, but different development teams and different games that get all of the profits as a single Business.

Blizzard was always in a partnership with bigger companies in the past, Vivendi. I don't know the exact contracts, but it mostly works that if Blizzard makes money from their games, then the bigger company will leave them alone, but if they have major losses, then it is up to the bigger company to take lead and figure out on how to move forward.

There were major f*** ups at Blizzard (Development team)overall.

Let's talk about World Of Warcraft. When Activision Merged with Blizzard, it was at the start of WOTLK, which had the highest Sub numbers 11.9mil+
after that over the years this declined and it is not a loss for you as a player, because you don't care, but it is a major loss for a Business.

from 12 mil to 2mil (being generous here) is a major loss.
You may argue 'oh, but 2 mill is still big', well no, for a shareholder when he invested, he wanted the subs to grow not to decline.


Overwatch was a success and still is.

Diablo 3 had great profits at the start, but due to bugs, bad decision making, lying (no pvp) made longevity of the game to bad levels.


Hero of the storm was pretty much a f** up, everybody knows this.


Hearthstone was and is still a success.


So overall, World of Warcraft, D3 and HoTs needed major changes, hence the firing of 800 employees, cutting content, not releasing nothing for other games like d3 etc.


In conclusion, I blame the Blizzard Dev Team for their f**k ups and I blame ex-wow, diablo players for un-subbing and letting Blizzard games to go on a decline mode.

So no, Activision did not happen.

Blizzard merged with activision before wotlk was released..... "Kotick accepted Lévy's deal, with the deal approved by shareholders in December 2007. By July 2008, the merger was complete, with Vivendi Games effectively dissolved except for Blizzard, and the new company was named Activision Blizzard." While wotlk released in novembet 13 2008.......

How people keep making the same god damn mistake.....

[Vilendor]

Bungie had to buy out Destiny 2 from the contract with Activision just to save the game

That's all you need to know about Activision's control over their products

Blizzard is dead, Activision kept the name to keep fanboys deluded. They turned WoW into a soulless money printing machine

[Relapses]

Jesus. I guess we needed another "Here's what I would do if I ran a billion dollar company" fanfiction.

So a couple of misconceptions in this thread: First, the sub level fallacy. We will never know how much of WoW's sub loss is due to the game being shit and how much of it is due to gaming, in general, moving away from the MMO boom around the beginning of last century. Players love to use that stupid fucking graph (don't do it @Doffen) to support this idiotic idea that if Blizzard had never changed anything that we'd be sitting at 200 million subscribers and Blizzard would be bigger than Amazon. In reality, anybody who has ever led or designed anything knows that stagnation is the silent killer of progress and innovation. This isn't to say every design decision Blizzard has made post-boom has been great but it does mean that a lot of what they have done has been in the interest of preserving as much of the playerbase as they can. The fact that we're all still here, still arguing about WoW fifteen years later tells me that as unpopular as some design choices have been, they must have made the right calls.

Second, while Activision isn't totally to blame there is one aspect which is seemingly undeniable: There are time crunches that are always at odds with the dev team's needs. BfA was the biggest example of this in recent memory as the disaster that was 8.0. The game was released with several specs in an entirely unfinished state to meet a Q3 2018 foscal year breakpoint. And even 8.3 recently seems to have been rushed to meet some arbitrary deadline determined by bean counters who care more about cyclical profit margins and Excel spreadsheets than player experience. The cancellation of 8.3.5 also indicates the dev team is shifting all of their focus onto SL so as to meet the pre-Q4 2020 deadline they've imposed on themselves.

Finally, the biggest issue: There is no easy solution to this problem. Clearly the formula works because we're still getting new content. While I'm sure Blizzard would love to have the freedom of not having to work against deadlines that's an unfortunate side effect of corporate culture in general. There's the common adage that a good game can be released eventually but a bad game is bad forever but I don't think that applies to WoW since it's a subscription-based game and relies on content patches far more than something like the recently delayed DooM: Eternal or FFVII Remake. It's a bit of a catch 22 because more dev time equals longer content droughts equals players blaming Blizzard for taking too long and quitting forever. But conversely, rushing the product has the same result. Blizzard tries to walk the line between the two and generally does a decent job but it's not an enviable position to be in. Add to that the ridiculously broad appeal of WoW and you have a recipe for a game which will always be at odds with itself yet completely unable to change due to the polarizing nature any such change would have on other parts of the playerbase.

And here's my hot take: I think despite Blizzard making mistakes and developing a game whose broad, sweeping appeal is both its saving grace and it's biggest problem that they are doing the best they can with what they have been given. There are areas which could use some more fit and finish (see: QA) but they're generally putting out a product that is far better than anything else on the market. I think players generally give Blizzard way more shit than they should but I also think there is a demographic of players who are afraid to criticize the dev team when they fuck up. That said, I'm a huge proponent of the status quo and "if it ain't broke, why fix it?" philosophy. SL seems to be the biggest departure from status quo we've seen since Legion but despite my misgivings towards certain aspects of the game I'm still confident that Blizzard will knock it out of the park.

tl,dr - OP is right and wrong. It sucks but there's no easy solution.

[Yarathir]

Good boy, defend the billion dollar company. I'm sure Bobby Kotick will send you your stipend any day now.

And Blizzard are the underdogs, of course.

[Doffen]

So a couple of misconceptions in this thread: First, the sub level fallacy. We will never know how much of WoW's sub loss is due to the game being shit and how much of it is due to gaming, in general, moving away from the MMO boom around the beginning of last century. Players love to use that stupid fucking graph (don't do it @Doffen).

Today, and today only in the name of preserving our sanity.

[CrawlFromThePit]

First of all, it is even ignorant to state "Activision" as a single entity. Activision and Blizzard merged, so it is Activision Blizzard. One company, but different development teams and different games that get all of the profits as a single Business.

Blizzard was always in a partnership with bigger companies in the past, Vivendi. I don't know the exact contracts, but it mostly works that if Blizzard makes money from their games, then the bigger company will leave them alone, but if they have major losses, then it is up to the bigger company to take lead and figure out on how to move forward.

There were major f*** ups at Blizzard (Development team)overall.

Let's talk about World Of Warcraft. When Activision Merged with Blizzard, it was at the start of WOTLK, which had the highest Sub numbers 11.9mil+
after that over the years this declined and it is not a loss for you as a player, because you don't care, but it is a major loss for a Business.

from 12 mil to 2mil (being generous here) is a major loss.
You may argue 'oh, but 2 mill is still big', well no, for a shareholder when he invested, he wanted the subs to grow not to decline.


Overwatch was a success and still is.

Diablo 3 had great profits at the start, but due to bugs, bad decision making, lying (no pvp) made longevity of the game to bad levels.


Hero of the storm was pretty much a f** up, everybody knows this.


Hearthstone was and is still a success.


So overall, World of Warcraft, D3 and HoTs needed major changes, hence the firing of 800 employees, cutting content, not releasing nothing for other games like d3 etc.


In conclusion, I blame the Blizzard Dev Team for their f**k ups and I blame ex-wow, diablo players for un-subbing and letting Blizzard games to go on a decline mode.

So no, Activision did not happen.

Hahaha, blaming players for unsubbing? gtfo.
To make people quit, the game has to suck first.

[Soon-TM]

While I'm certainly no fan of Activision and its egregiously overpaid CEO, I still think that Activision becomes often a very convenient scapegoat for Blizzard's own !@#&ups - which they are much capable of.

That doesn't mean that there cannot possibly be any interference from Kodick and his minions. It would be naive (at best) to think otherwise.

[therealbowser]

I'll stop blaming Activision when they stop micromanaging World of Warcraft. Deal?

I can deal with BFA's flaws in terms of story choices, mechanics, etc. What I cannot deal with is Activision pushing for grind heavy mechanics that they assume will keep people playing, and instead are burning players out and damaging the game (and, you know, my own experience with it).

Blizzard isn't perfect. They weren't perfect to begin with. But I'd rather deal with flawed design choices than intentional bad design for the wrong reasons.