Y'all need to stop blaming Activision for everything.

[DesoPL]

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

+ They pull out from BN newer CoD games.

[therealbowser]

+ They pull out from BN newer CoD games.

I can tolerate this. That said, I wish we could hide games on the launcher... at least they have the courtesy to separate them from Blizzard games.

[Kyphael]

I blame Ion Hazzikostas, not Activision. Shareholders and suits aren't in there cackling in dark hoods, telling Ion not to do this, make a micro transaction instead. Not how game production and game development works. They hired Ion to do a job based on his resume. He's game director. WoW is a game that generates revenue for us, here's your budget to develop the next expansion, Ion, make us a profit, Ion. Ion then turns to his team and says, ok, this is what we have, where do we go with the game, theme, zones, raids, lore, etc.? I think we should head in this direction."

If the game does well, Ion should get credit. If it sucks, Ion should get the blame. The buck starts and stops with him. If a movie sucks, contrary to popular belief, you don't go and blame the producers, you blame the director. I know, some producers are real dicks and like to interfere with day to day operations, but a director can put his foot down and say "hey, who's making this thing, you or me? You're just the wallet, you hired me to be creative. You want to direct? Here you go." (Looking at you, Dr. Strange 2 director.) I don't think Activision shareholders are in Ion's office or creative room stifling his creativity, they don't know the first thing about game development.

WoW is becoming continuously bloated and difficult to pull off well as profit dwindles, lore expands, and everything becomes bigger, figuratively and literally, while the money coming in gets smaller and smaller. It'll never die because even a million and a half active subscribers making micro transactions is a lot of money for any company compared to what they pay the developers, but it's unlikely to ever reach Wrath or even BC levels of profit again, even with model and system updates now and then. You can only polish it so much. It is standing the test of time, though, it's The Simpsons of gaming. To many people, it's part of their daily routine. Breakfast, shower, work, come home, play WoW. Just like Simpsons used to be part of American life. Come home after school or work, watch Simpsons, and those loyal players will never go away, meaning ActiBlizzard will always have that steady revenue. It's the same as wrestling. WWE will never again have the ratings it did during the Monday Night Wars, it lost half of its audience, but there'll will always be a loyal base of paying customers whose Monday Night tradition is watching RAW.

To many, WoW after work and school is part of their life, especially in the winter months or during an expansion release. ActiBlizzard is well aware of their paying customers' loyalty and the cultural impact WoW has had on every day American lives and will continue to bank on it as long as at least 1 million people in America (alone, not even mentioning Europe, China, Australia and Brazil) remain emotionally vested in their 50 characters.

[MoanaLisa]

The fact is that many people are in denial about Blizzard's corporate culture. Blizzard is perfectly capable of knowing how to monetize their titles and are happy to do so without Activision standing over them. I suppose some of that is nostalgia from a time when Blizzard was perceived as being more customer-friendly than they are now but that was how game developers did things then. Then is not now. You should comfortably assume that Blizzard's business practices are their own. They didn't get to where they are now with respect to business and profitability by being morons. They understand perfectly well just about how far they can push their customers.

Blaming Activision is just a sad substitute for the reality of multi-billion dollar corporations. You can enjoy their games or not but the notion that things are the way they are due to some insidious influence from Activision/Bobby Kotick/whatever is just to put on blinders. Blizzard knows perfectly well how to separate you from your money and is happy to do so without being told to do anything.

It's unreal how many people don't get this.

[Black Goat]

Every game that Activision touches turns to shit. Prior to Activision? Great game. After Activision? Obvious investor schemes with gameplay taking a notable decline in quality.

[pinkz]

ATVI stock hit a new 52 week high 61.45 from it's low of 39.85. so they are doing alot of something right, Kotick deserves another raise.

of course the stock is not at it's all time high, but that is common place in the stock market, not isolated instances due to hype, over extended speculation, then corrections

[Afrospinach]

Yeah TBC brought 3.5 million more players to the game, while WotLK added 0.5 million. I understand it had to stop somewhere and having 12 million players was very likely some kind of limit, meaning they couldn't get much more even if WotLK was different.

Did it? I bet it was a hell of a lot more than that.

These figures AFAIK never mention subscriber churn. Vanilla probably lost more subs than any xpac but there was a good stream of people coming in. I think analyzing sub numbers without these kind of details is a very fruitless endeavour.

[Kallisto]

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

So when the people leaving even when it was Vanilla-wrath was 8 or 9 in 10 of the accounts made it must have really sucked back then too. It wasn't 12 million joined 0 left. It was around late wrath 100million joined, only around 12 million stayed.

Cata - now is a mix of less people joining and people leaving a game for many reasons. Age is one of them, Arthas (WC3) pull is another, plus design decisions.

[Gratlim]

WotLK had the most subs not because it was the best expansion. But because TBC was great and had great sub increase overall and because WotLK had W3 Athas as Lich king.

In WotLK, the subs started to stagnate and even drop in the fist time ever.

Multiple difficulties (not in a clever Ulduar way) and ToC raid was when it started really. If i remember correctly, there was a shift at the time when Greg Street (Ghostcrawler) took over as dev lead nd ToC was his first baby. Correct me it i am wrong though.

[Doffen]

Did it? I bet it was a hell of a lot more than that.

These figures AFAIK never mention subscriber churn. Vanilla probably lost more subs than any xpac but there was a good stream of people coming in. I think analyzing sub numbers without these kind of details is a very fruitless endeavour.

Yeah, was from 7.5 million pre patch TBC to 8 million launch. Then those 3.5 millions from TBC launch to WotLK launch.

Though, the quarter TBC was announced, 4th Quarter in 2005, in 3 months, WoW got almost 1.5 million more subs. That TBC hype was real. From the TBC announcement to the TBC launch WoW got 4-4.5million more players. But yeah, think it was Ghostcrawler(correct me if wrong) who said that the first years it was many who just came in and tried WoW to never play it again.

But, the TBC hype was real

[Cuddleheart]

With all due respect to Blizzard, they probably have about as much say about affairs in Activision-blizzard in 2020 as AOL had in AOL-time Warner in 2005.

[Lolites]

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

i would agree, IF in the past week people werent flooding forums and ingame chat with how they cant grind coalescing visions so they could go more horific visions

heres the problem, the grinds in legion and bfa were introduced bcs in wod people complained theres not enough to do, now they complained theres too much to do, so the grind was mostly abandoned and now they AGAIN complain theres not enough to do...

so although activision and blizz have their fuckups and can be blamed for a lot of stuff, this one is really on the playerbase...

[RoKPaNda]

I've been playing Blizzard games since WarCraft 2 and honestly they've always released horribly buggy unbalanced games. We've been complaining about that since WarCraft 2. The only difference now is that people can give Blizzard a free pass and blame Activision.

[Dejavuproned]

To steal the star wars reference:

Basically sticking Palpatine and a Jedi in the same room for over a decade and force them to work together during that time TOTALLY would have absolutely zero effect on either of them.

Nope you're right, blizzard is exactly the same as they were back then and are just making more mistakes.

It has nothing with having the near epitome of corporate evil (at least in gaming) breathing down their necks for the last 12(?) years while they try to do their thing.

When Activision and vivendi merged and Blizzard became perminantely tied to Actimoney, at the time their visions and values on gaming could not be more opposed. You simply can't expect two opposing views to just coexist without one influencing the other, and based on what Activision has been doing we can safely say that it wasn't Blizzard influencing Activision over all this time.

Not that ALL the mistakes made since the merge have been Activision fault. Some of that was likely huberous. But the overall direction of the company and the decreasing quality of their games over that time, as well as the increased amount of simply missing the mark and just not getting it anymore... Well if you think Activisions influence whether direct or indirect didn't play a part then you are being a bit naive tbh.

It's just like BioWare, Maxis, and a hundred other companies. It's the gaming cycle of life. You start off as a great small gaming company making games for gamers sake, and at your height one of the big companies swoops in buys you out and grinds the company into the ground.

I'm just waiting for the internet meltdown when cdprojectred gets the same treatment. They are just about ripe for it with Cyperpunk coming out soon.

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[DemonDays]

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.

It's really sad all the fanboys constantly making Activision the scapegoat for Blizzards failures.

Did Activision force Ion to come up with Azerite gear? Did Activision say to Ion - "No you won't do any work on Class Design in BfA". Did Activision force the writers to write a horrible fanfiction story with no cohesion?

No. The moronic devs made these decisions. The current crop at Blizzard just don't have the "it" factor anymore. The old guard is gone.

Stop making excuses.

[therealbowser]

i would agree, IF in the past week people werent flooding forums and ingame chat with how they cant grind coalescing visions so they could go more horific visions

heres the problem, the grinds in legion and bfa were introduced bcs in wod people complained theres not enough to do, now they complained theres too much to do, so the grind was mostly abandoned and now they AGAIN complain theres not enough to do...

so although activision and blizz have their fuckups and can be blamed for a lot of stuff, this one is really on the playerbase...

You are misunderstanding their problem.

They want to be able to keep doing visions. They want invasions to feel like the timeless isles where you can keep doing content all day if you want to after the initial world quest thing. I can sympathize.

This may feel like a "have your cake and eat it too" situation, but really people just don't want to grind endlessly (especially on alts, essences are a big part of this), and they want to be able to enjoy repeatable content. It's not like this is anything close to an oxymoron. MoP handled this very well. Why can't they learn from those days? Legion's World Quests and MoP's Timeless Isle-style content and we'd have a very rich endgame experience.

Heck, toss in WoD's style of treasures for good measure and we'll be taking the best of every expansion for the past several years.

[Lolites]

You are misunderstanding their problem.

They want to be able to keep doing visions. They want invasions to feel like the timeless isles where you can keep doing content all day if you want to after the initial world quest thing. I can sympathize.

This may feel like a "have your cake and eat it too" situation, but really people just don't want to grind endlessly (especially on alts, essences are a big part of this), and they want to be able to enjoy repeatable content. It's not like this is anything close to an oxymoron. MoP handled this very well. Why can't they learn from those days? Legion's World Quests and MoP's Timeless Isle-style content and we'd have a very rich endgame experience.

Heck, toss in WoD's style of treasures for good measure and we'll be taking the best of every expansion for the past several years.

agree, and yet every thing you mentioned that worked well (which they did imo too) people were whining about
thats the problem, you CANT win with players, bcs whatever you doo people will complain...

i think best analogy is what one SW:TOR dev said, that if you give gamers magic hat that can fulfill their wishes they will complain about the color of the hat

[iperson]

I blame Ion.

[Dhrizzle]

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.

Slight correction, there are three companies involved. Activision is Activision, Blizzard is Blizzard and Activision-Blizzard is the holding company formerly known as Vivendi Games which got a rename when it absorbed Activision.

- - - Updated - - -

The fact is that many people are in denial about Blizzard's corporate culture. Blizzard is perfectly capable of knowing how to monetize their titles and are happy to do so without Activision standing over them. I suppose some of that is nostalgia from a time when Blizzard was perceived as being more customer-friendly than they are now but that was how game developers did things then. Then is not now. You should comfortably assume that Blizzard's business practices are their own. They didn't get to where they are now with respect to business and profitability by being morons. They understand perfectly well just about how far they can push their customers.

Blaming Activision is just a sad substitute for the reality of multi-billion dollar corporations. You can enjoy their games or not but the notion that things are the way they are due to some insidious influence from Activision/Bobby Kotick/whatever is just to put on blinders. Blizzard knows perfectly well how to separate you from your money and is happy to do so without being told to do anything.

It's unreal how many people don't get this.

Personally I never found Blizzard to be particularly consumer friendly. Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2 blatantly only told half a story so they could sell an expansion further down the line, and WoW charged a subscription to play the game you've paid for with no optional single-player or offline mode to avoid the cost.

[Dejavuproned]

Slight correction, there are three companies involved. Activision is Activision, Blizzard is Blizzard and Activision-Blizzard is the holding company formerly known as Vivendi Games which got a rename when it absorbed Activision.

- - - Updated - - -



Personally I never found Blizzard to be particularly consumer friendly. Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2 blatantly only told half a story so they could sell an expansion further down the line, and WoW charged a subscription to play the game you've paid for with no optional single-player or offline mode to avoid the cost.

Woa wait what? Of all the things to complain about of corporations doing (and yes blizzard these days is just as guilty) no single player mode in a mmo and continuing stories in expansions is what you go with? Seriously?

Both were standard practice back then first of all, as was a sub for mmo, second blizzard WAS very consumer friendly back then. They would continue supporting games YEARS past their release which WASN'T standard practice back then, it was basically un-heard of to support games for that long for free.

How do you think e-sports started with starcraft and war 3? Because blizzard kept updating and balancing the games for so long after to keep the meta fresh.

Regardless of how you feel about blizzard these days, back in the war 3 to early wow days Blizzard was, in fact, a very consumer friendly company. To say otherwise is absurd.

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