So i got a response from J Allen Brack (which I wasn't expecting)

[Lolites]

Yeah, this forum really has the "worst of the worst type of WoW players" (whatever that means) ^^

it means c**ts who jump on every hate train possible or create one if there isnt any and bitch and whine about everything, quite often about things they know nothing about, who are so self centered to think their opinion is what everybody thinks
both OP and the guy you responded to seems to be from that group, OP going the extra step to harras someone with more important things to do than him bcs he doesnt understand the game development at all but heard that Ion is bad so he wants him fired

[Uurdz]

Looking at the state of AoC i'm gonna say WoW is, despite how ran into the ground it currently is, fairly safe.

I agree with you however; the MMO genre will, slowly but surely, become a fringe genre, much like RTS did...
and, mainly due to how hard developing a half-decent MMO is, WoW is pretty much synonimous with the genre itself.

I still like the MMO-RPG but certainly I feel that there would be less participation from younger generations (15-24) but I have no evidence to support that idea.
I'd also assume that the cost of development + ongoing costs has a worse ROI than some of the simpler games like Fortnite, LoL or Valorant etc let alone the mobile games. It's not exciting to think that for mmo-rpg fans the golden years are behind us but I think it's a reality to accept. I recall even with SWTOR's launch they spend millions getting a game that had 100% voice acting and then it was a flop and had to go F2P quickly. it's a great game but i'd expect many in the industry looked at that among the litany of others and decided to opt out.

I doubt WoW will ever "die" and i'd bet against AoC being successful but it'll hopefully be a good home for MMO-RPG die-hards. But we might be looking at only another 1 or 2 expansions left before the put WoW on life support.

[Speedlance]

Just because some content creators say shit doesnt mean everybody else agree.

[Nerph-]

Here, I give you another statistic of somebody extrapolating data in pretty much the same infallible way as you did:
It shows a "graph has been independently confirmed by multiple mathematicians. WoW is going to be shut down some time during its next expac - and part of that reason is due to a mass exodus of people leaving for ESO and Wildstar, which far surpass WoW (this is undeniable) technically and mechanically."

Click here, you will piss your pants laughing:
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...2#post29402702

Lmao, oh my the post you linked is a gem. Thanks for the early morning laugh!

[Kralljin]

Old school Blizzard respected the input from its playerbase.

They didn't.

I've seen a Warcraft 3 dev (Dave Fried) talking about his time at Blizzard, one of the things he noted was that Rob Pardo was a person who rarely listened to people unless they were at least of Pearce Status within Blizzard (Frank Pearce being a Co-Founder of Blizzard).
While people can change, i doubt that someone who did not very often listen to Blizzard employees themselves would suddenly listen to players.

Blizzard devs see themselves as "Rockstar devs", they're the heroes who create awesome games for players not with players, Blizzard was never keen on getting very involved with the community.

The difference simply is, they actually created decent games, it paid off to not give a fuck about community feedback and that's the major difference.
Sometimes, you gotta stick to your design, but when it falls apart you have to pick up the pieces and learn from it and that's where the modern team struggles.

Integrating community feedback isn't the magic ingedrient to create a good game, developers with great ideas, a concept to execute them and the foresight how people will engage with a system are, first and foremost.

Ion was the one who determined that C'thun was mathematically impossible to kill at the time with the gear available to them.

And it became a huge meme because the encounter was just massively bugged / untested.
Tentacles despawning without rhyme or reason? Check.
People getting knocked on ledges by tentacles? Check.

"Pre Nerf" C'thun has become such a myth within the community without barely anyone really understanding what was bugged, intended or the actual math from Ion behind it.

Putting aside that back then, World buffs already existed and that would've nuked his math into oblivion anyway.

So how exactly does a game that is tailored to please shareholders, actually does please them if it loses paying customers?

Blizzard lost over 10M MAU over the past 3-4 years and their revenue is still increasing, which naturally implies that some customers are more valueable than others.

[Azerate]

What I got from this exchange is that you are someone who copies the opinions of your favorite influencers and demand that decisions be made (including laying people off) based on what they want. You received a polite explanation that this will not happen, which I think is reasonable.

And regardless of whether those opinions are correct or not, I think it's delusional to ask a gaming company to change stuff cause someone believes it should be the case. Contrary to what you think, neither Preach, nor Asmongold represent the majority opinion of the player base. They may represent the majority opinion of their own respective fan communities, and even that is mostly because they influenced these people to think that way.

There were things that were changed when the majority of players wanted it and it made sense. For example the initial idea to make covenant abilities not work outside of Shadowlands. In that case, the actual real players spoke up on the official forums and in other avenues and the change was reverted.

The idea that people will get fired because X youtuber doesn't like a part of the game is pretty unrealistic and I hope that at least you understood from that response e-mail.

[Amerissis]

I tried to start an email campaign

So wait. Spamming someone with unsolicited emails is now a 'campaign'? It'd get you banned and blacklisted here in Europe.

[deenman]

And less than a million people play retail... we can both make up numbers if we want, but it doesnt accomplish anything. The nostalgia part you have right, though. WoW fans long for a time when the game was fun, which gets back to my main point, that retail WoW isnt fun anymore and the sub number losses are a direct result of that.

not rly,we can see how many people played early on and how much of a ghost town it is now,my realm had thausands que first day,when i logged in i couldnt see the ground there were so many players....after a few days,zero que

these days i cant even find people to do dungeons with wile lvling an alt for tbc,meanwile in retail its instant ques all day all night,its actualy weird

[Sunderella]

The argument was lost the moment you mentioned youtubers as proof of anything xD. Also, comparing whatever Bellular is developing to a Blizzard game ... surely Bellullar games have to please the board and investors.

[Lolites]

The argument was lost the moment you mentioned youtubers as proof of anything xD. Also, comparing whatever Bellular is developing to a Blizzard game ... surely Bellullar games have to please the board and investors.

did he actualy release anything? afaik, he tried to develop something and failed, he never get beyond concept with anything, so at best what he knows is how NOT TO develop games...

- - - Updated - - -

So wait. Spamming someone with unsolicited emails is now a 'campaign'? It'd get you banned and blacklisted here in Europe.

i dont think he would get banned, but im sure after this polite answer (if its real which i doubt) from Brack and OPs terrible response he will be marked for spam at least

[TOM_RUS]

Oh, somebody needs to explain this always popular gem to me:

Game loses subs because it is either getting worse / not listening to the community (which means less money)
Also game is designed to please shareholders (who like money) and not players (see above, who quit = less money)

It is not like WoW has 1000$ worth of new items on the cash shop every month that some "whales" buy to keep the game afloat.

So how exactly does a game that is tailored to please shareholders, actually does please them if it loses paying customers?

Easy. They make it so for remaining players everything takes longer, progression is slowed down (see all those timegates all over the place, reduced loot, covenant swapping cooldown, conduit energy, soul ash cap, low anima rewards and so on), so they stay subscribed longer. It works, but only short term. In long term such design does much more harm to them. That's why game looses subs/players quickly. They turned it into job/chore.

I've had a lot of friends resub for SL, but all of them quickly quit after realizing all this endless grind, timegates and other restrictions that prevents you from playing the way you want. Blizzard is basically forcing you to play theirs way and no one wants that.

[Viikkis]

Both Ion and Brack are a pair of yes men, corporate cocksuckers. They are just doing what their corporate overlords tell them to do. Whatever will make the company the most money.

Yeah imagine doing what your boss tells you to do at work.

[kukkamies]

Ion did have decent answers. Not what I hoped either but it's still very reasonable and logical response.

And your answer to him was way way too long. The CEO doesn't have time for that. Keep it short and simple and you might get an answer.

[RemasteredClassic]

Don’t think this is fake. Very cool for Allen to respond in the way he did and he is right in everything he said.

If I were the OP, I would have worded it differently and completely avoided asking for the removal of Ion or anyone for that matter. I think the OP’s intentions are good nevertheless, just an approach/communications problem. Anyway, he doesn’t seem to be a professional journalist so let’s just forgive him for that.

[Lolites]

I've had a lot of friends resub for SL, but all of them quickly quit after realizing all this endless grind, timegates and other restrictions that prevents you from playing the way you want.

there is literaly nothing you need to grind to progress your character... maybe soul ash (if you consider torghast once a week a grind), and thats it, and afaik only timegated thing WAS covenant campaign, which can now be done within 10 or so hours after hitting cap...

[FelPlague]

Did... Did you just email a man's boss to get him removed from his position because you don't like the game, and used some Youtube influencers as "proof" of his lack of ability?

Dude, no.

It's almost as sad as when he found out I worked for a YouTube channel he watched so he pulled the fucking "well you just lost a subscriber!" Card. No one cares. It's literally the "I work at Walmart and we lost one customer... Cool, careful not to bump into the 10 people entering every second on your way out."

Was just sad.

[Stickiler]

im sorry, did i miss something? bcs we have no evidence at all about sub numbers since wod, and thats more than 3years ago...

It's people(either deliberately or not) mis-representing a number that was given during Blizzards latest Financial calls, they lost 29% of their MAUs over their whole game catalogue.

Most things point to it being caused by Hearthstone losing users while waiting for the new expac, or HOTS dying further, or SC2 or any number of other games in their catalogue, but of course the WoW people jumped on it.

[Bugsy]

If I was Mr. Brack, I would have responded to this email, as well. It shows a clear lack of aptitude in regards to the player(s) asking for change in his world. It suggests "Gamers" are just sheep who follow the loudest voices and regurgitate what they spew. While I am glad he responded, I think he did so maliciously to show Ion's right, we're dumb and wrong. It looks like you drunkenly rage mashed the keyboard in your response which just reinforced his image of the stereotype.

Lastly, before attempting to engage in this "campaign" why didn't you contacted someone who could formulate your ideas in professional way? It looks like you put work into arranging all this, why not do it right?

[Cosmic Janitor]

While I will voice my opinion about people in public as well (based on their actions), writing someone to get people fired is an absolute cunt move which has practically disqualified you from being taken serious.

[Lolites]

It's people(either deliberately or not) mis-representing a number that was given during Blizzards latest Financial calls, they lost 29% of their MAUs over their whole game catalogue.

Most things point to it being caused by Hearthstone losing users while waiting for the new expac, or HOTS dying further, or SC2 or any number of other games in their catalogue, but of course the WoW people jumped on it.

im pretty sure since classic is "done" that had some impact too...
but yeah, people LOVE to misinterpret and twist information so it fits their narrative...