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

[Segus1992]

well i've seen a preview of one of his games but dang it was so long ago and i can't find that video despite spending i think 30ish minutes looking for it. i did find a video of him talking about his studio which you can see above.

You're using a dude who's attempting to become an indie developer to argue against the president of Blizzard? Fuck me man, you can't honestly expect his credentials to impress anyone in that regard.

[Kralljin]

Sure. I'm merely commenting on the fact WoW isn't their only cash cow anymore.

Well, it still makes them revenue, but considering that Hearthstone has been absent from any noteworthy mentions in the last few quarterly reports, i think they're stagnating as well.
Take for example the Q4 earning report, a HS expansion released during that time (Madness at the darkmoon faire) and they didn't even talk about Hearthstone at the earning report.

Putting aside that the loss of MAU is also something that can be attributed to Hearthstone, unless you also want to say that alongside WoW, Hearthstone is also not the main area where this loss of MAU's has taken place.

[Le Conceptuel]

I know from the outside looking in, it may appear that way, but I didnt make the claim that 90% of classics player base left after the first week. No amount of critical thinking skill is going to allow me to prove a negative. Just not how it works.. Thanks for stopping by though.

You can easily at least put more effort into combating the claim. You have been given a comically easy claim to debunk. Honing your capacity for perspicacity is useful.

[Kumorii]

Isn't the MOBA dead and buried?

No. Stop listening to players... They still have a dev team, although small one, and keep on churning out events and skins and heroes. Latest one being hogger.

Whenever a player claim x is dead or content creator does it assume its bullshit because it most likely is.

[DarkAmbient]

The REAL issue with Blizzard is not WoW, it's them sitting on their ass for years on a pile of $$ without anything new to show for it. Whether it's creative bankruptcy, cowardice or their delusions of grandeur sprinkled with ego - they just simply don't move forward with any new games.

Good post (snipped for brevity). I think it's a bit of both. WoW's initial success up to Wrath was something of an anomaly, and an element of right place right time. Gaming has largely moved on since then and no matter what Ion does WoW can never return to its glory days, but as Legion showed they are still capable of making genuinely good expansions, which makes it all the more frustrating when we get a turd like Shadowlands. But no matter how good the expansions get the game's audience will continue to decline. Blizzard is just trying to plug the leak at this point.

Almost all the Blizzard OGs have gone, probably a combination of burnout and seeing the writing on the wall. They had 3 big IPs, one of them is dead or dormant, one is dying, and the other is about to get a resurrection. It's like bands who shoot to fame on the back of a couple of truly great albums and then fade away because they become fat and lazy and can't evolve or repeat the magic while they're still making bank on royalties.

[Raisei]

It's ... it's amazing.

You wrote an e-mail that can literally be summarized as "Ion doesn't listen to what I personally want from him! I demand him fired!" and not even ironically. That takes some real Karen-ism and a complete lack of shame. The entitlement you must feel to go through with this has me baffled.

I am very much doubting your "answer" from Brack is genuine, probably just a fake to give your ranting validation. But let us suppose that it is.

Suppose that after being fed up with you spamming them with this nonesense for weeks they finally relented and the PR department spoke to Brack and they decided to humor you instead of blocking you and banning all your accounts. They knew that someone that goes this far would blow a ban completely out of proportion and all the other Karens of the world would be on their ass again for "cancelling" your "honest concerns for the game's management."

So Brack rather sat next to his pool and wrote these lines just to satisfy you, calmly and friendly explaining the goddamn simple facts that everyone knows and you just do not want to accept. And your reaction is to still not understand them and double down on your demands... as everyone could have told them you would.

Really, I applaud Brack for his engagement (if this is truely no fake) of trying to make you understand, shame it was futile, since in the end you will never be satified until Ion does exactly what YOU want and additionally issues a personal apology to you on a life stream.

[sam86]

Spoiler alert: The game isn't losing subs because it's getting worse or because they're not listening to the community -- it's losing subs because it's over 15 years old and the hardcore install base has grown up and has either burnt out or no longer has the time to play it and the market simply isn't there to continue sustaining those kinds of numbers

Legion says Hi
I was - among many - like u saying same thing during WoD, maybe we are burned and it isn't game fault, then legion came and renewed wow love for many of us
So no, it isn't a 15+ years old game, LoL is most played game and it is now 10+ years old, wow changed massively from its start, retail wow is massively different from classic wow and can log and check that urself
So no, if they make wow good a lot will play again like what happened in Legion, if they make it shit a lot will leave like BFA/WoD
SL is ok exp, but it has poor to no update (like WoD) so ppl will leave, and in mmo it is hard to return once u leave mid-exp, mostly u'll wait for next exp, blizz made us think that way with how they treated WoD (one of strongest start, then puff)

[Segus1992]

No. Stop listening to players... They still have a dev team, although small one, and keep on churning out events and skins and heroes. Latest one being hogger.

Whenever a player claim x is dead or content creator does it assume its bullshit because it most likely is.

Let's be real though, HotS has absolutely been effectively abandoned by Blizzard on a large scale. Yes it has a development team but it's minimal compared to what it was.

[Qnubi]

Also before you go, can you please leave us your boss’ email address (assuming you have one). I would like to email them and discuss how you handle yourself in your spare time, and perhaps use it as evidence to get you ‘demoted’.

Thanks,

Up until this point I was on board with you, but then you did something worse. Yes, what OP did, is not really nice, but tolerable. What OP did was using the employees work results (Ion, designing the game) and show it to his boss (brack) and complaining about it from his POV (customer). In the work world this is totally acceptable, if an employee is doing something wrong (or perceived as doing wrong) it's fine to speak to his/her manager. If the employee is doing nothing wrong then there won't be any repercussions anyway. If you do bad work, you should take the responsibility for it, plain and simple.

However, what you propose is using the employees actions in his FREE TIME (OP e-mailing some CEO) against himself to get him demoted, this is not okay. What OP does in his free time is none of his/her boss business. You should be held accountable for the things you do at work, not for the things you do outside of work, unless you break the law (complaining about a product isn't breaking the law). OP is currently not working when he is e-mailing some other company about their products. On top of that, OP is not complaining to this boss about Ion as a person, he is complaining about his work whereas your call to his/her boss would be about OP's person and NOT his work. I hope you see the difference and the wrong doing of your way of thinking. OP is a customer with harsh feedback and criticism, you would be a random stalker trying to get him demoted.

Take this however you want, this just had to be said that you are acting worse right now.

[Darsyek]

Naturally this isn't solely down to WoW, but seeing such a steep decline and assuming that their biggest franchise is unaffected is just wishful thinking.

As a reminder back in Q 2018, Blizzard had 38MAU, from there, they lost 1-2M MAU's every quarter.

Your first mistake was assuming that WoW is their biggest franchise. At least in terms of MAUs, that's not at all true. In November 2020, Overwatch had 10 million MAUs, easily surpassing both WoW and WoW Classic combined. Considering they had announced in 2018 that Overwatch had reached 40 million players (not MAUs, mind you, they didn't split by games at that point and there absolutely was not 40 million MAUs of Overwatch), I imagine a large number of those losses every quarter are in no small part due to Overwatch.

[RemasteredClassic]

I don’t think it has to do with the game being old. Somethings are super awesome on paper, but not so much in practice, especially when the same thing is done repeatedly and routinely. It is what it is. Game dev or dev in general is super complicated and we should be lucky these guys even exist.

[Kumorii]

Let's be real though, HotS has absolutely been effectively abandoned by Blizzard on a large scale. Yes it has a development team but it's minimal compared to what it was.

lets be real, it hasn't since it still get content... is it downsized? Absolutely, but I don't by into the hyperbole that it's "dead" because it's clearly not, nor "effectively abandoned" because it's clearly not.

Granted since Hogger I haven't really stayed updated on HotS so maybe it has changed at this point if so I stand corrected but I haven't seen any announcement from blizzard that that is the case.

And you are sort of proving my point. That you can't listen to players when it comes to determine if a game is dead or abandoned due to this hyperbolic behaviour.

[Garymorilix]

I see posts like this and I just fucking cringe.

Some people are just so salty and jealous that others are bettering themselves and trying to do something special and better and others just cannot fucking take it. Grow up Orange Joe.

Fact is, Bellular ain't developed sh*t yet outside of fuckin' monthly pins you can buy from him.
Even then, he's like what, a hobby indie dev? Ain't got anything on the 16 years of dev exp on WoW.

Maybe if he was twitching less and not pretending to be drinking a 0,3L zero coke for 25 mins straight he could have a reasonable stance on something.
But all he does is complain. It's boring.

[Kralljin]

Your first mistake was assuming that WoW is their biggest franchise.

It is still their biggest franchise, not in terms of MAU, but it is still the franchise that brings in the cash.
And that doesn't somehow explain how WoW is supposed to be unaffected by this development or even be the one game that goes against this trend.

At least in terms of MAUs, that's not at all true. In November 2020, Overwatch had 10 million MAUs, easily surpassing both WoW and WoW Classic combined.

I'd love to see the source that showcases that WoW had less than 10M MAU during Nov 2020, because that's when SL launched.

[Wangming]

It is. But when it was not, it was sold with being one third of each big Blizz franchise. Unfortunately it came when people transitioned from MOBAs to Battle Royals and didn't do anything revolutionary with it.

My point is that every Blizzard cash cow or intended cash cow has at least 30% WoW in it.

[Thraps]

So for those who didn't see my email campaign thread before it was locked, I tried to start an email campaign by giving the emails of activision and blizzard higher-ups. What I wasn't expecting was to actually get an answer. I'm not particularly impressed by Brack's answers. But I thought I would share our conversation and see what the general populace thinks.

Whilst you have valid points in my opinion, You know you should of redacted the personal information like the email of J.A.Brack before posting the screenshots. Its one thing sharing the conversation its another sharing information of that nature.

[Qnubi]

Whilst you have valid points in my opinion, You know you should of redacted the personal information like the email of J.A.Brack before posting the screenshots. Its one thing sharing the conversation its another sharing information of that nature.

Pretty sure the e-mail of Brack is publicly available.

[Segus1992]

lets be real, it hasn't since it still get content... is it downsized? Absolutely, but I don't by into the hyperbole that it's "dead" because it's clearly not, nor "effectively abandoned" because it's clearly not.

Granted since Hogger I haven't really stayed updated on HotS so maybe it has changed at this point if so I stand corrected but I haven't seen any announcement from blizzard that that is the case.

And you are sort of proving my point. That you can't listen to players when it comes to determine if a game is dead or abandoned due to this hyperbolic behaviour.

I didn't say it was dead though, so you're the one being hyperbolic. It isn't dead - but it is essentially abandoned by its developers.

[RemasteredClassic]

Whilst you have valid points in my opinion, You know you should of redacted the personal information like the email of J.A.Brack before posting the screenshots. Its one thing sharing the conversation its another sharing information of that nature.

Was thinking the same from a security point of view, personally identifiable info but then again it’s the CEO and this info is probably already public.

[Trumpcat]

While I respect your dissatisfaction with the game's course, I find this letter and apparently how it was spammed, to be an example of why player feedback should be considered very conservatively and how in some cases it should be disregarded. Like the rest of his responses, I fully agree with Brack's assessment of the three youtubers/streamers you give as an example. Not only do I dislike them, but they definitely do not speak for me and it's clear as they how they monetize hate, much like the regular trash medias.