Backlash opening new doors?

[vsb]

Care to ellaborate?

Here's a simple example: when you're paying a subscription, you're receiving special currency. You can spend it to buy various cool stuff like TCG mounts and plenty of other things, if you're dedicated WoW player for years. There's gold token in WoW Classic. There're time restrictions and chat restrictions for minors (WoW desperately needs that).

Basically if you're a dedicated WoW subscriber in China, you're getting respect and gifts. If you're a dedicated WoW subscriber in EU, you're getting nothing.

[Mardux]

I don't believe it's dying I believe it isn't going to be as profitable as they want it to be and will take actions they normally would write off as to much of a bother to boost it.

If you don't believe it, why did you so heavily imply that you do?

[crusadernero]

Tbh, I dont see this ending well. Retail wow is already in a bad state and right now they have stopped working on it. The people that are working on wow right now, are the ones who made BfA and SL if im not mistaken.

That means that future content will be somewhat in the same category as it is now. systems upon systems with systems within the systems, meaningless grinds for items/gems/conduits that does nothing else than give + leech/crit/haste/vers but are so important to get cause it boosts your damage.

If Blizzard were to turn the ship around, I think they would be in a good place if they decided to actually make the game more fun. More engaging. Give us tier sets like in the old days with cool procs at 2 & 4 piece. Heck give us 2,4 & 6 tier piece. Make these tier sets unique for each class, not this bullshit standard gear. And for the love of god - stop with the endless grinds for no apparent reason for so much shit. I've been playing 9.1 a little and the shards of domination system is utter garbage and theres NO NEED FOR IT. They need to be more creative and open up on what can be done within the game that actually are fun and cool. Less about "this shard gives +leech" and call it a day.

Right now it feels like a simgame were you put in numbers and looks whats best. Your class doesnt do cool things or look cool when getting items. Its just more dmg/healing and thats it.

SL is a great example of missed opportunites. Torghast could have been fun. Covenants could have been fun. But they aint, its just a grind and an means to an end. Nothing fun with it.


As it stands now, I REALLY doubt Blizzard will ever release great content again for wow. No matter how the lawsuit goes, its still the same people at the office working on the game. The people that needs to be punished in the company, aint even there anymore for the most part. That means what we have now, and what we have been getting the last couple of years, is how its going to be in the future.

[Wangming]

Here's a simple example: when you're paying a subscription, you're receiving special currency. You can spend it to buy various cool stuff like TCG mounts and plenty of other things, if you're dedicated WoW player for years.

So it is like the cartel market in SWTOR, but you can't just buy it with money. You have to earn it through loyalty.

[Akka]

they can do things like:
allow copy from retail to classic
from classic to retail

Wat ?
You want to just make people leave even more ?

[Zmagoslav]

Blizzard is being sued by both workers and investors, people are protesting (read: not working).

How exactly did you get the idea this would somehow make things better?

[Lochton]

So, by now everyone and their dog has seen the clusterfuck that has been brewing in blizzard and finally spilled over onto our side of the fence for all to see. And it is generating all kinds of movement, whether it's good or bad in the long run is something we'll just have to see. Between this scandal and blizzard and a general hatred for shadowlands a quick trip through /wow on reddit will show plenty of people just saying "Screw this, I'm out."

As you can expect certain blue's are sweating about sub numbers. My point being is that short of a jaw dropping 10.0 trailer(which is a year away at the absolute best) WoW is going to be on the decline, so blizz in my opinion will likely try adding certain hooks that they would normally not consider or simply not bother with that will keep the game numbers afloat until they can try again with the next expansion.

New non standard model races?(Centaurs, trolls, Vorkai, Naga)
Faction changes?
Class/race restrictions?
long demanded customization options?

What do you think is a possible Hail Mary from Blizzard to keep people interested?

Doubt it'll open any doors like that but hopefully ill blood is flushed out and new blood in to save the game from being pulled down into this mess. Even many victims point out that they fight for this because they want to, and thus we need to rid of the rotten apples to make it better.

[Gorsameth]

Activision will settle out of court as these companies so often do and before long everyone will have forgotten about it.

Lol at people thinking this would actually kill WoW.

[Krasuss]

Nothing positive will happen...they will remove some NPCs and this whole thing will become (it already started) massive SJW witch hunt dealing with completely different issue and Blizz will sweep it under the rag after couple more higher up statements. If they kick the alcoholics/harassers out, because of the law suit, Blizz will rehire a "diverse" group of "mentally ill, blue haired women of colour" that cant code/work for shit and everything will go even more downhill from there.

[Cosmic Janitor]

As for the cosmic stuff, I'd argue they've already set up a few different cosmic directions they could go right back on Azeroth. Turalyon being High King of the Alliance rather than Genn doesn't feel like a move they'd make if there weren't plans to come with the Light. We've also seen a lot of Dragonflight stuff lately, it's possible we might have to do something with the Dragon Isles. We also have the mysterious Titan facilities MOTHER was mentioning in BfA. They may take us further into the cosmic stuff, but that doesn't mean that they plan to do it all off of Azeroth.

Do you know something I don't? Last I checked Turalyon was the interim leader of stormwind, no one crowned him high king.

[justandulas]

One thing is 100% clear after all this legal trouble, that activision was honest about being hands off the company and let blizzard run their own ship. To a fault apparently.

After this. Poppa kotick will assume direct control of blizzard and it will resemble something more like infinity ward on the cod side. Name only but all activision employees.

Blizzard lost any semblance of autonomy with all this embarrassing news and stock hits, and they won’t fly with activision. They will take complete control now like they’ve secretly wanted to. And all the people who blamed activision for blizzards mistakes will see how wrong they were.

OR blizzard will be strip mined of its titles, allowing other studios to work on them and they’ll go the CoD route of a dozen studios working on a few titles that come out every year or 2.

WoW isn’t dying but this is its biggest cross roads yet. Honestly, don’t be shocked if activision dissolves blizzard to take their titles for themselves and sells WoW to tencent

[anon5123]

WoW is going to be on the decline

m8, WoW has been on the decline since Cata, and with BFA being terrible leading into Shadowlands also being terrible, public opinion of the game is already way on the decline.

[Cosmic Janitor]

One thing is 100% clear after all this legal trouble, that activision was honest about being hands off the company and let blizzard run their own ship. To a fault apparently.

I guess you didn't read the expose on WC3R? Activision clearly controlls Blizzard via the funding. Also 2 of the stories that made the biggest waves (besides afrasabi) are rumored to have happned at other AB studios.

[unbound]

I've got news for you...WoW has been on the decline for more than a decade now. They've offered less for the same prices or more; and subscriptions have been declining steadily, with only occasional spikes, since Wrath.

The features they've added since Wrath have all been gutted or done with the primary aspect of making the game cheaper to maintain, not more exciting for most players.

Do many current players like M+? Sure. But the number of current players is a fraction of the player base from 10-15 years ago. Always keep that in mind for any feature that you think is great...it appears to a *far* smaller audience than the game had 10-15 years ago.

Too many have forgotten that the first rule of business is profits first for a corporation. *Everything* else is secondary. Top executives are busy lining their own pockets which happens via all the stock they give themselves and, thus, by keeping stock prices high. They literally don't care about you as a player (middle management on down might, but not top executives)...they only care about your pocketbook.

Hence, more items for money. Heck, in game money for real money (remember that no gold for money was a hill they would die on for the first 5+ years). No serious pushback against those selling runs for money. Fewer dungeons and raids for each expansion. World of Clickcraft (aka Garrisons v1-v4). Even the last class provided only had 2 specs. The last real race provided was singular.

Thus, Blizz will stay the course. There are enough people giving them money to continue the anemic development efforts. As long as the current playerbase convinces themselves that this is the best game (a laughable notion) and a couple million continue to feed them money, they will not alter course.

For the love of your own mental health, stop fooling yourself.

[HumbleDuck]

The things that happened, from sexual allegations to terrible work environment to lack of respect towards players, didn't happen overnight. These are results of the culture brewing up whithin blizzard for years. I don't think they can fix it even if they genuinely want to do so.

My feeling is that blizzard, as in the company we knew back in the 90s and noughties, is simply no more.

[Lahis]

My feeling is that blizzard, as in the company we knew back in the 90s and noughties, is simply no more.

It definetly isn't. Activision already had taken over the financial side and after this lawsuit the workplace culture should be gone too.

[jellmoo]

I think the fact that this shitstorm is happening at the worst possible time for Blizzard actually makes this more serious. There seems to be widespread dissatisfaction with the current expansion, the latest patch, and the speed of patch delivery. All the WoW hype is negative. Couple that with the sudden rise of FFXIV and you have the perfect storm of people actually turning away from a game a lot of people seem to play out of habit rather than real enjoyment.

I think that they will need something big to turn it around. It can't just be another "oh look, a new land, some borrowed power, another linear story that will result in status quo at the end".

They need a reinvention. More than just another expansion pack that adds more of the same, they need to make fundamental changes to both gameplay and narrative in order to excite people. It's going to need to feel "must play" for lapsed subscribers, not just "well I guess I can check it out".

I don't know if it's a timeskip or something more out there, but they need to move the story in a new direction while also getting out of the gameplay rut they're in. Moving past variations of the same old thing and do something new. Add mounted combat. Reinvent how the classes work. Give us truly large scale battles. Give us a storied sandbox. Something, anything that takes us away from the rinse and repeat expansion formula they've been using for years.

The game isn't in danger of dying, but it is in danger of becoming less and less relevant. Apathy can be a terrible thing for a property, and I think Bliozzard is startinf to really skirt that with a lot of their customers.

[Cæli]

more importantly they need a real customer support, not just bots that permaban you because you were caught in a false positive, and then having GMs that tells you 4 different things for each one you talk to

[schwank05]

They already did all they had to do to keep my sub forever and that was release BCC. I can run Kara every week for the next 10 years and be happy as hell doing it. This Xpac is amazing and this just means Wrath is a few years out. Retail has been shit since MOP ended, basically when I had to do a dumbass quest chain or do quests after leveling to learn Flight is lame as hell I'll stay in BCC and be happy, just wish they would separate the subs so there were actual numbers of who is playing which version.

[LunchBoxOC]

It's not mental fortitude, the devs are not interested in improving the game for the players, period. They are only making the game they want to play that also hooks enough whales, and if any players have fun in the process that's only a happy coincidence.

true man and have you heard about the little dogs as well?