who is to blame for Blizzard's downfall?

[DarkAmbient]

please enlighten me on things no one asked for and I can show how it was "Indirect Feedback"

Pathfinder, for one. And by no-one, obviously I'm being hyperbolic; a small number might have done, but there was certainly no general desire for it.

[NineSpine]

I think the big issue was the distorted "promises kept."

One of the big ones was "player housing" in WoD. They made it out to be this fully-customizable thing, were people could put them in any zone, it fell short. Instead of it being a home, it felt like a leash for busy work.

Another issue was that they were ignoring the content, in the name of the little things. Mounts drive revenue, but they ignored story content.

Meanwhile, plenty of other games did a far better job with player housing. Shit, games that were out more than a decade ago did a better job.

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I stopped playing retail a long time ago, but I did play some Classic (gotta love the nostalgia buy). That grew boring, and the community and bots were pretty shit. My buddy asked me to play some FF14 with him, and I tried it. Holy shit, the difference between the communities was unbelievable. Everyone is polite as hell, and super supportive. Now, I don't actually like the MQL gameplay (mainly due to targeting), but the people were fantastic. Heck, even SWTOR is a better game than Blizzard is putting out, and that has been largely unchanged in several years.

I think you hit on the main issues: People ask for something, Blizzard implements it in an extremely poorly thought out way, and then when people don't like it a bunch if folks turn around and say "BUT THATS WHAT YOU ASKED FOR!" as though if I asked for a turkey sandwich and someone handed me a piece of bread with turkey and motor oil on it I should be grateful.

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modern management as always.
clueless fucks who are in it for the quick bucks and shareholder asslicking.
they all will leech off a working ship until it sinks then switch to another.

That's called capitalism.

[ArenaDk]

M+ has been one of the most popular features ever added to WoW. Tons of players want hard dungeons. The problem is when you make those hard dungeons accessible via dungeon finder.



This is how I know that you are just throwing shit at the wall. Cata made the world less explorable by turning every leveling zone into very on-rails, narrow leveling. Cata has the most hand-holding leveling of any expansion.

Every group struggled in cata to clear, even premade.

And mythic + is different as every player can find their sweet spot.

I wont discuss this with you , you clearly never did the new zones and just repeat like a good sheep what others told you.

[Mysterymask]

Pathfinder, for one. And by no-one, obviously I'm being hyperbolic; a small number might have done, but there was certainly no general desire for it.

Yeah that I would say more indirect by people complaining the world is too small, "want for adventure" and Blizzard "Trying something" decided to restrict flying.

Pathfinder is more a compromise than a solution. They felt flying made building the world a bit more difficult and just upsetting (not fun to make a huge map for people and no one sees it cause they just fly over it) but everyone still wanted to fly cause we've always had it and it sucks having our toys taken away. Pathfinder was the compromise we HAD to see the world they built and do everything as they intended (On the ground) but then after that congrats you have flying

most of the complainers still don't like having their toys taken away

[NineSpine]

Every group struggled in cata to clear, even premade.

And mythic + is different as every player can find their sweet spot.

I wont discuss this with you , you clearly never did the new zones and just repeat like a good sheep what others told you.

Oh, well how intellectually honest of you, to declare yourself superior and refuse to engage.

The fact that premades had a hard time is absolutely besides the point. That's not how the vast majority of engagement with those heroic dungeons happened. People queued up, sat there waiting, zoned in, and then had people drop after the first wipe, which was often on the first pack. Queue-able difficult content is awful. If Cata heroics were premade only and you had to travel to the dungeon, and had commensurate rewards, all of which reinforce keeping a group together, the reception would have been very different.

[ArenaDk]

Oh, well how intellectually honest of you, to declare yourself superior and refuse to engage.

The fact that premades had a hard time is absolutely besides the point. That's not how the vast majority of engagement with those heroic dungeons happened. People queued up, sat there waiting, zoned in, and then had people drop after the first wipe, which was often on the first pack. Queue-able difficult content is awful. If Cata heroics were premade only and you had to travel to the dungeon, and had commensurate rewards, all of which reinforce keeping a group together, the reception would have been very different.

Well there is nothing to discuss . you either did not do the pre classic quests or the cata quests. As both are railroaded as you call it. Just that cata keeps it contained in 1-2 zones and has a polished story while classic has fragments that sometimes have you run around senslessly. The only reason classic has the illusion of less streamlined quests is that you needed to look for the quest areas/ had to grind trash mobs for a few level. download a quest addon and instantly its back to following the tracks

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Blaming it on the activison merger ignores all the rot that set in years before it.

Blame pretty much comes down to, in order of severity.

mike morhaime For ignoring and even supporting sexual harassers.

The sexual harassers them self for driving talent out of the company.

Mike again and then suits for not upgrading working conditions and pay with the times.

Poor development choices.

The fan base just being generally toxic.

[NineSpine]

Well there is nothing to discuss . you either did not do the pre classic quests or the cata quests. As both are railroaded as you call it. Just that cata keeps it contained in 1-2 zones and has a polished story while classic has fragments that sometimes have you run around senslessly. The only reason classic has the illusion of less streamlined quests is that you needed to look for the quest areas/ had to grind trash mobs for a few level. download a quest addon and instantly its back to following the tracks

The cata leveling model is to have three quests at a time that hold your hand through a zone. Almost nothing can be skipped as the quests lead one into another. Zones are constructed to be done from beginning to end without having to leave.

It is straight up delusional to argue that that is the same way that vanilla worked.

I am not arguing which model is better or saying you need to like the vanilla model, but to argue that these things are the same is absolutely deranged and anti-reality.

[ArenaDk]

The cata leveling model is to have three quests at a time that hold your hand through a zone. Almost nothing can be skipped as the quests lead one into another. Zones are constructed to be done from beginning to end without having to leave.

It is straight up delusional to argue that that is the same way that vanilla worked.

I am not arguing which model is better or saying you need to like the vanilla model, but to argue that these things are the same is absolutely deranged and anti-reality.

okay, this is your opinion

[NineSpine]

okay, this is your opinion

No, it is a fact. The vast majority of quests in vanilla are isolated and not part of a necessary chain. Almost every single quest in cata is part of a necessary chain. In vanilla changing zones all the time is the norm. It is rare in cata. The main driver of what quests you can do in vanilla is your level, while the main driver in cata is what point in the zone quest chain you are in.

These aren't similar, at all. You are factually wrong. Cata is objectively on rails to an extreme degree compared to vanilla.

[ArenaDk]

No, it is a fact. The vast majority of quests in vanilla are isolated and not part of a necessary chain. Almost every single quest in cata is part of a necessary chain. In vanilla changing zones all the time is the norm. It is rare in cata. The main driver of what quests you can do in vanilla is your level, while the main driver in cata is what point in the zone quest chain you are in.

These aren't similar, at all. You are factually wrong. Cata is objectively on rails to an extreme degree compared to vanilla.

Which is basically your opinion.

[kail]

Players. For not voting with their wallets back in old times, when they were told, that what started to happen in Cata - was slippery slope, that would lead this game to fail. Yeah, Blizzard had enough resources to make this slippery slope last for long enough. But at the end here we are.

Didn't Cata show the first steep decline after launch? Then most expansions after that? Players did vote with their wallets.

[StillMcfuu]

it must be Mike Morhaime right? Since he agreed to the deal with Activision?

am I wrong? is it a collective of former blizzard higher ups?

Define downfall. They unquestionably are more successful now than they were. But they've also become the Apple of videogames. They overcharge for a substandard product and people buy the game because it's Blizzard.

[czarek]

it must be Mike Morhaime right? Since he agreed to the deal with Activision?

am I wrong? is it a collective of former blizzard higher ups?

He agreed to deal with activision ? You assume that one person can decide this ? ;D No way. Its hard to blame one person or situation for this great downfall. Its more complicated.

[Tiwack]

Blame capitalism and the patriarchy, in a nutshell: maximum profits and sexual innuendo combined with the hubris and laziness that follows success.

[NineSpine]

Which is basically your opinion.

2+2=4 doesn't become an opinion just because you don't like the number 4.

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Define downfall. They unquestionably are more successful now than they were. But they've also become the Apple of videogames. They overcharge for a substandard product and people buy the game because it's Blizzard.

Real confusing since my M1 MacBook is more powerful than any windows laptop at the same price point.

[Okacz]

What ? Cata chnaged because people voted with their wallets?

Everyone was wanting hard dungeons like in tbc, a world to explore like in classic and multiple raids.

hard dungeons ? turns out that was a lie and people never wanted hard heroics, but mindless stramroll like in woltk

world to explore ? nope people only wanted end game content

Raids ? well… I think nothing can really be said against the raids outside of dragonsoul

Cata was Blizzard getting lied to by the vocal minority, which afterwards had the audacity when they changed dungeons to be easy again and leave the old worlds alone, that they started repeating the lies again how people want to explore and hard dungeons to spend all day in.

If you want to blame an expansion , blame woltk for being celebrated while full of reused content, bad story lines and easy mode dungeons. Not like classic was hard , neither was tbc, but woltk broke the steadily ramping up difficulty.

Dungeons weren't just hard - they were poorly paced and balanced, like revamped SFK needing quite specific teams. That kind of stuff doesn't work well with LFG tool, doesn't it?

The "exploration" point falls short the moment you realize the "new" world is just 5 zones, completly disjointed from each other. The rest is more or less updated leveling content players over 80 had no reason to interact with.

Raids were extremly bugged on release, and 10/25 man separation was a mess of epic proportions.

Don't buy into that rhetoric. Guess who benefits from customers blaming customers for the state of the game? Blizzard made Cataclysm with good intentions but definitely rushed implementations. I guess community is to blame for WoD as well, because someone somewhere on a forum said that having housing would be nice?

[KrayZ33]

Yeah that I would say more indirect by people complaining the world is too small, "want for adventure" and Blizzard "Trying something" decided to restrict flying.

Pathfinder is more a compromise than a solution. They felt flying made building the world a bit more difficult and just upsetting (not fun to make a huge map for people and no one sees it cause they just fly over it) but everyone still wanted to fly cause we've always had it and it sucks having our toys taken away. Pathfinder was the compromise we HAD to see the world they built and do everything as they intended (On the ground) but then after that congrats you have flying

most of the complainers still don't like having their toys taken away

There are several things wrong with flying by itself.
First of all, why *did* they implement it?
And why is the solution to the "problems" it added to remove it again instead of working with it properly?

It's still a bad way to implement it the way it is.
It's not like they added story to how we aquire flying again or anything like that.
They had no-fly zones in BC as well where canons would target you while flying above certain zones and what not.

Why aren't they designing new worlds with flying in mind? Or add mechanics to mounts? Make it interesting and people would be more reasonable.

[WowIsDead64]

No. That is not how any of that works. While voting with your wallet is correct and maybe should have happened, you cannot excuse this rampant endless barrage of corporate greed and misbehavior to that. Being rich doesn't make you a dick, it just allows you to show it.

If money - is only thing, they want, we should have taken them away from them.

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Didn't Cata show the first steep decline after launch? Then most expansions after that? Players did vote with their wallets.

Not actively enough. For example Blizzard decided, that it was ok to lose 2.5M within 2 years back in Cata, because game was still profitable due to cheaper game design, but cheaper game design meant lesser amount of work to do, so we got MOP, that lost another 2.5M. And then in WOD process started to be irreversible. Players should have listened back in Cata, that would have forced Blizzard to reverse bad changes instead of continuing towards even worse direction. Players should have shown them, that cheap game design ISN'T ACCEPTABLE in sub-based game. If they charge sub fee, that is equivalent of full price of many new games, made from scratch, then they should work accordingly - not just pump this money to shareholders' wallets, including Bobby's one, cuz, as I know, he is one of major shareholders himself, so he has interest there. "Game provide keeps you busy for long time, so it's worth it's money" - isn't viable argument here. Because there are so many ways to artificially stretch content. You know, 4 quest lines, each is 1hr of pure time, stretched to last for 1 month, don't make this game worth 1 month of sub fee.

[Wolfhonors]

Politics and the loudest people in the room arent always rooting for what the silent majority want. Said it a long time ago, the only think that will kill WoW off will be themselves.