Microsoft To Buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 Billion

[m4Zzo928]

I think the biggest problem is that Blizzard relied too much on player loyalty and the sunk-cost fallacy. Their fanbase put up with a lot of mediocrity for several years. WoD was a perfect example. Things didn't really go off the rails until Blizzcon 2018, and they never got that loyalty back.

Agreed. Though I think it's telling that when there's a new expansion. There's always hope it will be good again. So there's definitely demand for a good WoW experience judging by the returning players. Perhaps they had a sunk-cost fallacy philosophy because they knew they were churning out a mediocre product.

[rhorle]

You know what's coming ...

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Crabby

Though I wonder if Microsoft will keep the tradition alive since at least at the main unit they don't like pranks on that day.

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No, because you misinterpreted what I said about other companies recovering.

Right. You are making an arbitrary distinction that AB can't recover even though other companies in similar situations were able to do so "relatively quickly". It again points to conflicting statements on your part. That were just trashing AB just because while making exceptions for anyone else when it fit the narrative.

[TheRevenantHero]

You're right, you don't' get to move onto Stormblood onwards if you don't buy Endwalker at that point. However, when you hit level sixty, you can still play the game for free, and continue to do so until you opt to buy said expansion. Which means, again, you've got a literal asston of content available to you until that point.

SE does many a wrong thing with XIV, but their free trial is not one of them, it's extremely generous for what it offers.

And if the honeymoon period isn't over, than by all means, oh great master of understanding and circumstance, elaborate on why the queue times have all but evaporated now. Because again - this time earlier in the month I wasn't playing XIV without sitting in queue for well over an hour. Now, however? I can finally play the game whensoever I want. The only times the queues really pick up are on the weekend nights, and even then they're still nowhere near as bad as they were back when everyone and their dog were trying to get through Endwalker's story.

I mean, you are aware you're typing to someone who actually plays XIV, right? Or did I just imagine that thirty person queue ten minutes ago? Oh, or is it because I'm on a "Dead backwater server that never had a queue anyways", even though that five-thousand person queue a few weeks ago seemed pretty damn real to me.

They haven't On Crystal data center there are still queues for every single server. Sure they're not in the thousands anymore but they're still there. So if your queues are gone then you're likely not on a very popular server.

[Jester Joe]

Battletoads absolutely was not well received. It's received mixed reviews at best.

You know that I was talking about Sea of Thieves.

Also ignoring that Microsoft actually worked with Nintendo to have Banjo Kazooie for Smash, along with getting Donkey Kong 64 on the Wii U and Banjo Kazooie coming to the Switch.

And the Battletoads remake was average at worst.

[bloodykiller86]

People still unironically use Rare as an example of "Microsoft bad, they kill companies"?

Look, I loved Rare as a kid, they made fantastic games, as a kid. But even during their "Golden Era" on the N64, their games were starting to get questionable, we just never realized because were dumb kids. After Banjo-Kazooie, their 3D Platformers began to turn into extremely bloated, buggy games. We all have fond memories of DK64, I'm sure, but in reality the game was a complete mess. Banjo-Tooie, while not a bad game, basically overdid practically everything, bloating the game into a slog to play through. Star Fox Adventurers was rebranded from it's original Dinosaur Planet moniker because of how laughably similar it was to the Star Fox IP, and likely because Nintendo didn't think it was going to garner much attention otherwise. Also Blast Corps. The less said about Blast Corps, the better.

And of course there's Conker. Everyone loved Conker, because it was new, it was unique, it was naughty. Than when the game was remade near 1:1 on the Xbox several years later, people felt it wasn't that great. Why? Because when you take away the juvenile humor, what you're left with is a very bare bones, barely competent 3D platformer. Even when most of the original Rare team left Microsoft and founded Platonic Games to make Yooka-Laylee, the end result was a fairly average, meh game.

Rare was already beginning to collapse in on it's self - there's a reason why Nintendo didn't buy out the company instead of letting Microsft have it. Rare will always have memorable gems from our childhood, like DKC1-3, Banjo-Kazooie, and Goldeneye. But Rare was never an "OH MY GOD AMAZING COMPANY" that was smashed by Microsoft. It was an alright company, with a few good hits, that was already starting to become dated by the time Microsoft purchased them.

and now they have a huge hit in sea of thieves. they have been asked by xbox gaming division to make new games on old IPs but they havent due to not wanting to. They have worked on titles they wanted and so far its been a good direction since the modern era of xbox division (phil spencer era)

[TheRevenantHero]

You know that I was talking about Sea of Thieves.

Also ignoring that Microsoft actually worked with Nintendo to have Banjo Kazooie for Smash, along with getting Donkey Kong 64 on the Wii U and Banjo Kazooie coming to the Switch.

And the Battletoads remake was average at worst.

Sea of Thieves is typically polarizing too. I've only see people love it or hate it. There is never an in between.

[Gadzooks]

yeah wow is a drop in the bucket. If the game gets axed tomorrow, no one will care from a business standpoint.

Hilariously naive comments like this are why I'm continuing to refresh this thread. Please don't ever try to get into a position of leadership in any company, with your current mindset/ignorance, because you will cost people their jobs.

WoW is not a "drop in the bucket". WoW, despite it's issues and failures, is still the only franchise Blizzard has that's paying for all of their salaries and keeping the lights on for that division, and is still a profitable franchise, they're not actually losing money, they're just not making what they could/should be.

Axing the game at this point would make no sense. Blizzard as a whole is at least a quarter of the income ATVI makes. You don't succeed in business by throwing a quarter of your profits away. (Regardless of how they make it - the cash shop is a big chunk of that income, and as detestable as it is from a player perspective, it's money generation is acceptable from a business standpoint. Profit is profit.)

To prove my point, Blizzard is 24% of ATVI's profits.

https://www.investopedia.com/how-act...-money-4799286

Yeah, real big drop in that bucket. It's just pocket change, for reals.

I'm no fan of WoW, or current Blizzard games right now, god knows I love watching the slow train wreck WoW has become, and I've mostly given up on Diablo 4, they have a long ways to go to convince me to buy it, but from a purely business standpoint, it would be a unmitigated foolishness to ignore the income from Blizzard, from MS's position.

[Bladesyphon]

They haven't On Crystal data center there are still queues for every single server. Sure they're not in the thousands anymore but they're still there. So if your queues are gone then you're likely not on a very popular server.

So...like I said, the honeymoon period is over.

Or do you not grasp that dropping from over five-thousand people in queue to a couple hundred on a busy night, or in my case on Faerie, less than thirty (which, again I'd like to point out, a month ago I was still in the three to five thousand person queue) generally implies that fewer people are playing?

Look, I absolutely hate using Steamcharts, as it's a piss-poor way of trying to divine out how many people are playing a video game at any given time, especially if said video game isn't unique to Steam, but even it reads a drop in 18% of players since Endwalker's launch, which would imply that most people have stopped playing the game again either out of boredom, or they've done everything there is to do in it, and thus, no longer are interested in playing it (which would mean that server queues have gone down).

Or in other words, the honeymoon period is over. Good god man, why are you getting so defensive over people saying that FFXIV isn't the endless juggernaut you thought it was? It's a simple statement that Moana made, and accurate one - the game had a huge surge of players thanks to it's free trial and the launch of the expansion. Now that people have finished the expansion, and SE has made it so Free Trial players don't get priority queues anymore, and thus the game's queues and playerbase is starting to stabilize again.

At no point did either of say the game is shitty. At no point did either of us wish ill on the game. At most, I said that I feel there's a great number of things SE does wrong with XIV that I'm not happy with, but that's it. You are doing some serious stretch armstrong levels of stretching here, rather than simply saying "Huh, you know what, I think you guys are right, and I didn't take into consideration the free trial people screwing up the population numbers so badly for Queues", or simply understand that XIV is not like WoW, it doesn't do anything to retain players once they've gone through the storymode, and now that m ost people have finished Endwalker, they're likely going to quit and unsub until 6.1 and the next trickle of story content comes out.

[Nerovar]

Could this mean Heroes of the Storm will receive content again? Big hopium overdose.

[Jester Joe]

Sea of Thieves is typically polarizing too. I've only see people love it or hate it. There is never an in between.

It isn't black and white like that.

It did well.
Its successful to date. It would be like still hating on No Man's Sky after they did so much to turn it around and redeemed themselves from mediocrity.

[TheRevenantHero]

So...like I said, the honeymoon period is over.

Or do you not grasp that dropping from over five-thousand people in queue to a couple hundred on a busy night, or in my case on Faerie, less than thirty (which, again I'd like to point out, a month ago I was still in the three to five thousand person queue) generally implies that fewer people are playing?

Look, I absolutely hate using Steamcharts, as it's a piss-poor way of trying to divine out how many people are playing a video game at any given time, especially if said video game isn't unique to Steam, but even it reads a drop in 18% of players since Endwalker's launch, which would imply that most people have stopped playing the game again either out of boredom, or they've done everything there is to do in it, and thus, no longer are interested in playing it (which would mean that server queues have gone down).

Or in other words, the honeymoon period is over. Good god man, why are you getting so defensive over people saying that FFXIV isn't the endless juggernaut you thought it was? It's a simple statement that Moana made, and accurate one - the game had a huge surge of players thanks to it's free trial and the launch of the expansion. Now that people have finished the expansion, and SE has made it so Free Trial players don't get priority queues anymore, and thus the game's queues and playerbase is starting to stabilize again.

At no point did either of say the game is shitty. At no point did either of us wish ill on the game. At most, I said that I feel there's a great number of things SE does wrong with XIV that I'm not happy with, but that's it. You are doing some serious stretch armstrong levels of stretching here, rather than simply saying "Huh, you know what, I think you guys are right, and I didn't take into consideration the free trial people screwing up the population numbers so badly for Queues", or simply understand that XIV is not like WoW, it doesn't do anything to retain players once they've gone through the storymode, and now that m ost people have finished Endwalker, they're likely going to quit and unsub until 6.1 and the next trickle of story content comes out.

"I hate using Steamcharts but I'm going to use it anyway to attempt making my point." Ok, buddy.

[Kirbydude65]

Sea of Thieves is typically polarizing too. I've only see people love it or hate it. There is never an in between.

Ok what about the other First Party Microsoft games that have done well recently?

Forza Horizon 5, Halo: Infinite, Ori and the Blind Forest, Pyschonauts 2, Age of Empires IV, and Gears of War 5 have all been widely praised in one way or in another.

Hell even Microsoft Flight Simulator, was well talked about and praised.

[Machismo]

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Crabby

Though I wonder if Microsoft will keep the tradition alive since at least at the main unit they don't like pranks on that day.

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Right. You are making an arbitrary distinction that AB can't recover even though other companies in similar situations were able to do so "relatively quickly". It again points to conflicting statements on your part. That were just trashing AB just because while making exceptions for anyone else when it fit the narrative.

I'm saying they didn't think they could recover, so they sold when they still had marketability.

Other companies still had something going for them. Activision/Blizzard wasn't innovating, AND their brand name was garbage. They were hemorrhaging customers, and their development plan that was already in shambles, was being pushed to the right. You seem to be ignoring that part, which I desperately tried to get you to go back and read.

So, go back and actually read what I typed.

[Gadzooks]

Or in other words, the honeymoon period is over. Good god man, why are you getting so defensive over people saying that FFXIV isn't the endless juggernaut you thought it was? It's a simple statement that Moana made, and accurate one - the game had a huge surge of players thanks to it's free trial and the launch of the expansion. Now that people have finished the expansion, and SE has made it so Free Trial players don't get priority queues anymore, and thus the game's queues and playerbase is starting to stabilize again.

Don't discount the players influencers like Bellular, T&E, Preach, and other WoW streamers who quit WoW and brought all of their fans to the game. (And That One I Won't Name.) The scandals and general suck of Shadowlands created a void - and that game was there to fill it. I have no issues with that reality, or the game, or the people who run it. They're doing well, and people enjoy it - win all around.

(Personally, I don't care, my eyes glaze over at talk of it, but that's just me - I'm not looking for a new MMO, and I don't like the art style of that game, but it is doing well, more power to them, and it gets on my nerves at times how often it's brought up. But this is MMO Champion, not WoW Champion (although you could make the argument that it is), and honestly, that's not a fight I feel any need to pick. I just don't care.)

[TheRevenantHero]

Ok what about the other First Party Microsoft games that have done well recently?

Forza Horizon 5, Halo: Infinite, Ori and the Blind Forest, Pyschonauts 2, Age of Empires IV, and Gears of War 5 have all been widely praised in one way or in another.

Hell even Microsoft Flight Simulator, was well talked about and praised.

I was specifically responding to them talking about Rare. None of those other games would apply. I simply said Microsoft eviscerated Rare's IPs when they bought them.

[Orby]

With everything that went down at Blizzard did the stock drop so low that Microsoft saw their opening to acquire? all the shit that happened to Blizz over last year built and built that that stock plummeted and kept plummeting. then Microsoft be like 'yoink'

So basically all this controversy that Bobby and his pales got ended up given them a hell of a lot of money.

[m4Zzo928]

Some product cycles have a trough, and become popular again. Wow does this practically every expansion, but doesn't retain as good. With some innovation, maybe they can change that.

[jellmoo]

This is one of those really weird scenarios where this is a massive net negative for the gaming industry, but an absolutely massive net positive for Blizzard.

It honestly leaves me a little conflicted.

[Utrrabbit]

That's some ignorant opinion you have there.

I find it fucking hilarious when people here mention pruning abilities when it comes to console. People are literally afraid for nothing, considering FFXIV has more abilities and bigger rotations and works just fine with a controller, infact sometimes it's even better than with a keyboard.

I mean they are not wrong. As someone who has played FF14 it is pretty bad.

Also FF14 has a bigger rotation?

My mw monk alone as a 16 button rotation, not including CDs

[Kirbydude65]

I was specifically responding to them talking about Rare. None of those other games would apply. I simply said Microsoft eviscerated Rare's IPs when they bought them.

But why mention that when it has nothing to do with their recent performance and acquisition? I understand being sad about Rare not living up to the expectations many gamers had hoped, but a lot of Microsoft's acquisitions as of late have shown thriving interesting and fun games, even if they don't make a large amount of money (EG Pyschonauts and Ori and the Blind Forest).

If your point was, "But Rare was done dirty!" Sure that's true. But studios like Turn 7 and Double Fine have done wonderfully under Microsoft. If anything Rare's acquisition was sadly a learning process that has resulted in some great games now.