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  1. #81
    Blizzard will be fine, a worst-case scenario - they will open f2p realms for WoW, add a battle-pass system and launch WoW for phones. They may result in losing even more player base, but they will earn the money.

  2. #82
    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    There's a lot of uninformed commentary going on here about the merger. To keep it simple at the time that Kotick made his move to separate Blizzard and Activision from Vivendi, Vivendi was facing a lot of debt and was preparing to raid the Blizzard's and Activision's cash reserves. If they had managed to take all of it it would have left Blizzard with little or no operating capital for investment or development. The likely result of that would have been the end of both companies: Blizzard and Activision.

    To wit:


    Y'all may get your wish in any case. The recent stock problems have some speculating that ATVI (and Blizzard) could be a target for a takeover. I'm sure y'all would love a Disney-fied version of Diablo. Be careful what you wish for.

    I do think that the blame for a lot of this falls to Morhaime and the corporate culture he largely created. That has led to a lot of the recent lawsuits etc. Kotick needs to go as well. I do not think that a takeover by someone like Netflix or Disney would make the situation better; likely much worse. I have always believed that the way the companies were separated from Vivendi and the potential damage that Vivendi could have done to them was the best of a lot of bad alternatives.

    EDIT: Source for quote - https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...splits-vivendi
    Strange. Back in that time I had info, that Blizzard had special agreement with their investors, that existed since time, when they were indy, and that limited their dividends. But by that time it was expiring, that would lead to Vivendy demanding "fair" dividends from them. That's why Blizzard was bought out by Bobby and Mike. At that time it really seemed, that Cata problems were connected exactly to this event and that since moment, when Blizzard started to actually own themselves everything would start to be much better. But all of a sudden everything stated to be much worse, because Bobby started to find ways to decrease costs and therefore increase profits.

    I don't care about Wow 11.0, if it's not solo-MMO. No half-measures - just perfect xpack.

  3. #83
    The Lightbringer DesoPL's Avatar
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    We are to blame, because we buy every shit they made and justify it. "Oh because pandemic, oh because we didin't know" etc. I was saying since 2016 that Activision had more and more control on Blizzard, and you guys told me i am a hater, now look how it all went. Now deal with it and live, that Blizzard is gone and there is only Activision. They showed it numerous times in last 6 years. And don't try tell me that. "This is how gaming industry works, don't like it? Leave" Because you saw, what was happening this year in Blizzard. Hell even people started leaving Ubisoft due to... "Toxic work conditions" And yet ubisoft tried play saint here... Pathetic.
    .

  4. #84
    Herald of the Titans Vorkreist's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Burgundy View Post
    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?
    Bad leadership and systemic failure would be one of the main ones. Just pointing at Activision means nothing. Bobby didn't set direction for how the games would be made except maybe pushing for more predatory monetizations and he didn't hand pick all the talentless hacks working on the games today.

  5. #85
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    [QUOTE=Caerrona;53522074]I think this will be the only time I'd actually agree with the delusional poster above me.

    The players 100%. A bunch of weak willed spineless cowards decided to play games they hate for 2 decades while happily shelling out the cash all while screaming "da blizzurd is da ded".

    Instead of you know.... playing video games they enjoy. They would be happier and the people who like blizzards games would be happier not having a bunch of mentally unstable adult babies crying over every announcement."

    wow, settle down. you can be critical of something, still enjoy playing WoW, and not be a weak willed spineless coward. Seems to me the weak willed one is the person that resorts to name calling and hyperventilating about others opinions.
    Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries.

  6. #86
    there isn't one person to blame... if anything it was a culture, one where egos and fame got the best of several people, more names than we know of.
    Member: Dragon Flight Alpha Club, Member since 7/20/22

  7. #87
    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Burgundy View Post
    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?
    I would say it goes even further back than that; he was part of the reason why Blizzard North was shut down, you know, studio that created the widely successful Diablo franchise; they lost almost all of their talent that worked on it; it's why Diablo 2 didn't get any more patches because they were too cheap to pay their employees to work on it for 20 years. Part of me believes Mike Morhaime was the only person blocking the work on the game because after he's out of the picture, oh look we have a remake; maybe he has bad blood with former Blizzard North employees? Who know. You don't abandon a successful game like that for no reason...

  8. #88
    Quote Originally Posted by WowIsDead64 View Post
    If money - is only thing, they want, we should have taken them away from them.
    You ain't getting any disagreement from me there, chief.
    If you are offended by something i said, im probably at least 45% sorry about it and there is a 3% Chance it was not on purpose!

    Blizzard, getting away with murder since at least 2019.

  9. #89
    Quote Originally Posted by cozzri View Post
    I would say it goes even further back than that; he was part of the reason why Blizzard North was shut down, you know, studio that created the widely successful Diablo franchise; they lost almost all of their talent that worked on it; it's why Diablo 2 didn't get any more patches because they were too cheap to pay their employees to work on it for 20 years. Part of me believes Mike Morhaime was the only person blocking the work on the game because after he's out of the picture, oh look we have a remake; maybe he has bad blood with former Blizzard North employees? Who know. You don't abandon a successful game like that for no reason...
    A bit of trivia I read about, not sure if it's true. But the North team didn't even want to MAKE Diablo 2. They were completely burnt out on Diablo after the first one in the words of the interview but were pushed to make a second game and they had to hire new people to make the expansion. Might explain why Act 3 was so wonky and Act 4 was so small.
    The most difficult thing to do is accept that there is nothing wrong with things you don't like and accept that people can like things you don't.

  10. #90
    If we look at Acti-Blizz' finances then each of the 3 quarters so far show the highest revenue and net income compared to all other previous quarters ever.
    https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/c...izzard/revenue

    Not liking the game and the company is a matter of opinion, but from a financial perspective, which after all is the only thing that counts in our capitalistic society, Blizzard is no way in a "downfall".

    Added:
    Please note that I posted for Acti-Blizz as a whole, which of course is wrong. I have posted the numbers for Blizzard in post 92. Sorry
    Last edited by T-34; 2022-01-23 at 05:36 PM. Reason: Correction

  11. #91
    Quote Originally Posted by T-34 View Post
    If we look at Acti-Blizz' finances then each of the 3 quarters so far show the highest revenue and net income compared to all other previous quarters ever.
    https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/c...izzard/revenue

    Not liking the game and the company is a matter of opinion, but from a financial perspective, which after all is the only thing that counts in our capitalistic society, Blizzard is no way in a "downfall".
    Lumping in CoD and candycrush when speaking of blizzard games is pretty dishonest, Blizzard itself peaked in 2016 and has had a downward trend since. Despite currently having more sources of revenue then ever before. I do wonder if we can still keep track of them after the MS buyout.

  12. #92
    Quote Originally Posted by dlld View Post
    Lumping in CoD and candycrush when speaking of blizzard games is pretty dishonest, Blizzard itself peaked in 2016 and has had a downward trend since. Despite currently having more sources of revenue then ever before. I do wonder if we can still keep track of them after the MS buyout.
    Yes, that was a big boo-boo from me. That was for the company as a whole. Thanks for catching it!

    Here comes the numbers for Blizzard, not the whole of ActiBlizz:
    Net revenue, first 3 quarters:
    2014 1,18 billion
    https://investor.activision.com/stat...c-fe18184d90a0
    2015 1,1 billion
    2016 1,76 billion
    https://investor.activision.com/stat...9-7d511daacd79

    2017 1,53 billion
    2018 1,6 billion
    https://investor.activision.com/stat...0-6e17f00b8671

    2019 1,12 billion
    2020 1,32 billion
    https://investor.activision.com/stat...8-7cd443b44c9a

    2021: 1,4 billion
    https://investor.activision.com/stat...7-c18ebdb6b0e7


    Yeah, so my "optimism" was too optimistic, but so far the result is better than the last 2 years.
    But of course we have to wait for the results for 2021 as a whole to see if this trend continues the year out.

    Added:
    One thing that, in my lay-man opinion, should be a cause for long term concern for ActiBlizz, and thereby MS, is that 58% of the revenue comes from the Americas, or with other words that Europe+China+Asia is only 40% of the revenue.
    China is a slightly bigger market than USA, Japan is half as big as USA, EU is about 3/5ths of USA.
    Last edited by T-34; 2022-01-23 at 05:52 PM. Reason: Musings

  13. #93
    horny white dudes who never grew out of their middle school hormonal fratboi phase

    but in a more broad sense,very literaly the playerbase

  14. #94
    Quote Originally Posted by cparle87 View Post
    A bit of trivia I read about, not sure if it's true. But the North team didn't even want to MAKE Diablo 2. They were completely burnt out on Diablo after the first one in the words of the interview but were pushed to make a second game and they had to hire new people to make the expansion. Might explain why Act 3 was so wonky and Act 4 was so small.
    I don’t know… a lot of those guys went on to work for studios on similar games such as flagship/runic to name a few. My biggest takeaway is the team didn’t get to benefit from the success of their work and decided to leave; why keep a studio open when all your best guys walk out because the compensation is inadequate.

  15. #95
    Activision and then of course I have always blamed ghostcrawler.
    Everything went bad after his arrival.
    They started to listen casuals whining on forums and made game easier.

    They also couldn't find a good loremaster after that blessed dev died in 2009?. Don't remember his name.

  16. #96
    When Danuser became narrative lead, the game started to crash and burn.

  17. #97
    Quote Originally Posted by Val the Moofia Boss View Post
    WoW is still in the middle of stage 4. It's remarkable that WoW has remained at this stage for so long. Even more popular IPs like Star Trek didn't remain in decline this long before being killed off. A testament to the sheer addictive power of WoW. People have decades of emotional investment in their WoW characters - memories playing with friends, achievements, tons of mounts and pets, etc, that it's hard for people to walk away.
    Or perhaps what people enjoy is different from what you enjoy, and despite you being seemingly unable to grasp such a concept, people still enjoy the game.

  18. #98
    The fans. We just can't be satisfied. We hunger. Oh yes we hunger. But Blizzard can't provide fast enough.

  19. #99
    The Patient Awelon's Avatar
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    Activision's acquisition ruined it all I think. WoW-wise Ghostcrawler and Danuser have been a total trainwreck. Corporate wise it has all gone to hell with the inclusivity, transvestites and catering to some vocal minorities with all those "how to create a trans-fighterjet pylon with mental health problems" app.

  20. #100
    Go watch Bellular. He earned a considerable amount of subs, just by hatespeech against Blizzard. This litteraly tells you, how this community works. Blizzard allowed this happend thou. They decided to take the bait.

    This left Blizzard in a state where everything is confusing, rushed and frankly doesn't make sense(just like how the community is).

    Blizzards mistakes:
    1)Bobby was all about the profit. Closing down customer centers etc. and not giving enough resources to the devs.
    2)Considering how awful this community is; Blizzard should had stopped reinventing the wheel over and over again to please this group.
    Last edited by HansOlo; 2022-05-31 at 10:17 AM.

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