What happened to Blizzard's marketing team?

[jrockviggy]

Below is a post that I made on my guild forums, but decided I would bring it to a larger audience.

(Excuse the term "wrath babies" it s derogatory term that my close friends and I have given to the new players that flooded the game around WotLK's launch. I've met many great "wrath babies" whose skill match or surpass my own. It' just a term that stuck and we've kept using it.)
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What happened to Blizzard's marketing team?

Mr. T, Ozzy, Norris, South Park, Office Space

TOYOTA....

When can we start attributing this point to WoW's declining population, rather than solely the supposed diminishing state of the gameplay?

When you only sell to people who already buy, you will never gain clientele. Long lost "wrath babies" who have hung up the helmet can be intrigued when they are reminded of what Blizzard once was, not what it is trying to become. As a player, I enjoy the hype that comes with pre-expansion giddiness. But, that is not selling the game to those who do not follow WoW's progression like the religious players do.

I think there is a certain "cool guy" factor which Blizzard is no longer properly applying to their business. The company was formerly well-known for being outstanding with their sense of humor and for bringing popular culture to their product, which created an atmosphere that gave people a foot-in-the-door approach to WoW.

In current days, you see none of this. Blizzard's former style is seen only in-game by those that already play - through achievements and other easter eggs.

Blizzard: You already have my loyalty. It's time to reach out. It's time to sell your game again. Target the people who do not play WoW, not the ones who do.

Thoughts?

[Gimlix]

I Love WoW commercials on TV, and i hope to see them return

[Deleted]

Don't forget Blizzard's super secret stealth marketing team in action:

Other *MMORPG*s.

[crakerjack]

Simply put, WoW isn't the same because they made changes... but that's not the exact reason. They made changes, for stupid reasons. Removing rating requirement on PvP gear wasn't removed because it was unbalanced. It was removed because people who sucked at PvP wanted to obtain the same gear. I used to hardcore raid from vanilla to mid wotlk, but when I got a new job half way through wotlk, I didn't have time to raid 3 hours 4 times a week. I went back to PvP only as it was the only thing I could do w/ my spare time. I got full pvp gear each season w/ t2 weapons which satisfied that craving of getting awesome loot. Getting 2200 rating and buying my t2 weapon each season was just as good as downing a boss on hardmode and getting your BiS. When blizzard announced they were removing rating requirement, I asked "why?" I wasn't facing 1300 rated teams when I was at 2300 mmr, so that cancels out balancing. It's not like people at 1300 rating needed that kind of gear, because they were facing teams of equal skill at 1300 rating. Eventually I came to the obvious conclusion that blizzard removed rating requirement so that more people would be intrigued to do PvP, which imo was a very very very stupid reason. Want to know what followed? Those bad players still got stomped on in random bg's because they lacked the skill to even get 2200 rating, which means them having the same gear didn't change anything. The cons is that the feeling of getting 2200 rating and buying my BiS PvP weapon was stripped away just so some worse player can feel awesome that he has the same gear as me. Not being egotistical, but just like heroic raiding, you have to put in the hardwork to get the best gear, but I guess blizzard thought PvP was an exception. I quit halfway through cata for these reasons and have been following their next idiotic ideas to make PvP more appealing. Attempt after attempt they failed... now PvP gear is useless in world PvP, you think this is a good thing? When PvP and PvE have been apart of the game since the get go, screwing over one or the other is a death sentence. Marketing isn't the reason WoW is failing, it's because blizzard did an amazing job at alienating a part of their playerbase, then following up with more horrid ideas. Blizzard deserves this downfall to teach them a lesson... they should have stayed true to their fans from the get go rather than trying to appease the masses that joined later on. There's a reason the game had increasing subs into Wotlk, it's because the game had hard PvP and PvE, but look at what happened to PvP post wotlk... and people wonder why the game continues to lose subs.

Oh and wall of text crits for 99999999.

[Count Zero]

Don't forget Blizzard's super secret stealth marketing team in action:

Other *MMORPG*s.

This is actually a very good point.

WoW basically is the subscription mmo market. A single game that has literally just over a third of the entire market share.

Say I'm at a buddy's house and they offer me some RC cola to drink. Of course I'll gladly accept, but the mere mention of cola and I'm thinking Coke. Of course it's not completely analagous since, well, everyone knows of Coke ... but say someone who has never played an mmo before decides they'd like to jump in, it'd be basically impossible to wade into the mmo market without at least hearing about WoW.

I'd say at least a couple cents out of every competitor's advertising dollar winds up in Blizz's pocket.

[Belloc]

Players are Blizzard's marketing team. We like to play with our friends, right? So, we show them the game and encourage them to play. Players have driven far more WoW traffic than the celebrity WoW commercials.

[Deleted]

What happened to Blizzard's marketing team?

Mr. T, Ozzy, Norris, South Park

Was it selling games?
Was it selling subscriptions?
Was it creating positive associations for the game and the company behind it?
Should the faces of their corporate ID be Chuck Norris and Mr. T?

I dunno.

[mistahwilshire]

This is actually a very good point.

WoW basically is the subscription mmo market. A single game that has literally just over a third of the entire market share.

Say I'm at a buddy's house and they offer me some RC cola to drink. Of course I'll gladly accept, but the mere mention of cola and I'm thinking Coke. Of course it's not completely analagous since, well, everyone knows of Coke ... but say someone who has never played an mmo before decides they'd like to jump in, it'd be basically impossible to wade into the mmo market without at least hearing about WoW.

I'd say at least a couple cents out of every competitor's advertising dollar winds up in Blizz's pocket.

This is very true.

I have to say that after all these years too, I still recommend WoW to any friends looking to try out an MMO just due to the sheer lack of quality in the rest of the market. People can argue all they want about the design choices and mechanics in WoW but it runs damn clean and stands high above the rest of the genre in quality. The game feels good and responsive, which absolutely cannot be said of the overwhelming majority of the MMOs I've tried.

[quras]

SNIP.....


What happened to Blizzard's marketing team?

Thoughts?

I think the marketing team was fired after they heavily promoted path of the titans during blizzcon and it turned into...well, nothing.

Either that or no one really paid attention to their ads anymore so they just cut way back on promoting.

OR just maybe, blizzard wants to retain the people they have and think incoming gamers will not amount to anything near what they currently have so thats their focus.

[|Dexter|]

The Marketing team still is there! Just not target TV ads anymore like the TV ads maybe not had the result they were hoping for. Also promotion with other brands maybe was working out better for the brand them it was for WoW. I don't have the data, but Blizzard's marketing team seems to spend more money promoting Diablo 3 on Console and at events at the moment.

[jrockviggy]

There's a reason the game had increasing subs into Wotlk, it's because the game had hard PvP and PvE, but look at what happened to PvP post wotlk... and people wonder why the game continues to lose subs.

Therein lies the problem. How do you think they got those subscribers in the first place? It's now about how they lost subscriptions, it's about how they stopped gaining new ones.

Most of the people I played with in Vanilla quit and never returned in BC.
Most of the people I played with in BC quit halfway through WotLK and never returned.
Most of the people played with in WotLK have not been raiding since Cata, and play only at a casual level.
Only a few people that I met in Cata have been gone throughout the span of MoP.

See the trend? You can't expect to sustain a static roster of 12 million, 8 million or even 6 million players of the course of 6+ years. People's lives change. Familial, financial, employment, and yes.... boredom... these are just a few reasons that people can't commit to a game, and it tears down the playerbase. The way you strengthen it, is by reaching out to brand new players.

It seems like WoW is just another game in the MMO market. WoW used to stand out from the competition. It used to have a certain sparkle to it that attracted 12 million players. Now, granted, its seemingly blandness now may be due, in part, to how many clones (or "wow killers") have released in the last 5 years. Regardless, it needs something that lets it stand out.

I just think if people saw Mr. T's commercial on TV again, they'd reminisce to the days of raiding Kara when that commercial was fresh. Or if someone who has never played sees Mila Kunis or Channing Tatum in a WoW commercial, it would spark their interest.

I'm not saying games will not succeed without good publicity, but good publicity certainly seemed to be an aspect of WoW that motivated its subscribers.

- - - Updated - - -

Was it creating positive associations for the game and the company behind it?
Should the faces of their corporate ID be Chuck Norris and Mr. T?

Not that I think Mike Morhaime is on the same creative level Steve Jobs (not that I'm saying he isn't, either). But look at how Steve's sense of humor and suave attitude paved the way for Apple.

Yes, like I said, being able to relate WoW to popular culture put Blizzard in a good light with a lot of people. I think it made a big difference in how the game was viewed. I think the persona of WoW needs to be exactly as it was then.

[vinmmo]

Therein lies the problem. How do you think they got those subscribers in the first place? It's now about how they lost subscriptions, it's about how they stopped gaining new ones.

Most of the people I played with in Vanilla quit and never returned in BC.
Most of the people I played with in BC quit halfway through WotLK and never returned.
Most of the people played with in WotLK have not been raiding since Cata, and play only at a casual level.
Only a few people that I met in Cata have been gone throughout the span of MoP.

See the trend? You can't expect to sustain a static roster of 12 million, 8 million or even 6 million players of the course of 6+ years. People's lives change. Familial, financial, employment, and yes.... boredom... these are just a few reasons that people can't commit to a game, and it tears down the playerbase. The way you strengthen it, is by reaching out to brand new players.

It seems like WoW is just another game in the MMO market. WoW used to stand out from the competition. It used to have a certain sparkle to it that attracted 12 million players. Now, granted, its seemingly blandness now may be due, in part, to how many clones (or "wow killers") have released in the last 5 years. Regardless, it needs something that lets it stand out.

I just think if people saw Mr. T's commercial on TV again, they'd reminisce to the days of raiding Kara when that commercial was fresh. Or if someone who has never played sees Mila Kunis or Channing Tatum in a WoW commercial, it would spark their interest.

I'm not saying games will not succeed without good publicity, but good publicity certainly seemed to be an aspect of WoW that motivated its subscribers.

- - - Updated - - -



Not that I think Mike Morhaime is on the same creative level Steve Jobs (not that I'm saying he isn't, either). But look at how Steve's sense of humor and suave attitude paved the way for Apple.

Yes, like I said, being able to relate WoW to popular culture put Blizzard in a good light with a lot of people. I think it made a big difference in how the game was viewed. I think the persona of WoW needs to be exactly as it was then.

I think WoW stands out as the absolutely unequalled titan of MMORPGs. Nothing else, including all of the "wow clones" comes close to actually competing with it. They typically do one thing really well, but offer a bunch of lousy content in addition to try and compete with WoW, then their subs fall into the truly low numbers.

I also think a lot of MMO gamers are burned out. They spent years raiding 4 nights a week, burned out, and found themselves in a different place in life where going back to raiding 4 nights a week is too daunting to take on (Ie, they had families, got jobs, etc). If/when they do come back, they find themselves in a bit of a limbo state where a lot of their old guildmates, etc. have moved on to new groups, possibly new servers and maybe faction changed. Blizzard is taking steps to appeal to these gamers with the change in flex/normal mode raiding and all of the cross-realm love that comes with it...plus the new instant 90s and the ability bloat reduction...

I think that's the direction WoW is heading in. They want to make the game more friendly to people who just join on. Everything that makes it easier to get back into to play with your now dispersed friends will also make it easy for me, to, say encourage a co-worker to join and he can play with me and Bob from Accounting, even though we're both on different servers.

The trick is whether or not they can do that while still providing the high-end level of play.


Edit: To be more on-topic...if/when we see WoW commercials return to TV, I would assume it would be closer to when the Xpac is going live. Right now we're in the "End of xpac lull" and bringing people to the game right now is probably not the best business practice. Better to bring them in when Instant 90 is live and there's all the excitement of the new xpac. Heck, D3 RoS just had a commercial debut last night and the game comes out in about 3 weeks.

[Deleted]

Not that I think Mike Morhaime is on the same creative level Steve Jobs (not that I'm saying he isn't, either). But look at how Steve's sense of humor and suave attitude paved the way for Apple.

That's kinda the point. I doubt that Jobs and Mr. T appeal to a comparable demographic looking at gender/age/disposable income. Maybe they want to get away from the Mr. T demographics. Far away.


Read a quote about extremely successful movies once. You can either make a movie that everybody wants to see (once), like Titanic. Or make a movie that adolescent males want to see 20 times, like Star Wars. Maybe - I absolutely don't know - the second approach doesn't cut it anymore for WoW. On the other hand, maybe the next Mr. T commercial is only days away.

[Steve the Sloth]

Aside from it most likely being a business decision to cut back, I think they're going to kick it into high gear again come Warlords. They have free 90 boosts and new content that can lure a lot more players in rather than "here's the upcoming content, buy the game and level for 2 months THEN you get to play it".

They also just released a new TV spot commercial for D3:RoS that looks badass, marketing team is still in action!

[Deleted]

WoW is so obnoxiously big on MMO market that it requires no marketing in order to raise it awareness.

Any new MMO that comes up is flooded with "WoW clone" jokes. Anyone who doesnt know what it means googles it and finds out WoW. Free advertisement.
Any new MMO that comes up is automatically compared to WoW. Anyone who doesnt know what WoW is googles it and finds out WoW. Free advertisement.
Any new Subscription based MMO that comes up is automatically compared to WoW subscription. Anyone who doesnt know what WoW is googles it and finds out WoW. Free advertisement.

WoW had reached the pinnacle of popularity in its genrea.
WoW is literally Coca Cola of MMORPGs.

[arcaneshot]

What happened to Blizzard's marketing team?

Mr. T, Ozzy, Norris, South Park, Office Space

TOYOTA....

Promoting Reaper of Souls. It's not like WoW is in dying need to be advertised at the moment.

[Pann]

I suppose the marketing team decided the game is so good and big it needs no more marketing? I kinda see advertising as: "I have such a bad product, nobody will buy it unlsee I scream on TV about it and shove it down people's throat"

Honestly? I have seen the MoP commercials in cinemas and I was stealthily looking around going: "Okay, the geeks here play it anyhow, the others have no clue what it is and are not at all the target audience and this is just embaressing"

Coke, McDonalds, Pepsi, Nike, etc all continue to spend hundreds of millions each year on advertising despite having huge products. Seeing as WOW used to advertise heavily on TV does that mean that WOW was a bad product at the time? It is more likely that the advertising campaigns that screamed on TV shoving WOW down people's throats are no longer seen as cost effective.

I am sure Blizzard is glad you brought this to their attention. They will totally have missed these things. I hope they also read this: http://www.27bslash6.com/brochure.html

It it a little ironic that you decide to offer your opinion that Blizzard's cinema marketing was aimed at the wrong audience and then decide to sarcastically berate another poster for his opinion about their marketing.

[The Flavour Cat]

For that RoS video in case anyone's wondering:


And if World of Warcraft is the Coca Cola of MMORPGs, then why aren't they constantly marketing the damn product? Coca Cola still does it every year, and I believe they did one for the Super Bowl this year (I heard it mentioned, didn't watch it). Blizzard's marketing team (Or does marketing fall under Activision's duties?) needs to put adverts back on the TV, because we haven't seen any in ages. Have those cool ones with the 'celebrities' promoting them. Or they could also add physical promotions and the like in any general shops.

All they typically seem to be doing now is to try and get current existing players who either currently play the game, or those that stopped playing to return. New pets and mounts, Scroll retiring, and now they're getting rid of the MoP DE, which is obviously a ploy to get others to part with their cash (for a mount and pet, no less!).

[Deleted]

They're working on it. It's called the warcraft movie.

[Deleted]

I think the minimal marketing works. I mean let's face it, despite being the most popular MMO WoW is not a "cool" franchise in the same vein as Halo or CoD or Assassin's Creed. People seeing the adverts on TV probably aren't going to buy it for the most part - pretty much everyone who would be interested in WoW either already has it, or had it at some point. There's no point marketing to people who are never going to be convinced by a simple advert so the goal for now is simply to hold onto current players and entice old ones back in (which is a huge market of 100 million people.).

The Warcraft Movie is of course Blizzard's attempt to make it into the mainstream and turn wow into one of those "cool" franchises so they can then market more broadly. But we've got a way to go before that happens, and I doubt that WoW will ever fully cast off the stigma associated with it.