Do you believe Blizzard has the strength to pull WoW back at it's place?

[zorkuus]

They have the strenght but do they have the will? Heartstone is raking in the millions with much less effort than it takes to maintain a big MMO.

[dd614]

WoW will never be what it once was. The design team is hellbent on making WoW as unlike vanilla/tbc as humanly possible. Arrogantly ignoring the fanbase seems to be their main goal at the moment. Dark times ahead.

[Archmage Alodi]

They can but it's easier and more profitable to milk the game instead of fixing it

[Thelxi]

"Strength"? Uhm.. One thing is for sure though, they have the resources.

[unbound]

Do they have the strength? Absolutely.

Do they have the will? No.

This is about corporate numbers. They will look to spend money very conservatively to preserve their absurdly high margins on the game. They are putting a bit more effort in 6.2 to stem the losses, but that is likely the highest level of effort you can expect at this point.

Whether you like other games or not, it is in your benefit that games like FFXIV become extremely successful. This will tell Blizz corporate that there is still a market that they are missing out on, and that will finally prompt them to take WoW seriously again (or seriously develop another MMORPG). Competition is your friend as a consumer (and not your friend as a company)...lack of competition is why WoW has been sliding down for a good while now and the amount of content keeps shrinking.

[Deleted]

Yes of course they can do.

But why waste 100 Million on a product with 1.2 Billion return, when you can just keep it alive with 25 Million and milk it for 1.0 Billion return and use that other money to produce some other cashgrabs like Diablo, Hearthstone or Heroes of the Storm for another Billion?

[l33t]

Yeah of course they can. They are the most experienced MMORPG developers with tons of experience and bazillions of gigabits of statistics of what gamers love and what they don't love in games. Surely they can do wonders... but the real question: why do you waste money doing wonders when you can simply gain subs on patch releases and then just add shiny mounts to shops which dumb users will buy, resulting in a fuckton of almost free money with almost zero money wasted on actual game development?

Also, gamers are not the same as in 2004. MOBA generation rules the world now. Mobile gaming rules the world. Session play rules the world. MMORPG is a slowly dying genre, it is slowly morphing into some sort of pseudo moba session game, which is the pinnacle of dumb considering MMORPG equals world in a first place. Look at latest MMORPG games. Wildstar? Tried to call for gamers from 2004 and failed. ESO? I hardly can call this a MMORPG, it is a glorified single player game with multiplayer. Skyforge? Has no real world, a game is nothing but a number of instanced locations (and I believe ff14 is the same). Tera? Please, don't make me laugh, a sane western gamer won't touch that game with a 100ft pole.

So, ofc if Blizzard actually put a reasonable money into WoW's development, to make some great genre morph, it could shine once again. But I seriously doubt they will, sadly. They seem to be perfectly fine with store mounts sells and extra 5$ per token, while making "big" selfie content patches and integrating game to twitter.

[Akakishin]

No, because they don't have the dev team to do that, and it's not possible through changing dev team, cause not many exprienced developers out there familiar with MMORPG scene (number of greag mmorpg games out there explains alot), and ppl with enough experience already left blizzard and aren't gonna back in a thousand years.

Yeah of course they can. They are the most experienced MMORPG developers with tons of experience and bazillions of gigabits of statistics of what gamers love and what they don't love in games. Surely they can do wonders... but the real question: why do you waste money doing wonders when you can simply gain subs on patch releases and then just add shiny mounts to shops which dumb users will buy, resulting in a fuckton of almost free money with almost zero money wasted on actual game development?

experienced ones with considerable knowledge about mmorpg scene already left blizzard

[LilSaihah]

If they wanted to, they could dump a massive amount of resources into bringing WoW to tip-top shape.

But why would they do that when they can spend their resources making another great game? Hearthstone, Overwatch and Heroes probably take a fraction of the resources WoW does. Hearthstone punches above its weight, Overwatch is fresh IP that people seem interested in, and HotS is a MOBA and MOBAs are so hot right now.

They definitely could give WoW a complete makeover, but that'd mean that we'd be getting less other stuff, and honestly I think Blizzard's new set of projects have a lot of merit..

[l33t]

experienced ones with considerable knowledge about mmorpg scene already left blizzard

I dunno anyone except Ghostcrawler who left Blizzard, and I hardly can call GC "experienced". Actually, lots of decisions made by his team when he was on lead are to be blamed on why the game is in such pathetic state now.

I would totally love him to start balancing champions in LoL though. Just like he "balanced" holy priest, the best healer in-game before he started his balancing, and the worst now thanks to his balancing.

[Polarthief]

If they actually put some god damn effort into WoD, then yeah, they could have easily pulled it out.

But, New Blizzard is all about the numbers (economically). WoW pulls in less and less numbers each passing year, so they're gonna start using it with a F2P model (yet still keeping the sub costs because they can), and put effort into their other games, apparently.

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I dunno anyone except Ghostcrawler who left Blizzard, and I hardly can call GC "experienced".

Rob Pardo's another, and I know there's a ton more that also quit, but google's not listening to what I'm asking.

Here's all you need to know: WoW is stuck with Blizzard's B/C Team. This team also consists of Jay Wilson, if you remember that douchebag crybaby (the guy who obliterated Diablo III and made it into a pile of steaming shit in 1.0)

Actually, lots of decisions made by his team when he was on lead are to be blamed on why the game is in such pathetic state now.

As much as I blamed him for a lot of the shit previously, it wasn't his fault. He also doesn't have a "final say" or anything that went down.

I would totally love him to start balancing champions in LoL though. Just like he "balanced" holy priest, the best healer in-game before he started his balancing, and the worst now thanks to his balancing.

"Now"? He's been gone for quite awhile, lol. Also, again, you're putting everything on one person when there is no one person to blame.

Also, he's been gone for like 2.5 years now. You honestly think WoD's failures are on him? Please. It's this new shitty B/C team they put on the job. There's significantly more people working on WoW, but it feels like 1 guy in his basement (not even 2 guys anymore).

[l33t]

Also, he's been gone for like 2.5 years now. You honestly think WoD's failures are on him? Please. It's this new shitty B/C team they put on the job. There's significantly more people working on WoW, but it feels like 1 guy in his basement (not even 2 guys anymore).

No, Blizzard tell us they have a significally bigger team working on WoW. See the difference? In reality, considering that Blizzard lie way more often than say truth these days ("your capitals will be in Karabor and Bladespire!", "you can choose a location for your Garrison", etc, etc), it is quite possible that WoD is being developed with one guy in a basement, with movies, music, locations art and raid designs being an outsource jobs.

And I don't blame GC alone, I clearly said that. They make decisions as a team, so the whole team takes responsibility for that decisions. But sadly next team use previous team decisions as a base to make their own, and so on, and so on. Imagine WoW like a huge stone column, with every stone being a decision of some team at some time; now, when you put next stone, it goes atop of the previous ones, and you can't remove any stone in the middle of a column because the whole column instantly falls.

[Evilfish]

No, not when the development is led by fools like that greek moron.

[bryroo]

Well it looks like Blizzard is ready to just tank WoW and move on.

Good to know.

[Akakishin]

I dunno anyone except Ghostcrawler who left Blizzard, and I hardly can call GC "experienced". Actually, lots of decisions made by his team when he was on lead are to be blamed on why the game is in such pathetic state now.

I would totally love him to start balancing champions in LoL though. Just like he "balanced" holy priest, the best healer in-game before he started his balancing, and the worst now thanks to his balancing.

well I was talking about people like rob pardo (who I believe is one of the most important devs in history of blizzard and responsible for its glory in early 2000's) and jeff kaplan (left in WOTLK) or Mark kern who left around TBC launch (all 3 team leaders), people that created WOW and had a path in mind for it, a path we've seen till wotlk before it changes drastically, and becomes what it is today, I'm sure you can find many names if you google them or check credits names before cata on youtube.

[Conscious]

Well it looks like Blizzard is ready to just tank WoW and move on.

Good to know.

Essentially. I don't think they could give a shit anymore.

[Kallisto]

No, Blizzard tell us they have a significally bigger team working on WoW. See the difference? In reality, considering that Blizzard lie way more often than say truth these days ("your capitals will be in Karabor and Bladespire!", "you can choose a location for your Garrison", etc, etc), it is quite possible that WoD is being developed with one guy in a basement, with movies, music, locations art and raid designs being an outsource jobs.

Again you are mistaking aims for promises. Blizzard never says X or Y will be confirmed with a promise. It could easily just be that something happened mid development during WoD that caused bliz to start over (Hint it did happen) and since SoO was already 14 months old they were stuck between releasing something new and unready or a minimum of another 6 months SoO.

You can't just make new stuff on the fly no matter how many people you have in a team.

[Kazgrel]

They more than meet the strength requirement. But they don't have the requisite intelligence score to pull that feat off.

[Manabomb]

No, because of the most recent interview with their lead developer whatever you want to call him is full of baseless assumptions and tripe flavored "realizations" that somehow go over a veteran development studios head as if this was their second year of making this game. Watcher... So hilarious... The next Robin Williams I swear.

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Again you are mistaking aims for promises. Blizzard never says X or Y will be confirmed with a promise. It could easily just be that something happened mid development during WoD that caused bliz to start over (Hint it did happen) and since SoO was already 14 months old they were stuck between releasing something new and unready or a minimum of another 6 months SoO.

You can't just make new stuff on the fly no matter how many people you have in a team.

Considering the product we got and the aims that were cut off half way through, what exactly was Blizzard trying to do? Nothing even slightly suggests that they had to start any kind of development over in the middle of SoO as the beta was launched. What was decided to be in WoD and what was cut from WoD in the months following were the hasty last minute decisions of an expansion being made in 14 months.

[Terahertz]

Hell no. Blizzard's mentality seems to be more about milking the cash cow than anything else anymore.

Could they? Yes. They could. Easily. Will they? No. It's not profitable for them to put more effort into the game. At least that's what I believe.