Blizzard is not acting like BFA is failing

[Xalvia]

I don't like the game as it is right now at all, but they said that all the critisism and feedback they received from 8.0 onward will be addressed with 8.2.

I will hold back my horses till we know more about 8.2 and then pretty much decide if this expansion is rip for me or not.

[MoanaLisa]

We know what counts as a succes. That metric is nothing esotheric or an arcane mystery. It's the same across all markets: financial growth, no matter how unsustainable. As long as you earn more next quarter than the previous, so long does it count as a success.

Then that means all video games, movies, books ever have failed. That's overly simplistic and doesn't even apply to individual entities within a portfolio. Some things will be up, some down. Some up a lot with a bad outlook, some down with a good outlook.

[Doffen]

Maybe its not failing and they earn big buck still?

Maybe yes, overall BfA is worse than all other expansion(not you WoD) when it comes to the actual game, but blizz still earn a lot of money?

No one is to say BfA is actually failing, because no one actually knows except the developers. And they have also said that Azerite system wasn't as good as they hope, and they are trying to fix that. What more do people want than blizz trying to fix what players doesn't like as much as other aspect of the game?

[rda]

No one is to say BfA is actually failing, because no one actually knows except the developers.

We kind of know from player activity (worse than Legion, for example) and bits of financial info (the best they could say about WoW is that BFA sold a ton of copies in the first day, and that happened because of a very long accumulation of the pre-purchases).

[crazypeople]

There is one fundamental flaw still in the game they need to do something about: the horrendeous classes and the homogenisation of said classes. They also have to stop reinventing the wheel. When they make something good, like class fantasy or a new system (artifacts), they feel the need to ruin it in the next expansion for no apparent reason whatsoever. They're trying too hard to be different with each expansion, instead of iterating on successful systems.

[Doffen]

We kind of know from player activity (worse than Legion, for example) and bits of financial info (the best they could say about WoW is that BFA sold a ton of copies in the first day, and that happened because of a very long accumulation of the pre-purchases).

Yeah, its worse than Legion, I don't think we can argue about that. But how do we actually know? Because of that twitter-post who said 50% of all players use Weak-aura(wich in itself is just bullshit) or is there any other info about that?

I mean, I agree with you, it seems BfA got less players than Legion, but how can we know its failing? Every expansion after WotLK failed if we go for that metric. Except Legion who got a boost after WoD, most likely.

[grexly75]

They know they can't salvage BFA. BFA's Core Mechanics are fucked and NOTHING can change that. If I were them I would have cancelled 8.2 and 8.3 and moved the Devs to Classic and a new Expansion.

That would be the most stupidest thing that they could do.. When there are supposed to be big lore events coming in 8.2 and 8.3 among other things, cancelling those patches would be idiotic..

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They sit on facts and figures that the fans have no access to.

That being said, acting like your product is a disaster, would be a business disaster.

Exactly at this point in time admitting failure could pretty much kill the game as the shareholders would bail and ActiBlizz in dire straights..

[Lei]

Admitting BfA was a fail will happen only after the new expac is announced and hyped up, and bfa will be used as an example for how that new expac will be so.much.better than bfa that was a fail in many aspects. Learn how Pr works, OP.

Oh, btw, shill youtubers do the very same. The expac we play is always the best, nothing wrong with it, until the new is announced, then that is the bestestest, and see how better than the previous was?

[Chonar]

You crazy kids really need to stop pretending you're company shareholders.

[Amerissis]

Not disagreeing with the rest, but a) it is true, theres been a huge drop off in players, and the only estimates that we can make off of information we can yoink from 3rd party sources lead us to believe that its pretty fucking big, such as 50%+ if the API readings were anywhere near accurate (of which i dont think so) we're talking an estimate loss of over 85% of their legion subscribers, even if we make that 1/4 and say 20 odd percent drop off, that is a HUGE failiure from a business stand point, not sure what you are smoking when u say it isnt a failiure

Third party sources, if the reading were anywhere near accurate (you don't even think so), estimate, make that something else, say I pull this number out of my ass, huge failure. Yeah, sure, it's a failure.

Also, I'm selling a book that's guaranteed to make your rich, 99% of the time. Interested?

[Lahis]

we are slowly reaching a point when people start opening their eyes

they start to realise that all those idiotic streamers who have been whining for past few months did it solely to make $$$ on fake outcry

and sheeps followed them on forums

while reality is BFA is making ton of money and is really popular among casual crowd.

people need to stop being muppets who follow streamer's opinions blindly - thats what is happening

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sooo .. never ?

MTX are growing with each year , mobile games and mobile rpgs are now produced by every single big company , and workforce is workforce - they dont work for idea fix - they work to make a living - and current standards in industry are how they are.

dont worry one day you will realise the benefits of working for big companies like for example dental & healthcare benefits means a lot more then some stupid idea "lets make gaming great again"

It is sure nice to have good theeth when year long crunch period has ruined every other aspect of your physical and mental health.

Games industry is terrible place to work in.

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Then that means all video games, movies, books ever have failed. That's overly simplistic and doesn't even apply to individual entities within a portfolio. Some things will be up, some down. Some up a lot with a bad outlook, some down with a good outlook.

When was the last time highly marketed game was regarded as a success? Usually they perform below expectations, no matter how much they sell.

Hell, even RDR2 made Take Two stock fall, because it didn't earn sll money ever.

[Blackmist]

No company will ever admit there is a problem unless they also have the solution to sell you.

[DarkAmbient]

That said, how stupid do you have to believe that they'd openly say that BfA is failing under any circumstances? That any company would? That'd be like telling the players who remain that they shouldn't be playing until the issues are fixed.

Remember when the CEO of Square Enix publicly apologised for screwing up Final Fantasy IV, replaced the project leader, made it F2P for a while, promised to make the game better, and basically remade the entire game? What do we get from Blizzard: "we realised <insert mechanic here> wasn't working as well as we hoped and we're definitely looking at making changes blah blah".

[Velerios]

They were all non essential though, and almost all the major developer companies cleared house this year. If it means better games then it was a great move.

But it doesn't, that's the issue. Clearly, it's like saying: I just throw out my couch, now my Microwave will work better. No, because it's a fringing microwave, you press on buttons and wait until you take your food out and throwing it on the floor, because you burned your hands.

Many players in the industry fired non-essential people: althrough when DEVs create lazy and crappy products: these people should be needed more than ever: customer service.

Gaming firms always love to say that they didn't fire any of the developers: JUST customer service employees. Especially when they have records after records annual after annual. Hey, we made a record profit this year, to celebrate it, we need to fire our employees. That's not a joke, that what Actiblizz did at the beginning of the year.

So in the end: we have less customer service, but this leads to better products. Then fire all of them: then the product will be so good that nobody complains anymore: how? Simply because you can't reach anyone on the firm. Problem solved.

[rda]

Yeah, its worse than Legion, I don't think we can argue about that. But how do we actually know? Because of that twitter-post who said 50% of all players use Weak-aura(wich in itself is just bullshit) or is there any other info about that?

I mean, I agree with you, it seems BfA got less players than Legion, but how can we know its failing? Every expansion after WotLK failed if we go for that metric. Except Legion who got a boost after WoD, most likely.

Player activity is being measured by third-party tools like warcraftrealms, they have graphs. Player activity is a bad predictor of absolute numbers, we cannot tell how many subs the game has, but it is great at estimating relatives, as in, we can safely tell whether things fall or grow and which period had less / more players logging in (and this does correlate with subs, although there is a time lag and several other factors like the number of alts which perhaps increases slightly as the game matures, etc).

Player activity for Legion was worse than for WoD. Legion was perhaps a better expansion overall than WoD, but it was not good enough to reverse the trend of losing players, players continued to leave, just slower than before. Player activity for BFA is worse than it was for Legion in the comparable period. There's no dramatic drop that would be new to BFA - as in, there is a dramatic drop after the initial burst, but big drops after the initial big burst are with us since WoD, they are not unusual in that way, and there's nothing out of line after - it's just the numbers running somewhat lower than before.

Warcraftrealms is not the only source of data here, we also have arena trackers, wowprogress, etc. It's the same story on all of them: WoD had more players than Legion, Legion had more players than BFA. If they fail with 8.2, we are likely going to see a fairly significant further decline. If they deliver there, we will likely see the numbers stabilizing and perhaps growing a little for a couple of months then dropping back a bit.

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Example from wowprogress, the number of guilds that killed the easiest tracked boss in the first tier of each expansion, WoD, Legion, BFA:

WoD, Highmaul, H: Kargath Bladefist - 42070
Legion, The Emerald Nightmare, H: Nythendra - 39705
BFA, Uldir, H: Taloc - 29842

The same picture is everywhere else.

[Chemii]

I think if activision layed off some key figures. It would motivate them more to fix things. CS reps isn't really gonna cause that, but say laying off Lore, some devs, and narrative team members. Would prompt faster changes then current. Like most, you gotta accept that Ion really doesn't care about the game. But watch as they probably introduce two more parts of pathfinder. One for the naga zone and one for Mechagon. Wouldn't surprise me if they have it already planned.

Are you stupid?

Do you understand how difficult it is to just insert people into teams and make changes like that? This isn't fucking make belief, these are human beings. They got some stuff wrong but you don't just replace people like Ion, he isn't there by luck, he's super intelligent.

You can't just turn development teams around by slashing half their team and inserting a load of people no-one knows and expect magic.

[Flarelaine]

Obviously they aren’t going to say ‘BFA failed’, a) because it’s not true and b) because you don’t say that about your own product. You learn and improve.

No company will say their product is a fail.

I took part in a Q&A once where we managed to make a tabletop RPG's author to admit his game was crap. But even that was not the same as admitting it failed; in fact, it did quite well, being the first domestically published game in the market. (In fact, it was crap because they rushed it to be the first.)

[Cowsrocks]

Probably because its not. Maybe its time for some doom and gloom people on these forums that will grab onto everything and anything to moan about to take a break and go outside. The game is fine, might not be the best for everyone but that doesn't make it a bad game.

[Pu3Ho]

Probably because its not. Maybe its time for some doom and gloom people on these forums that will grab onto everything and anything to moan about to take a break and go outside. The game is fine, might not be the best for everyone but that doesn't make it a bad game.

That "logic" can be applied to anything. "Hey guys, we only lost 75~85% of subs since BFA initial launch but the problem is not us/our trash we made but YOU!" And no matter how bad the shit is, there will always be someone defending it.

[Daikoku]

" No Company would admit it's product is crap "

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