Blizzard is not acting like BFA is failing

[Relapses]

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.

Ion doesn't care, dude. I know because somebody on the internet said it then another guy agreed with that guy.

[Cowsrocks]

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.

Seeing thats just your opinion with no stats to back t up. Thats all it is. Someone not enjoying a game and having the need to shit over it instead of just quiting like a sane human being would do.

[Barzotti]

What? No. Just no. My friends who have kids quit the game because it's inaccessible to them.

Three IRL friends in their thirties came back to WoW in january after a year long hiatus. By your own metric, can I consider BfA a success then?

[Pu3Ho]

Seeing thats just your opinion with no stats to back t up. Thats all it is. Someone not enjoying a game and having the need to shit over it instead of just quiting like a sane human being would do.

Stats to back it up :

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment..._google_trend/ seems pretty accurate to me and actually pretty much supports the numbers gained from API leak.

I've quit the game long ago(for obvious reasons), but that doesn't mean i can't be on it's forums for w/e.

[Cowsrocks]

Stats to back it up :

seems pretty accurate to me.

I've quit the game long ago, but that doesn't mean i can't be on it's forums for w/e reasons.

Can't open Reddit in work. But Reddit isn't a source of information. Its a fecking forum.
And saying "seems pretty accurate to me" doesn't prove anything. It just shows you're biased on how the game is doing.

[diarx]

The Team feels the rumours of BFAs failure have been greatly exaggerated, but The Team knows it can do better next time.

[rda]

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment..._google_trend/ seems pretty accurate to me and actually pretty much supports the numbers gained from API leak.

That's not a good use of statistics (we can go into details and cite specific issues, but in general, that's just someone grossly misapplying the method), but it stumbles onto the same result as other, sound methods, because everything points the same way. So the graph in the link ends up reflecting the situation more or less correctly qualitatively.

[Skylarking]

The Team feels the rumours of BFAs failure have been greatly exaggerated, but The Team knows it can do better next time.

"the team" sure does not feel like a team at all

[Khandros]

All Blizzard does is tell outright lies on the rare occasion they make any effort to communicate, release amateur quality unfinished garbage and spin their failures on game systems and design to attempt to remove the focus on their arrogant and lazy ass Dev team that has no kind of work ethic. Boy have the mighty fallen.

[Segus1992]

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".

You mean XIV? If you think the situations is in any way comparable you're a massive moron.

[Pu3Ho]

That's not a good use of statistics (we can go into details and cite specific issues, but in general, that's just someone grossly misapplying the method), but it stumbles onto the same result as other, sound methods, because everything points the same way. So the graph in the link ends up reflecting the situation more or less correctly qualitatively.

Yet it never once contradicted itself when tested at the time when official numbers were still revealed, even it's isn't entirely accurate - it's still should be extremely close to the general opinion which was formed from other different sources(census/api leak/"mmo-c method/) etc = pretty much what you said.

[Xath]

They defended their Twitter/Selfie Cam patch, so you'll never hear them apologize for a thing. And as far as "no company will ever say their product failed", Final Fantasy absolutely did, and it went a long way to building trust and confidence in their revamp.

Selfiecam patch was still a better patch than 7.3.5 while it didn't add anything it wasn't actively destructive to many people's playing experience like the xp changes were in 7.3.5 especially in dungeons.

[LionSinMaikeru]

Is it just me or is Blizzard just acting like everything is fine?

Outside of Classic forum communication is non existent, only info we have is directly from Ion with vague promises, 8.2 PTR is not up for a MAJORRRR game changing patch, Lore has been dead silent except insulting people on the forums, devs have been afraid to communicate bugs when reported/confirm them.

The list just keeps going. Every single thing I see Ion listing out was reported far prior to BFA even launching but how many had to quit and get fired before he decided to put his hubris aside and admit something is broken?

Nowhere in his interviews is he addressing the casino that is BFA right now and if anything has embraced it even further in dev Q&A's which are few and far between. Where in the hell are the class devs? People are beyond pissed right now about class design and the pruning but there is nothing. Who in the hell looks at prot warriors in MDI right now and does not thing that is just broken and crowding out other tanks that need buffs?

Guilds have been turned into glorified raid log communities as people are just disillusioned at what is going on right now. Where is the 8.2 hype on the PTR? Atleast then you could get people motivated to stay with the game and not just give up.

I think they've acted like BFA is failing more than almost any other expansion. We've gotten more Dev talks and apologies in the last few months than we have in the last decade. Or am I wrong? Because it certainly feels that way.

[Echocho]

Because they're convinced that we enjoy excessive RNG, not being able to work towards anything and having everything completely reset every 3 months..

[Beerplz]

Its not failing it has systems that people don't like , Ion acknowledged those problems in the last 3 interviews he did just last week. They try stuff , they either work or they don't that's it.For every person that wants the game to be one thing there are 10 more people that have a different opinion.Its just "cool" at the moment to be "different" and by different i mean saying you don't like something so you fit in a group. There is a lot of valid criticism to be given to the current state of WoW but 90% of the time people just try to personally attack devs for whatever reason.
What do you have going in your life that you have the time to stay in front of the keyboard and try to act cool and all and say "oh fuck Ion" "oh fire this guy" "oh wow suckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkz" "FFIV BeTtEr GaMe ReEEeEEee"?
It feels like the only reason you have to life is to sit in MMO-Champions forum and preach your agenda? Its a game we all want it to be good, if you are not happy with it give your valid criticism and stop playing if its not taken into account. That's it

[Super Kami Dende]

It isn't exactly failed, stagnant yeah, failed. Eh.. not really.

[Aleksej89]

Blizzard has the approach of hiding reports about problems from the public ever since they hid the subscription number reports.

Due to the token system i would not be surprised that quite a few users are not paying real $ at all to play WoW these days - and might even be subscribed through tokens for the next many months despite not actually playing the game.

Blizzard needs to change:
- How classes are designed (revert ability pruning back to MOP era and then do light changes only where needed)
- How the gear is acquired (no more skinner box bullshite and extreme RNG in acquiring gear)
- How azerite works (completely rework max level character progression, perhaps coming in 8.2 or 8.3)

The dungeons and raids in BFA are not THAT BAD... problem is in our very characters.
Classes are basic shallow boring garbage (most classes lost half or more of their abilities between MOP and BFA) and the gear+character progression system is the worst it has ever been.

[Piesor]

BfA is not failing regarding the revenue.
People will always whine in the internet and pretend they know better. Mistakes were made in BfA and you can read this between the lines in any interview from Ion.

Show me just one other game that exists for more than 14 years, still has a healthy playerbase, still has regular expansions and content updates and is still on such a high level regarding the quality that players are willing to pay a subscription. Blizzard does what every other company does: Trying new stuff, provide new type of content. Sometimes that works (e.g. artifact weapons), sometimes it fails. Get over it - it's just a game.

[Beerplz]

Blizzard has the approach of hiding reports about problems from the public ever since they hid the subscription number reports.

Due to the token system i would not be surprised that quite a few users are not paying real $ at all to play WoW these days - and might even be subscribed through tokens for the next many months despite not actually playing the game.

Blizzard needs to change:
- How classes are designed (revert ability pruning back to MOP era and then do light changes only where needed)
- How the gear is acquired (no more skinner box bullshite and extreme RNG in acquiring gear)
- How azerite works (completely rework max level character progression, perhaps coming in 8.2 or 8.3)

The dungeons and raids in BFA are not THAT BAD... problem is in our very characters.
Classes are basic shallow boring garbage (most classes lost half or more of their abilities between MOP and BFA) and the gear+character progression system is the worst it has ever been.

No , MoP classes design is bad. Everyone has everything , everyone has stun, everyone has an immunity , everyone has a heal. We need classes that are good at one thing and bad at the other and that can't happen with the MoP class design

[rda]

Yet it never once contradicted itself when tested at the time when official numbers were still revealed, even it's isn't entirely accurate - it's still should be extremely close to the general opinion which was formed from other different sources(census/api leak/"mmo-c method/) etc = pretty much what you said.

It cannot contradict itself because of the way it is constructed and the way the contradiction is defined - the poster selected a subset of seemingly good correlations for several time periods, these correlations do not attempt to be good on the whole data set, etc, there's no real validation post-measurement or anything. There's just no way to construct something contradictory here, if a correlation is bad (= "contradictory"), you just do not take it from the beginning.

The methodology does not make any sense, the poster tries to use the method he does not understand and this just becomes a farce. In a nutshell, he tries to find search terms that correlate highly with WoW *subs* using the known part of the WoW subs graph and then see how these search terms perform in the period for which we don't know WoW subs. In process he discovers that there're no good terms which correlate with WoW subs well across the entire WoW lifetime - absolutely unsurprising, because WoW lifetime is long, things people search for and even search patterns in general changed a lot. So, he decides to use separate search terms for each expansion - also fine. But after you establish that search term A correlates well with WoW subs in vanilla, and search term B correlates well with WoW subs in TBC, etc, what search term do you use to estimate WoW subs for Legion? We don't know what search terms correlate well with WoW subs in Legion, right? So, which ones you select? You cannot select anything. Your methodology is wrong, you decided to cut search terms into periods but this prevents you from estimating anything about the periods you have no data for, you defeated your end goal. So, what does the author do? Well, he selects a couple of terms out of the previous ones using one more technique with zero justifications and zero analysis of what he ends up measuring after he applies this selection (and no, if we start analyzing the technique, there really is no basis for using it at all, in fact, the best search terms for Legion are quite likely just outside of the previous terms and no fancy selection method is going to find them).

But, as I say, although the method is grossly misused and the entire post is just a gigantic mess with someone being just dangerous enough to mess with things but not really understanding what he does, since all numbers for WoW really point roughly the same way, the produced graph ends up reflecting the overall picture more or less correct. That's all that happened.

PS: For the record, the 1.7 mil estimate of subs in the West from the "API leak", whether it was a real leak or not, is likely pretty close to the truth. That's not all subs, because we also have China (and a little of other Asia, but that's very small), but 1.7 mil for the West is completely feasible and, yes, vibes with other data (and now it has likely gotten lower).