Y'all need to stop blaming Activision for everything.

[Thetruth1400]

In WotLK, the subs started to stagnate and even drop in the fist time ever.

WotLK was fine. It stagnated and dropped (temporarily) because of a year long content drought, but that recovered when they launched Cata.

Cata was where we say the beginning of the decline as the game changed, moving into what could easily be described as WoW 2.0 style of design. Cata also would have been the first expansion where Activision could have had any say in it, as although they merged during WotLK era, expansion stories are worked on years ahead of time.

Since then, the quality and decisions have gone downhill, with minor peaks (MoP) and great valleys (WoD) of the quality. Legion was a new mediocre point, but everyone needs to remember, even Legion started off rough and had some patches people hated (time gated island anyone?).

Now I'm not saying Activision is to blame, but it is at least highly coincidental in the least that once they merged, Blizzard games took a turn in the direction of pleasing the stockholders, not the consumers, and that the game has, for the most part, suffered as a result.

[valky94]

You're telling me shareholders are so retarded that they don't understand the natural product life cycle?

bingo, they majority of shareholders are boomers who see games as another moneymaking product, they dont care about the games themselves, if it starts to not make them money or will make less money than the previous quarter they will preasure the devs

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+ They pull out from BN newer CoD games.

why have the game on steam and pay valve 25% of sales, when you can have it on bnet for free

[Dhrizzle]

WotLK was fine. It stagnated and dropped (temporarily) because of a year long content drought, but that recovered when they launched Cata.

Cata was where we say the beginning of the decline as the game changed, moving into what could easily be described as WoW 2.0 style of design. Cata also would have been the first expansion where Activision could have had any say in it, as although they merged during WotLK era, expansion stories are worked on years ahead of time.

Since then, the quality and decisions have gone downhill, with minor peaks (MoP) and great valleys (WoD) of the quality. Legion was a new mediocre point, but everyone needs to remember, even Legion started off rough and had some patches people hated (time gated island anyone?).

Now I'm not saying Activision is to blame, but it is at least highly coincidental in the least that once they merged, Blizzard games took a turn in the direction of pleasing the stockholders, not the consumers, and that the game has, for the most part, suffered as a result.

WoW 2.0 was WotLK. That's when they had the idea that dungeons and world content should be practically unlosable, content should be suitable for small "lunch-break" sessions and mindless eternal grinds properly kicked in (dungeon badges, though present in TBC, really kicked in with this game.)

It's probably worth noting that initially during the merger Vivendi kept them basically separate, Activision probably had no more influence on Blizzard than Sierra Software did.

[Liarparadox]

The fact is that many people are in denial about Blizzard's corporate culture. Blizzard is perfectly capable of knowing how to monetize their titles and are happy to do so without Activision standing over them. I suppose some of that is nostalgia from a time when Blizzard was perceived as being more customer-friendly than they are now but that was how game developers did things then. Then is not now. You should comfortably assume that Blizzard's business practices are their own. They didn't get to where they are now with respect to business and profitability by being morons. They understand perfectly well just about how far they can push their customers.

Blaming Activision is just a sad substitute for the reality of multi-billion dollar corporations. You can enjoy their games or not but the notion that things are the way they are due to some insidious influence from Activision/Bobby Kotick/whatever is just to put on blinders. Blizzard knows perfectly well how to separate you from your money and is happy to do so without being told to do anything.

It's unreal how many people don't get this.

Couldn't agree more and been saying this about several develop/publisher relationships. Activision and Blizzard love when people shit on Activision. In doing so, they give Blizz a pass. And see them as victims of a sort (big bad EA/Activision/Microsoft...) and still buy their games.

[tylenol]

Lets take a couple areas that has been in the game for like 10 years and throw purple at it and add a bunch of blue question marks and mobs, yeah, lets do the same for the 2 cities that have been in the game for as long (redesign)

CONTENT from a multi billion dollar game company

[Bisso]

First of all, it is even ignorant to state "Activision" as a single entity. Activision and Blizzard merged, so it is Activision Blizzard. One company, but different development teams and different games that get all of the profits as a single Business.

Blizzard was always in a partnership with bigger companies in the past, Vivendi. I don't know the exact contracts, but it mostly works that if Blizzard makes money from their games, then the bigger company will leave them alone, but if they have major losses, then it is up to the bigger company to take lead and figure out on how to move forward.

There were major f*** ups at Blizzard (Development team)overall.

Let's talk about World Of Warcraft. When Activision Merged with Blizzard, it was at the start of WOTLK, which had the highest Sub numbers 11.9mil+
after that over the years this declined and it is not a loss for you as a player, because you don't care, but it is a major loss for a Business.

from 12 mil to 2mil (being generous here) is a major loss.
You may argue 'oh, but 2 mill is still big', well no, for a shareholder when he invested, he wanted the subs to grow not to decline.


Overwatch was a success and still is.

Diablo 3 had great profits at the start, but due to bugs, bad decision making, lying (no pvp) made longevity of the game to bad levels.


Hero of the storm was pretty much a f** up, everybody knows this.


Hearthstone was and is still a success.


So overall, World of Warcraft, D3 and HoTs needed major changes, hence the firing of 800 employees, cutting content, not releasing nothing for other games like d3 etc.


In conclusion, I blame the Blizzard Dev Team for their f**k ups and I blame ex-wow, diablo players for un-subbing and letting Blizzard games to go on a decline mode.

So no, Activision did not happen.

Overwatch wasn't and isn't a success. It's a shit show, people inside and outside Blizz knows this.

Diablo 3 came with a Real money auction house. Something that nearly killed the game until the devs reworked the whole game around removing it.

Hearthstone is popular because it was a free to play game, but we hear stories from journalists that it's not making much money anymore.

Activision doesn't develop games anymore. They have multiple studios that do, they publish titles. And they decide who makes what. That's how they always worked since Activision-Blizzard became this giant entity. It kills studios left and right, creates terrible working conditions in pretty much every studios they own. Just read the various article about it. Devs are coming out left and right to point those problems. They've done so for years. Why would you not believe them?

It simply is not about "it feels like it's activision fault" or not. We have reports, interviews, witnesses of how thing actually do happen from the inside. We've known for years now that it's not a myth or a scapegoat. It's real. Stop defending Activision-Blizzard for no reason.

Look at Destiny 2. Same story, shit game, weird cash shops, empty game, nothing to do but grind through time gated content. Bungie buys itself out of Activision, make a huge announcement basically saying that now that they are IN FULL CONTROL of their product development, they will change everything.