
It's not connected to subs. People brag so much how FF14 popularity exploded - now look at their shop. Companies in last 10 years just discovered that some players are willing to spend way more cash on game for digital stuff. Game director that would suggest not bringing new stuff to or - dear God - closing shop would get fired in 5 minutes.
Some companies were even more greedy and introduced player power stuff to shop (EA) or.. skip through boring quests in single player game (Ubisoft).
At this point I am starting to wonder whether Nightborne are a lost cause. It's clear that Blizzard thought they could get the essence of Nightborne down with just rigging the Nelf model slightly, and at this point I think we just need to accept what we get, since we are never going to see the proper version, at least not without at least 4-5 similarly sized cosmetic additions.
The world revamp dream will never die!

Well, I suppose it would be easy to say it is an overarching theme and would make sense. Markets are sort of bound by competition and mimicry. However, Blizzard did start putting focus on the cash shop after subscribers started to reduce, so that does cast doubt on the matter.
https://gyazo.com/63c2448656b36d91ffd481e1e3b16ac3
This is unironically so pathetic.
Correlation does not cause causation however. Blizzard could have introduced the in-game store because of revenue problems, but they could have just as easily introduced it since that is where the games industry was moving at the time.
WotLK was released around the time when AAA games really started becoming a thing, so it would make sense that WoW, being a preeminent example of that classification, would add systems that were becoming a mainstay in other games.
The world revamp dream will never die!


Someone trolled this into existence a week a ago....
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...hanged/1077280


Well, that is true enough. However, when WotLK was released, we didn't quite see the full descent that has become mainstream now. Still, you are right--correlation and causation shouldn't be confused. In fact, it is also possible that correlation did exist, but simply went the other way--the presence of better triple-A alternatives could've contributed to the initial decline.

Admittedly, I'm not too concerned about the changes, even if they are somewhat half-assed ways of covering up the horrendous acts perpetuated in Blizzard, but I find the fact that any Troll can label something an issue to be pretty concerning about just how far Blizzard is willing to sacrifice autonomy.

This isn't really a serious issue. It's mostly just a rather piteous kowtow by a company that's trying to compensate hard in as minimal a way as possible.
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The new Stormwind stormy sky is pretty good. It looks relatively realistic given the usual standards Blizzard has for painted skies.