Is It Possible That Blizzard Will Consolidate Their Talent Behind WoW?

[Lahis]

There's been no discernable drop according to the latest quarterly. Anyone claiming that there has been one, is citing feels. At least wait for the next one which will include the lawsuit period.

The fuck? Blizzard MAUs are the lowest since 2016, before Overwatch and when WoW was in WoD end of expansion content drought.

Mythic+ participation is down to late patch 7.3 levels. PvP participation has dropped 60% since Season 1. 50% of guilds who killed Denathrius didn't return to kill Tarraque.

Numbers have fallen off a cliff on all forms of content.

[Bonkbonk100]

you people are so funny. The Game still has 2-4million Subs. Zero Chance its on its Way out. All it need is some fresh Air and we will see if they can deliver that with the next Expansion

Lol

10lols

[Sodia]

New hires generally have no idea what's going on, let alone where to go from here. New hires have no clue how to balance ambition with possibility. Veterans are not people who always catch lightning in a bottle every time they touch a product, they're people used to the rigors of working.

New hire system designs have always been terrible, as they're usually going to lack foresight.

They did drop millions in stock value, though. Capitalism reflected the happenings at the company. Not sure why anyone would think it's a 'magical' outcome.

Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 won't be out for a very, very, very, very long time. Like, even before this, they're in the scope of YEARS away.

yes, pfff because new people that you hire obviously did not play the game before right ?? Only the "old" guard could do that pfff Obviously !! Young lads this day ... Right ...

[Nerovar]

yes, pfff because new people that you hire obviously did not play the game before right ?? Only the "old" guard could do that pfff Obviously !! Young lads this day ... Right ...

I mean, it's very unlikely they played throughout all the expansions or even just the most praised ones. Not saying they can't come up with good ideas but the experience is clearly different from someone who's played the game since day one.

[sam86]

1- all blizz games are bleeding, nothing seems good, the fact u think so of D4 is puzzling, OW2 has its main cast left (one even in the lawsuit), only one 'good' is sc2 because it also is very low game (not dead but far from big game)
2- nothing ever Bobby Kodick did show he has he even like video games, he hates them with passion, and since he is leaving his position this or next year, doubt he will try to do anything, his long history shows he would actually like to fuck video games before leaving, he is spiteful
3- the 'new' writing team is purely woke anti-white males team, and Danuser is still in lead with no intention of change him, and they hiring their relatives, what exactly here show they are trying to improve anything? because they will focus on 'diversity'? usa is ~80% white, is being white now a crime in usa? (i'm brown/black from egypt so i really gain nothing defending anyone in usa, white male or not)
4- they still cash shop and token, zero effort to stop boost sales, again why u think they will try to fix/improve wow?
lastly i have zero hope in 2020 blizz to try fix anything at all, i do have hope for 2021 after entire lawsuit scenario ends, but if lawsuit continues to 2021 blizz will still focus on just PR stunts and damage control instead of actually care for games

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yes, pfff because new people that you hire obviously did not play the game before right ?? Only the "old" guard could do that pfff Obviously !! Young lads this day ... Right ...

for writing team the new hire is relatives and anti-white males woke feminazis, so actually he is right in that regard for lore
if anyone thinks lore is bad, it will get way worse soon
also blizz since a while never shown interest in recruit fans to work on wow, just random ppl we thought based on talent, only to be exposed they are relatives to higher ups and based on woke agenda

[Vorkreist]

Maybe they should pause on classic for a bit and focus on retail. It seems like ever since they started working on Vanilla classic wow retail content has been getting worse.

You mean those 3 guys copy pasting the old code ? For sure that is the issue instead of those inept excuses for devs in the retail team.
Ion is trying really hard to create fun systems but the very idea of those 3 guys working on classic is just crippling his ability.

[Baza]

I don't think it's controversial to say that WoW is the game that's bleeding the most out of their repertoire right now. D4 still seems to be in fairly good hands despite recently losing its Game Director, and stuff like D2: Resurrected is trucking along nicely. I'm not following Overwatch 2 much but apparently it's taken a turn for the better recently, as well.

It's not controversial, but also not true

Diablo 4 lost its game director and a senior designer, it's not that big of a blow to the game, but the quality and the release date of D4 is still very much in question. D2R looks good, but still, its just a remaster.

Overwatch lost Kaplan, and it appears that OW2 will be delayed. So I wouldn't call that a good state.

WoW player numbers are much lower than at the start of Shadowlands, that's true. But still it looks as the biggest IP of Blizzard. And you may recall the big number of new positions for WoW posted a couple of weeks ago, hopefully that means will will get better and more frequent content updates in the future, we'll see about that. But I don't think that there will be a big change with the next expansion with Ion at the helm, he is very stubborn, I don't think he's willing to let go of the systems upon systems design, and making us to play the game the way he wants, and not the players want.

[Boricha]

Honestly, the idea of moving old wow devs back to wow doesn't interest me much. I'd like to see new writers and system devs, a larger QA team, and have Ion step down from director to work on encounter design again. I hope the new co-leads of Blizz hold the wow team more accountable for quality.

[Azadina]

Going off the roles they posted hiring ads for recently, I think it's a clear indicator they're doing a serious reallocation of resources into WoW to step up production, at least quantity if not quality (YMMV). Note that this doesn't necessarily just mean shoveling more budget onto the teams; I expect this will mostly involve shifts among the teams to figure out how to beat the Peter Principle and getting people in who actually work instead of just get blitzed and grope their coworkers all day while HR buries the cases and retaliates against reporting employees.

If the reports are accurate and we're seeing even a significant minority of the employees fucking off, getting rid of them and replacing them with people doing their jobs will logically lead to at least a ramp up in production output, again with quality a factor for other discussions. Among other things, I expect 10.0 to feature a large scale class design overhaul comparable to Legion, given the number of class design developers they're looking for. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of 10.0 was a 'back to basics' expansion as systems go and the team focuses efforts on their core systems and gameplay loops before layering the new seasonal power systems atop them.

Let's not forget what happened last time when they were "reallocating", and even proudly blasting about increasing wow team by 40% with titan scraps.

What immediately followed was very prolonged SoO patch; followed by expansion with half it's content cut.

[Geckoo]

you people are so funny. The Game still has 2-4million Subs. Zero Chance its on its Way out. All it need is some fresh Air and we will see if they can deliver that with the next Expansion

We are talking about a 15+ year old game. It has been declining for some years and is only natural that it keeps doing so. That does not mean that it's not a profitable product or that they'll suddenly shut down the servers or stop releasing content, it still has some more years left of expansions and even more years existing as a service, but i doubt that they are willing to make any important investment in the game in such a way that can produce something innovative or fresh. Actually, i believe that it would be wiser to make that possible investment in something that is actually new, innovative and fresh without being tied and limited by 15+ years old systems.

[Cthulhu 2020]

From the perspective of the suits, they probably think that WoW is on the way out and that there is no point pouring more money into it (hence why Shadowlands didn't get a huge marketing campaign like the prior 3 expansions). More than likely they will switch to mobile games and trying to milk the Warcraft IP as much as possible before it is completely exhausted of customer goodwill.

I personally think Ion and Danuser should be thrown off of WoW (Ion can still design raids though) and the game should be redesigned to cater to casuals again, but that's not going to happen.

This is my take. The bigwigs on the board of directors probably see WoW not just as a game in decline, but as a liability. It's going to be receiving less and less funding as time goes on, and as the team shrinks they won't be rehiring new people to replace them. This is known as managed decline. I'm also certain that they're going to turn the WoW IP into other avenues just to milk the nostalgia Andies for their money. The moment I see a warcraft mobile game is the moment WoW is dead to me. And the sad part is it's not a question of if but when.

[lockybalboa]

Are there even any talent left in the first place? The original team personnel who made the game great have all left for greener pastures and all that remains are braindead people like Ion who are destroying the game bit by bit

[Swnem]

Bard has been terrible since Shadowbringers release and I know you probably don't do any Savage at all considering you listed fucking LORD OF VERMINION of all things as "content" but the game is terribly balanced, and they constantly gut classes (Rip AST)

I guess we'll agree to disagree, also I never said I wanted any convents or shit, but some kind of class differential would be amazing, all the melee classes minus Ninja pretty much just rotate 1-3/4 and use oGCDs, fill a bar, and then use it, it's boring and uninspired, imagine if I could DPS as a Paladin, or tank as a Ninja, the game is already homogenized so I don't understand how adding any kind of RPG elements to make yourself unique is bad but I guess this is a different crowd than Classic Andys and you just want meaningless mini-games for casual play

I never thought I'd see someone unironically simping for Eureka or FFXIV's PVP but you must be either new or a shill because god damn

For me I like having reasons to do things, Alliance raids aren't fun past the first clear, it's just pointless grinding if you have gear and things like TGC make me suffer for how bad the community is at doing basic raid fights, spamming roulettes and PoTD/HoH to level jobs isn't fun either, I'd rather quest but hey, leveling was an after thought, can you believe they used to make you spam fates to level? Thank god they don't ban botters lmao

That being said, you pretty much affirm what I was talking about, the game is great if you're a casual player, if you like to have meaningful PVE, it just aint it

The biggest example I can mention is, we don't list Pet Battles, LFR, and spamming LFD to level as content in WoW, but you mention it as content for FFXIV

Bard brings tons of raid utility. That is why. It should result in a similar net dps.

Astrologian top healer on Eden promise https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/38#class=Healers

So, yes, we will disagree on that.

I mean, you just described every class on every mmo. But, it's also not true. You claim to raid savage, but seem to not be familiar with the rotations. Ninja rotation changes depends on which ninjustsu or cooldown you have up, changing up the rotation. You definition of boring and uninspiring is your own and not fact of any order.
Adding slot machines is NOT adding "rpg elements". Because lets, be honest that is what those systems add. I do not put their possibility aside, but it is very easy to mess it up and end up with a frustrating system.

Lord of vermillion is evergreen content. Everygreen content is end-game content. I know you have this WoW centric view that end-game is just the power grind, but that is not how FF works.

Yet, they are. There are pet battle dungeons and tournaments. There is a pvp mode for it too.

[Saintlel]

Bard brings tons of raid utility. That is why. It should result in a similar net dps.

Astrologian top healer on Eden promise https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/38#class=Healers

So, yes, we will disagree on that.

I mean, you just described every class on every mmo. But, it's also not true. You claim to raid savage, but seem to not be familiar with the rotations. Ninja rotation changes depends on which ninjustsu or cooldown you have up, changing up the rotation. You definition of boring and uninspiring is your own and not fact of any order.
Adding slot machines is NOT adding "rpg elements". Because lets, be honest that is what those systems add. I do not put their possibility aside, but it is very easy to mess it up and end up with a frustrating system.

Lord of vermillion is evergreen content. Everygreen content is end-game content. I know you have this WoW centric view that end-game is just the power grind, but that is not how FF works.

Yet, they are. There are pet battle dungeons and tournaments. There is a pvp mode for it too.

Bard brings significantly lower rDPS than Dancer, and pulls lower numbers accounting for "utility", outside of Ultimates, there is literally no reason to bring a Bard over DNC

AST was gutted not in terms of viability but playstyle, they completely obliterated the playstyle and homogenized it while leading it into the same problem SCH used to have with having to wait on Aetherflow CD, this time it's Draw

In terms of the Ninja rotation, it doesn't change based on what Ninjutsu you use, what the fuck lol, you have trick windows and outside of that you just do the same closed loop rotation, do you mean Kassatsu? the thing you align with Trick? I'm assuming you're the one that has no idea what they're talking about

I don't give a shit about it being whatever buzzword you've learned in a Youtube video, I've played the game for a long time, I've never met anyone who played or cared about LoM, it's a meme within the community and it'd be like calling Garrison Mission Table content because it's always there, it's an unsupported mini-game that they threw into the Gold Saucer to make up for the content drought in HW because Ninja burnt them out in 2.4

[Swnem]

Bard brings significantly lower rDPS than Dancer, and pulls lower numbers accounting for "utility", outside of Ultimates, there is literally no reason to bring a Bard over DNC

AST was gutted not in terms of viability but playstyle, they completely obliterated the playstyle and homogenized it while leading it into the same problem SCH used to have with having to wait on Aetherflow CD, this time it's Draw

In terms of the Ninja rotation, it doesn't change based on what Ninjutsu you use, what the fuck lol, you have trick windows and outside of that you just do the same closed loop rotation, do you mean Kassatsu? the thing you align with Trick? I'm assuming you're the one that has no idea what they're talking about

I don't give a shit about it being whatever buzzword you've learned in a Youtube video, I've played the game for a long time, I've never met anyone who played or cared about LoM, it's a meme within the community and it'd be like calling Garrison Mission Table content because it's always there, it's an unsupported mini-game that they threw into the Gold Saucer to make up for the content drought in HW because Ninja burnt them out in 2.4

I very much doubt the difference is that significant. If you want to be cutting edge, then that is a you problem. Bards are perfectly viable.

So, it's your opinion.

You use different ninjutsu. That is what i said. You can't read for your the health of you. Maybe if you weren't such a hot head over small issues that wouldn't happen.

Yeah, nothing wrong with mission table. People do that too. Verminion takes more time though and as everything in the gold saucer rewards mgp. It's a preferance which activities you wanna do.
The meme here is your misplaced anger. Have it your way. I don't care either. See if it helps you any.

[Kumorii]

In case you wondered where all the talent went:

https://www.dreamhaven.com/about

No reason to hype them up until they put something out there tbh... only sets you up for disappointment.
People said the same about Torchlight, although good, isn't exactly praised as blizzard ones were. Hellgate: London was a flop etc etc...

I think it's harder for these "old" Blizzard people to create new IP's when they have worked with the same IP's for such a long time. Lots of stuff you get for free from previous works when doing the same IP over and over again.

Even though I'm excited, I don't think it's safe to assume it's gonna be good.

[Nerovar]

Going off the roles they posted hiring ads for recently, I think it's a clear indicator they're doing a serious reallocation of resources into WoW to step up production, at least quantity if not quality (YMMV). Note that this doesn't necessarily just mean shoveling more budget onto the teams; I expect this will mostly involve shifts among the teams to figure out how to beat the Peter Principle and getting people in who actually work instead of just get blitzed and grope their coworkers all day while HR buries the cases and retaliates against reporting employees.

If the reports are accurate and we're seeing even a significant minority of the employees fucking off, getting rid of them and replacing them with people doing their jobs will logically lead to at least a ramp up in production output, again with quality a factor for other discussions. Among other things, I expect 10.0 to feature a large scale class design overhaul comparable to Legion, given the number of class design developers they're looking for. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of 10.0 was a 'back to basics' expansion as systems go and the team focuses efforts on their core systems and gameplay loops before layering the new seasonal power systems atop them.

This is probably the one immediate change that could bring me back to the game if done properly. To me the Legion class "reworks" were even worse than all the World of Diablocraft systems they tacked on in Legion and the following epxacs. It's the single biggest thing that sucked the fun out of the game for me.

Realistically, I don't see it happening though.

[Kralljin]

This is my take. The bigwigs on the board of directors probably see WoW not just as a game in decline, but as a liability. It's going to be receiving less and less funding as time goes on, and as the team shrinks they won't be rehiring new people to replace them.

I think that will only happen if any attempt at salvaging the game fails.

Right now, Blizzard is not in a position to just "let WoW die", even over the span of a few years, the company has virtually nothing going for it right now other than Hearthstone (which also hasn't much recording breaking news to report lately) and WoW.

Diablo 4 is years off and OW2 can be considered "in development hell" right now with the game not shipping until 2023, with the success also being a bit more questionable due to the nebelous scope of the project (or more specifically, its success in revitalizing Overwatch).
Even on the mobile front, Diablo Immortal will come out some time in 2022, that's at least 4 years of development on a freaking mobile title, unless Blizzard releases a barrage of mobile titles in the next year(s), that section will also not flourish in the near future.

The only time WoW's "life" will be threatened by the board is when they have alternatives to pump their resources in, heck, i think it's more likely that unless Blizzard really fixes their production pipeline, they just get downsized and produce nothing but WoW, HS and possibly Diablo - those "Incubation chambers" have jackshit to show for anyway and existed for like 6-8 years by now.

As said above, the board will either clean house on WoW's development team / hand the reins to another team or give the current team a second chance, but they're not just going to let WoW die under the current circumstances because Blizzard has nothing to replace WoW as their main title.

[Soon-TM]

@Niwes while I agree that WoW is still Blizzard's biggest moneymaker, it does feel like it is a badly maintained machine, with the motor panting and at times refusing to start, and cracks showing everywhere in the machine's surface.

If the machine is to continue working, then it really needs a complete refurbishment, i.e. $$$ and competent people. Will ATVI be willing to throw either at a game that has almost reached the age majority?

[Sin of Pride]

I think they will move onto another mmo before massively investing in wow again business doesn't really like banking on something becoming fashionable again. To be utterly blunt though I think blizzard is just the dinosaur of mmo's looking for its place to die.

They have held spite towards their playerbase for so long I legitimitty don't think they are able to change. Just look at how they have taken player feedback over the years...

We like artifact appearances but dislike artifact power and talents they feel grindy. They then remove the appearance part of the system and make it grinder in bfa. Players love mage tower...they never do mage tower again.

There are countless examples of their community continuously warning them of mistakes they are making but they either don't care or are so stupid and arrogant they push ahead regardless. Covenants are another example where the high end playerbase warned them it would be a unfixable cluster fuck but they refused to listen.

Blizzard seems to be confused about what a company is... it feels like they expect the customer to serve their needs rather then serving the customers needs and now they are flabbergasted FF14 is demolishing them and are scared shitless about endbringers launch and are comically releasing racial cosmetics and island queues in a lame 9.15 patch in a desperate attempt to stave off a mortal blow.