To all the Bellulars, Asmogolds, Preaches, QoL'ers and Fans that want to Design WOW.

[Relapses]

You forgot, you can only buy 20 tokens a week, so it's not 23 days, it's actually 3.3 days straight every week for 7 weeks!

lmfao, I didn't even know that limitation existed.

[Empower]

You forgot, you can only buy 20 tokens a week, so it's not 23 days, it's actually 3.3 days straight every week for 7 weeks!

I thought it was a month? I know I hit it mass buying them at 20k in wod before it was added.

[Stickiler]

I thought it was a month? I know I hit it mass buying them at 20k in wod before it was added.

I got my information from this article -> https://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/12930
It says you can only buy 20 per week, it doesn't mention anything beyond that.

[Lolites]

Also, you can literally not figuratively go SERVER BY SERVER and add up the playerbase anytime you want day or night and have been able to do so for ages.

holy shit, that must be the most inacurate method to count subs ever... it will give you player count FOR THAT TIME, not subs ffs...
its like going to shop every day to see how many people are there and each day there is 10 people so you "know for a fact" its only 10 people going there, but in reality it was 10 different people every day...

EDIT: from another comment i understood you meant on some third side website (what an accurate source) rather than literaly on realms, thats slightly better, still terrible sourse for your guesswork...

its kinda hard to believe in accuracy of the website when they character count is based on following:
"* Population - amount of unique players that meet any of the two conditions:
- has a level 60 character and killed something in Ny'alotha Heroic Mode
- has a level 60 character in a guild that killed something in Ny'alotha Heroic Mode"

[Aphrel]

"Players are excellent at identifying problems but not how to solve them".

Although, with the extremely rudimentary problems blizzard are creating id say even the average fans solution is better than what we currently have.

[VinceVega]

Be careful what you wish for.


You're basically Homer in this episode.

I don't think they say they are. Actually (at least bellular and preach) SAY they cannot design the game for blizz just tell them what could be done and what players expect. ( and yes they even say what they say is not what EVERY player wants )
Bellular is actually a game dev. No idea if it is any good as it is still not out. But he at least has some merrit.

Asmongold just plays his fans like a fiddle. He tells them what they want to hear. And puts a bit outrage on top. I don't like him but i respect what he is doing with his fanbase.

Also why attack the people trying to tell blizz to do better if it is obvious that blizz is failing hard right now with their game?
They even removed the aoe cap for most abilities now. Way to late as always. SL is dead. Maybe next expansion

[Lolites]

It's just overall numbers, including trials, don't get what you see here.

i mena, why people who left after trial shouldnt count into player retention?
as of Dec 2013 (per the link) 100m tried the game , less than 13m was ever the peak of active playercount, so roughly 87% of people who tried the game left in that "amazing" period

- - - Updated - - -

I suggest to go outside for a moment.

i assume from his comments he cant, not without his caretaker, as the room is locked from outside

[Orwell7]

To everyone who thinks "yeah game sucks subs are low BUT HAHA THOSE GAME DEVS HAVE EXPERIENCE SO SHUT UP",
may I ask, how can you peek into alternative realities where Blizzard listened to feedback AND the game sucked even more?

If you cannot provide this evidence then you have no idea what you are talking about, plain and simple.

[Cosmic Janitor]

"Players are excellent at identifying problems but not how to solve them".

Although, with the extremely rudimentary problems blizzard are creating id say even the average fans solution is better than what we currently have.

I also find that a rather appalling generalization, given how especially nerd/gaming culture is home to many people who indeed attained higher education and there is bound to be many people who have at least learned some basic systems engineering knowledge. Heck, I'd go as far as saying that there is a significantly higher proportion of people with IT training among nerds/gamers. That in turn makes that statment even more egregious, as the laughably obvious flaws in Blizzard's design can be spotted by pretty much anyone who can do basic extrapolation.

Frankly I hope many of the apologists here at least got their gold in Tokio over the last week, because their mental gymanstics are certainly on an olympic level.

[Lolites]

Tokens supplement any subs that are being lost in that equation. Actual subscriptions aren't 'growing', they always trend downwards after initial launch of an expansion. Tokens soften that blow considerably by having a system that incentivizes token sales when subs start to dip.

well, when sub numbers take a dive so does token sales, as there is less people to sell and buy them...

[Stabbyfists]

Ok I know the op is probably trolling by acting like a blizzard apologist here but here is my two cents on the whole thing.

Blizzard has a long and storied history of thinking they know better than the people who pay for, and play the game and it biting them in the ass. They shit on a plate and just cover it with sprinkles before serving it to you hoping you will be too enamored by the sprinkles to notice the smelly piece of shit underneath.

A big example of this was with the Burning Crusade classic servers and the Dark Portal Pass. Everyone and their grandmother was screaming to the heavens that this feature, which was dressed up in the sprinkles of "It'll let your friends join in right away if they wanted" was hiding the rancid shit underneath that it would make Classic's already abhorrent botting problem even worse.

In BFA they took away the Tier gear and squeezed out the shit that was Azerite armor, and we all who tested the Alpha / Beta was telling them that the issue with tying the Armor Skills to the Necklace was going to be a major issue down the line, but nope, they covered it in sprinkles and tried to pass it off as "Hey, instead of a Tier Set, how about 3 pieces of armor that act like 3 Tier set bonuses!". I legit quit the game after Mythic Uldir progression because I got a piece of armor off Mythrax but couldn't use it because my neck wasn't high enough because I didn't spend 15+ hours a day doing islands over and over and over.

We had hoped that Shadowlands would be different because they promised... THEY FUCKING PROMISED US, that no new systems would be added aside from Tier Gear. Well, that was a lie. They took a shit on the plate and covered it in sprinkles once more and served us Domination gear. It sounded cool on paper. This raid / Daily / Torghast set that would make you more powerful in the maw / Torghast / Raid? Well, under those sprinkles was the puke inducing turd that was "You gotta get the right pieces" "You need 3 gems of the same type". They somehow sucked the magic out of what SHOULD have felt like Tier sets. Had it just been pieces of gear with special effects that increased the more of them you got, or the more powerful they were (4 levels, RF, Norm, Hero, Myth) it would have been fine, but it was this convoluted system of bullshit.

[Aphrel]

I also find that a rather appalling generalization, given how especially nerd/gaming culture is home to many people who indeed attained higher education and there is bound to be many people who have at least learned some basic systems engineering knowledge. Heck, I'd go as far as saying that there is a significantly higher proportion of people with IT training among nerds/gamers. That in turn makes that statment even more egregious, as the laughably obvious flaws in Blizzard's design can be spotted by pretty much anyone who can do basic extrapolation.

Frankly I hope many of the apologists here at least got their gold in Tokio over the last week, because their mental gymanstics are certainly on an olympic level.

yeah, heard it in a pretty interesting talk from a game dev.



I wont say i agreed to all his "lessons", some felt a little cynical and some a little naive, but it was a very interesting talk to get a different perspective.

[Very Tired]

Assuming Blizzard knows best in all things game design is a mindless appeal to authority fallacy. Not to mention Blizzard's motives for game design aim to maximize revenue, not always to make the game better. I know right? In a perfect world those two things would go together hand in hand, but not anymore.

[Cracked]

Spot on...
And the funny/sad part is, that at Blizz they are looking for new design and similar jobs non stop, but not one of them sent their resume to Blizz... Or maybe they did and were rejected because, "NO GAME DESIGN EXPERIENCE".

Yet, people listen to this sheep dogs like they are all mighty lords of game design...

Plenty of great games were designed by people with no design experience. In fact, most of the wow team had no prior game design experience before vanilla. Is it luck? Maybe, but a company like blizzard should know to take chances on newcomer insight, often referred to as luck. You hear about Google research all the time, but what you don't realize is that for each great research outcome, there was a hundred failed ventures by others at the company. But I guess running a skeleton crew of designers and "trusting they know what they are doing" is so much better, huh.

[Spicymemer]

If i were to redesign the game, i would take it straight back to wotlk/cata design philosophy with a bit of tbc sprinkled in.
It would be an amazing return to form for WoW.
I would do it for 100k a year.

[Vilendor]

Many of the german soldiers kept fighting even after H. shot himself in the head

People never change...

[crusadernero]

Ok I know the op is probably trolling by acting like a blizzard apologist here but here is my two cents on the whole thing.

Blizzard has a long and storied history of thinking they know better than the people who pay for, and play the game and it biting them in the ass. They shit on a plate and just cover it with sprinkles before serving it to you hoping you will be too enamored by the sprinkles to notice the smelly piece of shit underneath.

A big example of this was with the Burning Crusade classic servers and the Dark Portal Pass. Everyone and their grandmother was screaming to the heavens that this feature, which was dressed up in the sprinkles of "It'll let your friends join in right away if they wanted" was hiding the rancid shit underneath that it would make Classic's already abhorrent botting problem even worse.

In BFA they took away the Tier gear and squeezed out the shit that was Azerite armor, and we all who tested the Alpha / Beta was telling them that the issue with tying the Armor Skills to the Necklace was going to be a major issue down the line, but nope, they covered it in sprinkles and tried to pass it off as "Hey, instead of a Tier Set, how about 3 pieces of armor that act like 3 Tier set bonuses!". I legit quit the game after Mythic Uldir progression because I got a piece of armor off Mythrax but couldn't use it because my neck wasn't high enough because I didn't spend 15+ hours a day doing islands over and over and over.

We had hoped that Shadowlands would be different because they promised... THEY FUCKING PROMISED US, that no new systems would be added aside from Tier Gear. Well, that was a lie. They took a shit on the plate and covered it in sprinkles once more and served us Domination gear. It sounded cool on paper. This raid / Daily / Torghast set that would make you more powerful in the maw / Torghast / Raid? Well, under those sprinkles was the puke inducing turd that was "You gotta get the right pieces" "You need 3 gems of the same type". They somehow sucked the magic out of what SHOULD have felt like Tier sets. Had it just been pieces of gear with special effects that increased the more of them you got, or the more powerful they were (4 levels, RF, Norm, Hero, Myth) it would have been fine, but it was this convoluted system of bullshit.

I can understand why Blizzard came up with these ideas, systems & borrowed powers. Like them, I think many players also felt it was time to "shake things up" a bit since the game was becoming stale. They cant just do the same thing year after year.

With that said - I think Blizzard has been far to stubborn on alot of things. They should have been way more lenient and reacted way faster to alot of things, all of those you mentioned. I cant fathom how a big company like Blizzard can be so slow and stubborn. I mean, they obviously can patch things and fix most of it. But instead of doing it quickly, they just wait for the next big patch leaving the players in a rot.

I hope that what they are doing in 9.1.5 is a sign of them listening, but im not so sure. The trend over the years proves otherwise.

[Soikona]

Majority of these I wanted but I don’t care or even know of any twitch or YouTube screechers. Does that make me a sheep?

[Dracullus]

To everyone who thinks "yeah game sucks subs are low BUT HAHA THOSE GAME DEVS HAVE EXPERIENCE SO SHUT UP",
may I ask, how can you peek into alternative realities where Blizzard listened to feedback AND the game sucked even more?

If you cannot provide this evidence then you have no idea what you are talking about, plain and simple.

Alternative universe? This is our universe, Blizzard removed stuff to do outside raids and titanforging, so casuals had no progression left early during 9.0. But people like Asmon don't have guts to say "I was wrong about X". Instead they double down on stupid ideas that would drove even more casuals away (removing LFR, return of master loot).

[Frolk]

Be careful what you wish for.


You're basically Homer in this episode.

Im not Michelin star chef, but i KNOW when the steak im served is raw or charred beyond being called edible.