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

[Soon-TM]

Your friend is a uniquely special kind of special. A fool and their money are soon departed.

...but that isn't Blizzard's fault.

- - - Updated - - -



Do you even read my posts?

Yes, they all read basically like "Blizzard = good, criticism = bad, except if it's done the way I like it". And you would continue to do so if for some reason Asmon was to become game director (God forbid it), even if only because he'd be wearing a blue badge.

[Relapses]

I'll admit I used bad wording to say WoW tokens help them 'stay afloat' which makes it sound like they're dependant on them. Wrong choice of words.

But second point - what the fuck would the Token be there for if not to profit from whales? You know what a whale is right? It's not just *anyone why buys gold*. Whale means anyone who *puts a lot of money into the system*. RMT gold buyers aren't whales, because they're working outside of the system. Whale is a term that is specific to token buyers in this context. What the fuck do you think I'm talking about?

Your argument thus far is that because whales exist, Blizzard must have added the feature to the game to profit from them. I'm not denying the fact that whales exist. What I'm denying you is the completely improvable correlation you've made behind Blizzard's decision to add the token and the existence of whales.

[shadowmatrix]

Blizzards should take feedback and listen to what players want. Then give players what they actually need. They haven't been doing either for some time now.

The Blizzard developers are Homer and Uncle Herbert is the CEO/Shareholders in this video.

How many years did players ask to pay for their sub with gold? What happened when they introduced the token? And look at us now as we blame Blizzard for player behavior.

[Relapses]

Yes, they all read basically like "Blizzard = good, criticism = bad, except if it's done the way I like it". And you would continue to do so if for some reason Asmon was to become game director (God forbid it), even if only because he'd be wearing a blue badge.

You clearly don't read my posts because I've said that I don't agree with the design direction Blizzard has taken the game. My criticism is usually of the surface level 0 IQ circlejerking that happens, not of the reasons behind it.

[Rozz]

What games has Bellular developed?

... Wasn't Bellular supposed to put out a game but didn't, or did he?

It wouldn't make him qualified to speak on WoW one way or another, but I thought I've seen plenty call him a "game developer"...

Exactly. At the time he first said this he just started whatever team and didn't have a single game out. I'm not sure they ended up making anything, I unsubbed before I could hear more about it. It really rubbed me wrong, because at least 1) Have a competent game out in the same genre 2)have actual knowledge and/or experience in major studio development cycles, before you start mouthng off what the pro's should've done at an industry level.

It's fair to say the devs made a game that isn't fun to play. It's isn't fair to try and claim you know better as a professional when your work looks like a shitty free-to-play mobile game.

[KaPe]

I mean they do... That said I think people just use the api to track active characters and make a guesstimate of how many players there are.

These estimates can be extremely inaccurate or rely on some crazy assumptions. Like back in BFA, some fairly popular post was basing the supposed subs on popularity of Weak Auras addon... and I'm pretty sure the final count assumed that nearly half of the playerbase was using it. Something that's obviously ludicrous, since it's an extremely complex addon, far too complicated for 'normal' users - and half of the playerbase probably doesn't use addons at all, nevermind this specific one.

All in all, such guesswork is always inaccurate, with numbers swinging wildly depending on how much someone wants to prove that game is dead.

[draugril]

Nailed it.

[Kagthul]

I really hate to defend Blizzard but I will on this one.

If you don't like you wage then find another job.

Uhh.. yeah, thats the point.

Thats WHY people like Bellular wouldn't take a job at Blizzard.

Way to not even comprehend what was being said.

You aren't defending anything. You're making my point for me.

Blizzard pays for shit. Ergo, people like. Bellular wouldn't work there because they assuredly make quite a bit more doing what they are doing. He certainly clears more in a given year than Ion does.

[Luck4]

Be careful what you wish for.

You're basically Homer in this episode.

I mean we don't need to design anything, the was game well designed back in the day, and the people designing the recent expansions didn't design the old ones, and that's why the game sucks, because the new Devs are bad (just like the Homer in the video you posted) or greedy since the game is being designed to make you waste as much time as possible doing nearly every single activity.

The only team still doing a good job on WoW is the art team. Even the lore was completely ruined after Metzen left.

[Relapses]

Exactly. At the time he first said this he just started whatever team and didn't have a single game out. I'm not sure they ended up making anything, I unsubbed before I could hear more about it. It really rubbed me wrong, because at least 1) Have a competent game out in the same genre 2)have actual knowledge and/or experience in major studio development cycles, before you start mouthng off what the pro's should've done at an industry level.

It's fair to say the devs made a game that isn't fun to play. It's isn't fair to try and claim you know better as a professional when your work looks like a shitty free-to-play mobile game.

Bellular has always been pretty transparent about why he's on YouTube. Spoiler: It's money. In BfA, though, his videos were largely in defense of Blizzard. Sometime in 2019 he launched a sub-channel where he covered "industry news." This channel was by and large incredibly negative. When Bellular realized that negativity brings in clicks, suddenly his videos shifted from defending Blizzard to full on shitting on the company. The truly ironic thing is that you can actually use some of his BfA-era videos to criticize his more recent ones. The guy's a literal fucking meme. But, apparently, he's a rich one ... so there's that.

[Kagthul]

Yet none of the loud mouth streamers with all the ideas to save everything do nothing about it despite Blizzard hiring for game design and quest design for years now

Because they dont want to take a massive pay cut, move to a place with catastrophically high cost of living, and work in a super toxic corporate environment?

The average pay for Blizzard is well below industry standard, and almost all of these streamers make a great deal more than even industry standard for a developer.

And in some cases, they'd have to be able to move here from overseas, would have to WANT to move here from overseas (giving up healthcare, benefits, better pay, etc)...

Trust me, its not because they couldnt get hired at Blizzard. Its because they dont want to make less money to do more work and get abused in a toxic workplace.

[Femininity]

What's conspiratorial is implying that Blizzard added the token specifically to profit from whales. That's not why it was added and it's frankly bullshit to imply otherwise.

That's one of many specific reasons. I'd be surprised if it wasn't one of the fundamental motivating factors for its inclusion.

[Relapses]

That's one of many specific reasons. I'd be surprised if it wasn't one of the fundamental motivating factors for its inclusion.

...there's zero substantive proof of this other than "whales exist." Personally I don't find this to be a particularly compelling argument.

[Femininity]

...there's zero substantive proof of this other than "whales exist." Personally I don't find this to be a particularly compelling argument.

The fact that whales tend to drive a non-insignificant portion of the revenue behind monetization systems such as this is fairly well established.

[taliey]

The community is still the same after all these years. That sucks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohoLzH9EQzg

[Relapses]

The fact that whales tend to drive a non-insignificant portion of the revenue behind monetization systems such as this is fairly well established.

The purpose of the WoW token wasn't necessarily monetization, though. It was something players had asked for for a pretty long time. Yeah, Blizzard does profit from it -- but I find it a particularly egregious leap in logic to infer that simply because whales are a thing that Blizzard was rubbing their hands together thinking about all the ridiculous profit they'd make from people with more personal capital than common sense.

[Femininity]

The purpose of the WoW token wasn't necessarily monetization, though. It was something players had asked for for a pretty long time. Yeah, Blizzard does profit from it -- but I find it a particularly egregious leap in logic to infer that simply because whales are a thing that Blizzard was rubbing their hands together thinking about all the ridiculous profit they'd make from people with more personal capital than common sense.

Seems a bizarre characterization, both of a business not being motivated by profit and of the customer who stands to engage with (read: buy into) the model being inept or irresponsible with their own capital.

Egregious leap indeed.

Let me save you some time: every design decision they make, every system under development, everything currently implemented is, without any reasonable doubt, motivated by profitability. We can agree to disagree; I don't intend to take this conversation any further.

[exochaft]

As someone already mentioned, there's a huge push for 'appeal to authority' when it comes to these topics... although considering everything that's going on the real world right now, one shouldn't expect much difference when it comes to WoW.

To keep it as simple as possible, everyone (Blizz employees included) is human, and they are all prone to making mistakes that every other human can. It's extremely common that when someone is working on a project that they get tunnel-focus, apply their own bias or irrational emotion sentiments, miss obvious mistakes, lose perspective, extreme hubris, and so on. Basically, the authority figures can be wrong and misguided in their field of expertise for many reasons... sometimes VERY wrong. Furthermore, just because an individual doesn't specialize in a field doesn't mean they cannot notice issue, nor does it mean they can't have better solutions than the authority figures.

When it comes to WoW itself, there have been a lot of systemic issues with the game that have persisted for several expansions or longer. The concerning part is that the player feedback, at the very least, has pointed out these problems... and pretty early in some cases. However, Blizz has gotten much worse when it comes to the feedback cycle, to the point where Blizz have been employing gaslighting when it comes to the situations that could've been fixed if the feedback was used and respected.

Now, one could make the argument that the feedback from players isn't focused or not structured in a that is helpful to Blizz. Alright, that's fine... so why haven't Blizz tried to fix this? One of my gripes about the testing phases of WoW (more the beta/PTR phases instead of alpha) is that Blizz tends to just throw out updated content... but generally doesn't ask for specific items to look at during the phases. That doesn't mean the feedback should always be rigidly structured, but some form of guidance isn't a bad thing. In the most innocent yet still damning examples I could imagine, I wouldn't be surprised if feedback concerning the Covenant system got ignored because Blizz was focused on (for example) raid/dungeon testing.

Now, this doesn't mean the players will always have the right answers... we've seen some pretty ludicrous recommendations on these forums. Not all feedback is going to be good, even if it was just amongst Blizz employees. To paraphrase a great book about human nature, there's wisdom in a multitude of counsel.

Exactly. At the time he first said this he just started whatever team and didn't have a single game out. I'm not sure they ended up making anything, I unsubbed before I could hear more about it. It really rubbed me wrong, because at least 1) Have a competent game out in the same genre 2)have actual knowledge and/or experience in major studio development cycles, before you start mouthng off what the pro's should've done at an industry level.

It's fair to say the devs made a game that isn't fun to play. It's isn't fair to try and claim you know better as a professional when your work looks like a shitty free-to-play mobile game.

People really underestimate the value of failure, as it can give you perspective and insight into whatever your venture is. As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed 10,000 times. I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work." Just because someone has failed in an attempt does not mean they didn't not gain useful experience and knowledge that could apply to Blizz. Many famous and wealthly people spent a good portion of their lives failing at their endeavours, and what sets them apart of most other people is their ability to learn from their failures. Everyone fails at some point in their lives with any number of ventures or ideas, excluding their ideas and feedback based upon just failure alone is silly as you'd have to ignore everyone.

One of main issues that a lot of people have with Blizz is that it doesn't appear that they're learning from their failures. And still, people will blindly appeal to the authority of Blizz despite their failings while ignoring the feedback of others who may have failed. Early in the life of WoW, there were blue posts concerning design philosophies, as well as "lessons learned" posts concerning what systems and ideas worked and failed. That's great... however things changed over time. I'm trying to remember the exact expansion where this occurred, but Blizz was trying to implement a system that had failed in the past without making any adjustments to what caused it to fail. I remember it signaled that either the new employees at Blizz were not learning the lessons of the past, or Blizz was just ignoring the lessons learned. Fast forward to today, it's not really uncommon that a problematic system is the result of not learning from failure.

Regardless, the main point is that learning from failures is very important, and previous failures shouldn't necessarily discount the advice given. As it stands, Blizz has been giving off the vibe that they don't want to learn from their mistakes, as they'd rather blame/gaslight the players than solve their issues.

[Triceron]

Your argument thus far is that because whales exist, Blizzard must have added the feature to the game to profit from them.

Nope. That's how you chose to read it. I can say that Blizzard can add incentives for people to buy more tokens. That is not saying Blizzard *must have added the feature* in order to profit.

I'm not denying the fact that whales exist. What I'm denying you is the completely improvable correlation you've made behind Blizzard's decision to add the token and the existence of whales.

You might as well deny they exist because you're regarding any mention of whales in any regard to supporting the system as being a conspiracy theory. I mean, what exactly can I say about whales that you would regard as *being safe to talk about* then in this regard? That I can only say they exist but not say anything about them contributing to the economy of the game, because you believe it doesn't affect the economy? Or I can't say they're buying tokens for things like rare mounts on BMAH because it makes no logical sense to you that people would choose to spend money on tokens for mounts? These are *baseless conclusions* that you've drawn to support arguments against anything I've mentioned about the whales.

You're projecting your hangups on things that I did not imply. As I admit earlier, I used the wrong words to convey them 'staying afloat' through the WoW token, but otherwise there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with pointing out that the Token system is an intentional system that profits off whales through a legitimate means of gold-buying. If Blizzard was really all that good natured, then they wouldn't design the system to be so gold-centric to begin with, and simply allow people to earn things at their own pace and be readily available rather than fostering a rarity system that artificially inflates the gold values of said mounts. The system is *DESIGNED* to profit off of players who choose to partake in it, and it's not mandatory to everyone else or anyone who seeks an alternative to obtain those items in other ways, or mot obtain them at all. It is one example of a system that appeals to players who are able to obtain a very rare thing through monetary payment, and appeals to those who partake in that willingly. Let's not pretend that it isn't.

This ain't a consipiracy theory when I'm literally pointing out how the system works. The way you're regarding the facts is a very twisted perception of Whales being stupid for putting money into the system and anything that defies that 'logic' must be a conspiracy theory. I'm literally pointing out what already happens in the game, and how it *incentivizes* players who already buy tokens and value in-game items more than the monetary cost are willing to pay that amount in tokens to do so. That's all I'm pointing out.

[Ringthane]

Because they dont want to take a massive pay cut, move to a place with catastrophically high cost of living, and work in a super toxic corporate environment?

The average pay for Blizzard is well below industry standard, and almost all of these streamers make a great deal more than even industry standard for a developer.

And in some cases, they'd have to be able to move here from overseas, would have to WANT to move here from overseas (giving up healthcare, benefits, better pay, etc)...

Trust me, its not because they couldnt get hired at Blizzard. Its because they dont want to make less money to do more work and get abused in a toxic workplace.

Well, if all they're going to do to change things is sit around and moan all day, they're not doing any good either. They're more useless than a bag of ice in Antarctica.