who is to blame for Blizzard's downfall?

[kaelix1]

Blizzard/player based/time/gaming market, all have equal blame, no king rule forever, simple as that, Blizzard start with some very very high standards that were hard to keep, whats going on with the game its a natural decline, next expansion subs will go back for a while then go down once everyone realises that wow is the same shit since vanilla but they have different taste and they are older

[Bebethebebe]

Blizzard themselves. And the very vocal, whiny fans.

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Imagine blaming Ghostcrawler for making the game easier because of "casuals whining" when he's the guy that thought making the game harder in Cata was a great idea, until it wasn't.

Also, the game was made progressively easier right from Vanilla, which was easy to begin with.

Excuse me, i was tanking in cata, i rolled a tauren paladin and geared up in a short time.
I don't remember grinding gear was hard and neither tanking the raids.
I just remember there was too much moving in raids on my part, thats all.

[Jester Joe]

Excuse me, i was tanking in cata, i rolled a tauren paladin and geared up in a short time.
I don't remember grinding gear was hard and neither tanking the raids.
I just remember there was too much moving in raids on my part, thats all.

Ghostcrawler is literally known infamously for having a blog post that told people to get good for cata dungeons at launch

[callipygoustp]

who is to blame for Blizzard' downfall?

Blizzard's own fault: if they would have provided player housing disaster would have been avoided.

[Toby451]

So if Dragonflight, OW2, and D4 are all really good are we going to get another thread talking about how Microsoft saved Blizzard (despite not really having done much of anything yet)?

[bbr]

Pretty sure it's a combination of many things.

The general playerbase just getting tired of "more of the same" over time.
Bobby for one.
The "out of season april fool's joke" called diablo immortal as well, and still continuing with it.

Eventually the value and stock value of Blizzard had plummeted so much that Microsoft saw an opportunity in this, and took it.

[The Stormbringer]

This is a pretty entertaining video that goes over a number of reasons, though I'm pretty sure it came out before all the sexual harassment stuff came out. It's not a perfect analysis of everything, or even who specifically is to blame, but it does document a lot of the things that caused a decline.

[cparle87]

Ghostcrawler is literally known infamously for having a blog post that told people to get good for cata dungeons at launch

After Wrath when dungeons were aoe faceroll easy when they were tuned for 80 ilvls below what the players had. Then suddenly doing random heroics which were tuned higher than you are. It's like people forgot what heroics were like in TBC. It's the same reason people wipe in timewalking, cause we get scaled down and can't brute force ignore everything. Him telling them to get good and not expect to faceroll something 4 tiers lower than themselves was appropo.

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Pretty sure it's a combination of many things.

The general playerbase just getting tired of "more of the same" over time.
Bobby for one.
The "out of season april fool's joke" called diablo immortal as well, and still continuing with it.

Eventually the value and stock value of Blizzard had plummeted so much that Microsoft saw an opportunity in this, and took it.

I have no respect for the haters of Immortal because their hate is based entirely on a meme and is invalid. No different than lolpandas and people should disregard it for the absurdity it is.

[Edge-]

After Wrath when dungeons were aoe faceroll easy when they were tuned for 80 ilvls below what the players had. Then suddenly doing random heroics which were tuned higher than you are. It's like people forgot what heroics were like in TBC. It's the same reason people wipe in timewalking, cause we get scaled down and can't brute force ignore everything. Him telling them to get good and not expect to faceroll something 4 tiers lower than themselves was appropo.

Man, I remember the early cata heroics as a tank/healer on my paladin. Having to explain what CC was to players who had started in WotLK and legit had never actually used it in a dungeon before. Tanks just grabbing whole-ass rooms while severely undergeared. Players failing basic ass mechanics they couldn't just ignore because they overgeared. Healers being wholly unprepared to do actual healing because they were used to tossing the occasional heal and then just DPSing...good times.

Fairly convinced that most of the folks playing at that point were the post-BC crowd that largely never had to deal with "heroics when they were actually heroics", even if you could fairly easily trivialize those with as simple as T4 gear, heh.

[Zyky]

When Danuser became narrative lead, the game started to crash and burn.

Started before that with developers raping women and Mike Morhaime telling them to keep it quiet.

[cparle87]

I don’t know… a lot of those guys went on to work for studios on similar games such as flagship/runic to name a few. My biggest takeaway is the team didn’t get to benefit from the success of their work and decided to leave; why keep a studio open when all your best guys walk out because the compensation is inadequate.

https://www.wired.com/2021/08/geeks-...id-l-craddock/

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Man, I remember the early cata heroics as a tank/healer on my paladin. Having to explain what CC was to players who had started in WotLK and legit had never actually used it in a dungeon before. Tanks just grabbing whole-ass rooms while severely undergeared. Players failing basic ass mechanics they couldn't just ignore because they overgeared. Healers being wholly unprepared to do actual healing because they were used to tossing the occasional heal and then just DPSing...good times.

Fairly convinced that most of the folks playing at that point were the post-BC crowd that largely never had to deal with "heroics when they were actually heroics", even if you could fairly easily trivialize those with as simple as T4 gear, heh.

Had something happen to me with this most recent TBC timewalking. I warned them as soon as went in that all the trash in the first room was tied to the boss and got responses like "What kind of fools do you take us for?" and "Like a stupid mechanic like that is a thing." I then warned them about the boss's nasty damage reflect and... all the dps died. We wipe, run back. Tank pulls most of the next room. Get gouged, loses aggro, dps get destroyed. It's my fault. I totally should've done something in the 20 seconds I spent silenced and even when it finally ended my mana had been drained.

[deathshere]

it must be Mike Morhaime right? Since he agreed to the deal with Activision?

am I wrong? is it a collective of former blizzard higher ups?

blizzard .

[JadedTauren]

Who is to blame for blizzards downfall? I feel like going on a Tevye-esque rant about being trapped in tradition and the eventual downfall it brings to those around us.

[cparle87]

it must be Mike Morhaime right? Since he agreed to the deal with Activision?

am I wrong? is it a collective of former blizzard higher ups?

Blizz has gone on record several times that Vivendi, their previous owner before Activision, micromanaged them way more than Activision ever has.

[uuuhname]

the management, how is it some mystery the people allegedly in charge of that company are not 99.999~% responsible for Blizzard's current state.

[Gorsameth]

Man, I remember the early cata heroics as a tank/healer on my paladin. Having to explain what CC was to players who had started in WotLK and legit had never actually used it in a dungeon before. Tanks just grabbing whole-ass rooms while severely undergeared. Players failing basic ass mechanics they couldn't just ignore because they overgeared. Healers being wholly unprepared to do actual healing because they were used to tossing the occasional heal and then just DPSing...good times.

Fairly convinced that most of the folks playing at that point were the post-BC crowd that largely never had to deal with "heroics when they were actually heroics", even if you could fairly easily trivialize those with as simple as T4 gear, heh.

And that's where we got the term 'Wrath babies" from.

I still can't help but laugh a little on the inside every time I see someone mention that WOTLK was the high point of WoW.

[Djaye]

the players

for throwing money hand over fist at every stupid decision blizzard has made over the last 15 years...
they created a money hungry monster and have already learned that game quality is not what it takes to make that money cuz players throw money at them no matter the quality.

so here we are. you made your bed, now sleep in it...

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And what happened in cata that supposedly wasn't happening in wrath? Lol

innovation and growth of the game, two things players hated at the time

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Looking back now whoever made the call to create Classic has literally saved the WoW franchise.

at the very least, it extended its life almost indefinately. if they relaunch new servers every few years for each classic expan, it will be decades

[pahbi]

100% the fault of people who refuse to vote with their wallets.

[JDL49]

Blizzard has been pushing people out of the game since the intro of Cata. As was mentioned above Wrath was easier and many who found the game during it's heyday balked at the changes. Since then, besides the people who are prissy about stuff like; 1) hating Pandas, there is the 2) loss of 10 man raiding. 3) the gutting of crafting 4) the decline of the AH, 5) the loss of niche roles like gathering specialist for a guild or providing sharding for chains of dungeon crawls, 6) the removal of tier sets (now back in but it's too late) and finally 7) moving away from true rotations in combat.

Anyway there used to be a saying about the quitters to the effect that they would be back. Nobody says that anymore. Blizzard has pissed off too many people and they do not trust them.

[Beefhammer]

Blizzard has been pushing people out of the game since the intro of Cata. As was mentioned above Wrath was easier and many who found the game during it's heyday balked at the changes. Since then, besides the people who are prissy about stuff like; 1) hating Pandas, there is the 2) loss of 10 man raiding. 3) the gutting of crafting 4) the decline of the AH, 5) the loss of niche roles like gathering specialist for a guild or providing sharding for chains of dungeon crawls, 6) the removal of tier sets (now back in but it's too late) and finally 7) moving away from true rotations in combat.

Anyway there used to be a saying about the quitters to the effect that they would be back. Nobody says that anymore. Blizzard has pissed off too many people and they do not trust them.

I mean wrong. From the beginning people have been leaving in droves. The game was just new, fresh, and a cultural phenomenon, so way more people were checking it out in Vanilla and TBC. What was Blizzard doing to push those people out? What about WotLK that barely grew the brand as subs plateaued?

By the time Cata came along, WoW was old news. Smartphones and F2P games were hitting it big, as well as tons of competition in the MMO sphere.

1, nothing but childish manbabies trying to prove their maturity by hating on things they find childish.
2, 10 man raiding never went away. In fact my raid team still raids with 10 more often than not and has since Cata.
3, design choices have never been a major driving factor for people leaving the game.
4, opinion AH seems alive and well to me. It never seems to be out of anything I'm looking for.
5, never really needed a gathering specialist, but nothing is stopping you from double gathering. Thank god but you can still do that if you want.
6, tier sets were a bone of contention for years, Azerite gear idea was good just implemented poorly.
7, dedicated rotations are not necessary. Situational use of skill is so much better. But there are still tons of rotations.