Another leak about what's going on at Blizzard

[ifrah]

Not giving much credibility on any of these "leaks," but have to agree on the point the subscriptions seem to be in a free-fall. LFG used to be quite populous list in the 9.0 times, but is nowadays a quick 10 second read of "yeah, nah, maybe another time."
With all the turmoil at Blizzard on top, I don't know what things will turn out. Game isn't dead, but certainly not going too strong either.

[Archmage Alodi]

Wish I could say they are not stupid enough to do this, but I believe they are.

[Romanthony]

The only thing I believe from this "Leak" is the stuff about Steve honestly. It has Way to much "FF did this so we are doing this" in it No longer releasing Expansions doing a "Evergreen" Wat? Chromie time a failure? Wat? so yea for sure some interesting fan fic only believe able thing is about Danuser

[Mace]

Yes, it does matter if someone is lying or not. A lie is, by definition, a rejection of reality.

I wanted to clarify that in particular because I've noticed too many people adopting the "it doesn't matter what's true" mindset without much critical thought.

I appreciate that, truth ofc matters, always. That is not the message I wished to convey, and I should have been clearer about that. For the purposes of whether his "leak" is true, it doesn't matter that much because they seem to reflect what' going on at blizz.. this is just in response to those who utterly dismiss it as garbage. .

Ultimately for me whether it's true or not holds no direct relevance to me and therefore doesn't matter. The game is neither necessary to my life nor life changing, it is vanity mainly and leisure mostly.

[Gaidax]

Nice fanfic, breh.

4chan, must be legit tho.

[Yayeet]

The sub money used to be a huge driver, but for a long time it's the expansion sales, they are selling on average around 10 million copies in the first weeks, which equates to around $400 million in revenue, that means within that single time frame they have paid for the expansion itself, the employees, the marketing, the global server costs for the entirety of the expansion.

What remains is probably another $100 million or more in pure profit, on top of that you have the sub money and microtransaction money (their mounts averagely bring in $20 million in just two weeks). Then you have another layer of potential income, which isn't favorable, but it's still there and it's still being used.

So thinking that wow is in trouble anytime soon is hillarious.

[Asrialol]

The part about Danuser just shows it's some salty basementdweller that wrote this. Maybe even a poster from MMO Champion, they tend to mention his name specifically when whining about.. everything.

Entertaining, though.

[Ange]

As a WoW gamer since vanilla, I wouldnt even mind Diablo3 like seasons.

Not sure about the soon 20 year MMO gap and "fortnite players". WoW was seen 2004 as the most casual MMO for competitive gaming, because it was and still is. Thats clearly not how current younger players see a 2-5 raid-day schedule + character progression/farming, there is way to much noise about basic MMO time requirements - yes water is wet, what a shocking relevation.

[Wries]

"We're in the dark just as much as you are"

Proceeds to go into lore and mechanic filled details about 10.0.

Ok buddy.

[Dystemper]

https://boards.4channel.org/v/thread...blizzard-leaks

I don't know man, get your opinions. Wouldn't surprise me if this was true.

>WoW currently has around 960k active subscribers in the west. Since August the games numbers have been in freefall and never recovered.
>The higher ups assumed there were a lot more "heavy users" or "lifers" locked in for the duration than there appears to be, though the scandals could have something to do with it.
>This "final chapter of this book in the warcraft saga" was news to the team before the 9.2 video dropped. Its assumed its trying to riff on the media for FFXIV's upcoming expansion but the sentiment around the office is its bad optics and seems insincere and delivers a narrative that we are imitating rather than interating
>Danuser is insufferable. When he isn't gaslighting anyone that questions his divine god given narrative about certain characters he has an unhealthy obsession with -take a guess which- he is not really talking with the rest of the team. We make assetts and raids and quests but don't really know what for. You don't know why the Arbiter broke? why he is trying to retcon Warcraft 3 into the jailors forces fighting the jailors forces? yeah guess what? NEITHER DO WE. WE STILL DON'T. We didn't even know what Zereth Mortis was till 2 months ago. We are as in the dark as you are.
>He is even blanking other writers. The reason the Sylvanas book is delayed is because he didn't talk to Christie Golden for months after she pointed out he was trying to bruteforce a Sylvanas redemption that wasn't earned like a petulant child and as "punishment" she was kept out the loop WHILE WRITING A NOVEL ABOUT SYLVANAS SET DURING 9.2!
>Meanwhile as long as he makes raids Ion doesn't care. He just sits there most of the day stress eating and barking commands but as long as it funnels players to his next raid thats about all the rest of the work is good for. He is generally oblivious to anything outside his bubble. Or doesn't care.

>The majority of the games flaws as a product stem from these two men who both only care about their own slice of the pie so to speak and the rest may as well not exist and mismanagement is team wide.
>Cross faction grouping is on the table because they would rather do that than take the bad press hit and merge servers at the risk of losing transfer fees. Like that would be the worst news for the company this year.
>The game is monumentally tilted to horde in terms of userbase now and its almost entirely due to racial but for some reason the balance team refuses to buff any alliance racials or nerf horde ones.
>The Cyphers are a retention mechanic designed to keep players subscribed. It will take 12 weeks to unlock all base ciphers and the currency cap per week will then double this for the next stage of unlocks. Intended on paper to be a 6 month weekly content update.
>Most of us understand the complaints about borrowed systems. We do not like them either but we aren’t in charge and the ones that do seem to think we are working on a mobile project and not the rpg most of us signed up to be a part of. We feel like we are trying to trick the player into some habit forming loop like some mobile gambling app and it feels dirty to say the least.
>I work on the live team and not 10.0 but I can tell you the Infinite Dragonflight are involved along with a shift in the way we release product. WoW is not going to release expansions after 10.0 but instead focus on “evergreen” seasonal content. The game we keep being told to compare our work to is not something like FFXIV as you might assume but Bungies Destiny.

>From 10.0 onwards after the events of End of Eternity the entire game will be reworked including Chrome Time which has internally been seen as a bit of a failed experiment in its current state. Players will have an experience closer to Diablo 3’s adventure mode. You will create your character and have a series of “campaigns” to play through solo or with friends but also a seasonal track comparable to a battle pass using a system like renown. The idea being no matter what content you do be it some random quests in the Eastern Plaguelands or Island Expeditions in Kul Tiras you will always be advancing your seasonal track.
>The first season will involve the infinite dragon flight as a lore friendly way to explain this and the reworks to chromie time. You will assist the time walkers who reveal themselves to have been Attendants created by the First Ones to mend fractures in the timeline but as with the Attendants of Korthia they are a separate and visually different group to the ones we know in Oribos.
>Right now there is one baseline track that acts almost like post level cap experience and another that requires a currency but is not a paid track.
>Time Fractures will allow characters to be shifted around and there is a visions style activity called “Paradox Moments” which are essentially a blend of visions, scenarios and the theming of the old Carvens of Time Dungeons
>Speaking of the Carvens of Time themselves will be destroyed and instead of new areas the new zones will be existing zones at different points in time. Think the End Times version of Dragonblight from Cataclysm’s Dungeons

>Seasons are intended to last 3-4 months right now and alternate between WoW Classic seasons -which is the test bed for some of these ideas- and allow us to make time limited seasonal content that will use FOMO to keep the players coming back and allow us to make changes to existing zones albeit many being temporary so we don’t permanently change too many things forever as with the Shattering content that really messed up the timeline for questing players, ironically given 10.0 I suppose. While the seasons are wholesale taken from Destiny and to a lesser extent Diablo 3 of course this temporary world changing is being workshopped as something to appeal to “the fortnite generation” and started getting put forward around the time they did their big map redesign for the first time.
>This is done to spread the workload, increase profitability beyond one major box sale every 2 fiscal years and to try and lure in a new younger audience as the current “Heavy User” audience of diehards are a lot older than the target demographics Activision as a whole wants to target.
>Yes the fruit bowl stuff caused some internal fiction but its not the “us vs the essjaydubyas” you might think but rather there is a sentiment that a lot of the games current issues are being waved away by pushing the earlier team members under the bus rather than respect the work and the foundation they built.
>FFXIV is not the boogeyman you might think but we had one large meeting with leadership specifically asking “What is it doing right?” and being befuddled when people point out things and going “but we already did that” while missing the many replies of “but we don’t anymore”.

Honestly, I have no problem believing any of this. It all seems very credible. Not saying it's true , just saying it's very likely.

[evertonbelmontt]

The line about the imbalance between horde and alliance being the racials makes this so troll.

Imagine writing all that just to "mess up" in one line.

Every other line could have a little bit of truth in it but that one is the red flag.

[Raven]

Honestly, I have no problem believing any of this. It all seems very credible. Not saying it's true , just saying it's very likely.

Yeah totalt credible, i mean just the word essjaydubyas tells you how credible this is.

Maybe its just me but i would expect a person working on a game to atleast get the name on the patch they have been working on right.

[Fenrys]

To anyone who believes a word of that; please, let us help you. You need it.

[Vakna]

You can really tell that whoever wrote this has no idea how game design works in the slightest.

[Fenrys]

The line about the imbalance between horde and alliance being the racials makes this so troll.

Imagine writing all that just to "mess up" in one line.

Every other line could have a little bit of truth in it but that one is the red flag.

Quite - anyone who actually plays the game knows that overall alliance racials are better (I miss meld so much)

[Greyvax]

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if all this is at least partially true. They know they aren't going to have some resurgence of subscribers after 17 years. The only way to continue to milk the current playerbase is to use seasons, timegates, and fomo tactics until it runs out.

[RoKPaNda]

Unless you've got a leak like 3 days before a convention it's 100% just a fanfic, and even then 99% of them are just fanfics.

Since August the games numbers have been in freefall and never recovered.

We talking about the same game that set a personal record for most player engagement in a non-expansion year in a decade?

Probably the least believable thing about this is that Christie Golden was somehow a voice of reason, or the emphasis on FFXIV. WoW and FFXIV have coexisted for years now, if anything they'd be worried about upcoming games.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if all this is at least partially true. They know they aren't going to have some resurgence of subscribers after 17 years. The only way to continue to milk the current playerbase is to use seasons, timegates, and fomo tactics until it runs out.

Runescape says hi. That said, all they need is an expansion that people actually like. Can they do it? Yeah. Will they do it? I'm doubtful.

[Nefastus]

I don't know, the no expansion thing looks fake. I mean they get tons of money from selling expansions, why would they stop? Even if Shadowlands is losing players non stop, didn't the xpac sell absurd ammounts when released?

[Greyvax]

Runescape says hi. That said, all they need is an expansion that people actually like. Can they do it? Yeah. Will they do it? I'm doubtful.

of course they are capable. definitely not willing though. it would cost too much in development dollars and not enough revenue to offset it.

[hulkgor]

Nice fanfiction. Thanks for sharing, i guess.