Its really that simple, not all decisions are made to be customer friendly.
Apple removing chargers from the boxes is for the ‘‘future generation’’ to preserve the planet.
Which is very fancy marketing speech for: adding chargers and producing them is very expensive and we will make more profit on the same phone without the charger in the box.
Prices for phones without chargers are just as high as the generation of new phones that did have chargers in the box.
There is literally nothing in that decision that is beneficial for the customer. Because the eco friendly part is all but removed by how they produce their products and under what kind of circumstances.
Well the sad truth is that the effects on a long term loss due to less players is something that the people who make these decisions could not care less about.
Unlike the creative departments, the business/financial departments are lead by people who only care about the rise in the short term (which pleases investors) and if the ship starts to sink they can easily jump to another company (even one unrelated to games) because their skills are 100% transferable.
Unless a massive enough number of players stop playing because of this change like right now (unlikely), this will not bother them.
Ow well, lets see how many people we lose over this and how it might effect our bottom line.
There sure has been quite the research into how this change would effect the playerbase and also calculated for losing players, and probably gaining them aswell.
Its not like: ah heck, lets just do it, and if it does cost us a Bobby Kotick amount of bonus money we will revert the change.
How does reducing ease of access to a product gain customers ??? It simply does not.
Yes, they did the research, they crunched the number’s and they realised they could profit from it, that’s the ONLY result that makes any logical or business sense with this change.
People that are now subbing with gold and think its too expensive to do so, and can pay with subscription might swap over.
These people will pay their subscription and because they are on a renewing sub, its easier for them to ‘‘forget’’ to cancel in time and due to this they will make more money. Which is being offset for people leaving over this change.
If you buy a wow token on a 30 day basis, to ‘‘fund’’ your gametime you only use up 1 WoW token paid for by an individual. At this very moment.
With the change, 1 wow token wont be enough to fund 30 days of gametime, requiring you to buy 2, which also requires someone else to ‘‘offer’’ said WoW token, which is than paid in full.
They made 40 euros, because you decided to spend 400k gold on 2 WoW tokens, where you can only get 60 days of gametime out of it.
Where as if you would pay with the subscription, they only ‘‘make’’ 26 euros for your 2 months of gametime.
It can be a different business plan together. From aiming an “en-masse market” to a smaller more profitable one. Compare a bakery with a car dealership.
A bakery must sell an specific amount of bread before they get any profit. Its not enough to just sell 1 loaf of bread they need to sell at least 10 per day to go into “green”. While a car dealership can go for a week without any sales. And as long as they sell at least 1 car per month its already good enough if not great.
The MMORPG era is long gone. We wont reach 12M no matter what Blizz will do. So they re-focus and understand that they can’t rely on income based on “how much quantity of players are playing”.
The result also would have shown some sort of probability rate of losing customers, the increase in income from WoW tokens, since it would require 2 to fund someone’s gametime with gold now.
And how much customers they can lose over this change before it would become ‘‘dangerous’’ and a financial issue.
That boils down to the answer, they changed it.
And they will make profit over it.
Would they have implemented this change if it wasnt profitable? Ofcourse not.
They are a business in it for revenue and profit.
So what exactly do you want to hear?
They shouldnt have changed this and find other ways to increase their profits?
They should tell investors: ow hey guys, we decided we arent in it for the profit
They want to increase their profit and revenue, like any other company out there.
But if its Blizzard these forums get filled with: omg greedy Blizzard and bad move.
But when your local store increases prices by just a few cents to ‘‘survive’’ and keep his business open, we are all fine with it.
So instead of attracting new customers with more friendly options, better restrict options to get more profit from existing ones? Can you imagine having 10% of players that are now, even if blizz made more profit from it. What kind of MMO would that be.
Well these are existing players, but i specifically asked how this change will attract new players.
Didnt multiple people make fun of others who suggested that this was their strategy? Including MVP i believe.
Unfortunately by the time they realise this, it might be too late and will just cut company as its not longer profitable. For example multiple studios EA has killed same way.
And that opens up another whole “can of worms” that’s clearly predatory for profit
You keep saying a company has to make a profit, Yes I agree they do, its about surviving BUT there’s a line between profit and pure GREED, Hell, their CEO just got a 200 mill BONUS ! I think the line they take is quite obvious
You are forgetting outside factors like MMORPG are NOT part of a main trend anymore. Blizz can create wotlk 2.0, TBC remastered…whatever. There is NO guarantee that there will be a large influx of players.
So aiming to get an masse in-game can’t simply backfire cause the new generations are not interested in “long progression” games. They want instant gratification - Log in. Pew pew pew for 20 mins and you are done. Cheers!
You simply have a narrowed approach to this: Blizz change system. Make game more expensive to some They bad. Uma uma. me don’t likey Blizz make cheap stuff. Me likey. Uma uma. ooh. banana.
Yet I see any decision made by calculating at least 70 factors. Making business simulations to see what will happen if we do A or if we do B. Market research. Trend research. Future market predictions. The current costs of maintaining the current system versus potential gains/loses from a new system. Risks and gain from taking action A vs taking action B. Backup plan D if action A doesn’t work out. What are the competitors doing. Their predicted plans for the future…and etc and etc and etc…
Its basically based upon the notion of letting people swap to subscriptions instead, to generate more steady income.
And to increase token sales.
The ‘‘new and fresh’’ players who want to enjoy WoW for the first time will be few and far between, and if not advised by other players probably not sticking around long.
The days of WoW being easy to hop into, with all the different gameplay systems / requirements in guilds / communities makes it very hard to jump into this game at this very moment.
If you would do so, because some friend or family member plays, such a player would advise anyone in their decision on how much gametime to get before having a good idea if this game is for you.
‘‘Just experiencing’’ leveling up to lvl 20 with the free trial doesnt tell you anything.
Doesnt matter, they want more people to subscribe because it paints a better picture over the metrics being shown with Token to Bnet balance swaperoo people who update their gametime on a ‘‘out of sync’’ basis. (a sub renews every 1 / 3 or 6 months) you could renew your gametime once a year on gold and they only see ‘‘high profits’’ in Q1, but they want to see a high revenue number in Q1 / Q2 / Q3 / Q4.
Which is a way better chart to show to investors and shareholders than 4 quarters with varying degrees of income.
Once again, these changes were made after making the calculations.
If it would endanger the company too much, do you really think they would have change it regardless?
This decision isnt just made at the coffee machine at 16:45 on a friday, and put in motion at 17:00 that same friday.
Once again, making profit and revenue and streamlining your income is just part of running a business.
No company ever in the history said:
Okay guys, we need to make 1 million profit to ‘‘survive’’ lets just run our company for 100 years and keep that 1 million profit going for the 100 years.
Every year, they want to grow their business and profit / revenue margins.
So ‘‘blaming’’ Blizzard for increasing their profits / revenue is just a silly thing to do.
Businesses have to do things like this to stay competitive / interesting for shareholders / and to survive nowadays.
Yeah he did, because he was smart enough and had a good lawyer who helped him sign a contract that included a 200 million bonus if he would hit certain targets.
Or rather a % based rewarding system based on the goals reached by the company.
Its also a bonus he got for the last 3 years of his performance, since the contract stating said bonus and the % (which you can easily google) state: 2017 to 2020 fiscal years and the long term performance of Activision-Blizzard.
Is it fair in the current economic trend? with Covid and many Blizzard employees being laid off?
I dont think so.
Is it rightfully ‘‘earned’’ apparently because he got paid and apparently he managed to fulfill his ‘‘duties’’ as CEO.
I also have the luxury that i can get a certain bonus for reaching the goals set by my superior, as an extra incentive to increase productivity / safety at the workplace and other various things among my co-workers. (its just not 200 million )
‘‘Just doing a good job’’ when we are talking about people who run multi million businesses isnt enough.
These people are hired and fired over very harsh and strict ‘‘goals’’ they have to attain and the market for CEO’s running these companies is a cutthroat business.
Well yes, they try to mathematically make out what will grant biggest profit, instead of making positive changes for people. Doesnt mean its automatically good, no matter how much you repeat “its what business do”. And any project or business is doomed to fail if it wont attract new customers or atleast keep existing ones. Personally i dont want WoW to be killed by Blizzard in search of even more profit. But its just my opinion. Maybe you do want it dead, so you can be free from these forums.
Well then dont say they might lose some, gain some. Just say they want to use up existing ones more.
Finally you say something thats more interesting and true.
Yes, they dont think far ahead, companies want profit NOW and as much as possible, after that they dont care what will happen. Countless dead games and studios that followed this path kinda make it hard to believe otherwise.
You know there is a finite amount of people and money in world, they wont be able to increase profits permanently. What happens when corporations no longer get increasing profit? Cut costs, lay off people. What happens when they give worse product due to this? Even less profit, because fewer want to buy it. What happens then? Closure.
Didnt they just increase their profits by laying of people and cutting costs?
Thats how you increase your performance as a company.
If you can make 10 cars, with 10 people and then optimize your production to make 10 cars, with 9 people you already are making more profit.
And companies keep researching / looking for better cost saving measures.
Employees are the highest cost in running a business, so reducing the amount of people working for you by ‘‘firing them’’ and replace them with robots or IT solutions is a huge gain in profit.
And currently, with the innovations in terms of machines producing more per hour (i.e. bigger machines / faster machines etc, or robots welding cars instead of humans) they can keep doing this for years to come.
Because these innovations wont stop. (or atleast, they should stop ‘‘somewhere’’ tho)
If the above tends to lead to a product thats worse and it causes them to go bankrupt, yeah they ‘‘overplayed’’ it.
They sure did, who needs QA anyway right. Just release buggy mess and people will still be fine with it.
That is true, with 5 people even more profit, but at same time the existing workers get more and more stress, you dont seem to take this into account. Actual human beings are making products, laying off people makes it harder for remaining.
I sure hope we wont reach a point where games are made purely by robots or AI.
Well thats exactly what i dont want, because i like wow, its the game i played most so far (not the only game). These profit based changes dont exactly fill me with much hope.
And thats where at some point, the optimization stops.
If you are too thin spread on workers, they will ‘‘stress out’’ and you will lose profit or opportunities because you wont be able to produce enough to keep going.
I dont think we ever will, and highly doubt its even possible.
But the truth stays the same, employees are the highest costs in 99% of businesses, (some exclusions apply)
Well, you either continue to keep playing then even tho it got more expensive or you move on.
They will keep changing things the coming years to increase revenue and profit, so this wont be the ‘‘last thing’’ to get upset about.
Well once optimization stops and profits starts falling because workers get stressed out, they will just cancel projects, games, studios. There are a lot of reports about stress in workplace in multiple corporations.
Also, cutting costs too much will turn WoW into HotS, with just barebones team.
Optimization will stop in terms of ‘‘removing humans’’ in the process. They will then look at other options: different suppliers / different ways of producing the goods they are producing etc.
Its not simply: ow we can do it with 5 workers and thats it, even then it continues.
At some point, a company will run out of ways to increase profits without growing or expanding their business, and most of the times a company just is the ‘‘top-dog’’ in that business and someone to look up to.
But till you reach that point, any company would want to grow to satisfy their needs for more revenue and profit and every company has its ‘‘ceiling’’ before they are done growing and stuff.
When they maxed out their profits, its not a matter of fact that they will go bankrupt or start to fail.
Well companies will never be satisfied, if they dont make more money than last year its a failure in their eyes (they want to please shareholders, otherwise they might leave). And to get more money they will cut things out, increase microtransactions and so on. But such way is unsustainable and will eventually lead to failure.
The way game companies works is the following. They put expectations for revenue (higher than previous). If they reach it, they tap on their backs and continue. If they dont reach it, they cut costs. Rince and repeat. After they cant cut costs anymore, they close game/studio down. Even if the game makes billions in profit, but is below their expectations, commence cutting.
Well in this case it is and thats what is happening, Ion has publicly stated the delay in Shadowlands launch and the lack of alot of content that was promised is missing because, quoted By Ion “they are understaffed” plus “they had to cut a lot of corners”
Quite clearly the quality of the product has declined. a lot, and is even admitted by the head developer.
Their “Optimisation” as you say as well gone past the point of being a benefit for the product and this recent change is just another step in the wrong direction.
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