I like the vibe in SL, but the endgame and “hamster wheel” mechanics are horrible. Missed opportunity.
My point was that they peaked at 13 and could potentially stabilize at 8 to 10 million subs. No way cash shop can compensate that much income that would be generated from sub money.
by the time the token was introduced the sub numbers was no where near those numbers 
Yeah i mean its their supposed solution.
Which is weird but kind of predictable. They can’t produce good quality content / product thus they resort to short-term solutions, which make the situation even worse.
Btw, idk who was talking about the quarterly reports but on SEC filings you can check and see their 10-K annual report. Now I don’t expect people to have the same financial analysis capability i do ('cuz its my job) but WoW down quite a bit in terms of revenue. In fact the report even says that their revenue would be higher if WoW did not generate lower income.
Anywho, this idea of cash shop compensating enough income from the lack of subs is just false. Any claiming that should just check their 10-K report.
the topic was never that it compensate from subs the topic is that the tokens are ultimately making more moeny then the subs left
It doesn’t cover the entire lost sub money. It gives enough for the financial department to give the green light and make the investors/board happy.
Nobody is blind to the fact that WoW is NOT at its peak anymore. So the question is not about getting the same amount of money as you would get from 13M subs but get enough money so that the big cheese at board are not seeing “red numbers” in the report. To help achieve this… goal. They also cut expenses(aka…the mass employee let goes and etc).
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Yeah and that is wrong.
Board is not made up of dumb people. They can easily see the downward trend of WoW’s revenue over the years.
There are 2 ways to handle that pressure; make desperate changes for more income and/or milking the whales strategy or try to win back the player base.
Second one is easier but not sustainable, thus, we are here.
yupp and you see blizzard senior staff leaving pretty regularly the last guy was senior game designer Johnny Cash
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The seccond one - will pressume you mean milking the wales part.
Yet the first one is a gamble. You can take the best minds(which are left) at Blizz and try creating the “best expansion ev@r!” but there is no guarentee that people will like it.
Sure we got the feedback and etc. But the customer will tell you that this steak is “bland and raw. I dont like it” but they will never tell you how to “cook it properly”. So you can give your best shot and the next steak will be too…overcooked and salty. 
Don’t assume that “winning back the audience” is as simple as following a simple chemistry formula with 100% success chance.
World of Warcraft, in the end, is nothing but a product. Which is very customizeable and changeable.
A solid company would seek extensive feedback from the customers to create the desired product to maximize sustained income through subscriptions.
The issue is not that company needs solid devs or has to go back to “past” and play a gamble.
Just imagine this. You are Apple and your new iphone’s designs are leaked. People saw them and the reaction is overall good but there are 2-3 tiny things where customers say “If were they to change, the design would be just perfect”. You do the neccessary market research and see that this change would not push other customers (that is not bothered by these 2-3 things) away. Thus, you decide, you will go ahead and change these 2-3 tiny things.
In case of World of Warcraft though, such is not what happens, which is incredibly weird. WoW has an insane advantage over other video game products. It has almost an unlimited amount of feedback that costs them little to nothing. For such a comprehensive feedback alot of companies are willing to spend millions of dollars.
But of course the issue is that they simply go ahead and do what they believe is right. This shows they either;
- Lack the neccessary business intelligence; or
- They are egoistic and want to push their own idea of what is “good” and “bad”.
Its like Apple saying (in the given example above) “Nah, we won’t make these changes on the 2-3 tiny things” and as a result making lower sales.
Which all sounds nice and dandy ONLY its not the case with WoW. People have multiple and often conflicting interests.
Make PvP gearing more accessable? = PvE guys, I DONT WANNA DO PVP to do my m+/raids!!!
Make flying available on the let go = anti fly camp: OMGZ NOEZ!!!
Make power progress more availble for world questing casuals = raiders/m+ runners! OMG DONT GIVE mythic level items for killing 10 boars!!!
There is very veeeery few issues(if any at all) which doesnt have an supporting A group and an opposing B group. And before you start with the “majority vs minority stuff”.
The majority is defined by the players who scream the loudest… on these forums anyway.
pretty such the majority is defined by the group who has the biggest wallet and guess what its not the raiders
There are certain changes that would not irritate others. Making MT permanent, going back to MoP 5.2 style gearing in PvP (which literally nobody complained about) etc.
But Blizzard is going against all of those wishes.
KSM being account-wide for example. People in my guild were rejoiced in 9.0 with that. It got removed in 9.1. Did Blizzard really think people would push 5 toons to 1.5k rio to gear them after they were done with their main? A few will, yeah, others will simply unsub.
Of course its not this or that, its the accumulation of poor decisions.
There’s a new trend to pay people to streamers and gamers like you that causes chat waves like this one and influencers trends. It’s commonly know that FFX* bias parties have been paying good money to sway people to swap to their MMO.
And if you think I’m talking nonsense, try explaining this type of streams, read the description and check the follower base:
It’s an odd trend, but we are all familiar with the dishonorable tactics the chinese gold farming industry uses. Regards FFXIV, it’s a fine game on its own, but it’s mostly for weebs.
Posting on forums doesn’t mean someone has a sub, as a pensioner forum user you should know better.
Yes, it has a few good things in it but too many wrongs that sucks all good into them. I haven’t played last 9 days I guess. Waiting for 11 remaining days to expire not even going online.
Bad faction balance, amusing story in a bad way, lots of grinds that players most likely dislike and here we are. Next patch doesn’t seem interesting at all. I might come back for 1-2 months right before end of the next PvP season play some arena get elite and leave again because I don’t see anything appealing except that. The game made me feel like I’m wasting time recently hence I decided to focus on different things.
They need to change the game fundamentally next expansion just like how they did with Legion and that Legion system doesn’t work anymore, give 1 legendary and let players play with it for 24 months style is old and not interesting. They either come up with a new structure or player count will shrink.
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It means they’re ‘subscribed’ or ‘paid for a month’ to post in General Discussion, whatever venue that may be. Simple as, they paid in either gold, bnet balance, or money to do so.
I use more time in the forum then in the game. The forum is more fun.
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Same here, not hardly touching the game right now…
Blizzard was always had the least income for Activision from the big 3 (Activision, blizzard,king) and atm wow is still the biggest money for blizzard. Maybe HS but I doubt that.