So as you see, designers who play the game or would design the game for us, are not in the “lead” of the game anymore, they make it for money ofc.
And this is driving innovative people out from the company (as you saw the exodus of devs from WoW ) and this is causing a decline in enjoyment, which is causing players leaving.
As you can see the large amount of players who are unhappy with the game or actualy already left.
They could turn this around by having some devs who still know how to make enjoyable game, but the problem is that they already left.
So probably we are looking towards a not too bright future for WoW, which is sad,
For me at least,
these fresh face people they probably employ are most likely way over their heads and have no idea what to do to make the game better … i feel bad for them…
our only hope is activision step up and restructure the development team removing the certain key people who are stagnating the game.
then again all the original talent as far as i can tell all left the sinking ship … so who would they replace them with ??
Marketing and sales is not driving WOW, the issue is that the developers are designing entire expansions around systems that are grindy, have too many new curriences, and are replaced with each patch or expansion that launches. Thats the problem with WOW.
All about the MAUs. Gotta make that presentation every month to show just how many people were engaged for {n} hours of the day, therefore the game must be designed to force {n} hours per day per player.
I miss “gameplay first”. It was a good philosophy.
There’s no reason to assume that WoW wouldn’t be able to earn just as much money as it is today if it was designed in a completely different manner.
I mean, it’s not like it’s only this design that WoW currently has that opens the door to a financially profitable product. Other games show perfectly well that different design approaches with regards to gameplay can work just fine – and those games are made by companies that also have shareholders.
As Jurgenhan says, it’s just gameplay design and gameplay design alone that is the issue. People seemingly don’t like what Blizzard are serving up. It has nothing to do with MAU or whatever. Blizzard just presents some gameplay that revolves around systems and raids and progression and people look at it and go: “No thanks. What I want is something like that other game where people dress up and build houses and roleplay cat furries.”
WoW is just doubling down on a gameplay design that those World First Raiders are having a hell of a time with currently, but it shuns away the casual roleplayer who enjoys an online world of social immersion and adventure.
I guess history is repeating itself cause i guess the people are learning nothing from their mistakes and by that i mean blizz not the guy that posted this just to clarify so there is no confusion.
That’s… just not the argument I ever see presented?
People are tired of BS like conduit energy, and the slow swap between covenants. They’re tired of doing content A to be relevant in preferred content B, and that content C completely locks them out if they didn’t engage with it in the first week. Player housing would be nice, but if they were able to just log in and play what they enjoy without having a list of chores, far less people would care. Most players want more dungeons, raids, and BGs, and yet we get given everything except that.
That world first raiders are having fun in mythic really doesn’t help anyone else. Most of us are playing a totally different game to them.
Also, there is naff all social immersion and adventure in WoW. Let’s not pull arguments like that out of our undies because they do not hold up. Character choices are made by Icy Veins because the devs are incapable of balancing anything to the point where it can be left to player discretion.
Again look up the Dilbert Principle and this is another way of repeating that mantra. And yes indeed Blizzard’s management never mind Activision suits are now doing an excellent job and yes I am being sarcastic about destroying this game it’s as if they want it to fail. This ship has been taking on water a long time it’s still staggering that it’s not sunk yet!
I have never blamed the average staffer in the company as they usually do not call the shots but the people who are running it at the moment and those above them have and continue to have a lot of things to explain themselves over to the consumer meaning us as well as why they persist in keeping Ion and co in post when it’s clear the game is on life support. And it’s just going to get even worse.
They took the RPG out of MMORPG sadly. There is much fun to had in WoW still, I’ve had a good time today, and most likely will tommorow. But in terms of investment, aka, the ‘roleplay’ I feel much more deeply involved in FF14 currently than what happens with my WoW character.
I will say this, and do believe it, the wake up call has come, whether they react is on them.
Corporate greed is a thing, and not only with WoW.
Somewhere along the line, someone figured out a way to “force” players to pay and play their games, but at the same time sucked the enjoyment out of the same games. The stream of income is still there, so it has to look like it is working. I feel it’s more like a house built on sand.
When players genuinely enjoy a game, money will still be poured into it because they enjoy the game. Somewhere, someone lost sight of that. Again, not just WoW. I see the same trends elsewhere as well.
I am glad that FF14 is getting so much attention and a lot of players are switching to it. Not because I like that game (I really don’t), but WoW has lacked any real competition for so many years, which I believe has over the years lead to a “we can do nothing wrong - they will still play our game” attitude.
It was true then, too. It’s mostly the same people.
And like was the case when Steve Jobs said this, there is still a customer base. At the time Apple had 15 million users but were doing terribly, and Blizzard also have many users but we all definitely feel that something is wrong.
If this goes super-Apple then what could happen is Blizzard buying Dreamhaven and buying itself free somehow and then we get a huge rebirth of the company, but I’m not sure I see that happening. Apple was still independent, Blizzard is not.
However, I don’t think this is true. I do think the people in charge of WoW are driven more by games than by financial results and they do understand a lot of things about WoW well, but what they don’t understand is the sense of world and sense of community, and they’re destroying the game because of it. They’re really doing a metric ton of damage and there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight.
Worse still, a lot of the feedback they get from the community identifies this but makes terrible suggestions on how to fix it, and Blizzard sometimes tries some of them and fail.
Call me realist but in BFA I would have never installed another game other than WoW. I really enjoyed most of it, the story, the zones, the theme…
In SL everything is so… shattered, confused: you pass from blue to sunny to acid green to darkness… I can’t choose a covenant I like because the other spell is way cooler… can’t have certain mount/mogs because I’m different covenant… upgrading conduits it’s a casino lottery… and the long time between patches.
I’m not going to leave WoW but speaking for myself I’m playing way less than I used to I don’t mind grinds… I farmed primal life and primal mana to get enough money to purchase a 60% mount in the old TBC but at least it was just gold and not 10 different currencies.
ATM for the first time I subscribed to FF14 and I joined the group “WoW refugees”
As much as people flame activision, never underestimate that the very thing that most people flame - greed - can often result in the very thing the players want a better game.
If the game starts to earn less and less money they will review why, if it turns out to be as most of us would expect - too many systems etc etc - chances are they would make the change to take the game back to a more successful model.
However… that’s only if the money investment is worth it - if its not the game will remain its current capacity until it doesn’t come cost effective to run anymore, sadly that’s business.
Overall i think many people overestimate the financial loss from 9.0 as these people are business men and women they are ruthless, people would be getting chopped left right and centre if it was deemed a failure. As for is 9.1 will be a failure (financially) time will tell.
You only need to look at elite level sports like football to see how ruthless business leaders are when large amounts of money are involved.
There is no exodus though. Not only it’s perfectly normal in this industry for developers to only work in a studio for a few years at best, and all major studios are affected especially during the pandemic, but Blizzard is way above industry standards when it comes to retaining devs, and growing better.
Only if they understand the problem. There are thousands of companies in American failing every single day because the people there knew they were losing money but didn’t understand how to fix it.
Now, I don’t really like bringing politics into my games, but I actually think it’s relevant here: Designing World of Warcraft requires a deep understanding of how societies and economies form and build. It requires you to understand city layout, population density, external factors, the impact of an adversary, and many, many other things. In some ways you could argue that it requires the skills of a government minister - and many of them, too.
Blizzard has now filled to the brim with far left radicals, as has most of the rest of California, and these people fundamentally don’t understand any of those things. They think they do, and they take education to understand it and they write papers and “science” (science is supposed to be about the natural world folks…) and come to a lot of the same conclusions that led to disasters like the Soviet Union, not to mention they put themselves into a debt they have serious problems repaying. One of my closest friends took a social science degree - spent 6 years of his life. He cannot get any job in his field, like everybody else really, and now he’s working as a school teacher. He was also radicalised to the far left. This is common.
They don’t understand it and they get really upset when you point it out - obviously - you’re saying they wasted their lives.
But I think WoW is a another piece of evidence. WoW’s economy has in many ways collapsed, the town square is no more, spontaneous communities don’t form. Like, Blizzard loves putting these PvP areas in really strange locations nobody ever goes to for example.
WoW may literally be falling apart due to radical left wing policy being superimposed on an MMO game world.
And if that’s the case, there’s no saving it. It’s one thing to convince people they’re bad at designing video games and suggest how to turn it around. It’s another thing entirely to convince people their politics are poorly thought out and that they wasted their education. That’s really difficult.
Can you specify what the glaring “left wing policy” is that is currently the modus operandi for WoW’s design philosophy please?
I mean in 9.1 we have meritocracy (M+ score) we have a rampant free market with the leggo system, we have tiered rewards based upon performance and not mere participation (pvp rating required for gear) and best of all we have players whom will embrace a RIO system which encourages competition and optimisation and you are there claiming the game is facing stormy waters because of “left wing design philosophy”.
You’ll need to help me out here. Not saying you’re wrong, but it’s not my immediate thought when I look at WoW I will tell you that. If I looked at the game without any knowledge of twitter or whatever, there is no way i’d go “this is leftist circle jerk” on the basis of what I see in game because of a couple of gay alien animals and a trans spirit dude.
Least of all not because pretty much the rest of the game content design encourages ideas commonly at odds with leftist philosophy such as encouraging competition, reward on merit alone, a free market with no restraint and hand-holding etc etc.
You’re gonna have to help me out here (and I say that in good faith) because I am genuinely curious as to what you mean here - but I need it to be specific as you can please!
I don’t mind grinds… I farmed primal life and primal mana to get enough money to purchase a 60% mount in the old TBC 
but at least it was just gold and not 10 different currencies.