A fistful of dollars

General Discussion
1

As a disclaimer, I wanna say up front I’m a Blizz consumer. I’ve played all their games. I’m 44 years old, so 20 years ago I wasn’t a child. I remember everything vividly. I grew up with Chuckie Egg, Invaders, Jumping Jack and other Spectrum games, then Doom, and by the time Starcraf came out I was ready for something great… and Blizz delivered. Between Starcraft, Diablo, and World of Warcraft, I think I’ve played more hours that I’m capable of admitting.
But, anyway… my point is - this post is not a rant. If I’m biased somehow, it’s obviously in favor of this company that kept me twenty years in front of a monitor playing amazingly captivating games.

However, I cannot avoid making some logical assumptions, based on what they said few days ago.
So, according to Blizz - ‘Tuesday, we hit another concurrent player high, with a few hundreds of thousands of players in one region alone’.
As I know, there are 3 regions, which means approximately 2 million players world-wide.
Let’s just say that there were not 2 million players online that day, but it’s safe to say that (at least!) 2 mil ppl bought the game… right? Maybe even more (way more…), but for the sake of this argument, let’s say 2 mil ppl payed for the game.
Well, if my basic arithmetic still works, 2 mil ppl x 40$ = 80.000.000 dollars. Right?
So, let’s just say that the game development, paying the company that resurrected Diablo 2, paying taxes, taking care of advertising, and all the logistic in selling it costed roughly 30 mil $. I know it’s not that much, but let’s just say they had to spend 30 mil all in to make the game, pay all the taxes, all their collaborators, and sell it.
Well, in that case, there is a profit of 50 mil $, right?

I have three simple questions based on logic.
If you’re Blizzard, not some indie company no one ever heard of, and you’ve just made a profit of 50 mil $ after selling a game:

  1. don’t you buy the best tech equipment money can buy these days, so that you can be prepared with servers capable to hosting 10 mil ppl (not 2 mil) without any problems?;
  2. don’t you include ladder from the start, as long as it’s a vital part of the game, which gives motivation and purpose to the players to continue playing the game?;
  3. don’t you deliver a product bug free, without transforming your buyers into beta testers?

I don’t know how other ppl feel about this, but if I were the Blizz director, I’d split 10 mil between me and all the employees, and with 40 mil I’d buy some NASA type of tech equipment, just to shut everyone’s mouth.
After all the years of Wow expansions, after the Error37 in D3, and after the whole planet knows Blizz is late with release dates and has crappy start on any new game or expansion, if I were in charge of it all, I’d make it work so smooth that no one would ever open their mouth to complain about it.

And I’m not saying all this because I have no ladder, which means I stopped playing D2R a week ago because without playing hardcore ladder I have no motivation in continuing to play the game. I’m saying all this because it amazes me how a company so loved by its consumers doesn’t seem to care about pleasing those consumers and delivering a product close to flawless, and having some tech equipment unmatched by its competition, as long as the profit is huge when they bring their products on the open market.
I know Blizz is a company based on making money, not a philanthropy that does community work for free. I payed for all their games that I love playing, I enjoyed them, which makes me a happy consumer. But, when you do the final calculation, bottom line is that I’m never happy with their products 100% of the time, because weeks after they launch a game or a Wow expansion, I’m frustrated, I wait in huge queues, I play a buggy game, and basically I cannot play that game to its full potential; but, meanwhile I pay them 100% of the money they ask for that game. So, why can’t us, the consumers, benefit from 100% of the product that we pay for? And it’s not that they can’t do it… because when you have ‘few hundreds of thousands of players in one region alone’, and those players played ‘few tens of thousands of hours on each one of your games alone’, I think it would be decent and wise to deliver a product that is worthy of your name… right, Blizzard?
But, that happens only if you’re like Clint Eastwood and you know what to do with that fistful of dollars, and if you respect your buyers… those ppl who stuck by you for decades.

Sorry for the long text. I had to… See you all in Hell when ladder pops out. Until then I’m cleaning my potion bottles, folding my tp and id scrolls, and polish my hammer… my blessed hammer.
These are my two cents. Over & out!

4 Likes
2

As far as the queues, my guess is Blizzard vastly underestimated the number of people that would purchase this remaster. It’s a good thing on the long term, bad on the short term.

As far as the game crashing on computers, that’s an issue that a lot of complex software experiences shortly after release. The fact is that no company can test their software on the millions of possible hardware configurations that exist prior to releasing the software… Then there’s always a potential for computers that may have underlying issues that are exposed with a new, heavily system taxing game. There’s also a possibility for the computers owners not knowing to, or how to update their system drivers and firmware.

Back to the queue issues, mistakes happen. As long as they are doing something to resolve the problem as quickly as humanly possible, that is what matters.

3

Agreed. But, when you make so much profit in selling a game, don’t you buy the best equipment money can buy? You’re still repairing and finding last minute solutions?!..

4

It’s not blizzard, it’s Activision. They could do anything, it’s not a matter of needing to even spend the money. They already have the tech, the manpower, the brains, and the money. They just don’t care. Probably because they are very busy making other games to take more of our money. This one already sold it’s copies. And something you didn’t touch on, at least I don’t think because I didn’t quite read the whole thing: nobody that works on this game actually gets paid high wages. It’s not a great industry to work for. The only people making a really good wage are team leads and up. So what is the reason for all of this… It’s simple.

Greed. There are bigwigs that pocketed more than what the leads of the dev team will make in 5 years at the company from this one game release, and that’s all that really matters. Hard to say how this is gonna go. Really hard to say. On one hand we all just need to be more patient, but on the other hand there are so many reasons why the game should not be in this state. One thing I’m really sick of is company is pretending like two to four days of beta testing is enough to fully stress test servers. That’s been shown to fail time and time again, at this point I kind of agree with the sentiment that they were aware this whole time that there was going to be huge issues.

5

I’d rather be patient upfront, while the game is developed… with a longer Alpha and/or Beta testing, not when I already payed for the game and I’m in the mindset of a binge-farmer 10 hours/day doin’ mf runs, cows, Pindle, Mephi and so on.
Their management seem to be lacking leadership, to say at least…

6

If they would have allowed all of the acts during the beta, they would have gotten a better glimpse of what is to come. (Pindleskin runs)

Hindsight is 20/20.

7

I’m not working in this domain, but I understand that millions of ppl creating games every 30 seconds are putting a huge stress on the servers.
But, again… when you make tens of millions of dollars profit, can’t you afford servers capable of handling that stress as if it’s nothing?

8

Yes you can… But server deployment takes time, especially on a global scale.

I work in IT… A server deployment takes a minimum of two weeks. That’s planning for the now and 5-10 years into the future, getting the server hardware/racks/cabling etc, installing software, data migration, then finally deployment. Then there’s usually loose ends to tie up.

1 Like
9

I assume they saw the numbers way before the launch. They saw how many millions of ppl pre-purchased the game… right? They had time to install good servers.
I mean… why would I look at the money I made just sitting there in a bank, and not organize my company so that it has the best gear possible?
I would be ashamed to work for Ford (for ex) and sell to ppl a car that can’t drive smoothly for about 1-2 months after they buy it…

10

They saw the preorders yes, but what they didn’t see were the number of people who ordered the game on release and afterwards, which was something they could only estimate. Again, I think Blizzard vastly underestimated how many people would buy the game.

11

Blizzard makes good games, well… they release good games. What happens after they release the game is usually the problem. They must have some unqualified relatives at the top.

12

TheDarkJedi, their pessimism is understandable, and also I think that the stress on servers didn’t came only from ppl buying the game after release, but from 2 other reasons: 1) ppl geared up after a couple of weeks and started creating games faster to do mf runs; and 2) ppl didn’t play since day 1, knowing Blizz has crappy start, but waited to cool off, and then a lot of ppl started playing a bit later, not from the launch.

Upgrayedd, I agree… but, when you make so much money and your company name is Blizzard, you kinda get the most qualified ppl to do the most stressful job there, I guess…

13

That is why I said they would have had a better glimpse of what was to come if they had allowed all 5 acts during beta.

Yes I agree, when players get better gear, they become more efficient runners and create games quicker. The problem grows further even if the player base stays the same.

14

meanwhile Fortnite had peak player counts of 10-12 per day for a long time and their servers rarely failed.
Blizz is not even close to this level of daily traffic on their servers. Their servers have been a joke for a while. No where near sturdy enough for a company making billions every year.

15

I find it somehow funny that they remastered the father of all rpgs, the best game of all time (some would say), and they had misinterpreted so many issues on so many lvls. I mean… c’mon! You make D2 playable with amazing graphics in 2021… don’t you think all the millions of ppl that played it back in 2001 will play it again, and another few millions of curious new players that didn’t play it and wanna see how it is and why’s all this hype about this game?

16

Spending profits on better servers = lower EPS = less money for shareholders

Not gonna happen

17

Well, sad to say this, but it is very true. Blizzard/Activision are in the game to make money.

It’s better to spend less and need more/get more, than to have spent more when they needed less.

18

I never claimed they should give us free stuff. I gladly payed for all the games I bought from them. I just think it sux that in this contract (seller-buyer) they got used to not respecting their part, and ppl got used to it over time.
Someone there should have an iron hand and make some big changes.

19

I’m not talking about giving free stuff… I’m talking about servers to handle the game.

20

Exactly! And when your profit is tens of millions of $$$, shouldn’t you spend huge amount of money on amazingly capable servers, but constantly complain about how hard it is to handle millions of ppl playing your game?
It’s as if you’re complaining you’re so profitable.

  • Awww, excuse me players, I made so much profit, but I can’t handle all of you on my servers… but, I keep the $$$ in the bank, not buying new stuff to make it work…
    Wow! So cool!