Let’s be honest here. I have paid hundreds of dollars for games I hardly played like the Call of Duty iterations, Diablo 3 (bought on PS4 and! PC), Overwatch and many more games on other platforms. All the while I have played Warcraft 3 by itself the most over all those years.
However of WC3 I saved the key codes I bought on release date many years ago. So I understand that from a profit point of view WC3 does not look like a success. The issue here is that blizzard needs to get working on a good strategy to make money with WC3.
Both HOTS and SC2 are free to play, but I am sure did not generate the effect that the sales department was looking for. Both games lack potential for FTP schematics. HOTS is third to LoL and DOTA2 and SC2 is too much focused on hard core gamers.
Meanwhile WC3’s (past) audience is much more broad as is displayed by the relative player numbers on the ladder in the early 2000’s and popularization of custom games like tower defense and dota.
So why not make WC3 the focus FTP game of blizzard with good support of community and availability of all sorts of micro transactions such as the other games have. The warcraft world already contains a lot of assets.
There is a lot of potential here going to waste. However I am hopeful, when CS:GO was released it took years before Valve realized that the game with good community potential could be monetized via skins. CS:GO was pretty bad for its first few years, but look where that game is now. The same is possible for WC3. However with the low effort progress that is currently applied, WC3 will forever remain lost potential.
TL;DR, the main problem with WC3 is the poor business strategy behind the game. WC3 would have more potential as FTP game compared to SC2 and HOTS.
6 Likes
Oh man…
Edit: they could’ve made some money via taking a cut of sophisticated custom maps which have some pay to win elements, like in Dota 2, but they ****ed that up too.
I would be ready to pay up to 20€ for a new DLC “remastered” graphics.
I would also be interested to buy some custom maps if they are high quality and fun to play.
4 Likes
I would buy a Reforged version of Warcraft I and II but first they shall deliver their promise of III Reforged.
2 Likes
I’d be more than happy to pay upwards of $50-$60 for a proper “Remaster” (none of this “Reforged” nonsense), that takes the old models/assets and brings them into 2020.
I know most people would not pay that much, but I would. Despite me buying RoC on day one (I bought the NE archer box), and playing/watching this game more than any game since 2003; I didn’t bother buying Reforged because I hated the Reforged graphics. They always looked goofy to me, so I knew I would stick with Classic. Blizzard didn’t give me a reason to buy Reforged.
7 Likes
They cannot legally permit this. This is why such thing does not exist in StarCraft II.
All it would take is a single custom map to allow some aspect deemed as gambling and then the entire game could be banned from some countries. There is also limited quality assurance and a lot of liability they have to take on.
For monetization, selling skin packs seems the best option. These are similar to SC2 and could be used in melee to customize a player’s race appearance while also adding assets for custom map makers to use and make better custom maps.
They also could have added their own sort of coop commander mode. That mode is still popular in StarCraft II and heroes for it did sell. This requiring owning Reforged to play, with Reforged giving 6 free heroes, would have really improved the value proposition of Reforged.
2 Likes
Well there could be a clause that prior to monetisation, some employee would have to take a look at the map. Not rocket science. Apparently Actiblizz manually checks on reports of insults in Bnet games anyway.
So I have played SC2 for 3 years and have not played a single custom map during that time. But it seems nowadays there is some monetizing possible with custom maps in SC2: starcraft.fandom. com/wiki/Arcade. Although because of the difference in communities of SC2 and WC3 I would expect a lot more than 5% of Warcraft 3 players would be interested in custom games. I mean SC2 did not even release with chat channels. I have made many online friends in my WC3 time to play custom games with, meanwhile with SC2 I literally made zero friends online to play custom games with in all those years.
1 Like
Jesus Christ, they literally only had to copypaste this… my God, the incompetence knows no limits.
It seems you both did not heard the shot back then.
There whas a massive backlash back then in the community when SC II did this and it whas so bad that Blizzard need to confirm that those two where only a test baloon and no further such actions will be taken. It came during the time where Bethesda tried the same with Skyrim and everyone whas pissed that the developer of the game tried to make money with the love and effort of its creative players. So they stayed with selling the announcers and CO-OP commanders and unit skins.
2 Likes
Ok that is fair. I missed it. Obviously if you add something to a game 8 years after release you do not get much traction anymore. People have moved on. Though I certainly admire the dedication. A model where you can get skins/icons/animations/(win)sounds per custom game would work though I would guess and to be fair if the custom games are worth it I would pay. Especially if the custom games are part of a FTP game. Though I see the complexity of this when the community is against it.
I’m not sure a system where Actiblizz gets, say, 20% of inmap sales for some stupid stuff where people like OP can spend their money would’ve been worse than the “all your maps are belong to us” policy, which also caused outrage.
1 Like
From what I understood this one came from Reforged and RoC are two decades appart and so things that natural for newer games are comming as some unfair change because it whas nearly two decades like this. But I have to confess I do not have so much information in the materia and I mostly heard the theory they did it because of DotA.
I’m thinking of a Dota 2 custom map which you probably have never seen, so let me explain its concept: it’s a very sophisticated and well designed TD type, but with experience and progression mechanics for both your account (persistent) and your towers (temporary). You can spend money to level up your account and you need a premium account to access certain very good towers. I only played it twice because I hate pay2win concepts, but apparently there are people like OP who casually spend money on stuff for whatever reason. It’s very well made though, so I can see it having success.
Now instead of encouraging such models, where Actiblizz could’ve benefited from, the low IQ management had a train of thought akin to this:
- we lost a chance to make a ton of money with Dota and our copy (HotS) is not very popular
- how can we prevent losing such an opportunity to make a ton of money again?
- hmmm, there were lots and lots of custom maps in classic, right? so there will be lots and lots of custom maps again
- how can we profit from it while retaining full and complete control over everything?
- we will just change the terms and conditions, none of those stupid gamers will read it anyway, right?
Dota 2 became huge because Icefrog and everyone else involved in the development are smart and passionate about the game. Actiblizz just tries to luck their way into money with the least amount of effort possible, basically they’re speculating on gamers being sheeple who buy everything because of the brand “Warcraft”, not because of the actual quality of the game (because of people like OP, no offense).
1 Like
The auto chess games are successful custom games that are getting monetized by Riot and Valve so there is a way. Blizzard just needs to start acting. It is somewhat satisfying to see Blizzard miss all those hypes while they could have had it all. Maybe we should ask Riot or Valve to make a proper WC3 RTS successor. Although I still think that if Blizzard gets it all together they would make the better game.
1 Like
I started calling them Actiblizz because clearly they have nothing to do anymore with the Blizzard we knew and loved… I have no hope.
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Explain how an RTS has better monetization options than a moba please.
???
What
???
Just to be clear. I don’t play pay2win games like that either. I did pay for extra factions for Company of heroes 2 and Northgard. Which is not the same as pay2win to me since you can only buy them once. Though the number of factions that TW:Warhammer is selling wouldn’t feel right to me. Still when I like a game I would normally buy all additional content, such as add-ons and skins like I did for SC2 and many other games.
You realize that if blizzard applied the same business model to DOTA1 in WC3 as Riot and Valve did, that LoL and DOTA2 would never have been a thing. They were the first movers here and they could have easily kept the momentum. Yet they didnot make WC3/DOTA1 FTP and lost hard.
What are you even talking about? The original DOTA was a custom map, are you saying they should sell skins for random custom maps?
You even just made my argument for me, that a MOBA has better monetization than an RTS game.
You claim WC3 has better monetization options than HOTS, a MOBA. I ask how and you reply with that nonsense.
Tell me what they’re going to sell as DLC in WC3.