Less people are paying though. People didn’t come back for 9.1 and early metrics show it’s a flop. SL is a PR and financial disaster in the making. Classic is keeping this game up right now and they messed up TBCs launch so a lot of people left there too.
A lot of those players feel swindled out of their money because the product is so bad. Which is a bad business practice by Blizz. These predatory monetization tactics are catching up with them. Blizz has one of the worst reputations in the industry right now and it isn’t going to get better. They should of started doing damage control a long time ago and now it is just almost too late.
It’s a smart business decision to have SL as the last expansion and I think 8 expansions was a good run. You gotta call it now though.
The only thing that matters is the money. As long as the money keeps coming so will the xpacs So we’ll just have to wait and see what the financial reports look like but you can rest assured there’s going to be a 10, 11 is what you should question.
I moved to ff14. There’s talk that blizzard is ending wow. If 10.0 does happen it needs to be the best expansion ever.
Flying with zero restrictions
Unlocked classes from the get go and unlock allied races
No split areas
No hellscapes
Remove class and race restrictions
Give me a house I can decorate
Get rid of horde and alliance race restrictions, let me choose the side I follow
More than 5 raids
More than 5 daily quests
Bring back the levels
Bring back the big number gear
Or I’ll never come back because I have the taste of unrestricted gameplay now.
Kinda, but not really. Their office is in a place that’s traditionally a hotspot for that kind of talent, so they should have their pick of people. CoL might be an issue, but companies tend to adjust salary down to match local CoL, so even if they had an office out in the middle of a field in Arkansas or someplace like that, the reduced CoL would mostly be moot. Game companies would just be paying peanut shavings instead of full peanuts.
The truest part of your statement is sub-standard salaries, and it’s a problem plaguing the entire game industry. Game companies are paying peanuts, and there’s enough people who want to work on games that they can get away with it, leaning on game dev being “passion” work.
Up north in silicon valley where I’m at, the situation is much much more healthy for non-game software developers. It’s not really anybody’s passion to work on the website for a financial service or on a mobile app for some random subscription, so to keep people around, companies have to pay well, else they’ll find some other company that does.
The fact that you say predatory monetization and bad business practices don’t matter makes me question if you know much about business. You can’t keep screwing over the players. Not sure how you don’t get that.
Short term cash grabs where you purposely hurt customers has long term effects that ruins your company. The money won’t keep coming in. That is why WoW is in trouble right now. Please try to keep up.
That is why they should have SL be the last expansion it’s the perfect time from a business standpoint.
There’s been talk of Blizzard killing, or ending, WoW since cataclysm.
This means literally nothing.
Until it is no longer profitable WoW will be alive. Plain and simple. And with the piles of cash they are raking in from the in-game store I wouldn’t count on that happening any time soon.
Hey don’t provide hard numbers and common sense to people here about the state of WoW, they don’t like to see anything that disproves their WoW is dying theory lol
1st some people like wow as it is and the direction it is going and some do not.
Blizzard is making bank atm. Now depending on how many do not like that direction and actually leave and hurt the revenue is to be seen.
We do not have solid numbers on the like and dislikes… funny thing some people dislike and play still while playing another game just to hope things go their way…
It’s gone up over the last three months, and even at it’s lowest (after the normal post-expansion drop) it was still doing better than the previous three expansions.
So we’ll just have to wait and see what the financial reports look like but you can rest assured there’s going to be a 10, 11 is what you should question.
As long as players keep paying expansions shall keep a coming