No question the people who dominate the forums, here and elsewhere, feel just as you do and the Content Creators who make their living feeding the former rage bait feel that way as well. Or at least they say they do.
However there is no evidence that people outside the forums feel the same way. I’m perfectly happy with what Blizzard has done with WOW and I’m looking forward to DragonFlight.
I’m not saying they were player housing. I think the devs were inspired by player housing, and added their own touches, to turn it into your own personal quest hub and workplace. Maybe they thought players would accept it as player housing. These are the same devs who thought players would accept removal of flight.
However, the basic technological framework of garrisons - a fully upgradable instance where your friends can visit you - could be adapted to be player housing. It could be placed in many zones. Choose a cottage or a mansion. Landscape your grounds. A swimming pool! Stables for your favorite mounts. A portal in many popular locations that would take you to your home, and a portal at the front entrance to return you. Or you could go outside through the back gate into the zone it is located in.
Don’t know where you have been but since Bobby essentially was stripped of power and Microsoft is taking over next year, we have not had THIS MUCH communication on anything since the early days. They are literally putting blue post after blue post on things on live and for Dragonflight and being open about it all. It’s honestly feels strange because we haven’t had this kind of treatment in way too long.
Ah, yes. A fresh perspective on things.
The merger occurred in Wrath of the lich king, no?
IMO, since Warlords of Draenor.
Yes. Activision was bought by Vivendi and merged into Vivendi Games, the owners of Blizzard at the time. Vivendi Games was renamed Activision / Blizzard. Several years later, Vivendi had financial problems and spun off Activision / Blizzard which was then sold to investors led by the President/Ceo of Activision / Blizzard.
Blizzard was trying to appease their corporate overlords long before this merger happened. That is one of the reasons why Starcraft II campaigns were split into three different game purchases.
We don’t.
There is no single consensus on “what players want”. Every individual player has an idea of what she wants and believes is “good for the game” – even when their actions directly prove otherwise.
We are so split on what we want it hurts.
And so on and so forth.
But let’s be real here, Blizz has been about the $$ for some time. If they weren’t they’d take the FF14 approach and keep their game loop roughly the same since the dawn of time.
Bobby and his hand-picked crew are still in charge at Blizzard until after Microsoft takes over. Management hasn’t changed.
That’s why I think it’s so odd that even though Phil Spencer said outright that he wanted to see more people playing WoW, decisions made by planners since then have totally tanked player participation and run raiding into a black hole. Is that merely incompetence, or is it bad faith?
The issue is that they’re all about short term profits. They tunnel vision on that and don’t even notice how changes they make affect the entire playerbase.
When they because Activision Blizzard. It’s really that simple. But I can see the product people are in a constant push pull maneuver with the financial people. That’s just business.
Glad you took a stand. 
Let’s hope they keep not listening to the players. Especially the ones who post thousands of times on this forums with their terrible ideas.
If you don’t like this game, playing a different one is always an option.
There’s a big difference between private corporations and publicly traded corporations in culture though.
It’s definitely hard to articulate. But the publicly traded era feels driven a lot more by designing around metrics.
Blizzard has been part of larger corporations since the company’s very early days. A couple years after their formation, the owners sold the company to Davidson and Associates. This allowed quicker expansion than remaining an independent development studio. Davidson and Associates was then bought by Sierra Games. Sierra Games was purchased by Vivendi. They always would have had the pressure to perform and provide revenue for investors and shareholders.
Even now, Blizzard Entertainment is not technically a publicly traded company on its own. There is no Blizzard Entertainment stock. They are fully owned by the Activision / Blizzard holding company. They only have the pressure to perform and provide revenue for their owners.
To be honest, I think Blizzard’s largest problem is creative brain drain. They haven’t had any new IP since 2016 and even that was many years in the making. They can’t release on consoles or mobile annually. And their flagships products have been languishing for years.
actually it makes no sense at all. unhappy customers means no customers. it starts at the top. take care of your employees and they will take care of your customers. and if your customers are not taken care of then find the weak link and get rid of them.
When Activision bought Blizzard and became Activisuon/Blizzard, that’s when crap started happening. It wasn’t sudden, but over each year Activision got more and more in control of Blizzard and let it be dictated to by the accounting department.
That’s why all of the original developers have bailed and we don’t even have the “B” team running it; now it’s the “F” team; as in they **** up the game, and **** over the playerbase on a very consistent basis. Only Microsoft can set things right at Blizzard now.
-Help us Microsoft; you’re our only hope!
Well that’s the prevailing theory, that it must be the content that is the reason why people are leaving. But on the other hand:
WOW is an 18 year old game in an industry where 5 years old is middle aged and 10 years old is an antique. The fact that it’s hanging on at all is a plus.
When WOW first started it was one of the only D&D like MMOs around. Now there are hundreds of new ones each year.
The modern trend is toward social media and mobile where WOW doesn’t play well.
How would you know if it was content or one of the there problems I listed which is causing more people to leave?
Because becoming a smaller cog in a much larger conglomerate has always helped companies right their ships. There will probably be an even higher amount of pressure to increase revenue under Microsoft.
Provided the purchase actually gets approved…
But still allowed 
So your saying you pay more money for the same problems or worse 
.