Blizzard is out of touch with it's players

Lore Story Forum
1
I'm not saying that ... an investment research firm is:

"The company's stock value dropped by close to 7 percent on Monday (via Sarah Needleman of WSJ). Shares closed at $64.34, which is down from the previous day's close at $68.99.

In a note to investors, research firm Cowen & Company said 'Blizzard severely miscalculated how their fans would respond, which suggests they aren't in touch with their players as maybe they should be.'"

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-blizzard-stock-drops-following-diablo-d/1100-6463046/

Granted, this is related to the Diablo fiasco, but perhaps there's hope for some soul searching w/r/t WoW's horrible story.
2
yeah. I think this blizzcon was a pretty good reveal that they were willing to listen to players. I hope the diablo team gets their engine in gear, too.
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"When the people that can make the company successful are sales and marketing people, they end up running the companies

Then the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it's like to make great products"

-Steve Jobs
4
A drop that'll be wiped out when Diablo Immortal makes them small-nation-GDP levels money.
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You don't need a degree from a fancy school to see that a mobile game would not go over well with an audience full of pc gamers.
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11/06/2018 05:57 AMPosted by Kaillie
A drop that'll be wiped out when Diablo Immortal makes them small-nation-GDP levels money.


I wouldn't necessarily count on that.

Like look, I understand why Blizzard wanted to make a Diablo mobile game. China is flooded with what are blatant Diablo ripoffs for mobile, many made by the very company they're partnering with. Why wouldn't they want to get some cash from that?

And maybe they'll be able to make a strong entrance into the market with a better product than all the ripoffs that are already there and make tons of cash.

Or....maybe not. After all, what they're promoting looks like a reskinned version of countless games already released. Maybe they'll be able to give it the patented Blizzard polish and become the go-to standard for mobile ARPGs. Or maybe nobody will care, and they'll just keep playing the games they're already invested in, because Diablo mobile will only offer a marginal improvement.

The problem is that there's a very consistent emerging pattern across recent Blizzard products and announcements: Great art, great-looking, but extremely, extremely lackluster in terms of game innovation or design. Game design is a constant flub, an albatross around the neck of Blizzards increasingly good-looking games. Diablo mobile fits this pattern. It looks pretty. But it also looks like they've barely made any gameplay changes from already existing games.

And then they presented it at Blizzcon, like reskinning an already existing game was some huge achievement?

All this is making me increasingly suspicious: Blizzard is hollowed out. They have a great art department, and very little game design talent left. That's bad for the long-term health of the company.

They might make a lot of money off Diablo mobile. But Diablo mobile would only be successful because of the past success and brand name of Diablo itself. If all Blizzard can do going forward is make quick cash-grab reskins of mobile games, slapping increasingly aging brand names on already existing products-and worse, if, as Blizzcon showed us, they actually think that's impressive-then they're in a lot of trouble. Short term, they can make a lot of money. Long-term, their brand is going to cease to be seen as any sort of standard of anything impressive or innovative. No amount of short-term money making is going to compensate for that type of damage.

Edit: Whoops, quoted wrong person