Blizzcon 2019

Community General Discussion
41

Honestly getting into the mobile market made sense. They did it for Hearthstone but the that market moves so quickly that a mobile game will become irrelevant super quickly.

The only mistake Blizzard made with the Diablo Immortal announcement was not having something else to announce next to it. Even if it was a 10-second teaser trailer for Diablo 4, it would’ve done so much to give the impression they weren’t doing a hard turn exclusively into mobile.

I think the “Don’t you guys have phones?” meme is pretty stupid, mostly because the guy’s not wrong. Countries in the third world are getting connected to power grids daily. It’s more likley you know someone with a smart phone than doesn’t have a smart phone. Install rates for games on mobile devices dwarf PC and console metrics by a ton.

But that’s when you get when announcements aren’t made by PR guys, but developers whose skills are in making games, not necessarily reading a crowd or on-the-spot damage control.

So keep banging the drum, I guess, and maybe Blizzard will remember to keep something for the hardcore even when catering to a larger crowd of casuals.

BlizzCon 2019 will be about whether or not they learned from last year.

42

In all seriousness, you’re totally right that Blizzard is smart in joining the mobile market. As a gamer, I’m not happy with this direction, but as an ATVI shareholder it’ll probably make me a lot of money. With that said, I believe this endeavor is being driven by Activision Blizzard, not Blizzard Entertainment. I think if it were up to Blizzard Entertainment, it would’ve been a PC game first and a mobile game second; but Activision Blizzard found it more profitable to hand it over to NetEase to make 100% mobile and then forced Wyatt Chang to sell the idea at Blizzcon and pretend to be excited about it. ActiBlizz don’t really understand gamers, just numbers, so they thought announcing it at Blizzcon would be a good idea to get players excited. Of course, it backfired horribly.

I also think Wyatt and the Diablo crew really really wanted to announce Diablo 4, but someone higher up in the ladder told them no, so they could only repeat the “multiple diablo projects” line over and over.

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43

I wonder if Hearthstone was a Blizzard initiative or a push from Activision to get into the mobile market?

All the same, Diablo needed some new life. It had monetization problems in a world are getting increasingly monetized with microtransactions-- for good and for ill.

Might as well test the waters with Diablo, but I say that as someone not particularly attached to that franchise.

But it sounds like what you’re saying is I should start investing in ATVI.

44

I’m sure that even without any meddling from Activision Blizzard’s corporate, Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone would look exactly like it does right now. It wasn’t even a mobile game until later.

I won’t tell you to invest or not invest in ATVI. I just figured it’s relevant to talk about the direction the company is going from both a gamer’s and an investor’s perspective.

45

Damn. And here I was hoping for some hot investment tips.

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46

Pretty sure they’ll be announcing a new mobile app.

What? Do you not have a phone?

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47

That WoW is going mobile.

You have phones, don’t you?

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48

Taliesin low key pushing Blizzcon?!

I don’t believe it.

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49

Something is getting announced this year. I’m guessing they are expecting it to be big, because they poached CDRed’s Stepien to work on this project. Some investors are saying stay away but then another said something of the equivalent “Activision has a strong 2019 line-up”. And currently that just isnt true, so they must know something we dont, I’m guessing.

50

This will never get old ROFL.

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51

Exactly! We’re all waiting for an xpac announcement this year, now imagine if blizz come and show Warcraft PET’s for mobile and that’s it, no new expac, nothing more… imagine the backlash.

52

WoW Mobile

53

Given their announcement last year and their inability to see why that was such a garbage move, this would not surprise me at all.

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54

Lots of people speculating Warcraft mobile, and I think it’s coming, but not yet. If there’s another mobile game in the works I think the Heroes of the Storm franchise will be the next to find itself going into our phones. After that, probably Warcraft and Starcraft.

55

I think it’s why they wanted to remove flying. So WoW could be easily moved to mobile.

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56

That’s a plot twist to me. Interesting take.

57

bring on wrath 2.0. would love another lich king expac

58

This is so common on any corporation that belongs to a father company. People love to bash at Blizz for their poor decisions, but the pressure they have on the developers is certain.

It’s sad but neither side wanna listen to the other, admiting you did wrong seems to be something people sure is scared of.

59

I went to Blizzcon 2018 solo. It was exciting to go to, but it was certainly a once in a lifetime thing.

This Blizzcon I’m opting for the virtual ticket.

60

Well it will def have a wow expac, I’m kinda expecting Diablo 4 to be announced after last year, maybe overwatch will get some major new stuff like a battle royal like mode, hopfully the documentary on how Garrosh only did one thing wrong and that was kill kill the warlocks RIP Neeru