Don’t remind me of that heart break :(.
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He sold to Vivendi, not to Activision (who later bought out Vivendi and Blizzard was just part of that deal). Also, I’m not willing to assume the circumstances Morhaime faced–if you found a company and you still want to lead it, but you’re in dire straits and the choices are: a) chapter 11 bankruptcy; or b) go public and lose full control, which would you do? We know what Mike did, but I bet it was not an easy decision. Maybe he has regrets, but all you can do is move forward and learn from the past.
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Honestly I have a lot of fun on WoW but it does have it’s serious issues. Activision being one of the main ones.
Limiting interaction with the community unlike a long time ago you could actually talk to GM’s, hang out in game with them, they would appear from time to time as a mock raid boss outsides cities.
They used to address server population by merging realms which now they just hold out for the faithful wow players to buy realm transfers so they can make the 25$.
They got rid of the ability to buy a single month wow time for 14.99 and now you are forced to do a subscription or pay 30$ for 2 months. And before anyone says it’s the same price. Yes and no. I for one use Bnet cards and a 50$ Battle net card prior would be enough for time, a wow token and a pet. Now it’s only enough for wow time and a token. So technically you get less for your 50$ net card.
Lack of beta access for players. They have prioritized streamers for the last several betas and the launch / delays really show that it’s what happened. WOD Beta key streamers followed by the very first quest chain to be bugged and gating players from experiencing the game, WoW Classic with layering exploits, infinite boss spawns, Black Lotus exploits, millions of bots and went unchecked because hey a bot is still 15$ a month. Shadowlands was also delayed and when they finally invited non advertisers I mean streamers everyone saw the horrible state it was in when it was already meant for launch. Couldn’t level traditionally, thousands of game breaking bugs.
On top of all this Activision continues to release content the fans didn’t really want nor ask for. Weekly chests, long time gates. I understand the reasoning behind them but why not poll your community and see what they would want with a majority rule. Similar to OSRS polling the fans. Or when Divinity Original Sin was a kickstarter (We think X idea might be cool if you guys want that please donate X to fund it if not we won’t work with this idea)
Now don’t get me wrong. I love WoW I’ve played it since Vanilla when I was in 7th grade. There’s so much content between mount farming, pet battles, Xmog, over 14k quests ( Please add a higher quest achievement than seeker as I finished 3,000 before Cataclysm) mini games, holiday events, deep lore, fan art a huge community. And I wish WoW was restored to it’s former glory.
But the sad state is the way it is appearing at least to me is that it’s all just a cash grab now because they are either planning on ending it soon or they aren’t convinced that their numbers will be able to keep up.
I know that’s just my thoughts but I’ve experienced this with other MMO’s and people would label me crazy, conspiracy theorist etc etc. It happened with RIFT which I used to love Gamigo bought them then proceeded to flood the microtransactions with promises content is on the way. Then before you know it the last expansion was 7 years ago and you rarely run into players.
On top of all this you can read articles from former wow dev’s on the horrible state of employee workplace. Paying in time cards, treating employees like crap, not giving WoW Dev’s the creative freedom they want because it’s owned by Activision. A company notorious for being money hungry and releasing crappy overused content year after year. Look at Call of Duty they in essence release the same game once or twice a year. And some of their games aren’t even finished.
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The only game that can kill WoW is WoW itself.
Here is the thing, since 2004 when the MMO market literally exploded with WoW, more and more and more and more MMOs have been created. This has created a huge plethora of MMOs for people to flock to. Regardless of what Dreamhaven or any of the other companies founded by the original Blizzard devs make, WoW won’t die until it kills itself.
For all we know, blizzard wouldn’t have survived if he hadn’t sold.
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Startrek TNG did it’s best work after Roddenberry left the show.
Annecdotal, but there you go. /shrug
I would not be surprised if they made a great game together at dreamhaven (though we have no idea what kaplan is planning to do with his life) and if they go that route I hope it’s fantastic.
Actually funny enough if you look at games like OSRS, FFXIV, their population has been increasing steadily for years while WoW’s has been going down for years. OSRS is closing in on surpassing wow for active players. If the data graphs continue in the direction they are going WoW is going to drop from #1 to #3 within this year.
And that’s before projects such as Dream Haven, and New World are released. If Blizzard doesn’t start catering towards it’s playerbase they will notice it in their numbers. And when massive corporations such as Activision notice bad numbers what happens is people get fired instead of searching for the root of the problem.
Right, but that’s not those games killing WoW. That’s WoW killing WoW.
Also, I could care less about New World.
I’m waiting on Ashes of Creation.
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i just got finished with tng for the first time a while ago, it was amazing. i just got finished with the movies too, those were, uhh…
I enjoyed first contact.
Yes and no. I see your point as to why that’s WoW killing WoW but also if all these other high quality options weren’t there Activision would just continue to extort the WoW community and their subs would remain steady. So in a sense it’s both WoW stabbing itself and other companies taking advantage of horrible player interactions by the top dogs.
I mean, vultures steal from lions, but you’d never claim that the vulture killed the zebra.
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I’d say the Lions lack of awareness caused the vulture to benefit. And the lion lost out on some high quality meat 
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oh, no doubts that he’ll join dreamhaven to make games with his old buddies…
i’m saying this as someone who assumes WoW started as a group of dudes playing a homebrew game of AD&D, where orcs don’t have to be the bad guys, and shamans are their version of mage-blade (or whatever the fighter/mage combo is called). i figure he’d want to work with his old friends to make a new rpg world for folks to enjoy.
A lot of this also depends on your definition of WoW dying.
Everquest is still going strong, 22 or 23 years old with graphics that could probably run on a Sega 32X. Still releases expansions frequently (It is on expac number 27) and people still pay 35 bucks to buy them.
Are you a senior citizen?
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Maybe he’s just retiring. After that long being involved in game development, it would be enough to drive most people to the retirement spot for a nice long sanity break.
Me to Blizzard
Dont you guys have Devs
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/10 chars
And nothing groundbreaking will come of it. It’s just going to become a collective of pretentious has-beens, that refuse to acknowledge that gaming trends change, and that will have mild success with whatever contrived BS game they do put out. Somewhere in the 250-500k copies range over a year. They will refuse to listen to the playerbase and insist they know best, take 10x longer to correct mistakes/patch things, piss off customers, customers never come back. The end…
Nobody cares about the old “SoonTM” “It will be ready when it’s done” crap anymore. With an overly saturated market of good games, how delusional do devs have to be to believe that if they build it, they will come; no matter how long it takes. That worked 15 years ago, doesn’t fly today though unless you’re Nintendo, Naughty Dogs or FromSoftware.
News flash: 95% of gamers, even Blizzard loyalists, don’t know or won’t remember the name of a single developer. There have been like a dozen or more other spinoff companies with ex-Blizz employees and that name didn’t turn their projects into gold.
Not true… there is one name… that is forever etched into the minds of every Diablo 3 player… Jay Wilson.
Heck there’s a few developers out there that if I even see there name floating around a title… I walk away. Richard Garriot.
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