You quoted me where I talk about wow generating more than it costs and you reply with numbers that don’t match that.
What makes you think WoW makes ONLY enough to cover it’s own expenses?
Again you have no idea what “maintain” means when trying to claim that maintaining will preserve current users.
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If Ion is thinking that, he’d be fired. I guarantee they are trying to come up with ways to bring in more people, but they just keep swinging and missing.
Sure. That doesn’t mean they’re hiring more people than they currently need. Businesses hire to meet need. Unless theyre just starting up, they don’t hiring to generate need.
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I never said that. Quote where I said that.
I said — very plainly — that if WoW makes X% profit for dollars invested, and another product makes >X% profit for dollars invested, a business is going to send that money to the other product.
Read that as revenue, my bad.
Your example still assumes that Blizzard has 2 products with KNOWN profit returns to invest into. Which isn’t the case we’re discussing. We’re discussing drastically cutting down resources for WoW to take the money OP believes it will somehow still be earning, to invest in a new endeavor whos success we cannot know.
Edit: Editing cause “sunsetting” isnt properly used here.
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Honestly? I’d stop once I felt the game was on life support.
With wow there’s always that sense of ‘maybe next expansion’. If, say, BFA was IT I couldn’t imagine it holding my attention for that long. I’d be sad, sure, because this has been my favourite/most important game of all time (I’ve played since beta and married someone I met in game years ago).
But … the game feels pretty ‘done’ anyway, with the designers determined to focus on little player retention loops instead of what made it great.
Guy, I literally do this for a living. The reason I got started in stock investing is because you get a large 4 year grant for working at FAANG.
Also, I have no idea why you are fighting so hard to convince us that Blizzard isn’t going to put the game on maintenance mode. The OP was about a hypothetical and the question was what would you do if the hypothetical was true - not an argument about how likely the hypothetical was.
Blizzard divesting resources from WoW is just a common strategy for publicly traded companies. There’s no shocking revelation here if Blizzard says they have been scaling back development of WoW and cutting resources to work on mobile games. That’s just what publicly traded companies that have a commitment to their stockholders do.
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All good. Misreads happen. 
I never said that either. I said WoW and “another product”. Money is always shifted to the higher profit product. Barring, as I said, public perception and loss leaders.
Oh I wasn’t going along that road. I was just chiming in to correct what some people misunderstand about revenue, profit, and how businesses invest money.
Will they put WoW in maintenance mode? One day. Maybe not in my lifetime with how popular WoW is still. lol
I can see them dialing back investment, though. That certainly seems to be the way it’s going. (Public perception)
I think they already have. It sure does look that way.
What would I do if WoW was put into maintenance mode?
Final Fantasy XIV is waiting for me.
(Gad, I wish they had a world chat!)
Investing in the stock market doesn’t mean you understand what maintenance mode means.
I gave you definitions that contradict you. Do you agree with the definitions or not?
And I’m not arguing whether or not Blizzard will ever put the game on maintenance mode. You said in your OP that it would make sense for Blizzard to do it. I’m saying that it currently does not due to how much profit wow appears to generate.
Lastly, scaling back world of warcraft is not what we’re discussing here. You used the terms “skeleton crew” and “maintenance mode”. Those terms are far more than simply ‘scaling back’. Do you no longer stand by your use of those terms?
Do you know what FAANG is? Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google - I’m a software developer that’s worked for the best tech companies in the world. The terms you are using do not have fixed meanings, they’re jargon that you understand through context. Saying that an operating system and a game are both in maintenance mode can mean wildly different things - the commonality being that you’re putting in the minimal amount of effort required to keep the project alive until it’s EoL.
Is only something Blizzard knows, but the premise of the argument is satisfied if they’ve already dialed things back and just aren’t telling us, so I fail to see your point here.
I’m glad you understand this. Because in the video game industry, MMOs in particular, these terms are more severe, near synonymous with sunsetting. So you’re wrong by both the actual definition and the context based colloquial definition as well.
The point here is that you used specific terms; skeleton crew and maintenance mode. Terms which in this industry, mean putting the game on life support. If that’s not what you meant, that’s fine. But as of now you’ve instead chosen to argue that your particular definition is correct and everyone else’s is wrong.
And you’ve chosen to move from the original point of the OP, to a pointless argument that Blizzard isn’t going to dial back WoW, to an even more pointless argument about the semantics of product lifecycle terminology. A bit ridiculous don’t you think? What does this have to do with my original point?
If they officially announced it and their were no hope for future expansions. I would without a doubt quit and play a new mmo lol.
Please address that you used the incorrect terminology.
I have never made the argument Blizzard will not “dial back WoW”. I have made the argument Blizzard will not “put wow in maintenance mode with a skeleton crew” any time soon. I make that statement with an understanding of both the actual definition and the context based colloquial definition of those terms. We’ve moved to now arguing definitions because this is the crux of our misunderstanding; your use of those terms.
So once again, either address that there was a misconception due to your improper terminology. Or tell me whether or not you agree that World of Warcraft will not be moved into a ‘sunset’ period any time soon.
Yes, you funnel net net profit into other projects if you’re not going to push the Warcraft IP forward any further. You most assuredly do not shut it down and kill a nine figure revenue stream. A portion of your expense is staffing a team that continues the product in maintenance mode.
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I’ve already explained to you that jargon has contextual meaning, and that my usage wasn’t incorrect. Lot’s of words in tech mean different things to the public and to the people that actually do this for a living. Like the word hacker is almost never used in the context of cybersecurity, but you can tell when someone is using it that way based on context.
But really there is no crux here - I’ve already explained what dialing back WoW would look like, and my OP was never about arguing the probability of the hypothetical. You just want to be argumentative over a post asking for an opinion about what you, the individual player, would do if WoW development was dialed back.
It was in correct in the context of MMOs. So yes, the useage was incorrect.
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What you meant: Stop trying to grow wow and maintain it as it currently is instead.
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What it means in MMO context: Only keep staff required for the game to function + a few others for minor fixes/updates. (Similar to Wildstar’s end of life period).
Seems fairly incorrect to me.
Nope. We started arguing because I understood your post to mean #2 above. Yknow. The meaning that is both the actual definition AS WELL AS the proper definiton for the context of MMO development. This caused me to disagree about whether or not your premise was a good business move or not.
So as you can see, our whole back and forth began due to a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding of your assuming that everyone would understand your terms in the context of typical software development and not in the terms of MMO/video game development.
You chose the wrong term for the topic basically.
Edit: At this point I’m still arguing because you seem incapable of simply understanding that you chose the wrong term given the topic.