I doubt that ‘biggest player base’ factoid holds true. The Chinese market has dipped, that’s what was keeping the number where it was.
Region wise, I’m sure it has lost that stat in NA regions in the off season of Xpacs when newer MMOs came along a few years ago. EU might be holding there still.
For all we heard, the lay off were non devs. The long term, for all we know, is still secured.
I’m not saying it’s not concerning, but as per this very community, WoW has been dying for 14 years. So I’m taking doomsayers with a grain of salt.
Edit : and what the hell, if WoW, or blizzard for that matter, goes down, I’ll just be saving 20$/month…
Yeah, the claims ‘wow is dead’ have been going for 14 years. Dead isn’t the same as dying though.
When did Wrath come out though? Because the argument can be made that’s when the decline started - that never stopped.
I don’t believe we should be silent at all, that’s not what I was suggesting.
Personally I think unionizing is the way to go to protect the employees since those in charge dont’ seem to care.
That’s all opinions though. I’ve been having a blast at all steps of the way.
That too is opinion. it’s not really about your or my personal subjective experience alone though is it?
It’s about the millions of other subjective experiences… the ones declining.
For the record, I think this was taken out of context because the article focused on the economy in 2010 and money. What I got from it is “it’s not good for business to goof around when the economy is in the dump and businesses are having a hard time”. Please read the article carefully before jumping on the bandwagon.
I think it was a dumb thing to say on the record though.
But now we know where streaming to Facebook came from and probably Twitter integration.
Good to know OP watches Az as well.
Yikes, that whole paragraph of what he said in the interview doesn’t sound like he’s a good fit for a video game Company … AT ALL.
Sad thing is, people like Bob is that there are 100000 more like him waiting to take his place like mentioned by someone earlier here.
Unfortunately until he is manning the Titanic, nothing is going to look good going forward.
To me, that’s just not seeing the forest from the trees.
Non-developers were the ones laid off, fair enough… but the words and actions of the guy running the show are what’s concerning me. As I said earlier, he clearly considers everyone to be expendable; developers will find themselves on the chopping block if they cease to be useful for any particular reason.
The culture of fear and pessimism he’s trying to instill will also stifle the morale of the developers, never knowing who’s going to be let go next…
The timelines have certainly shifted, but massive loss in Activision Blizzard’s stock price over the past year or so (despite record profits) probably draw some pretty big parallels to what happened back then and what’s going on right now.
Nevertheless, that’s the wrong attitude to have… ever.
… and yes, some of those things REALLY are dumb to say on record.
But that’s the problem. You cannot simply pin sub declining solely on subjective problems.
You say Wrath was the peak numberwise but wrath was about 10 years ago. A LOT of things can happen in a player that gets them to eventually leave. It’s unfair to directly point devs, director, ceo and what not.
Before we can assign much blame, we first have to even admit there’s a problem.
Have we reached that step? Where we can agree WoW’s got an avalanche of problems right now?
… or are we still kinda in denial about that?
I mean, I am keeping an open mind about what his goals are, but I’m not going to forget the words and the intent. I just want people to not get hung up on like 11 words and not think about the big picture. I am not defending him or the article at all, but I don’t think we need to whip people into a frenzy either over the idea that he ruined the idea of “gamers making games for other gamers”.
I did see that he was talking about technology and advances with guitar hero and letting people link it up to facebook… Which is something we have (had?) In Wow. Other than the initial feedback, I haven’t seen any interest or a word uttered about it since it was implemented. Was he the one who came up with that idea? Do they look at it now as a waste of time? Maybe he is the wrong kind of person for Wow, I dunno. I look at fluff like that and Twitter as a huge waste and not at all in line with what Wow used to be about.
But… when you read the entire article I can see the logic at the time. Maybe it has caused issues. Maybe devs and creators feel a lot more strained and businesslike than they did before (I dunno since I don’t work there), but that is in opposition of what we have heard even recently. Yth on his stream underlined his belief that they still have passion and whatnot, which doesn’t fit the cold, calculating team of people that seems to be the goal from the article. People look at the way Ion talks in Q&As and they think he’s out of touch, doesn’t play the game, wants to push the bottom line. I see an internal struggle with being a leader in a company and being a nerd making video games.
No, I’m fully aware of the problems within the game or the company. I have my own issues you know. I detest the removal of masterloot, the inclusion of many skills on the gcd, the sharding etc. I’m not a fool.
What would be foolish though is to believe that Blizzard is doing it on purpose, that they’re actively trying to piss off their customers, out of spite.
That would be a pretty dumb thing to do.
Oh, I don’t think it’s out of spite. I think it’s a bigger and more systemic problem.
It’s a challenge companies face when the middle-managers, bean-counters, ‘just give me the weekly report’ c*o’s, and metric-obsessed get the power. None of them are doing anything out of spite. They are just parts of the machine, and the machine doesn’t care either way about anyone.
To play devils advocate:
With all their sub losses and all that, they posted a record breaking year for themselves.
It might be unpalatable, but it’s entirely possible that they simply don’t need us like they used to. Not don’t need us as in customers, but don’t need us as in the customers who are up in arms about WoW and “mobile game controversy”.
If microtransactions are doing so well for them, I can’t imagine they’d stop moving towards them.
The unfortunate truth of an industry is that sometimes growth means that portions of your customers move on. Sometimes, you embrace an entirely new product line or style, and any who don’t like it leave.
Which is to say that “we” are unnecessary. They don’t need you, or me, or any specific one of us. They only need customers and consumers, which they can get far more of in the mobile market than we could ever provide in WoW.
Customers are essential, but we in particular are not.
A month or two ago, there were some articles swirling about a definite change at Blizz’ in terms of operations. Namely, the business people showing up at more meetings and pushing their own agenda more.
These forums were starting to get into an uproar around then about that… and now we’re starting to see real results from those practices.
It’s a been a slow boil, but now we’re seeing a whole hell of a lot of steam.
A rabble-rouser Youtube creator finding a 9 year old article which seems to reinforce the ideology behind the recent business decisions… it doesn’t look good.
As this forum has said for a long time:
Well… between the 9 year old article and the recent layoffs?
Activision isn’t just meddling, they’ve taken over.
Why? Because of the layoffs? Because store mounts? How has it suddenly reached critical mass?
I don’t remember which articles you mentioned. Usually if there is a written source passed around on the forums I make sure to read it and stay as informed as I can. I may have missed them or something. Can you link them?
The sad part is, if by some miracle, everyone just stopped buying Activision, EA or whatever hated company of your choice’s garbage and they went out of business, the people who pulled all the scummy tactics would still walk away as multi-billionaires who lost absolutely nothing in the end.
Paints a sort of hopeless picture.
It started relating to an increase in employee buy-outs.
I think this is the article which started it, from December 2018:
https://kotaku.com/with-activisions-influence-growing-blizzard-is-cutting-1831263741
And it does mention more “business influence” in the meetings.