I think Wrath was when the RPG part of MMORPG started to get minimized. They’ve even admitted that they moved so far in the direction of game play and mechanics that they forgot about class fantasy. And really, that’s part of why modern raids are so well tuned. If talent’s don’t really matter (or matter very little), and you can be reasonably sure that every raid will have all the tools, you can be very tight with the game design. In Classic, you have a version of the game where that isn’t the case. It’s designed with the expectation that there may be some ret pallies, enhancement shaman, or whatever meme spec you can think of in the raids. Once they saw the community was going to min max to the extent that it did, they were free to trim the fat in raid sizes and basically build the game around raiding.
Man I don’t know, I mean maybe, but perhaps it has more to do with their lack of proper table top RPG backgrounds and disconnect from the community.
One could say they kinda brought the situation on them selves in a way too, listening to the QQ in general about things just being too hard or needing more quality of life and then never stepping back to say “is this too much?”
Also there is just a general lack of quality communication, and they depend far too much on community influencers instead of actual players. Some of the community influencers are decent but also can’t speak for the grand majority and can never foresee all the possibility outcomes to proposed changes and some times the community influencers sponsor and promote ideas that directly buff their job over the game.
So really it’s a lot of things, and yes I agree Activision is a problem.
Is that appropriate for gamers in 2020, as it was in 2004?
Mmm… Prior to releasing WoW, what was the connection to the community?
Maybe it was this:
There were some game developers developing a game they would like to play.
Now there is a game corporation developing a game based on feedback from the community.
Blizzard has said time and time again that Activision doesn’t influence the development of their games.
Activision is Activision.
Blizzard is Blizzard.
Activision Blizzard is Activision Blizzard.
Correct.
And Activision-Blizzard has nothing to do with Blizzard games or Activision games. Blizzard develops and publishes their own games. Activision publishes CoD and whatever else I have no idea because I don’t play Activision games.
Incorrect. You play WoW, which is a Blizzard-Activision game. We wouldn’t have gotten classic without the go-ahead from Activision, I can promise you that. Blizzard makes zero changes without the okay from Activision.
I don’t either, but I certainly have an idea, because I use a Blizzard, BattleNet launcher, and I see a section called Partner Games.
I suppose this could have been Blizzard’s design team’s decision, but I’m skeptical.
The game developers developing a game they wanted to play was developed by table top gamers who liked both table top rpgs and Everquest.
Yeah. I’m relatively aware. I grew up playing both styles of table-top games. We had a Galaga table-top at home (Arcade Video game), and I played D&D, and a lot of the Paladium RPG dice-rolling/character sheet games.
WoW during BC was where my highschool friends and I found ourselves in the game that was what we had sort of imagined when we hung out together, and played those table-top RPG games.
You have absolutely zero evidence for that. Conspiracy theories are bad, mmk?
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, not in the least. I’ve worked for semi-big corps before, and damage control is 100% a thing that corporations do, all the time.
Blizzard may be the ones creating the content, but that content has to be pitched to the guys uptairs (Activision) before they’ll spend money on development. You think Blizzard are the ones who put it in the in-game cash shop? That’s just silly.
Really, this is the total truth when it comes to WoW. It’s basically EQ with a lot of the tedium stripped out and a better combat system.
Best kinda RPG
Activision may not directly influence any Blizzard decisions, but corporate culture tends to bleed over.
However, I feel like there was a fairly recent article from Kotaku talking about how the Activision influence at Blizzard was growing.
Absolutely.
I guess you’re going to conveniently ignore the numerous paid character services that existed long before Activision-Blizzard became a thing. I guess you’re going to ignore the trading card game with rare loot cards Blizzard created in 2006. Blizzard in 2006 created the first iteration of loot boxes.
Those are completely different things. I’m pretty certain i read somewhere that character transfers were paid because they required individual attention, it wasn’t automated like it is today. Also, creating physical cards cost money. No company that makes trading cards gives them away for free. The issue is digital goods and loot boxes, which didn’t become a thing until after Activision came along.
Activision started doing Lootboxes with CoD, then guess what? Hearthstone with card packs and Overwatch with loot boxes.
You do realize companies evolve and how they make money evolves too, right? The trading card game was the first version of loot boxes, anyone with a lick of sense can understand this. Virtually nobody played that game, they gambled on buying the packs to get the rare loot cards.
If you think Blizzard would have never further developed their money making tactics without Activision, I’m sorry but that’s a little naieve. Anyways, I wouldn’t bother responding to my posts any longer because I’m adding this little custom script to my uBlock:
blizzard.com##article[data-user-id="1038100"]>div[class="row"]
Blizzards income was subscription based. They never ONCE tried to leech money out of their players until years after Activision took over and started making changes.
Not sure why you’re white knighting Activision, they ruin everything they touch.
You block me because you can’t handle people disagreeing with you and with valid points. My time was wasted, gg.