No New Customizations is the "Don't you guys have phones" of 2021

Community General Discussion
1069

After years of playing WoW, it still never fail to amaze me how little Blizzard does in 6 months.

Blizzard makes: ~2+ million subs * $15/month * 6 months = $180,000,000+ worth of subscription revenue to fund their patches. That’s 180 MILLION. And amazingly, they still cannot come up with any meaningful additions to the game in their patches.

Their patches are bare-bones, one raid, a couple mounts, and some number tweaks to classes.

Where does the 180 MILLION dollars go? And what are the Blizzard employees doing in 6 months?

It is as though 95% of the 180 MILLION revenue goes nowhere. 3% goes into servers and support, and the remaining 2% goes into the development (180 mill * 2% = 3.6 mill).

3.6 million goes into development staff, and then the staff are doing nothing 90% of the time. So that leaves $360,000 worth of actual work that is put into each patch.

As someone who has worked in software and art development for many years, $360,000 is about the amount of work-hours put into the meager amount of content in each patch.

If Blizzard puts their patch development out to bid, I would bid $360,000, hire 6 contractors for 6 months, over-deliver on the patch content, and I would still have money left-over. With $1 million, the content can be iterated 3 times over.

$180 million revenue turns into less than $1 million worth of actual content, that is the definition of the work done by the current Blizzard.

13 Likes
1070

Games Workshop partnered up (in some way) with multiple fan creators that produced great cinematic’s.

Blizzard on the other hand is ignoring their own fans, their creativity and cutting the feature with the best reception ever among the community (according to Blizzard).
This is so backwards to me. My disappointment grows only more and more.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/m214bx/no_customization_vs_gw/

11 Likes
1071

I think the funny part is how uncomfortable the guy who fielded the question looked during it. He over-explained with what amounted to a bunch of corporate talk (saying nothing in an attempt to placate). I feel like at least some at Blizzard understand that this was going to blow up in their face, but that it was a higher level decision made by those who are pretty out of touch.

2 Likes
1072

Wa… Luup Monk! (i coulddn’t resist)

Well, you read what you want to read… did you read?

Shadowlands was about Sylvanas Windrunner becoming the savior of all and restoring balance in the afterlife! Blizzard added customization as a work in progress during this expansion.

I personally bought the game for the Sinstone i am wearing in my back!

Bow down before the Dark Lady, Goddess of Death!
For the Forsaken!
Death to the living!

1073

No. Customization was one of the main selling points. Instead of a new class, race, allied race etc.
That’s not even a question. It’s simply what it was.
Edit: Not not the “only” selling reason.

1 Like
1074

Customization for you.
For me me it’s all about the Sinstone and Sylvanas!

1075

Not only for me. It was a feature advertised from Blizzard.

Like DKs were for WoTLK if you understand. :slight_smile:

1076

…and like Allied Races for BfA, even though 4 of them were from Legion.
…and like Pandaren / Allied Race DKs for Shadowlands, even though they were playable in BfA with pre-purchase of Shadowlands.

1077

Yes, near the end of the page, advertised as a game update (not as expansion feature).
~https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/shadowlands

1078

Nope. Even during Blizzcon, every interview and so one.
According to Blizzard themself it was their most well received feature ever. That’s it. Simple.

1079

I still love you.
Simple.

1080

And that’s actually one of the better ones… male NB hairstyles got an even worse treatment. Well, not just the hair.

1081

I’ve pondered this a lot too.

My guesses are as follows:
A) Gross mismanagement - they SUCK at project management
B) Laziness/Inefficiency
C) Inefficiency due to law of diminishing returns that cripples all big corporations and operations
D) Combination of the all of the above

1082

There must have been massive cuts behind the scenes. Only explanation, because if you don’t see patch 9.1 on the PTR by April something is wrong!

:surfing_woman::surfing_man:

1083

How long until Patch 9.1 starts?

1 Like
1084

It’s super simple. Do not mention it on a stage in front of a live audience, being recorded if you don’t plan of following thru with it.

And if you have your time cut in half by a pandemic, then make sure you DO everything that you mentioned on a stage in front of a live audience while being recorded. Then set aside all the 120 mounts you randomly plan to add that you did not mention and instead put those artists on the projects YOU DID MENTION!!

If they did that, no one would be angry with them now.

9 Likes
1085

Preach!

I mean I like new mounts as much as the next guy, but jesus… there’s hundreds already. The game is saturated with them… yet face options average around what? Five per race/gender?

What really makes me dissapointed is that they said they understood why people loved new customization options and races, yet they clearly don’t. At all.

7 Likes
1086

Even then, when you talk about the race with the most face options, they limit which faces can have scars. In today’s world, how is that acceptable, when they literally separated them for other races?

Every race should have lots of face options available, covering:

  • Wrinkles
  • Scars (with a ‘flip’ toggle, that literally doubles the useable amount of scars)
  • Freckles (tired of seeing freckles only available on one or two faces)
  • Makeup (more than just eyeshadow, rouge, and lipstick) for all races and genders
  • Tattoos (with a ‘flip’ toggle, that literally doubles the useable amount of tattoos)
  • Paint
  • Individual eye color selections
  • Eyebrows (with an ‘off’ or ‘none’ selection
  • Jewelry for all races and genders
  • Hair styles from all over the world, Earth and Azeroth, for all races and genders (with a ‘flip’ toggle, that literally doubles the useable amount of hairdos) with a wider variety of colors to choose from
10 Likes
1087

I mean we did get a ton of customization in the pre-patch.

1 Like
1088

True, some races got a ton. Others got a few, and some got nothing, when it should have been evened out, as best they could do. I’ll refer you back to Cow and Terranox, who illustrate how great the divide is, and what fans are doing, since there just isn’t enough customization available:

15 Likes