Blizz makes more money off Wow with 2-3 million subs than it did when it had 12 million. It’s all about the micro-transactions. Whales spend a lot money.
1 Like
No not really. Have you even read what I wrote?
Retail, dragonflight as of today, is very popular and still the biggest mmo out there.
It has nothing to do with how many subs wow had 20 years ago. We speak about now and we compare it with mmos now.
But I do agree that they mostly likely make more money than before. Mostly because they fired 90% of their staff and now rely on AI responses, and them having cosmetics in the shop.
Well at least there is some truth in your post with the bit about micro transactions.
The 90% and A.I. responses things are both bogus, but meh 1 outta 3 ain’t bad.
The 90% is obviously exaggerated, as nobody not even you know how many they actually fired, and the AI responses is pretty known by now but I assume you just live under a rock
They use templates sent out by a person for all actual interactions, this is not the same as A.I. but that is a distinction us under the rock people make.
As for your made up number I assumed it had some level of sarcasm but since it was thrown in the middle and is likely off vy around 85% or so I think it’s worth mentioning.
Pretty sure you missed the latest drama about people getting AI responses.
Okay, you want a full response? Yes, it is. How else do you explain charging a subscription fee, upwards of $100 for expansions, having follower quests and other mechanics with “cooldowns”, having daily farmville like resource gathering required for obtaining the best gear making it necessary to level alts and ‘farm them daily,’ offering to skip the leveling process via boosts, and offering WoW Tokens to buy gold to buy gear and materials off the AH.
Yes, that’s why the overwhelming majority of people would rather play the 20 year old version rather than the current one. It’s clear as day that adding boosts / gold buying etc ruined the integrity of the game, that’s why the explosion of new and returning players for Classic quickly fell off when they offered the same damn things in Classic BC and Wrath, and why people flock to SoD which (for now) does not have those things.
Despite this being an obvious lie (dragonflight offers a boost that includes gear, flight paths, gear, renown, etc), why are we talking about the last 10 years? We are talking about retails vs ‘classic’ whereas most people consider classic to be vanilla through wrath (or maybe cata).
I think this coincides almost perfectly with the activision blizzard merger, whereas you can observe all the things I mentioned that ruined the game’s integrity happened shortly after.
The first store mount. The first digital deluxe edition. The first level boost. The WoW token. Paid cosmetics, paid pet companions. All of you Blizzard defending Andies have been gaslit into the “it’s just cosmetics” narrative. Blizzard is selling you art assets that cost them a fraction of the price of the complete game to produce, and charging you sometimes as much as the full game itself, and you happily argue that this is good value.
What a ridiculous brainlet argument. The reason nobody cares about leveling is because Blizzard ruined the game. If 90% of the content of the game is “boring and a chore” so much so that players voluntarily pay to skip it, it’s a problem with the game. How can ANYONE argue this? If people hate leveling as a concept, why do so many go back and replay classic / hardcore / seasons? No, people hate leveling in RETAIL, because retail is a garbage experience. Good games don’t incentivize players to pay for progression and let players skip significant parts of the game.
That’s why, as another post mentioned, Blizzard makes more money off of microtransactions than game sales or subscriptions? Appealing to the anecdote of “I don’t need to buy the WoW token, I can farm 100k a day” doesn’t negate the fact that many people do; probably including yourself if I could check your purchase history.
No.
No.
When did you start playing, might I ask? Because I find it hard to believe these takes come from someone who started WoW pre-Wrath.
If ‘very popular’ means a fraction of the popularity WoW pre cata was.
Compare dragonflight with the 2019 classic release and tell me retail even comes close.
1 Like
I only play classic and haven’t touched retail since BfA, but that’s absolute nonsense. The majority of subs are for retail. Do you have some source that shows something different.
What are whales and are they a bad thing?
Call MoP or call Classic who gives a s**. Play the game. Move on.
1 Like
-Whales Word describe the players who can easily spend couple of hundreds or thousands of dollars per week in any game.
-whales age can vari between 10 to 40~
-Whales doesn’t care about the game itself they just want to get what they wants
-Whales are the number reasons for bots to swarm the game
-whales are the real reasons RMT exist in the first place.
-the companies love whales because whenever they add any useless thing on shop whales buy that on a whim not because it’s good looking or needed But because WHY NOT? spending 100$ to them is like you tossing a 1cent just to see how far u can throw things in water.
-the company tend to make a whale friendly system to attract them so they start gaining insane amount of money via Micro-transactions
for example in wow classic case…
- blizzard was super happy to see all the mage boosting bots in game which created a meta of “u wanna level? u wanna step into any dungeon? then u must buy boost” which led to BLIZZARD introduction level 70 boost and saying with big smile that they’re giving players what they needed. “then they ban mage boosting Only after releasing their shop boost”
- same with when blizzard allowed gold sellers to run rampart and never banning gold buyers to create a culture of gold buying which are the target audience of Future game token, which what exactly happened and now they’re banning gold buying to make people buy the tokens instead.
how whales effected retail in the history?
1-when blizzard add fancy transmog to dung time u could see top groups selling spots and a whale simply pay 500$ worth of gold for 1 complete runs
2-when blizzard add mount for 2m gold a whale who want that will simply buy tokens to get it Or buy gold from 3rd party since it’s cheaper.
3-when blizzard add something on black market, a whale go to gold seller to buy 10million gold to get items from the Black auction"
4-blizzard is feeding on whales, the reason they made harder difficulty and more complexity even though they knew casuals will quit they know that whales will simply pay more, since rich players are the real deal.
& the numbers proves that…u can see that after wow lost almost half the players from the transition of late wrath to end of cata within 2years yet blizzard doubled their income HOW? that’s when shop was introduced. and the first step from blizzard selling gold was not the Token in 2015, IT happened in 2011 when blizzard add the first shop pet which was tradable and selling on auction house, Every whale who wanted to buy gold legaly was buying tons of those pet and putting them on AH to get gold so they can buy boosts to w/e. that pet was the actual test done by blizzard to see the real numbers of players that are interested in RMT…& for that token came later
1 Like
Seems everyone has toxic names for all groups these days.
if you’re talking about the word “whale” I think it came from…
a whale in the ocean open it’s mouth to swallow everything in the way & that kills too many small fishes.
Thanks that you’re trying but I’m going to be honest, your response just made you look even worse.
This is the worst argument I have ever seen and I read Mktaar sometimes.
Lets go point for point because I assume you don’t know what crap you just wrote:
Has always been
The expansion cost itself never changed (at least if we consider inflation), they just charge you more for additional stuff. Nothing else than a collectors edition lol. In fact, they just called it collectors edition up until BfA.
Not in Dragonflight, wrong expansion
Not in Dragonflight, wrong expansion. The only cooldowns you have are the ones from your spells and lockout.
Not in Dragonflight, wrong expansion
I see a trend here, you haven’t played Retail for quite some time.
Levelling is just tedious… I mean sure, this could be you first legit argument.
Now you lost again all credibility. People have always bought gold, regardless of token. You just didn’t see it because you were a kid
Data? Thats just a lie. WoW has significantly more subs than all classic versions combined.
It didn’t, no. Thats just your biased take.
No. And you’re just embarrassing at this point
Boost got added 10 years ago, 2014, at the end of MoP.
Data? You think that. You are not most. You are ONE person.
Nonsense. After the merge, Blizzard released Hearthstone, Overwatch and the last two expansions of Starcraft 2, which all were very popular and received very well at that time.
In Wrath, one Version you defend.
This is not an argument, this is a rant.
And besides, you can call it what you want and change reality but in the end those are just cosmetics. If you want to spend $20 for a mount, transmog or pet then go for it. Its your money. The game doesn’t change for me when I see someone flying around with heart of the aspects while I fly around with invincible.
A very good one, I’m still missing one good argument of yours.
They didn’t. Biased rant.
Levelling is at best 1%.
Another 0 iq argument.
I said:
This does not mean that they don’t get money from it. Whales exist, they have always existed.
I started in early TBC. You are just delusional and you hate the direction of Retail.
Data??? Stop claiming such things
D A T A ??
You claim stuff you just made up because you hate retail.
1 Like
To who? Appealing to an audience of yours that doesn’t exist? Social shaming in a WoW forum. Hah.
Not in combination with other monetization.
Yes they have.
Economic illiteracy
We are not talking about dragonflight, we are talking about retail as a whole.
We are not talking about dragonflight, we are talking about retail as a whole.
We are not talking about dragonflight, we are talking about retail as a whole.
I thought you said it was easy and it was pointless to buy a boost? Nice flip flop.
Only people like you.
I was 18 when Vanilla released.
Data?
Poll it.
When did I say otherwise?
2+2 = 4 “SOURCE!?!?!?!?!?!”
Would you agree card packs, loot boxes, battle passes, etc were positive additions to the game that made those games better?
Strawman. I never defended Wrath, I said the Classic ‘Era’ peaked there and began to die a year or so into its success, and one reason out of many was the aggressive monetization practices and implementation of systems that disrespected player time and incentivized buying gold or boosting alts.
no, those are aspects of the game one previously obtainable through in game activity rather than money. stop using the “it’s just cosmetic” copout.
Funny scenario you’ve created. Would it change for you if they offered invincible for $20? Probably not, since you’ve already convinced yourself that anything in the game should be up for purchase. What’s your argument against paying for mythic raid progression since you’ve previously argued it should be okay since people “already do it” using third parties?
Being one of the few people that openly enjoy retail doesn’t make you the best judge of what a good argument is.
That’s why they have a fraction of the subscribers than they did over a decade ago despite gaming as a whole being more broadly accepted and accessible.
You’re asserting that 1% of the content in the game is the entirety of azeroth / all of the expansions, and 99% of the content is the end game dungeons and raids? Are you speaking subjectively, or are you talking about development resources? If the latter, are you braindead?
Please describe to me how the game is simultaneously not pay to win, yet you are asserting there is enough of an incentive for whales to spend money on it?
If you’re dropping that argument, please describe to me how they are making money if new and returning players don’t feel the need to spend money to boost characters or buy gold.
What “direction” is that? The direction of micro transactions, live service systems, and player unfriendly design philosophy? Strange that you seem to love it so much.
Are you really going to die on the hill of trying to prove Dragonflight has anywhere near 12 million subscribers.
2 + 2 = 4. WoW was objectively in a sharp decline in subscriber count post cata, and review scores of nearly every expansion since reflect the negative sentiment toward ‘retail.’
1 Like
More subs are obviously better, but Blizz has focused much more on milking whales than creating great games. The latter requires a lot of time, effort, hiring competent workers. The former is just putting a shiny in the cash shop.
And they report record earnings. While simultaneously laying off large amounts of people…but that’s another issue. The point is from a pure money perspective, WoW is thriving. Turns out a smaller number of clueless whales are the ideal playerbase.
Why do you guys keep appealing to whales? We are talking about WoW, not diablo immortal. What incentive is there for a whale to spend thousands of dollars in WoW? You made a point that the celestial steed made more than starcraft II. Are you believing that a handful of very wealthy people bought many steeds? Or that many regular joes forked over the money because they wanted a really cool mount and people weren’t yet soured to aggressive monetization practices yet?
Pretty much defeating that other guy’s argument of “nobody needs to spend money” when you can clearly point to the fact that everyone at some point has in fact spent money.
Reinventing a new argument. We are talking about the state of the game, whether it is good, whether it is fun, and whether it makes a large number of people want to play it. Not whether or not Blizzard is turning a profit on it.
Ask 10 people and you get 10 different answers. So what possible resolution to this argument do you expect?
Blizz isn’t in the business of making fun games. They’re in the business of making money. That USED to mean making a quality product. Now it’s manipulating dummies.
I was just reading an article about a Larian EP. They made Baldur’s Gate 3. He said…
“We don’t make decisions where we think ‘this could make us the most money’,” Walgrave continues. “In the long run, building a community, building a playerbase, building games that are actually fun is going to make you the most money, that’s it.”
That sums up the Blizzard of long ago. And it’s sad that that sentiment is so rare in the gaming industry. It’ll be even more sad when Larian inevitably sells out. Just like Blizzard did.
My entire argument was that Blizzard use to make good games, now they make bland games with aggressive monetization designed to manipulate and extract the maximum amount of money out of people. What is it exactly that you’re disagreeing with?
You seem to be under the impression anyone that replies to you is attacking you. Perhaps don’t get so defensive.
My disagreement? People passing off opinion as truth. Even if I happen to agree with it.
2 Likes