Bad gameplay systems don’t raise the stock value or the dividend. If anything, it makes the game less popular, which creates less revenue, which doesn’t help the stock price.
What is happening is that Blizz is sweeping the issues with WoW under the rug so it looks like it’s doing fine to shareholders.
Ever wonder why they release monthly active users as a single number across all games? Because if they released WoW’s MAUs, it would be an embarrassing number, so they only show as much information as they can get away with without it being a misleading of the shareholder, or fraud.
I am pretty sure they’ve specifically reference MAUs for the different games. Maybe not specific numbers, but something like “MAU for WoW is stable” or “MAU for King Mobile games is dropping”
You are correct, if they were smart. I actually believe that there are some people, like a particular human male paladin that owns one or two shares, then thinks it is in their interest to defend blizzard to the end of the earth. As if their one or two shares has any impact on anything.
Maybe it is lack of imagination on my part… I just cannot think of any other reason why some people so blindly defend these systems in place and BFA in general.
So, I know this pops up on every conspiracy theory about time played, so lemme be the one to say it: time played is not what is used as the metric for success, it is MAUs, or monthly active users. The systems design is actually worse when you consider that MAUs are how they measure success, and if blizzard wanted to serve the MAU overlords, they would make monthly cooldowns that you cannot miss or you’ll fall behind in power progression. Like each month, getting a one time 12 corruption resist on the 4-8th and if you don’t log in to get it, you’ve got no catch up mechanic for this patch.
They only mention it when it’s convenient. For instance, they said that MAUs doubled after Classic WoW’s released, but didn’t say doubled from which number to which number. Whatever info they release will bias towards being good news.
I have never been in a board meeting where when they say, “this doubled” someone on the board doesn’t ask, “from what to what”. I just wonder sometimes what is going on.
Does it really matter who you blame for the terrible game design?
I just came back for a month and won’t be renewing because of these terrible systems. I probably wont be buying Shadowlands either, because they don’t seem to be changing directions. The current stacking of borrowed power systems is complete garbage.
Anyone who wants to play casually is SOL.
Anyone who wants to play alts is SOL.
Anyone who just wants to PvP is SOL.
This effectively leaves only the enthusiasts and hard core raiding crowds. Everyone else has almost no reason to keep playing the dumpster fire of a game WoW has become.
If they want to look at why subs are down, the above points are the main reason. Playtime metrics mean nothing when the bulk of former players have no interest in returning at all. These systems also tend to create data which support the fallacy that these BS grind heavy systems lead to an increase in player engagement.
Even if that was all true, (and I’m not saying it isn’t. You make a plausible argument.) There are only so many new races they can add and they are reducing the time it takes to level up in SL, which will lessen the need for a level boost. Once that well runs dry, what will they do to make up for the lost revenue?
And to bring it back to shareholders, I’d say these merely offset the lost sub revenue from the ones lost over time.
You might not like some of the grinds, which is understandable, but as far as overall quality of life stuff goes, I’d argue it’s as good as it has ever been.
You can always tell how big the numbers are by whether or not companies or governments use percents or dollars. Specifically, I remember when a Medicare expansion was being debated like a decade ago and talking heads were going on and on about a 9% tax increase. 9% increase on taxes came out to 1.9k or something like that back then for me. 1.9k over 12 months is friggin nothing in taxes. But when the same airlines were talking about flat cost increases to an airline, they used raw numbers like 900k. Neglecting to realize that 900k of that airlines 290m revenue is like 4%.
So basically this thread is just to argue with whoever this “human male paladin that owns one or two shares” is. I’ve yet to read a convincing point made by you, because people have been defending games and bad systems since there were games with systems.
Shareholders aren’t going to ask. They just focus on the MAU numbers that Blizz did release. They’re not as invested in specific games like WoW as gamers are. They just want to know broad strokes about how well the company is doing. Because frankly shareholder meetings are boring and nobody wants to be fed too much info.
Alternatively this is a big game with millions of players so it’s pretty likely statistically speaking that people will like things that you don’t like.
every single system that so many of you people have asked for has been used against you, effectively.
if you people would demand things go back to wotlk, they couldn’t do this stuff anymore. but no, wotlk was too casual, even though everything you pushed as not-casual is just a way for them to sap your cash while you have 0 fun.
I frontload numbers for all of my presentations to corporate and the timeshare investors so that they’ll stop asking me questions and let me do my job. Bore them quickly and you get out faster.
People ask for Wotlk and MoP style play almost every day on these forums. I gotta leave this thread. These are the dumbest conspiracy theories I’ve seen since Flat Earthers.