See, now would be a great time for the slightest hint of transparency.
Therefore I’m predicting complete radio silence
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That reminds me of city of heroes, where before the shut down like 100% of their new paid content was just new outfits and powers.
It was actually working until ncsoft pulled the plug anyways
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Unfortunately, transparency with consumers generally incites anxiety and tension among investors.
If they told us today with an admission that the Darkest Timeline has come but they see the writing on the wall and want to get back to their roots, I would simply unsubscribe having been burnt too many times by “We make games we want you to play” not seeming to have much truth to it. As a rat on a sinking ship with the captain coming down and telling me that they are, indeed, sinking but he thinks he can fix it, I’d have no interest in staying, and I imagine many others would nod in agreement here.
We only have speculation and speculations of speculations. As long as that’s it, the people on the fence will probably keep their legs dangling on the “subscribed” side of the fence while investors hm and haw and Blizz “fixes” things in the background.
If nothing else, staying silent and “fixing” things on the sly even goes further as it manages to discredit the doomsayers. See? Things weren’t so bad.
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“To increase transparency and communication with our players, we’ve implemented a 50% increase in calling them morons in Blue posts.”
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GW2 finally figured this out by finally implementing seating. Unfortunately, if you want unique chairs you gotta shell out for them. Same with a lot of their clothing. The rest of the game is not RP friendly (or casual friendly) though and Anet refuses to budge out of sheer stubborn philosophy.
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I have some familiarity with upper level management, albeit in a very different industry, and I would assume that the changes we see from this are likely not going to be terribly significant. An important thing to keep in mind is that a CFO typically takes direction from either the CEO or the Board of Directors, often both (which one has the most influence depends on the company). That is not to say that a CFO doesn’t have significant influence on the financial direction of the company, but they’re generally taking at least some direction from higher up. Activision-Blizzard is really unlikely to correct course at this point in its existence. We might see some minor changes, but anything sweeping would have to come from slightly higher up.
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I hope the new chief financial officer writes better plot than the old one
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He’ll never be as good at that as the janitor is at being Head Marketer.
Blizzard: It’s just a bunch of nonsense in here.
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Blizzard: we looked really good when we were the only ones doing it but in a saturated market with a lack of new directions to go we struggle to break away from the pack.
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There’s a link on Forbes that I can’t link to because I am extremely untrustworthy discussing Blizzard-Activision’s start to the year. The title is “In 2019, The State of Activision-Blizzard Is Not Strong,” if you want to find it.
The article is a touch unkind toward Blizzard, but it doesn’t feel unfair or dishonest. It seems like Blizzard still has some solid flagships, but each of them has some flaws ranging from inevitable (WoW’s age, Overwatch’s toxicity) to glaring (Diablo’s bad Blizzcon).
Of interest is the article citing the newest CFO (who is now resigned) of being the driving force of cost-cutting. It’s probably far too little to suggest that means anything, but it’s worth noting.
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This. I wish they’d just be upfront with certain things. They don’t have to make big, bold statements about inner secret crap, but stuff like “hey guys, WoD? We agree it was terrible. We’re going to work on never making mistakes like that again.” Or “Horde players, we might have gone a bit overboard with your story in BfA. We’re working on toning it down and giving you some moments where you can be proud of your faction again.”
Just something to reassure me, the customer and consumer of their products, that they’re aware of issues going on instead of glossing over it in some Q&A non-talk. Hell, they don’t even have to agree with what I think is a big deal. Just tell me why I might be wrong, sell me on the idea of “bad thing” and give me a reason to give it a second chance. Telling me “well, some people like it” isn’t helping.
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A good step toward being more open would be getting over the weird idea that outright lying is a clever misdirection.
“Oh, Sylvanas won’t burn the tree, you’ll be so surprised!”
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Oh I was surprised alright.
…surprised they ever thought this was a good idea.
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Yeah the fact that they don’t know what misdirection is kind of concerns me lol
“Anduin is going to die in the Battle for Lordaeron”
“He didn’t die? What?”
“HA! A clever misdirection!”
Like… nah man, that’s just lying.
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They insisted that they could “still surprise” us. Then they found out that no, they couldn’t – but neither could they bear to admit defeat. So they turned to vile falsehoods to sustain their dark rule.
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It’s like if you went to see a movie that was advertised as having “huge surprising twists,” but the surprising twist was that the director peed in your popcorn.
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Now that you mention it whatever happened to M Night shamalamadingdong?
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Apparently he’s got a movie with Bruce Willis coming out next week?
I honestly thought that guy just sort of dropped of the face of the earth.
…wait. That wasn’t butter? …oh.
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M. Night is continuing the Unbreakable series, yeah.
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