This has been a Garbage Year (BFA launch - Now)

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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BFA Launch (August 14, 2018)
Now (April, 20, 2019)
Classic Launch (July, 16, 2019) (Theorized)

11 months from the launch of BFA to the launch of Classic. A year that will undoubtedly go down as the worst in gaming history.

BFA launched, and within 2 months people were leaving in droves because of all the problems BFA had.
Azerite armor didn’t work, Island expeditions were terrible, there was no real reason to raid (tier sets gone), and Warfronts handed out loot that made content irrelevant.

Call of Duty Black Ops 4: Release with no microtransactions, get all the good reviews and then BAM! Raiding people’s wallets to sate Activision’s eternal greed.
Shame what the gaming industry has devolved into.
But of course, ‘what goes around, comes around’, and Activision got exactly what they deserved in the coming months.

Blizzcon 2018. Absolutely the worst Blizzcon there has ever been. The Diablo Immortal backlash started off with the Diablo community’s anger at the neglect their franchise had suffered, but then quickly turned into a wider gamer rebellion against this “Mobile is the future” attitude that many companies had.
Mobile games are cheap cash grabs that are designed for the shareholder and not the gamer.
Blizzard’s reaction only angered gamers even further:

“Do you guys not have phones?” - Firstly, I play on PC because I don’t want to squint at a tiny screen while I am bombarded with ridiculous microtransactions.

“We have moved all our best developers to mobile” - Which explains why BFA is so bad.

Fallout 76 came out November, 14, 2018. The game was broken, unfinished, and had micro transactions up the wazoo.
Then there was the canvas bag controversy. Then the Nuka cola controversy, then all the other controversies that just kept piling up.

Apex Legends released February, 4, 2019. After the gaming disasters in 2018, gamers were greeted by yet ANOTHER Battle royale game.
Now people said that it was a good game. But it’s Battle Royale, a genre that really needs to die so the gaming industry can actually innovate and not copy paste what everyone else is doing.
First it was League of Legends “Moba” games that were the rage, then all the Overwatch clones, now Battle royale is the new kid in town.
Fun fact, Apex legends is actually dying now, and Fortnite is back on top.

Bungie Leaves Activision January, 10, 2019, taking Destiny with them.
If only Blizzard could do that.

Activision-Blizzard layoffs. “Record profits”, executives like Denis Durkin getting a 15 million dollar golden handshake, Bobby Kotick annual salary around 30 million dollars, making them the highest ‘overpaid’ executives in America.
Then they fire 800 employees. Plus Activision-Blizzard stock tanked last year, and their shareholders were suing them.
Activision finally did it, they took over Blizzard and started rearranging the furniture.
Absolutely disgusting, no wonder Mike Morhaime left.

Anthem released February 22, 2019. Anthem is the final evolutionary stage of what the AAA-gaming industry has been slowly devolving into.
Unfinished game, rushed out to rake in cash, microtransactions, DLC, season pass, game looks pretty, but is hollow. Slap that EA logo on it. $80 pls.
And it killed people’s PS4’s.

The “Lull” period. (March 2019 - )
Around March things started to die down, and we went from face palming ourselves at the incompetent greed of these companies to a more optimistic feel.
Hytale was releasing updates, but no release date in sight.
Halo was coming to PC, everyone was very excited, but no concrete release date was given.
Classic Wow Blue posts started to come out more regularly, everyone was excited, but again. No beta, no release date. Just rumors and hearsay.

That’s why I call this the “Lull” period. We went through the “Gaming Crash of 2018-2019” if people want to call it that, and now we are looking to new releases to “cleanse the palate” of bad games.

The problem is, we are in a “Star Citizen” dilemma. What we want we’re not getting, and what we’re getting, we don’t want.
It’s all good and well that Hytale, Halo, and Classic are coming…but there’s nothing for us right NOW.

So we end up just waiting.

I think the release of Classic Wow will mark the end of the “Worst year in gaming history”. Apart from Classic re-energizing the playerbase in a way BFA couldn’t, it will also re-invigorate the gaming industry as a whole.
If a subscription-based game with no micro transactions can succeed, will companies start to shift their priorities; and focus on making good quality games, instead of developing new and ridiculous ways of ripping people off?

But also if a game from 2004 can work in 2019, will companies start to look at older games and why they worked. Imagine if the next wow expansion brings back the old talent system. Or maybe even gets rid of cross-realm, LFR, and LFD.

Overall, I’m optimistic for the future, but if the AAA-gaming industry wants to survive, they have got to start fixing their franchises, and not milk them in the ground.

Edit: I forgot to mention the Epic store strongarming gamers into using their terrible store. (Metro Exodus, Borderlands 3, Outer Worlds, etc…)

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I agree, these micro-transaction games need to be outlawed. And legislation is coming down the pipe in many countries to remove this filth from the world.

Gaming companies have ruined expectations with this garbage and it is high time that the CEO’s and MBA’s get more realistic about their salaries and the way that games should be built.

I find it ridiculous what they did to Diablo, and how they announced it. I can’t believe their PR team wasn’t all over that. I also cannot believe they fired so many employees after recording record profits, it reeks of corporatism and trashy ideals.

This game will make Blizzard hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decades if they can just get out of their own way.

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Just because you make a big post, doesn’t mean you can hide little snippets of fake news in there.

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That is what Allen Adham said at the Diablo Immortal press conference.

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No, no it isn’t.

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Epic Store belongs somewhere in that list as well, I think.

Other than that, yes, triple A companies haven’t really had a good year. Greedy publishers at the root of it all. I bet a lot of game dev’s are tearing their hair out in frustration, with regards to the directions coming from their publisher.

That said, there are also companies who does it right. Just have to look beyond those triple A publisher’s with a few notable exceptions.

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Not all, but many. Still reeks of we need quick cash grabs for shareholders.

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Thank you for linking the proper quote.

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Susan will handle microtransactions. Susan and her vast network of farmers across all mmo’s is why the industry is where it’s at today.
Players who spend extra money for that leg up or that cool look are why the industry is where it’s at today.
This article is a very good read on how mtx came about.
Steve Bannon had meetings with game executives to try and bring gold selling/mtx into games. They told him no and then did it. Lol.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/steve-bannon-once-guided-a-global-firm-that-made-millions-helping-gamers-cheat/2017/08/04/ef7ae442-76c8-11e7-803f-a6c989606ac7_story.html?utm_term=.3de00492e025

#nomtx
#tellbillyNOmtx

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He didn’t say most either, he said many.

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“All” might be an overstatement, but it’s not fake news; they were quite proud of saying this in a panel during Blizzcon.

Edit: nevermind, others have already linked it.

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Yes you’re right, and fixed. Dunno why I thought most instead of many. I blame too little coffee :smiley:

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AAA gaming has been in the toilet for years now, though admittedly we are the lowest point yet. I would say we are in a “dark age” of gaming. The root of the problem is that gaming had become very popular, and consequently very lucrative. This caused a bunch of people who don’t like video games (but do like money) to buy their way into the industry and force it to make them as much money as possible. Once they have milked everything they can and games no longer make them the money they seek they will move on to greener pastures, leaving a desolate wasteland behind them.

That puts us in a bad spot right now, but does give us hope for the future. A future where people passionate about video games are back in control and can rebuild.

EDIT: As for mobile gaming, it really needs help. Currently the market is super-saturated by shovelware, but at the same time there is a stigma against paying money for a phone game. Something needs to give one way or the other.

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If you’re going to quote someone, you should probably do it word for word. Didn’t you guys do that game where you sit in a circle and whisper a story and it comes out completely different when the last person to hear it tells it out loud?

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If I’m going to quote someone, I probably did it word for word. Didn’t you guys do that game where you stand in a square and mumble a story and it comes out completely different when that murloc hears it out loud?—

yay the telephone game!

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You’re getting far too defensive and patronizing. Look, you also made a mistake in not knowing it was a thing. You didn’t question the exact details, you simply said it was fake news; it wasn’t a correction, it was your ignorance.

There’s a difference between ‘all’ and ‘most’, and I even said

  1. I didn’t make the original post.
  2. I acknowledged that what he said may be an overstatement.

Stop this condescending attitude, please.

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The last time I saw it played was in 8th grade, meaning ~1984. I don’t remember what the first message was, but I remember the teacher losing his mind when the last message was basically a string of comments on various ethnic groups of differing lifestyles.

Amazing how some things can lie dormant in one’s head until something brings them back to recall.

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i actually think the problem started after the 2008 stock market crash. you may not know this but the usa use to have over 90 different banks. after 2008, it was down to 4. and when they went, they took people’s life savings with them. this effected every country who’s economy was based on the oil dollar. gaming companies all over the world went broke over night. people lost jobs by the millions. many of those were blizzard customers.

only the big guys survived and they only survived because they got creative. they replaced the lost customers revenue by getting people with jobs and subs, to pay more for their games in the form of mtx. that’s how the token system works in wow.

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But trying to be the smug superior intellect character on the internet is some people’s only outlet. :grin:

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This.

And also many of the new mainstream gamers do not have the same taste as the previously often obsessive gamers.

Kind of like music: if it gets tooooooo mainstream things become formulaic and less exploratory. It can degenerate into garbage.

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