How hard is it to look back into the development and history of the game that you work on and think 'hey, why did we have 12 million active players at that point, maybe we should go back to that."
Would seem pretty easy wouldn’t you say? Well I guess not.
I believe that the development of this game has made so many incredibly damaging game design decisions over the past 7 years that they are almost impossible to erase. Once you give an person something it is hard to take it away without looking like a tard.
The only way moving forward to even believeing that this game could return to even half of it’s glory would just close this down and move on to a new version of World of Warcraft.
Starting from scratch and realizing that the safe space, everyone gets a cookie, style of MMO design has failed. The more and more you gave to the blue hairs have had a direct influence on the number of your subscribers.
Do the right thing and take this game out to pasture. Start over, call back original developers for help or in the end suffer the demise!
Different time, different people, different circumstances, different variables.
I don’t think the game should be dragged backwards to an iteration of what it was. I don’t even think that it would work in “restoring” the game to its previous popularity and population.
Wow doesn’t exist in an entertainment vacuum. Its not just about what’s in the game - its about what’s in the game and what’s available everywhere else.
Pong was super exciting and was incredibly successful. Should Blizzard try to replicate pong?
I disagree, only due to the fact that this game is so dead at this point that there is no way to fix it.
LFG
LFR
CRZ
No arrows
No crafting poisons
No reagents
Hyper inflation
12 hrs leveling processes
No mystery
So many addons
Flying
World quests
Balance issue
Dual specs
transmog
Have all each in there own way took a little bite out of what makes a MMORPG unique.
The game has morphed into a parody of what an MMORPG is at the roots and it can only be fixed by returning to what it was meant to be.
An MMORPG is not meant for everyone, just like this version is not meant for most. It is hard to argue numbers and 12+ million vs whaever it is now (pretty low),
I think the devs honestly are trying to make changes that bring people back, or attract a new audience… problem is when those changes don’t resonate with the existing base and they lose folks without successfully guessing what the magic new thing to draw people back is.
Classic is an attempt to get back the glory day seekers, and maybe they will build on that with other xpac servers… but live is them trying for the next big thing - hopefully they find it without driving too many more existing players away.
I don’t understand how a rational, logically thinking human can have this understanding. As many other people pointed out, it is WAY more variables to it than what you stated. This is SUPER common in very popular games to hit a HUGE spike, and then drastically fall off because it is not sustainable.
Take a look at some examples. PuBG was HUGE for a time, some of the highest concurrent steam player numbers ever. Where is it now? Much lower than it was, but just because it isn’t massive, does not mean its over. Take a look at League of Legends? Same ol’ song and dance.
My point being, many games become so popular for a bit, that many people try them out for the first time. Eventually, as is human nature, a lot of these people move on to new games. The idea that you can just literally recreate Wrath of the Lich King RIGHT NOW and WoW suddenly booms to 12 million subs is not only just a fantasy, but down right intellectually dishonest.
It won’t work. At the time real competition didn’t really exist. WoW also had a serious amount of hype, not only from the gaming community but outside of it as well. It was a phenomenon.
Even if they went back and completely made the game like WOTLK again, it wouldn’t draw back in that amount of players. Older game also means aging player base. Older players means more responsibility.
I think a lot of people underestimate how many people quit not because they dislike the game, but because they just don’t have the time for it anymore.
Classic pretty much a test by Blizzard. if it goes well, I think they move that direction. if look at it and what this poster and others ask for. It seems blizzard willing to gamble and see. Thus, classic I think is a gamble for blizzard to see if it can work in present culture of the internet.
Starting all over with a new WoW will never work as much as I would like to say it would be nice to have. Like with anything that ages, there are good times, bad times, and a lot of change. WoW and the gaming industry is changing.
Maybe you can try and recreate those happy memories in Classic.
I think classic or a entirely new game would be the way to go about this. They burned a lot of people in the past with arguably one of the most expensive video games on the planet.
I think they should be studying old school runescape for what to do next myself.
Because they’re part of that group that thinks video games die a natural death.
Never mind all the evidence to the contrary. Like the fact Path of Exile came out in 2013 and has a LARGER audience in 2019. 6 years after it released.
The reality I think we are going to have to accept though is that Blizzard isn’t the same place it used to be. It became corporate, nasty and toxic to talent. The talent left and the untalented stayed. The product suffered for that.
Everything corporate sucks and Blizzard is no exception to the rule. If Activision really wants to make a difference in the video game industry my single line of advice to them would be to create an environment conducive to retaining talent.
Get HR out of there.
Get the corporate policies out of there.
Let the teams who make this stuff decide what gets published.
Product people drive product. Not sales people.
Create a hands off policy to product development. You exist to manage the issues the product guys aren’t there to manage. Stick with that.
Do all of that and maybe this problem can be fixed.
Because if they do what others have done they aren’t being inventive and feeling good about themselves. This is Blizzard, home in California, with Granola eating, sandal wearing, long hair beta boys. They need to feel special.
In all seriousness, they used to make games that they wanted to be good first. Now they are more concerned with keeping you busy so their metrics look good.
We all knew this point was coming, the real issue now is what they will do in the future. Will they actually learn from this debacle, or will they double down? My honest answer to that is that they will double down on it. The hubris of this group and spite towards the players is real.