why doesn’t blizzard look at at what made the game successful? For example I think the highest sub count WoW had was during wrath and it was 10+ million subs. any smart person would look back and say “ hey look how well our game systems worked back then to achieve that many subs” I don’t understand why you wouldn’t go back to something that worked so well.
Instead of trying to expand on ideas that were not popular or good for the most part anyways. I am not saying new ideas are bad but I think the smart thing at this point would be to look back at previous xpacs and find out what players loved the most or game systems that were most popular and put those back into the game. not trying to improve a new idea that wasn’t popular in the first place.
Because looking back doesn’t fit the needs of Blizzard today. Back in the day the game was designed to be fun for players. Today the game is designed to be a slot machine to keep you logged in racking up the monthly hours.
4 Likes
Small indie company. That’s why
We don’t move forward looking backwards.
There’s a lot of factors that go into why Wrath was successful, you had a fanbase that was built on WC3 that was anticipating this expansion. You have the LotR movies that had everyone hyped in medieval fantasy. You had a general age demographic more likely 10+ years younger than now. You had a more lenient system of policing (as much as the hate talk or racial slurs bugged me, at least there was character behind the characters).
1 Like
There was also a big celebrity ad campaign with people like Ozzy Osbourne involved, and the South Park episode on WoW was still fresh in peoples’ minds.
OP, it’s also fair to point out that the MMO genre as a whole is dying as well. 10 million subs compared to later on in the games’ life isn’t really a completely accurate way to evaluate the quality of the game.
2 Likes
if you meant ‘look back and learn from mistakes’ well you have to recognize that mistakes were made not merely setbacks
1 Like
WoW has always been a slot machine. Took my hunter 4 months to get a bow from Prince. I was already deep into SSC and TK by the time it dropped. I only had 2x tier 6 when Wrath was released.
Took 3 months to get full tier from Naxx and never got a full tier set from Ulduar.
Don’t think I actually got a single epic drop in classic.
Don’t even get me started on the classic rep grinds that yielded nothing worth having at all - not even the 20% discount for being exalted because it was bugged and didn’t work.
Grinding out the same content because of RNG or to get profession patterns or just to get into some raids has been a thing since day 1.
1 Like
I am 100% certain that Blizzard DOES do this. They probably have a whole department that does this (though it may be just a few people). After all, it’s their business. And they have a huge amount of information that you do not have and I do not have.
I assume that they reached different conclusions than you, because they had so much more data.
1 Like
Yes, but Blizzard knows EXACTLY what the sub count was then and now. That is the difference.
Because it’s activision now, not Blizzard. The older stuff didn’t make as much $$ as today’s microtransactions,
Your math-fu is weak.
Sure you can look back. And the release of Classic is going to be a gigantic experiment in that. But gaming for the most part has changed significantly over the past 15 years and the gaming audience has as well. Think about how they’ve changed. And ask yourself if people would grind through what we used to grind back then.
That is exactly why I’m on the fence about Classic. I played it. I loved it. Game has so many improvements made since then that I don’t want to give up. AOE looting and mount/pet journals are prime examples. Connected flight paths too. I want to for nostalgia but I also don’t want to tarnish the memory.
I know what you mean, but they can’t JUST look back. People like to blame this feature or that for making subs drop, but you can’t blame one thing. And you can’t know which changes actually kept people from leaving sooner.
Going backwards means classic WoW. And count me as one who thinks classic will get a lot of interest for a short period and then fall off a cliff. Nostalgia is tasty, but it is like cotton candy: You can’t live on it.
Rather than strictly looking back, I wish that Blizzard would simply acknowledge that the current dev team really isn’t doing the job. They have people in charge who approach the game in a very narrow way. Is it any shock that they have a shrinking customer base?
Blizzard needs more people in leadership who have emotional intelligence…people who know what makes people feel awesome. Of course it’s vital to have devs who come at problems in an analytical way, but I don’t think they have enough power players who can say “Sure that works, but it isn’t going to get people excited!”
A game like WoW needs to get players pumped up to log in and have adventures. Logging in for just an hour needs to give players a feeing of progressing, of getting closer to something they really want. All of that is just broken in this expac, and trying to go back to the past won’t fix it. They need to move forward after shaking up the team.