I’m not sure how large the player base was in China, since a lot of eastern MMOs have released since WoW released in China, but if it’s a lot it doesn’t bode well for WoW.
I’ve seen a few development studios shut down profitable MMOs because they weren’t as successful as they had hoped. I’m sure WoW will remain profitable for years to come, but Blizzard has also lost a lot of players since Legion. If Dragonflight flops, what will Blizzard do? Will they close shop and invest resources into whatever genre is popular now or will they put the game on life support, which is a death knell for a game?
Only time will tell, but I bet losing China was financially impactful.
I think Blizzard is already doing everything in their power to avoid that lol. In the past we generally don’t even get a heads-up for upcoming changes until they’re ready to drop. Now, we have actual devs in at least some of the class Discord servers communicating with the top players for advice and explaining their own design philosophies. This is literally them going from a straight F in communication to A+, and it gives me hope, because my spec has already become much better as a result.
I agree, I do think Blizzard is doing better with communication this expansion. I think most people had issues with their design decisions though. I’m excited for Dragonflight, but it remains to be seen if the player base will find Dragonflights design decisions welcomed.or not.
Let’s be honest here lol, WoW is a fun game. If Blizzard can just set their pride aside and implement key mechanics like Dinars and Corruptions vendors right from the start, most expacs would be gameplay bangers.
I think people care more about design decisions that are made to boost time played metrics. A lot of decisions seem transparent to be for boosting that metric. Things like:
Flying
Mob density
Scaling
Loot drop chance
Drip feed campaign content
Terrain designed to make you cover as much ground as possible to reach objective.and.then return to quest giver
AP systems
Very small amount of rep rewards for doing the only activities that reward rep, outside the daily/weekly rep token rewards.
Oh yeah, locking flying and overcomplicating world quests are also annoying problems. BUT, stuff like Dinar + upgrades and Corruption vendors already solve the most important part of the “boosting playtime” issue you mentioned. As long as my character is getting stronger, I personally can stomach the timegated rep grind and slow campaign. Honestly, aside from the singular instance of Blizzard making my faction’s queen and totem a raid villain, I haven’t ever cared about this game’s story anyways.
i think thats a good thing. they were probably a big part of why d:i was so greedy.
the only reason it sucks is that they got unethical laws where they cant play games that dont have a partnership with a china company. saying “no” makes blizzard look like a gigachad in my book
on the other hand it probably just means blizz will find some other chineese company to partner up with - maybe tencent? not much better… might actually be worse… but they already got some % of blizzard so i wouldnt be surprised.
in a perfect world everyone would say no to china until they get rid of their unethical laws but that’s not how things work in this capitalism focused world heh
For better or for worse, there’s no real content on Australia, and no extreme sentiment either way. The overall attitude in China is basically just, the west in general is a pathetic SJW hellhole, America in particular is Satan, and Japan & Korea are the scums of the Earth.
As a side note, if you care about that kind of stuff, the Chinese internet(probably bcuz they’re nudged along by the government) hates Japan so much that when Shinzo Abe got assassinated, they were making jokes about the entire situation and calling the shooter “Japanese Graves”. That’s a League of Legends reference, in case you don’t play that game. Also, they routinely bully and harass Japanese entertainment companies like Tsuburaya into letting actors/actresses go for nothing more than the personal political leanings of said actors.
Is that because of the ww2 occupation? Or is it just the general history of the two countries?
Also, I once told my Chinese co worker about Tiananmen square (though he told me that name is inaccurate). He was so surprised that we even knew anything about China but at the same time had no idea of what went down.
Dummy went and asked his friend about it on weichat or whatever. Hope the gov wasn’t watching that.
On one hand, Japan really did do some heinous stuff back during WWII, but no, that’s not really why China hates Japan. Basically, it’s the same thing as the Hitler and the Jews. Even more than the fact that the CCP needs the average Chinese person to hate anything that isn’t China, when you’re a government trying to control a population, having a scapegoat for everyone to personally hate will always be in your favor.
Funny story about that lol. Back when I was like 14 and fresh out of China, I was having an argument with this guy on what is basically Chinese Reddit. I mentioned the Tiananmen Square thing to make a point, and my comment was insta-deleted. 30 seconds later, the forum mod, who I had already become “online friends” with and knew that I was just a kid, DM’ed me and literally warned me to be careful irl. As it turned out, he deleted my comment manually in an attempt to protect me. He, as a working adult and someone moderating a sizable online community, felt it was necessary to do that because he didn’t know I was already in the US.
This is going hurt Blizzard badly and now you have rely on customers from US and EU to keep your lights on. So that means, give what the costumers what they need otherwise, they make the company lose lot of money.
There is no such thing as free speech on this forum.
??
So saying that people have gone to Tibet and filmed their experiences where they’re welcomed by the populace is a crime now? Okay, that’s news to me.
Ehh, no, not really. Right now people are saying “Oh World War 3 is going to start.” because of the escalations with Russia surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war. China is actually one of the few nations saying: “Hey, escalation is bad, lets take a step back and create a dialogue.” while not providing any direct aid to either side of the war.
Oh are the Tibetans suppose to be miserable 99% of their lives now that they are owned by China? Do u think they have a choice? Equating “China” to even an ounce of “Tibet” is quite literally insulting knowing what the CCP does. I think u should do more research on the history of Tibet before telling us “ some people went there with a camera and they were smiling!!!” Some people in Xinjiang Uyghur are prob smiling too if you met them. Doesn’t mean they aren’t being herded into camps.
