im so glad that blizzards internal culture and conduct align with microsofts values enough for them to skip the hands-on approach theyve shown with other subsidiaries
Wonder how much it cost to make Candy Crush. The profit margins must be rediculous on something that isn’t even an original concept and is filled with ads.
Honestly, Microsoft bought them because they thought it can magically catapult them to #1 in the gaming industry. And they have, in a sense. The advantage of having so much money that you can buy your way into the industry. But the problem is that Microsoft has no idea what to do next.
Microsoft already had some actually good products that didn’t just market nostalgia to people simping for a company that treats woman like literal slaves while man have a fucking Bill Cosby Room…
They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re playing the software game. Right now they’ve turned their development studios into marketing divisions for game pass. They don’t need to do anything special right now other than let their teams make games, put them on their subscription library and watch the money roll in.
Versus Sony, which not too long ago was rabidly against anyone having crossplay with their console and is individually publishing titles.
The thing is, for the most part it doesn’t matter who’s holding the strings so long as good games get made available for as many people as possible at a decent and not rising price point.
The whole $70-80 free rise is being done by companies that are struggling to keep their foothold with their current MTX-based models.
MS has been doing that for over 20 years, no news there. The reason for acquiring is to deny acquisition to others, and to ensure MS’s ecosystems have software, I imagine.
Too bad they didn’t have this attitude before cutting 1900 jobs, most of them Blizzard employees and making the cut after promising not to make massive cuts.
Out of the loop here, but my recollection was WOW printed money because they were a subscription service before it was cool. I can’t say I’m surprised, but are they really doubling down with MTX?
I feel like the justification for subscriptions is “this way we can afford to keep adding new content.” To turn around and go “oh, BTW, you have to pay separately for that new content you’re subscribing for” just feels like an extra slap in the face. But I guess you do you WOW players. They’ll keep pulling this kind of BS as long as folks keep paying for it ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Remember, that's the third time you have to pay! The first rug pull is when you buy the game and then find out that the entire world is utterly devoid of players because everyone only plays the latest expansion. But you can't access it because you don't have a subscription. On top of a full price game.
Besides the switcheroo, I also think it's sad for WoW. Its world is massive and beautiful and utterly dead. Everyone is only in the latest zone. The game would be better named "Zone of Warcraft". I love how e.g. Elder Scrolls Online solved it. They made all zones viable. You will see players everywhere. It's a real contrast.
I don’t understand why people whine about subscriptions so much. Servers ain’t fucking cheap to run for millions of players, the options are microtransactions or subscriptions and I prefer subscription almost every time.
They are not hiding that you need a subscription to access the latest expansion. But they don't tell you the rest of the game is dead so you need the latest expansion to do basically anything.
There’s plenty to do outside the latest expansion, I really don’t know how you’d propose they do any better either. They don’t just release a new expansion and do nothing until the next (usually. It has happened, this current cycle has been great though) they make content for 2 years between expansions. I think that WoWs method is honestly the best one. People love to talk about how wonderful FF14 is and it’s the same thing. Most the most well liked MMOs use this method for a reason.
There are exceptions like Warframe which uses their platinum market to find the game through people willing to pay to win and supporting people who farm the materials people can buy with their Platinum. Guild Wars avoided this issue by making the patches between expansions their own smaller expansions with their own price tag. Both these games, while being great games, have far more extensive mtx shops than WoW or FF14 do as a result, though.
If you treat it as a single player game maybe. There are very few players outside the latest expansion. Maybe a few power-levelling alts. Some quests are almost impossible because you're supposed to do them with multiple people and there's nobody around.
I prefer the Elder Scrolls Online way. It has far less power creep and more sideways progression, so people run all content all the time.
People would be OK paying a subscription if Blizzard didn’t fire all of their game masters and let the game be infested with bots and extremely racist and homophobic players. Ticket wait time are 2 months… you’ll pay $30 before your report is even seen and then completely ignored.
Subscriptions are to keep the lights off, servers on and server maintenance and improvement. Then purchases of expansions covers the cost of development.
MTX in such a game is a bit weird, but it does give something for extra asset creation and animation. I suppose if they make something that doesn’t end up being used they can repurpide it as a pet or mount.
It’s the trading money for gold and the effects of the economy in wow that put me off.
The sub is great for their bottom line. The current state of the game is selling carries for everything from pvp, ranked, raids, dungeons, even leveling. To fund these legal in game purchases blizz will sell you gold for money. They also introduced a cosmetic store with in game currency which you earn by keeping the sub active. Then finally they have their normal store of mounts and pets for cash.
Interesting thing to say, with lots of the public expecting Microsoft to uproot the abusive work culture. I mean, you probably can’t say anything right in that regard, nor is not talking about it going to look good, but yeah…
“The breast milk snatcher will be caught”, a Microsoft representative assured the New York Times before taking a deep, long slurp of their milkshake, their eyes closed in apparent bliss as shivers ran down their spine. “Your days are numbered!”
Blizzard was (still is?) Activision for a number of years as well, so that didn’t help. There is much more to blame and I can’t even begin to pretend like I know all of it, though.
My own complaint is similar though. When “profit at all costs” takes over, and knowing how to make a quality game is lost, there is usually little hope left.
The people that made blizzard are all gone, there’s several newer studios that haven’t released much of anything yet. Frostgiant, warchief gaming, dreamhaven, imagendary studios are all offshoots of former blizzard employees.
Although Metzen is back, Blizzard will never be the Blizzard of old. They are just too big now. I am very curious to see what Morheim will bring to the table though.
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