Disappointment Comes From Love

The Room

This is the point where I admit that I had never actually made it all the way through “The Room” before last night.  I’ve sat down several times to watch it, but it was just too bad and too awkward for me to struggle through it.  I feel like this is the sort of movie that is just more fun with a large group of people.  So when I saw that Rifftrax would be doing it, I thought it would be a blast.  I’m getting to be a regular at this whole Rifftrax live thing, and by live I mean sitting in a theater as the show is live simulcast from where they are actually at in Nashville.  So far I have seen Godzilla, Anaconda, and a strange 1950s Santa Claus movie from Mexico.  This season they have dubbed the “Crappening” with The Room, Sharknado 2, Miami Connection and Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny.

As far as The Room itself…  they commented last night that it was a movie made by a man who had never actually seen a movie…  or another human being.  This film is just so out there, and the funny thing about it is that I still don’t think Tommy Wiseau realizes quite how bad this movie is.  I mean at this point it has brought a relative state of infamy to all of the actors, but that isn’t exactly the same thing as fame.  So as insane as the movie is, you can imagine that it gets cranked up a notch when the Rifftrax folks are lampooning it.  The only problem with going to this movie with co-workers… and being named Mark… is that from now on I am going to be hearing a lot of “Oh Hai Mark” as I walk around the office.  To which I will of course have to respond… “Oh Hai Doggy”.  It was a great  evening though and I look forward to the next one.

Subscription Drop

Yesterday the Quarter 1 earnings call happened at Blizzard/Activision and it should shock exactly no one that the World of Warcraft subscription numbers are once again down.  With the launch of Warlords of Draenor the subscription numbers spiked at around 10 million players and has now dropped once more to the 7 million range.  Each expansion gives the subscribers a spike and then things taper off from there, so this was going to happen no matter what.  I will admit that I did not expect the bleed to happen quite so quickly.  That said given my own feelings about the current state of the game, and the general rumblings within the community I guess it should not really surprise me.  I agree with something that Alternative Chat said yesterday on twitter, that what we are seeing is a lot of people who came back and played the game for the month that came with their boxed copy, decided that they did not really like what they saw and left again all without actually subscribing.

If nothing else this seemed to be the trend within my own guild.  Folks would come back and were extremely active until they got their first character to level 100, and then tapered off their playtime ultimately leaving again shortly after that point.  My own time with this expansion is not all that different, and were it not for the fact that I am still raiding I would have left a long time ago.  I leveled three characters to 100, and got the rest of my army of alts to “garrison” level.  I spent the first month logging every single character in religiously and doing their garrison chores, and now I cannot be bothered to do them on more than just my main.  The first character ran a lot of heroics, and now subsequent 100s jump straight to the LFR queue for gearing.  During the launch we had 30 to 40 people on each and every night and it was insanely active.  Now when I log in nightly to run my garrison stuff there are at most three other people on during non-raid times.  While my guild is not exactly a bellwether for the game, it does at least show that something is fundamentally wrong.

Disappointment Comes From Love

.@eljeppy it is impossible to be disappointed if you don't love something 🙂

— ▪Bel▪Writes▪Things▪ (@belghast) May 6, 2015

Yesterday I made a comment on twitter and this morning it still seems very true.  This time around the folks that are complaining about Warlords are not necessarily the people who simply want to watch Blizzard burn down around them.  This group are players that still love the franchise but are disappointed at what it has become.  Ultimately you cannot be truly disappointed in something, unless you really do love it.  I mean if you hate something, then it is impossible to be disappointed because it simply doesn’t matter that much to you.  The problem is I am not exactly sure how this ship can be righted.  Blizzard seems to be committed to the path it is on, because the 6.2 patch is largely just “more of the same”.  The problem being that I see nothing in that patch that is going to keep people glued to the game for another quarter.  The naval missions seem interesting, but at this point folks are just sick of the lost potential that is the Garrison.

What we need now is an expansion announcement to bolster hope in the faithful, the problem there is I am seriously doubtful that we will see an announcement until Blizzcon.  November is two quarters away, and I am just wondering if whatever does get announced is going to be too little and too late to keep from another subscription drop.  Lots of people are talking about an expansion tying into the movie, but that movie is still a full year away.  The 16 month lag in content between Pandaria and Warlords is still very fresh in everyone’s minds and quite frankly Blizzard does not have the luxury of waiting that long.  They need a new world for us to start daydreaming about now, rather than waiting for a movie that may or may not be successful.  The positive is that Blizzard is still doing remarkably well in spite of World of Warcraft.  Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Starcraft II, and Diablo 3 all seem to be doing awesome.  So maybe they just don’t care as much about their MMO as they once did?  If nothing else these months leading up to Blizzcon 2015 are going to likely forever shape the face of Warcraft.