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Blizzard Does Not Need WoW

August 5, 2015 by Belghast

The Elephant in the Room

I figure this morning I would cut with any sidebar discussions and get straight into the topic that was on everyones lips yesterday… the Blizzard Q2 Earnings call. If you remember during the Q1 2015 earnings call they announced a drop to 7.1 million subscribers after a peak of 10 million during the Warlords of Draenor launch bump. I think we all knew that the numbers would be down, at least incidentally based on our own experiences from the game. I have to say that I thought WoW token would be more of a game changer, and when they announced that World of Warcraft was down to 5.6 million subscribers I figured that the Token numbers would bolster this amount. However based on further information it appears that this number does include token subscribers as well. In truth this number likely does not fully account for the actual loss. Personally I would consider myself no longer playing World of Warcraft, but my account does not actually die until mid September. There are several folks in similar holding patterns in our guild waiting on their time to tick down as well.

As always MMO Champion has a spiffy graph charting the subscription numbers since the release of the game. To put things into proper perspective, the subscription numbers are exactly what the subscription numbers were in December of 2005 roughly a year after the initial launch of the game. This has lead some folks to point out that when you iron out the outliers like the Warlords of Draenor bump you end up with a standard curve that you might expect for a game of this longevity. There was a lot to be gleaned from the earnings call, but one of the major points I got out of it.. is that while they have already announced that the World of Warcraft expansion would be revealed Thursday at Gamescom, they left it off of the list of products planned for the rest of the year. That tells me that at the very best the expansion will be a Q1 2016 release. That means that there will be at a minimum of a six month lag between content patches, and at worst… honestly who knows what the worse case scenario could be. Hopefully this will not be anywhere near as long as the content drought after 5.4, but I am seriously hoping that they reconsider Hellfire being the final patch of the expansion.

Blizzard Does Not Need WoW

I feel like the takeaway from the earnings call is not that World of Warcraft has fallen by 1.5 million subscribers in a quarter. Anyone who was not expecting this was living in a rose colored world. Quite honestly I half expected it to be a bigger drop just based on my own experiences. The real take away for me however is that in spite of losing this many players Activision Blizzard had one of its strongest quarters yet. During the earnings call there were repeated mentions of “diversification of product offerings”, which tells me that Blizzard no longer considers themselves the “World of Warcraft” company. They see the writing on the way, that their juggernaut is winding down, and they have replaced its revenue by more agile games that are significantly easier to support. The hard truth is that Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm are making them lots and lots of money. When Overwatch launches you can damn well bet that it is also going to make them equally large piles of money, further diluting the need for World of Warcraft.

There was a time when Warcraft was the prize bull, but that is simply no longer the case. If you think of it from a pure numbers perspective it makes sense. Hearthstone for example is a digital card game, and the bulk of the assets that are created for it are two dimensional images. Granted they are awesome looking but they do not require the amount of time it takes to create three dimensional textured models and even more so huge three dimensional worlds for players to explore. The type of content that goes into games like Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm is just simply cheaper to produce than the amount of time that goes into building an entire world filled with hundreds of quest givers that have to be debugged and cross checked to make sure they are not breaking something else. To make matters worse… this expensive content is something we are extremely good at either avoiding or burning through as quickly as possible. The hunger for new content is never changing, there is never a point where we the players will ever be satiated. Adding a new playfield to Heroes of the Storm changes that game and its meta for months, and requires only a faction of the work that a single zone would take in a traditional MMO.

The Movie Tie In

The timing of all of this seems to coincide with the release of the Warcraft movie, but I question what exactly that means for the franchise. All of the details behind the movie so far seem to point at this being a “Warcraft” movie and not necessarily a “World of Warcraft” movie, meaning that it takes place in a time before the MMO is set. So does this mean that we will be doing more “timey wimey” stuff with the expansion, and we are somehow trapped in the timeline that we created by following Garrosh to Draenor? Are we going to play a role in trying to stop a new invasion of Azeroth by Guldan and the Burning Legion? The bigger question is… if all of this is going to happen are players going to stomach yet another storyline retcon? These are all questions that I really don’t have an answer for. I feel like if Blizzard has a shot in hell at rekindling the love of this game, they have to take us someplace new and unexplored, but do it in a way that feels epic like never before. I still mark Wrath of the Lich King as the best expansion to date, and it built upon the success of Vanilla and the Burning Crusade polishing both to a mirror sheen.

This is simply something that going back in time cannot provide for me. We’ve done the reboot of the world thing before with Cataclysm, and I found the whole process frustrating and annoying that places I once loved… simply no longer existed. I feel the only real option is for us to take the fight to the Legion, and have an expansion where we are the ones laying siege for once. What I want to see is an expansion where the Alliance and Horde finally put aside their difference, and with it the artificial barriers between players fall down. I want to see an expansion that places us squarely in the path of epic battles as we lay siege to the worlds that the Legion has conquered before, slowly working our way back to their base of operation and banishing their evil from the universe. That is the adventure that will bring players back, and anything less than that I think will ultimately feel hollow. We have run out of villains that we care about… and the whole “Dances with Orcs” feel of both Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor has been infuriating for anyone who really doesn’t care a damn about Orcs. Blizzard needs to prove to us that it can still create an opposition that is worth of the lineage of Arthas and Illidan, and I feel the only way they can do that is by having us take on the Burning Legion on their own territory.

Blame Acti-Blizz

June 30, 2015 by Belghast

Closing in on Turn Nine

Monday night is traditionally the raid night of our static group in the Greysky Armada Free Company. I had been wondering if we would actually raid since… well the expansion was released and we are all busy leveling. We were wondering just how a lot of things would work out, how our gear levels would scale appropriately and how effective we would be down leveled back to 50. It turns out I was pleasantly surprised on almost all counts and we stepped foot into turn nine once more making some of the most progress we have ever made. We actually managed to make it through a dive bomb phase unscathed, so at least now we know what that feels and looks like. The problem is shortly after doing so… we started our normal “death by simple mistakes” meaning we were all getting too tired to continue on.

I have hope however that maybe this weekend or next week we can step back in there and finally get a damned victory. Right now turn nine is our white whale… which is ironic in a game that literally has a giant flying white whale for a boss. This is one of those things that I just want deep down in my bones now, to move past this barrier and be able to say we have beaten it. I realize at this point it is outdated content… but that doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is taking down Nael and being able to move into the Final Coil of Bahamut. I am hoping that we will continue plugging forward and taking down this stuff even when it is no longer relevant. It makes me happy that the game continues to be challenging even though some of our members have long since reached the new level cap of 60. I however was on my dragoon last night which is still only level 51.

Blame Acti-Blizz

I was having a conversation yesterday with a good friend of mine, about the 6.2 patch and what has worked and what has not worked. During the course of this chat, he threw something out there as though it were just fact… that surprised me a little bit. This friend of mine is as diehard a World of Warcraft fan as they come, and both he and his son play on a daily basis. So to hear it from him really took me back to an earlier conversation he and I had back in 2008, to the announced merger of Activision and Blizzard. His comment was, that the current state of the game and the seeming lack of forward momentum… is entirely to blame on the merger with Activision. Back when this happened he said that his greatest fear was that it would change the way Blizzard interacts with its games and with its players. Last night he said that essentially all of his worst fears have been realized, and that the game we today is a direct result of this merger.

While we cannot say this with any certainty for me at least Blizzard has been on a downhill slide since the release of Wrath of the Lich King. That was the last “great” expansion for me personally, and represented the closing of an era when I was completely enraptured by the game. Granted lots of things have changed, and so many other games have hit the market… but it feels like Blizzard stopped being the revolutionary market leader… and started trailing behind in the days post Activision merger. My question is more did they simply shift focus… did they no longer care as much about the World of Warcraft community as they did their other product offerings? It feels like WoW is a game that has been left to largely fend for itself. There is a large amount of hype drummed up each time a new expansion releases, but then that quickly dies down and we are thrown right back into the cycle of doing just enough to keep hope alive in their player base that things will eventually get better. The problem is… this sense of hope is fading as players are staring down the barrel of potentially another Siege of Orgrimmar like lapse in content.

Following the Money

I think the problem is that quite literally World of Warcraft is no longer Blizzards most important asset. You can see that pretty clearly as you look at the attention paid to each of their product offerings. The favored children of Blizzard right now are Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, and this is evident by how much attention they seem to be getting by the company. You have to think about the simple economics behind that decision. If you can create a game where people will gladly plunk down $4 for five virtual cards, and potentially do so multiple times a month… what is the pure money benefit of spending much effort on a game where the players are ONLY paying you $15 a month. Similarly with Heroes of the Storm you have a game where you can churn out multiple new heroes a month and sell them for the priced to own rate of $10 a piece roughly, not including the skins which are also often around the $10 price point. I saw a recent article stating that it would cost around $1000 to purchase everything that is currently available in the in game Heroes of the Storm store.

Don’t get me wrong… I don’t begrudge them either of these games because I play both of them. The problem is… if you can churn out a few champions a month, or a new hearthstone expansion… the potential investment of time to the money it makes the company is far greater than spending the year it takes to make a brand new World of Warcraft expansion. Even factoring in the box sales it is no wonder that the Warcraft team seems to be starved for resources when the rest of this company is thriving. So I guess I get back to my friends point… that the Activision merger shifted the focus of this company from making great games “whenever they were ready” to making games to maximize investor profits. I cannot be so naive as to believe that the Blizzard of old didn’t care about profits, but I think for a long period of time they were simply shocked and baffled by their own success. I’ve said for awhile that when you start to believe your own hype… you are setting yourself up for the fall. I think with the Activision merger… Blizzard saw their valuation and consumed their own hype completely. Ultimately as I watch the company change, I fear for the state of World of Warcraft, this game that in spite of all of my better sense… that I still care about.

Developer Appreciation Week 2015 – Part 3

April 2, 2015 by Belghast

Over the last several days I have been rattling off a series of studios and game teams that I appreciate. Today will mark my final day of this process, but I am hoping that it has inspired some of you out there to make your own posts about the developers you appreciate. The person I really appreciate is Scarybooster for getting this thing started back in I believe 2010? Scary has a way of coming up with these great ideas, like he is the person who decided the Alliance of Awesome needed to happen as well. Unfortunately he no longer updates his blogs, and has deleted more of them in the past than I can count. So if you know Scary tell him he needs to stop doing that shit and keep coming up with interesting and awesome ideas.

Blizzard – Heroes of the Storm Team

I talked about League of Legends yesterday, and there is no denying it’s market domination in the MOBA arena. The problem is League is far more complicated of a game than I care to play. I get frustrated trying to figure out what I should build when, and then Blizzard comes along and creates an MOBA for someone like me. This game does what Blizzard does best, boil a genre down to its most basic essence and polish it until it shines. This is precisely how I feel about HoTS and its impact on the MOBA genre. Through a series of quick this or that choices you can build out your character and get right back into the action without constantly being afraid that you built the wrong thing. While friends have pointed out that this greatly limits what you can do with any given champion… I am fine with this and in fact welcome it. As much as I enjoy a “Tanky Darius” I would rather just have some clear messaging on what the intent of every champion was, and Heroes of the Storm gives this to me. On top of this the map design is awesome, and each one feels equally enjoyable with its own specific mechanics. I think the entire world is tired of playing Summoner’s Rift.

SOE/Daybreak – Landmark Team

Every time I talk about the company formerly known as Sony Online Entertainment, I do so with a little bit of heartbreak. Daybreak is not the same company, but I feel like the people that are still there are trying their damnedest to make this situation work. There is a lot of negative press that I could be talking about on my blog, about the poor decisions of the company managing Daybreak but for the most part I have tried not to. I feel like there is plenty of negativity out there already on this subject, and that the people who are still there need our support now more than ever. With that said this post goes out to everyone who has ever been a part of the Landmark game. While I am not playing it right now, I still think it is an extremely cool concept and I keep meaning on jumping right back in. Landmark is essentially the ultimate building game in every possible way, and the amount of stuff that the community has been able to create because of the excellent toolset developed by this team is phenomenal. This game blew me away, and I am still constantly amazed by the sort of things I am seeing built. So bravo to the folks who are no longer with the team, and bravo to the folks still there fighting to keep the ship going forward.

Undead Labs – All of the Them

For most of these I have singled out an entire team to talk about, but this time I am breaking that trend and instead talking about an entire studio. I love Undead Labs. I love their spirit, and I love their dedication… and quite honestly I love the way they interact with the public. I remember when State of Decay was about to release on the XBox 360 I was completely pumped for it. I went home that night played the game for several hours and then wrote a pretty gushy blog post the very next day. Within moments of posting the blog I had it being retweeted by Annie Strain the wife of Undead Labs Founder Jeff Strain, who then proceeded to engage with me in a back and forth about my blog post and the game in general. That sort of genuine interaction is just so damned refreshing, and it seems to extend to every single team member. I was lucky enough to get to hang out and talk to several of them during Pax South, and they all had this infectious joy over the games they had created and were creating. While I still desperately want a multiplayer version of State of Decay, I have faith that sooner or later the team will give me something akin to that experience. In the meantime they just seem like a really damned cool studio, and I look forward to watching as their latest game Moonrise progresses to launch. Additionally I feel like I am probably buying yet another copy of State of Decay as the special Year One edition should be landing shortly.

Motiga – Gigantic Team

This is another tale of me just really liking a game studio. I went to Pax South knowing next to nothing about this game other than the fact that it existed, had a cartoony art style and used a teal and orange color scheme it all of its marketing. I walked away from Pax South being both a fan of the game and of the team behind it. I was lucky enough to participate in several plays of the game, and got some time to talk to several members of the development and community staff. They all seem just as amped about this game as the players did, and it was awesome to be coached by the folks who built the game… or have them marvel when I apparently found a bug that nobody had actually found yet. The game is just really damned fun, and that seems to be the focus on making sure the various champion interactions are enjoyable. I have no clue what the timeframe for this games launch is but I look forward to it anxiously. Playing it with two other members of the AggroChat crew against a minor YouTube celebrity, and defeating him… was pretty much the highlight of my Pax South experience. So keep up the awesome work and I look forward to playing this game with my friends when it releases.

Every Single Game Developer

While I have singled out a handful of individuals for specific games that I really love playing… I feel like for this final day of my #DAW2015 love fest… I want to change things up a bit. Basically this goes out to every single game developer out there, regardless of what you are working on or for what company. You guys are living the dream of so many of us who did not choose to chase it. While there are absolutely days I’m thankful I am not in that industry, especially as another studio decimates its staff to realign for this or that reason, there are other days where I pine over the path not taken. You folks are my rockstars, and even if you are making a game that no one will ever play… you are being awesome. Games bring me so much joy, and there is a cast of often nameless and faceless people who struggled through crunch time to get that product into my hands. As I talk about the games I talk about, I try my best to always be aware of the folks behind the scenes that made it happen. So to all the game developers out there… keep making awesome stuff and I will keep playing it. Thank you all.

Art of Quietly Leaving

January 10, 2015 by Belghast

My Happy Place

Events over the last few days have made me realize how happy my world generally is. I’ve managed to curate and carve up social media into being a place where mostly I find friendly faces staring back at me. That does not mean that we always agree or always get along swimmingly, but as I said yesterday it is a place that causes me much more joy than it does frustration. What has lead me to this realization is watching a small bit of strife happening… but as an echo. That is to say I am not actually seeing it in my own thread, but instead hinted at in the comments and tweets of the friends who do frequent mine.

First off… it sucks when someone or something is making you unhappy. That said I would like to remind everyone this morning that social media exists for our own personal enjoyment. Just because someone wants to interact with you, doesn’t mean you have an obligation to interact back especially if that person is trying to bait you into a larger fight. While I wish the block button was a more powerful tool, with its continued use folks eventually get the message that you are not going to play in their games. I’ve seen the adverse effect of a lot of “Sea-Lioning” and sooner or later said folks get tired of creating puppet twitter accounts only to be blocked. I hate when I have to block someone, but ultimately my social bubble is about my happiness and not your enjoyment, and I feel if more people understood that the “twitters” would be a happier place.

Art of Quietly Leaving

A good chunk of the most recent strife that I have seen in echo.. is that a number of high profile individuals are leaving World of Warcraft, and in theory trying to burn down the house on their way out. The “I don’t enjoy this, so I will make sure no one else does” instinct runs deep in human beings, and god knows I have been guilty of this so many times. It is something you have to struggle with. This blog has been devoted to so many posts that have a shared theme that could be summed up as “WoW Failed Me”. Over the last year and a half since I started the daily blogging challenge thing… I have worked on trying to make myself into a much more positive human being. Part of this has involved letting go of the emotion out of my choices, and trying to present a much more amiable view of the world. Sure games have frustrated me, and I have been disappointed so many times… but I try my best to post my critique in a far less ranty manner than I might have the desire to.

Burning down the house on the way out, only serves to cause chaos and strife in your community… and makes sure that it is going to be much harder to eat crow later when you return. I have said I was done with World of Warcraft so many times at this point. I seriously could not count the number of times but the most recent was mere weeks before I started playing Warlords of Draenor (though at this moment I am struggling to find the reference). The heart wants what it wants, and you never know when it is going to drag you kicking and screaming in a direction you have no intent of going. I was doing perfectly fine until I watched the damned Blizzard World of Warcraft anniversary documentary. I was assaulted with a sneak attack of feels and wound up saying “I would play only to see molten core” and that wound up turning into “I guess I am back now” before I realized it. Even for the first few weeks of playing Warlords I was adamant that I “was not back” to the point of refusing to take back the crown to the guild I started back in 2004.

Put Joy in Enjoyment

The problem with World of Warcraft is for many of us it is like a relationship in itself. It is the bad breakup or the ex that betrayed us. We are bitter and confused as to why things changed and are left asking ourselves “was it me?”. Please take the advise of someone who has quit and restarted various MMO games more times than I can count. Yes it very much is you. Sure the game is in a constant state of flux, but so are we. The situation that leads us to play changes over time. Years ago I started guild and raid leadership because I really felt like I had no control over my own life. I was in a pretty horrible job, with the most petty boss I have ever experienced. I felt like I had no control over my own fate, and as such built my own realm where I was the one in control. I had an awesome guild and it was everything that my job was not. When I left that job and found a happier one, all of the reasons why I needed to be the leader melted away, leaving me only with the stress and burden of being the one everyone looked up to.

My situation had changed, and as a result the way I related to the game had changed. Chances are if you are leaving Draenor for this or that reason… your situation has changed as well. These sort of things happen without us realizing it, and in ways that surprise us. I’ve changed the way I approach these games, and while I still love the community aspect and I love raiding as part of a team. I am also willing to walk away when something isn’t as enjoyable as it once was to me. There is no reason to keep playing a game you are not enjoying. The best revenge of the “game that wronged you” is going off and finding one that does bring you happiness. Yes everything I am saying sounds suspiciously like relationship advise… but in truth it is because for some of us this game has been a ten year long relationship. Whatever you do… don’t break everything you can on your way out the door. Be the adult in this relationship and leave quietly and on good terms, because as evidenced by my revolving door of video games.. you never know when you are going to want to come back.