World of Warcraft: Current Year

Chris said:

In Bellular's numbers, I belive he did adjust for time and it was still awful.

But yeah those 9.1 numbers are going to look much better this time next year when 9.2 hits PTR and brings everyone back! /cope

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Best part Chris, is that Bellular's data doesn't include the entirety of the PR disaster fallout-- per his own admission.

Wait for the next ball-crushing Bellular update. Expect to see a sling around Zack's jaw to hold it up. I feel bad because Bellular is basically going to give this guy TMJ.

I doubt Zack is actually surprised by the numbers. Just an act. You didnt have to have data sets in order to see the writing on the wall. Even back a couple months after SL's release.

To be fair, SL's initial numbers were better than they should have been, just due to Covid droughts. And Activision's stakeholders can argue whether they are playing Live or Classic, they are still paying their sub.

It should also be clear their glacial release schedule has done their retention numbers no favors.

Personally, I don't think replacing the roster of "Devs not good enough to be poached by other companies" with "Devs hired for diversity/wokeness purposes first" is going to do any favors, and as always, if you aren't happy, just unsubscribe until new (not even better, just new) content comes out.

P.S. As bizarre as this sounds, I like Lord of The Rings Online's current model. They have a $15/$20 zone they put out every ~3 months. If you want variety, you buy the zone and have new quests / reps / etc. every so often. If you aren't a devoted fan, you just skip them until the next level cap increasing reset expansion comes out.

Wombat said:

P.S. As bizarre as this sounds, I like Lord of The Rings Online's current model. They have a $15/$20 zone they put out every ~3 months. If you want variety, you buy the zone and have new quests / reps / etc. every so often. If you aren't a devoted fan, you just skip them until the next level cap increasing reset expansion comes out.

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The amount of content you get for $35 bucks each expansion is generally pretty good in terms of just hours played, whether its a good expansion release or not. Being generous, thats likely two months of subs equaling $60 bucks altogether. But the remaining $180-$220 between expansions for the sub is just ridiculous for the amount of content you get in patches. Especially when the scope of content is lack luster at best.

If they dropped the sub and went F2P with the option to buy content like that (or ESO's model, GW2's model) - WoW would likely have the biggest resurgence of players its ever seen imo. Not only that, dev's could actively be weighed on their performance and decisions more accurately. Ion puts in 30 fucking systems that all need to be grinded in a piece of content and sales on it flop? Then its his ass thats on the line for those decisions, not every other person in the marching band.

Wombat said:

P.S. As bizarre as this sounds, I like Lord of The Rings Online's current model. They have a $15/$20 zone they put out every ~3 months. If you want variety, you buy the zone and have new quests / reps / etc. every so often. If you aren't a devoted fan, you just skip them until the next level cap increasing reset expansion comes out.

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Biggest issue with that is it fractures the playerbase and makes older content less viable for reuse.

Neranja said:

To be fair, I don't think it is Ion personally. But I think he trusted his EJ buddies in the system design team too much, especially in his role as a game director.

He is a lawyer, so he's doesn't need to be good at math, but he should've realized what a fragile house of cards they built. Most likely to impress each other.

They claim they have internal balancing tools for their designs, and I think they claimed they are more complex than SimCraft and the likes. But if that's really the case, balancing classes more than 10% would be unnecessary.

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Huh? The guy is a smug narcissist who hates people questioning him.

Mist said:

My point is that people will eventually get bored of a video game. It's a 17 year old video game that was not even close cutting-edge when it was new. It should have died a long time ago.

Yet people on the internet, who don't even play the game anymore, will spend time analyzing graphs of Mythic dungeon runs, instead of doing literally anything else productive with their time.

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We can't all be as cool as you are.

Mist said:

My point is that people will eventually get bored of a video game. It's a 17 year old video game that was not even close cutting-edge when it was new. It should have died a long time ago.

Yet people on the internet, who don't even play the game anymore, will spend time analyzing graphs of Mythic dungeon runs, instead of doing literally anything else productive with their time.

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Mist said:

Yet people on the internet, who don't even play the game anymore, will spend time analyzing graphs of Mythic dungeon runs, instead of doing literally anything else productive with their time.

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MMO players typically aren't looking to spend their time being productive..

xmod2 said:

Just in case anyone still had thoughts that it was going to get better and that Jen and Mike were going to be able to turn it around for WoW.

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Long ago I think many would have relished the opportunity.

Barf.

First and foremost you hire people that know what they fuck they are doing, because if it's shit and people start pointing fingers having no stereotypes to hide behind is not an improvement.

you would have to work under that gremlin?

xmod2 said:

Just in case anyone still had thoughts that it was going to get better and that Jen and Mike were going to be able to turn it around for WoW.

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convoke the spirits 2.0 in next expac. hype

I'd be day-drunk at work if I was an MMO dev.