Microsoft Tries to Buy Activision Blizzard

[Cassius_Smoke]

Raven Software have formed a Union. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
They should leave it in place, but I suspect the MS machine will silently kill it.

[briareos_kerensky]

Raven Software have formed a Union. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
They should leave it in place, but I suspect the MS machine will silently kill it.

I'd say they'll play along, maybe with some conditions. Shutting down (or letting ActiBli shutting it down and blaming them) a spontaneously formed union after what everything happened will be a PR suicide.

[Lebowski]

Heroes of the Storm wasn't successful at all and i'd count probably Hearthstone as a flash in the pan but did retain some sort a player base but isn't Diablo,OW or the Crafts levels. Can't speak to the quality of them never play Dota or PVP Magic Card videogames.

But you're right, Blizzard going nowhere and the mainstream and those that don't live on twitter(which is the majority) don't know about what went on behind the scene's.

Apparently Wow can still sell well, its last dlc sold 3.2 million copy's day one becoming the fastest selling pc game of all time, pc gamer's are a strange lot

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-warcraft-shadowlands-becomes-the-fastest-selling-pc-game-of-all-time

Personally i think its a ageing hardcore player-base that's keeping this game afloat people who played it at launch and never left, their not enjoying the game anymore but like drinking or smoking its a bad habit they cant quit. When you think of how many MMOs have come and gone in its time its very strange that its still going and offering pretty much the same experience it did all those years ago.

[Asura]

Personally i think its a ageing hardcore player-base that's keeping this game afloat people who played it at launch and never left, their not enjoying the game anymore but like drinking or smoking its a bad habit they cant quit. When you think of how many MMOs have come and gone in its time its very strange that its still going and offering pretty much the same experience it did all those years ago.

Thing is, even if everyone playing WoW quit tomorrow, and Blizzard were running it at a loss, they've made so much.

WoW had a peak playerbase of 12 million. The recent expansion sold 4 million copies pretty quick but today, the WoW sub includes all of the older expansions "free" so there are doubtless players who didn't get it, as they haven't reached that content yet or for whatever other reason. So let's be conservative and say that the game has averaged 6 million players per month over its life.

The price per-month has changed over time, I think it was $9 at launch but presently it's $15. For convenience, we'll say it averages to $10.

The game has been out for ~17 years, which is 204 calendar months.

So 10 x 204 x 6,000,000 or 12,240,000,000, or for the summary of this TED-talk, more than a billion dollars per year.

And sure, they've spent a lot of cash in advertising, making content, all the rest, but I'm also going with low-ball figures for everything, so I'm willing to bet they pocketed at least a billion a year.

[Lebowski]

Thing is, even if everyone playing WoW quit tomorrow, and Blizzard were running it at a loss, they've made so much.

WoW had a peak playerbase of 12 million. The recent expansion sold 4 million copies pretty quick but today, the WoW sub includes all of the older expansions "free" so there are doubtless players who didn't get it, as they haven't reached that content yet or for whatever other reason. So let's be conservative and say that the game has averaged 6 million players per month over its life.

The price per-month has changed over time, I think it was $9 at launch but presently it's $15. For convenience, we'll say it averages to $10.

The game has been out for ~17 years, which is 204 calendar months.

So 10 x 204 x 6,000,000 or 12,240,000,000, or for the summary of this TED-talk, more than a billion dollars per year.

And sure, they've spent a lot of cash in advertising, making content, all the rest, but I'm also going with low-ball figures for everything, so I'm willing to bet they pocketed at least a billion a year.

And that to me is crazy $15 a month to play one game???

On the launch of new content it brings in at least 4 million people per day for months at a time which dips to a million players a day when things are quiet. The subs alone they must gain monthly is crazy. and that's before you start looking at the cost of in game cosmetics and micro-transactions.

https://mmo-population.com/r/wow/stats

[Asura]

And that to me is crazy $15 a month to play one game???

Honestly it didn't feel so weird at the time. Netflix etc. didn't exist, so we were comparing it to, I dunno... The gym? A golf club membership? That thing at the cinema where you pay £20 a month and get unlimited films?

I mean £15 is 3 basic drinks at a nightclub. Some people used to save money by having WoW to do on a Friday night!

[Brad]

If you love something enough you don’t mind paying. Was talking to my mate about the DCS payment model the other day. Base game is free to play including online. Maps and aircraft you pay a one off fee for (about £50 a pop). The issue is that they have to keep making new aircraft to cover the costs of fixing the old ones or enhancing the base game in any way. We both agreed that if they changed to model to £15 a month we’d gladly pay it if it helped them implement better ai, multi core and vulkan support. It’s the only game we play so it’s fine. For us. Plenty would complain I’m sure. Anyway, wow folk probably the same.

[fishbowlhead]

If you love something enough you don’t mind paying. Was talking to my mate about the DCS payment model the other day. Base game is free to play including online. Maps and aircraft you pay a one off fee for (about £50 a pop). The issue is that they have to keep making new aircraft to cover the costs of fixing the old ones or enhancing the base game in any way. We both agreed that if they changed to model to £15 a month we’d gladly pay it if it helped them implement better ai, multi core and vulkan support. It’s the only game we play so it’s fine. For us. Plenty would complain I’m sure. Anyway, wow folk probably the same.

Thing is, I wouldn’t mind this model if devs actually fixed stuff, and added meaningful content.

We hear you.
We’re aware of the issues and are currently investigating a fix.


2 years later its still not implemented or fixed, and they have to rush the new content out which is also broken or breaks old stuff to keep afloat.

[Cassius_Smoke]

At this point MS need to do a FF14 with WoW and completely refresh it. Get it looking and feeling great and get it on consoles. It'll rake in a fortune in monthly subs.

[QualityChimp]

200+ posts in this thread and still nobody can tell me if I'm getting a new Tenchu game or not.

[fishbowlhead]

200+ posts in this thread and still nobody can tell me if I'm getting a new Tenchu game or not.

No. Your not. Ever.

[Asura]

At this point MS need to do a FF14 with WoW and completely refresh it. Get it looking and feeling great and get it on consoles. It'll rake in a fortune in monthly subs.

The problem is I think they already did that. They made WoW Classic, which was a very old version of the game which was preserved for those fans, and then they made sweeping changes to much of the game for the last expansion. The Classic thing made a lot of money for a bit, but I don't know if it persisted, and the changes to the main game were fine, but didn't make waves (within the community I've no idea how they were received).

If they want to reinvigorate the brand I think they either need to make a proper sequel, or a World of Starcraft.

I don't envy that task, though.

World of Warcraft is somewhat infamous in the MMORPG space for being a massive success due to making a really good, streamlined version of a classic themepark MMORPG. In the game as it was released (putting aside all the innovations which came after its initial peak), it was a very conservatively designed game. It worked because it was easy to play (compared to games like Star Wars Galaxies), had great production values and had a really interesting world to explore. Other games had come along and tried to mix-up the EverQuest formula with technical or design innovations and none of them really took root.

They looked at the successful MMORPGs that existed, and trimmed away the excess while expanding on what made them good, and they did so with Blizzard's comic-fantasy-art Warcraft visual style. But mechanically, the initial game didn't do much that wasn't just the norm for genre. Nothing in it was surprising apart from the richness of the world (and accessory things, like world-building, cutscenes).

This isn't to be dismissive. WoW was an absolute masterpiece. The fact that the MMORPG "elite" dismissed it as casual rubbish just hammers this point home. It was a huge success and deservedly so. It was kinda like those earlier games like EverQuest had demonstrated that there was this formula for a phenomenon, but their formula was imperfect and just needed some really critical tweaks.

There's also a timing aspect. It was contemporaneous to the growth of Xbox Live; for most people, World of Warcraft was their first MMORPG, but for many people, it was their first online multiplayer game of any sort.

All of this is a bit of a self-indulgent monologue but I guess the point is that I have no idea what a follow-up would or should look like.

[Neon Ignition]

Yup, the only way forward for WOW now is World of Warcraft II or a World of Starcraft and even then I think you're hoping for something FFXIV level success wise at best. WOW was lightning in a bottle for a genre type many have moved on from.

[wakka]

WoW was definitely lightning in a bottle, and god knows enough devs have tried to recapture it over the years, but I wouldn't blame MS for trying. I think a ground up reinvention for Game Pass and console oriented would be very interesting to see.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2022-01-26-next-three-call-of-duty-games-reportedly-heading-to-playstation-despite-microsoft-acquisition

Reported everywhere but really this is 'insider' reporting reaching Mystic Meg levels now. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Call of Duty: Black Ops VI and Call of Duty: Warzone 2 will all be on PlayStation

You know, all the ones developed pre-merger