I hope people now realize that the true beginning of the end 100% started with the ghost crab idiot destroying character development and removing player choices and gutting every core aspect of the game he could. You let the dummies with the cookie-cutter mindset control the game and remove everything that made it fun and worth playing control the game and constantly dumb it down further and further until retarded babies could play. Replacing real players with retarded babies isn't a good business model.
I'm just happy the classic server will fix all Blizzards errors and give a home to most of the disillusioned players who want a real game made for an adult audience to play. Hopefully they quickly come out with a BC classic server so we can have the arena and gem-crafting too.
As soon as any company becomes publicly traded it is driven by stock prices. This has always been it's not "Now." When did they become publicly traded? Because that is when it started.
Some companies do try to concentrate on bringing great products to market with the idea that the stock price will always go up and down (like my company) BUT I never assume any company (including my company), let alone any publicly traded company is doing it "for the feels."
My thought is to always know what you are dealing with. With companies, with people, with everything.
There seems to be a common sentiment that publicly traded companies must take the lowest road trying to grab the most revenue and push their stock price no matter what. I think that hasn't worked well for a lot of big companies that either aren't companies any more or have ended up shells of their former selves.
It's possible to push your revenue and stock valuation by caring, doing it for the feels, and putting out a great product because you know that's a solid path to success. The former method may get good short term results but long term, not so much. Very few companies disregard on their core customer base year after year and stay on top.
Case in point: Destiny 2 revenue this year. Forsaken corrected a lot of bad things with D2, but Bungie isn't escaping the inevitable backlash for releasing Destiny 2 the way they did.
Also, while Forsaken fixed some bad designs, Bungie's attitude hasn't changed. Forsaken still tries to pull a lot of the same bullshit they pulled with D2 launch. Strong first DLC, then "balance changes" and updates turn it into a massive grind fest with second rate content. On top of that they charged out the ass for Forsaken, considering it's supposed to be a DLC and then to pour salt on the wound they tried to force sales of their previously shitty DLC as a pre-req.
I don't disagree. I bought Forsaken after they bundled it, so I didn't feel I overpaid, but definitely would've felt like I did had I been missing all the DLCs. I honestly can't believe they released the base game with the content they did.
Bungee - as the developer - will certainly have been complicit in the decisions. However - to be fair to Bungee - we don't know what "control" Activision Blizzard exerted; over the design of D2 in particular - Bungee seemed to be more "in control" of D1 and responsible for both the good and the bad.
And I think that Bungee with their "the Destiny we always planned" approach will form the crux of their mantra, going forward, to distance them from AB. And it will probably work for D3 being what people will want to believe.
WOW wasn’t perfect back then, it isn’t now, and he’s correct about one thing, the new classic servers will show people the one Dev lead was right, they think they want a vanilla experience, but they really don’t, or something like that. I believe he’ll be proven correct in the long run.
I really find it hard to understand how so many people hold this belief so fervently. Its like a religious zealot who believes everyone will see the light and realize their God is the one true God.
I will grant you most current WoW players that try the classic server will not like it after a little bit. The same with all the people excited for most of the tripe currently in development.
But lets be reasonable - is it possible wow has shed fans over the years looking for aspects x, y, and z that are no longer in WoW but used to be? And these people actually want x, y, and z?
Or put another way - you claim you love EVE. If EVE over the next ten years changes everything you love about it, making it into a completely different game - would a classic EVE server not appeal to you? In that case, would you agree with a dev saying you mistakenly want all those things they removed from the game and they know what you want better than you do?
You people are basically telling us we are retarded and don't know what we actually like or want in a game. The sheer audacity is amazing. The people that actually played vanilla WoW are not retarded children. We are fully grown and (I'm assuming mostly) independent adults with a clear and specific understanding of what we like and dislike.
We don't play modern WoW because we are confused about what we want. We don't play it because it doesn't give us what we want and hasn't for a long, long time.
I have no idea if wow classic will be a mega hit or not. But I know for certain I am going to play the shit out of it and enjoy it.
@DMKano 's comments about the difference between the Blizzard of today vs the Blizzard of yesteryear are spot on.
However with Vanilla I believe Blizzard were going to invoke the "Blizzard of yesteryear" vibe.
The way things are at the moment how they tackle the "problem" of dealing with both current and old WoW could prove even more of crucial decision than it was always going to be. No pressure!
Blizzard did release some of my all time favourite
games but then they stopped releasing games that interest me, over ten
years ago. At the end of the day, I really don't care who makes the games I play as long as there's good games to play. I've never had so many awesome games I want to play released as right now, smaller developers are releasing amazing stuff all the time. I don't have enough time to play all these great games.
Some genres I enjoy like MMORPG, RTS and Arena-FPS games are lacking in newly released games I want to play, other genres like ARPG, MOBA and RPG are in a golden age right now imo. It all goes in cycles which genres are popular, I fully expect genres that aren't popular right now to make a comeback.
For MMORPG's I see it as a good thing that the genre seems to be dying off right now, a fresh start with smaller scale games is needed to get some interesting ideas in the genre again.
That's kind of the thing, though. Most Blizzard games released since WoW have been generally not met with great enthusiasm... Maybe the run-up (see Diablo III), but it kind of stopped at release.
Overwatch is really the main exception, and it's no wonder they are trying to hard to build around it. They feel like they have struck gold.
I think what is fueling this is more nostalgia than reality. People are thinking about Diablo II, Starcraft and Early WoW and acting like it's been anything like that in the past decade or so.
I found myself agreeing with almost every word he wrote, so maybe im ablizzard fan too, or was, rather. Anyways, here is an interesting response from an ex-wow_gm:
As an EX-Blizzard GM, while I don't have information on those design decisions, I can tell you something happened around 2011/2012 after WotLK before Cataclysm.
From the CS side of the business it went from being a "Find a way to make the player happy" and "This is a game company, we should be having fun at work" to "What's your TPH (Tickets Per Hour), FCR (First Contact Resolution), CSS (Customer Service Score, how the customer rated their experience)."
This was some what fine because our ticket queue was absolutely bonkers, but we had 12 million players and most tickets were resolved to the satisfaction of the player. However there was two changes that occurred that for me really put the nail in the coffin.
The first was going from a standpoint of try to find a way to tell the player yes (within reason) to "Knowing how to tell the customer No". I.e. we were changing support policies for things like quest reward reimbursement, character/item undeletion, etc because they were putting in self-help systems. Those systems didn't show up for another 2 years and in the meantime we were just denying everything for no reason, which was stupid because it those issues were SUPER easy and quick and had a HUGE POSITIVE impact on the player.
Now I agree we needed self-help options because it WOULD mean less tickets in the queue but it SHOULD have been to suppliment In-Game Support, not replace it.
The second change that took slightly longer to come to fruition is that our CSS (the scores the customers gave us in the survey) went from counting everything 0 - 5 to only counting 5s. The problem with this is that to a customer a 3 is satisfactory and a 4 is above the average so both are still good results. However since 1 - 4 were now counted as 0s. This meant if you didn't think you could get a 5 out of the customer (ie either you COULD help them or they were just that super nice player) then you're wasting your time even attempting to help them and it's in your best interest to simply tell them no and close out the ticket as soon as possible.
Now, again I wasn't part of any of those design decisions so I don't know for sure but to me it seemed similar things were happening throughout the company. Blizzard no longer was focusing on the right things and only looking at the data. Around that same time is when the Mounts/Pets/Faction Changes (previously transfers, name changes, and race changes were a thing) but you could see them ramping up and they were making a killing, because the items were so expensive.
On this note, previously per year we got something like 10 codes of each service, 2 codes for each item (mounts, blizzcon, collectors editions, ect) but they decided to scrap that system and give us 25 20.00 Blizzard Bucks codes which was 500 dollars and wouldn't purchase NEARLY the same amount of codes. This also meant if you wanted to give a family member/friend/guildie/random stranger a faction change, you had to give them 50.00 to spend 30.00. They tried to play this off as "this gives you more choice on what services you actually want instead of hoarding name change codes you never use" but really they just didn't want to give us all that free stuff.
On that same note, when I first started we had cool things like free drinks, pizza parties all the time, cakes for peoples birthdays, ect
That ended up turning into no free drinks, no pizza parties, and all snacks/food/ect had to be paid by the employee.
They also started micromanaging us. At first while they were concerned with stats like custom support scores, tickets per hour, ect they started adding metrics like time off task, time spent on tickets, how many tickets you were doing at one time, what kind of tickets you were doing had different weights. What this ended up meaning was that instead of pizza parties and nerf wars we all had to bunker down and focus only on our metrics.
Anyway, thankfully I left and I'm at a way better job now, but Blizzard lost their soul and I'm sad to see the shape they are in today.
With the state of their games currently, I don't know how much longer they will be around. Activision isn't doing so hot either. Their only games are COD and Destiny. Basically if you look at the entire catalog of games from Blizzard and Activision, it's not looking so great IMO.
Long rant over, good luck Blizz.
Edit: Thanks for all the replies, I've read everyone and try to respond to a lot of them. I'm considering doing an AMA but too busy this weekend.
Comments
I'm just happy the classic server will fix all Blizzards errors and give a home to most of the disillusioned players who want a real game made for an adult audience to play. Hopefully they quickly come out with a BC classic server so we can have the arena and gem-crafting too.
And I think that Bungee with their "the Destiny we always planned" approach will form the crux of their mantra, going forward, to distance them from AB. And it will probably work for D3 being what people will want to believe.
I will grant you most current WoW players that try the classic server will not like it after a little bit. The same with all the people excited for most of the tripe currently in development.
But lets be reasonable - is it possible wow has shed fans over the years looking for aspects x, y, and z that are no longer in WoW but used to be? And these people actually want x, y, and z?
Or put another way - you claim you love EVE. If EVE over the next ten years changes everything you love about it, making it into a completely different game - would a classic EVE server not appeal to you? In that case, would you agree with a dev saying you mistakenly want all those things they removed from the game and they know what you want better than you do?
You people are basically telling us we are retarded and don't know what we actually like or want in a game. The sheer audacity is amazing. The people that actually played vanilla WoW are not retarded children. We are fully grown and (I'm assuming mostly) independent adults with a clear and specific understanding of what we like and dislike.
We don't play modern WoW because we are confused about what we want. We don't play it because it doesn't give us what we want and hasn't for a long, long time.
I have no idea if wow classic will be a mega hit or not. But I know for certain I am going to play the shit out of it and enjoy it.
However with Vanilla I believe Blizzard were going to invoke the "Blizzard of yesteryear" vibe.
The way things are at the moment how they tackle the "problem" of dealing with both current and old WoW could prove even more of crucial decision than it was always going to be. No pressure!
Overwatch is really the main exception, and it's no wonder they are trying to hard to build around it. They feel like they have struck gold.
I think what is fueling this is more nostalgia than reality. People are thinking about Diablo II, Starcraft and Early WoW and acting like it's been anything like that in the past decade or so.
Time to move on, people.
Anyways, here is an interesting response from an ex-wow_gm:
As an EX-Blizzard GM, while I don't have information on those design decisions, I can tell you something happened around 2011/2012 after WotLK before Cataclysm.
From the CS side of the business it went from being a "Find a way to make the player happy" and "This is a game company, we should be having fun at work" to "What's your TPH (Tickets Per Hour), FCR (First Contact Resolution), CSS (Customer Service Score, how the customer rated their experience)."
This was some what fine because our ticket queue was absolutely bonkers, but we had 12 million players and most tickets were resolved to the satisfaction of the player. However there was two changes that occurred that for me really put the nail in the coffin.
The first was going from a standpoint of try to find a way to tell the player yes (within reason) to "Knowing how to tell the customer No". I.e. we were changing support policies for things like quest reward reimbursement, character/item undeletion, etc because they were putting in self-help systems. Those systems didn't show up for another 2 years and in the meantime we were just denying everything for no reason, which was stupid because it those issues were SUPER easy and quick and had a HUGE POSITIVE impact on the player.
Now I agree we needed self-help options because it WOULD mean less tickets in the queue but it SHOULD have been to suppliment In-Game Support, not replace it.
The second change that took slightly longer to come to fruition is that our CSS (the scores the customers gave us in the survey) went from counting everything 0 - 5 to only counting 5s. The problem with this is that to a customer a 3 is satisfactory and a 4 is above the average so both are still good results. However since 1 - 4 were now counted as 0s. This meant if you didn't think you could get a 5 out of the customer (ie either you COULD help them or they were just that super nice player) then you're wasting your time even attempting to help them and it's in your best interest to simply tell them no and close out the ticket as soon as possible.
Now, again I wasn't part of any of those design decisions so I don't know for sure but to me it seemed similar things were happening throughout the company. Blizzard no longer was focusing on the right things and only looking at the data. Around that same time is when the Mounts/Pets/Faction Changes (previously transfers, name changes, and race changes were a thing) but you could see them ramping up and they were making a killing, because the items were so expensive.
On this note, previously per year we got something like 10 codes of each service, 2 codes for each item (mounts, blizzcon, collectors editions, ect) but they decided to scrap that system and give us 25 20.00 Blizzard Bucks codes which was 500 dollars and wouldn't purchase NEARLY the same amount of codes. This also meant if you wanted to give a family member/friend/guildie/random stranger a faction change, you had to give them 50.00 to spend 30.00. They tried to play this off as "this gives you more choice on what services you actually want instead of hoarding name change codes you never use" but really they just didn't want to give us all that free stuff.
On that same note, when I first started we had cool things like free drinks, pizza parties all the time, cakes for peoples birthdays, ect
That ended up turning into no free drinks, no pizza parties, and all snacks/food/ect had to be paid by the employee.
They also started micromanaging us. At first while they were concerned with stats like custom support scores, tickets per hour, ect they started adding metrics like time off task, time spent on tickets, how many tickets you were doing at one time, what kind of tickets you were doing had different weights. What this ended up meaning was that instead of pizza parties and nerf wars we all had to bunker down and focus only on our metrics.
Anyway, thankfully I left and I'm at a way better job now, but Blizzard lost their soul and I'm sad to see the shape they are in today.
With the state of their games currently, I don't know how much longer they will be around. Activision isn't doing so hot either. Their only games are COD and Destiny. Basically if you look at the entire catalog of games from Blizzard and Activision, it's not looking so great IMO.
Long rant over, good luck Blizz.
Edit: Thanks for all the replies, I've read everyone and try to respond to a lot of them. I'm considering doing an AMA but too busy this weekend.
Edit 2: Bungie Splits With Activision, Keeps Destiny https://kotaku.com/bungie-splits-with-activision-1831651740 Well that leaves Activision with just Call of Duty.