Blizzard is clearly not banking on the sub model

Kyleran · November 2019

Some point to the recent success of Classic as a validation of the sub model.

Perhaps for an older title like WOW on a PC platform but Blizzard isn't counting on it on their upcoming releases.

"As we introduce mobile and free-to-play games based on our franchises we believe we can increase audience size, engagement and monetization across our wholly owned franchises.

With a strong content pipeline and momentum in mobile, esports and advertising, we are confident we will remain a leader in connecting and engaging the world through epic entertainment.”

Source: 3rd Qtr results over on MOP.

Scot · November 2019

I mentioned elsewhere that classic in any MMO does not seem to be effecting any design choices about the "modern" version of the game. I have seen quotes saying it is causing a rethink, but not seen a drop of evidence it is doing so.

I pointed to it being the possible cause of a rethink about subscription when (I think) it was Lineage 2 made one last year. But months ago I changed my mind.

What seems to be happening is classic is going to be sold to people like PvP or PvE is, where the game is sold in two versions. Classic is just a different version they are selling, the assumption seems to be that the sort of players who want to play the modern version of the game do not want anything classic, after all if they did they would go and play classic.

This is a golden opportunity to see if a hybrid between new and old school could make for a better MMO, instead it is just being used as a marketing ploy to increase the player base. Sad really, but what did we expect?

P.S. I think DMKano is more spot on, by phrasing this in terms of variations of the payment model, we were terribly naïve. But to be fair to ourselves we were being told this was being considered.

Kyleran · November 2019

DMKano said:

They are not.

They are banking on pretty much what everyone is attempting - i call it - EPM- every payment model

Crowdfunding
Early Access
Buy the game
Pay for DLCs/expansions
Optional Sub
Cash shop for skins and more

Basically every possible way if making money - they put it in the game

Great name for it, better than mine, FtS.

(Fleece the Suckers)

Oh yeah, added a few you left out, Blizzard doesn't use them of course..well, at least not yet anyways.

Cheers

IceAge · November 2019

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

They are not.

They are banking on pretty much what everyone is attempting - i call it - EPM- every payment model

Crowdfunding
Early Access
Buy the game
Pay for DLCs/expansions
Optional Sub
Cash shop for skins and more

Basically every possible way if making money - they put it in the game

Great name for it, better than mine, FtS.

(Fleece the Suckers)

Oh yeah, added a few you left out, Blizzard doesn't use them of course..well, at least not yet anyways.

Cheers

Blizzard is still one of the few companies who gives us more then decent games with decent payment models and yet here you are, jumping on the hate train.......in advance.

Kano has seen Blizzard "going down" years ago, and if it will actually happen in 5-10-50 years, he'll come here and say "i told you so" lol.

Based from our history in the last.. 100+ years , companies surviving more then 50 years are very, very slim. So yeah, theoretically chances are, that Blizzard will no longer exist in the next 20 years, but .. why worrying about something which didn't happen?!

Exactly!

Albatroes · November 2019

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

They are not.

They are banking on pretty much what everyone is attempting - i call it - EPM- every payment model

Crowdfunding
Early Access
Buy the game
Pay for DLCs/expansions
Optional Sub
Cash shop for skins and more

Basically every possible way if making money - they put it in the game

Great name for it, better than mine, FtS.

(Fleece the Suckers)

Oh yeah, added a few you left out, Blizzard doesn't use them of course..well, at least not yet anyways.

Cheers

Blizzard doesn't use Crowdfunding....? I guess you missed the whole esports prize pool issue with the toy mtx funding the entire pool.

They dont use EA? You know Activision-Blizzard is the entire name of the company, right? CoD says hello.

Cash shop for skins and more. Some people might beg to differ with the Blizzcon virtual ticket having that outfit tied into as well as the refer-a-friend.

Now are all of those things as aggressive as say SE with FFXIV, which pretty much encompasses all of those things minus the "crowdfunding" I suppose. Hell no. It is clear that they do want to push it with their store being updated quite a bit this year. Its not on par with SE updating FFXIV's cash shop on a monthly basis (twice a month if there's a holiday). With how aggressive SE's monetization on FFXIV is, you'd think it would draw more attention, but all you see is people saying "The game is amazing!" ignoring the fact that its a AAA mmorpg where you have to pay extra money if you want to RENT extra storage space/auction slots. Amazing game indeed....That community feels like a cult sometimes...

Jamar870 · November 2019

As far as storage is concerned, as a starting player in FFXIV you get alot more storage in the begining compared to some of the other games like WoW, Aion and Rift to name ones I played on. As to your complaint about cosmetics being used as another revenue stream, BIG WHOOP. Doesn't bother me one bloody bit. If that bothers you then I would take it you stopped playing such games. As to WoW, I kind of burned out abit on both retail and Classic. So I stopped playing.

tawess · November 2019

As much as one hate "new" Blizzard. Apart from Heroes (a decent game but not able to pull the numbers) Blizzard games are good. But they more or less refuse to stay still. They keep moving forward, for good or for ill. In fact i am pretty sure that Blizzard per se never changed their stance on Classic, but as the rules goes.. the money talks.

But of course this constant forward motion (compared to the FIFA´s and CoD´s of the world) do leave people behind.

IceAge · November 2019

DMKano said:

IceAge said:

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

They are not.

They are banking on pretty much what everyone is attempting - i call it - EPM- every payment model

Crowdfunding
Early Access
Buy the game
Pay for DLCs/expansions
Optional Sub
Cash shop for skins and more

Basically every possible way if making money - they put it in the game

Great name for it, better than mine, FtS.

(Fleece the Suckers)

Oh yeah, added a few you left out, Blizzard doesn't use them of course..well, at least not yet anyways.

Cheers

Blizzard is still one of the few companies who gives us more then decent games with decent payment models and yet here you are, jumping on the hate train.......in advance.

Kano has seen Blizzard "going down" years ago, and if it will actually happen in 5-10-50 years, he'll come here and say "i told you so" lol.

Based from our history in the last.. 100+ years , companies surviving more then 50 years are very, very slim. So yeah, theoretically chances are, that Blizzard will no longer exist in the next 20 years, but .. why worrying about something which didn't happen?!

Exactly!

Opinions vary.

In my Opinion the best Blizzard games were Diablo 1,2
Starcraft 1 and Vanilla WoW

They have been declining for the last decade

These are my opinions - that is all.

Very well and I respect that. But just as a reminder, Blizzard is still doing fine.

Torval said:

Watch Angry Joe's rant on CoD Mobile loot crates and then tell me they aren't in the front running for most aggressive. Naive people will say, "But but but that's Activision, not Blizzard." To which I say, you believe what you want cowboy it's surely working for you.

Activision is not Blizzard. That's true. I mean, literally.

Listen, I prefer to be a cowboy, then to jump on something which didn't happen or which will ( maybe ), happen in the next .. years.

Anyway, am I missing something? Are you guys against cosmetics shop? Are you insinuating Blizzard games in the future will have P2W items? What it is? What are you against here anyway?

As a matter of fact, this thread is .. weird, lol, so i'll just leave this here : The fact that there are 5 (?) or so people on mmorpg.com who are permanently bashing anything which has Blizzard name on it, is a living proof that Blizzard is fine.

The moment we see you guys will stop speaking about Blizzard, will indeed be a moment to think if Blizzard has failed or not. Until then ..

Cheers!

Kyleran · November 2019

IceAge said:

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

They are not.

They are banking on pretty much what everyone is attempting - i call it - EPM- every payment model

Crowdfunding
Early Access
Buy the game
Pay for DLCs/expansions
Optional Sub
Cash shop for skins and more

Basically every possible way if making money - they put it in the game

Great name for it, better than mine, FtS.

(Fleece the Suckers)

Oh yeah, added a few you left out, Blizzard doesn't use them of course..well, at least not yet anyways.

Cheers

Blizzard is still one of the few companies who gives us more then decent games with decent payment models and yet here you are, jumping on the hate train.......in advance.

Kano has seen Blizzard "going down" years ago, and if it will actually happen in 5-10-50 years, he'll come here and say "i told you so" lol.

Based from our history in the last.. 100+ years , companies surviving more then 50 years are very, very slim. So yeah, theoretically chances are, that Blizzard will no longer exist in the next 20 years, but .. why worrying about something which didn't happen?!

Exactly!

I am most certainly not jumping on the hate train, I've been sitting in the 1st class car since about 2006 more or less.

Blizzard actually hasn't existed since Activision bought them. Tencent or someone like them will one day acquire A/B and so goes the corporate circle of life.

Kyleran · November 2019

IceAge said:

DMKano said:

IceAge said:

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

They are not.

They are banking on pretty much what everyone is attempting - i call it - EPM- every payment model

Crowdfunding
Early Access
Buy the game
Pay for DLCs/expansions
Optional Sub
Cash shop for skins and more

Basically every possible way if making money - they put it in the game

Great name for it, better than mine, FtS.

(Fleece the Suckers)

Oh yeah, added a few you left out, Blizzard doesn't use them of course..well, at least not yet anyways.

Cheers

Blizzard is still one of the few companies who gives us more then decent games with decent payment models and yet here you are, jumping on the hate train.......in advance.

Kano has seen Blizzard "going down" years ago, and if it will actually happen in 5-10-50 years, he'll come here and say "i told you so" lol.

Based from our history in the last.. 100+ years , companies surviving more then 50 years are very, very slim. So yeah, theoretically chances are, that Blizzard will no longer exist in the next 20 years, but .. why worrying about something which didn't happen?!

Exactly!

Opinions vary.

In my Opinion the best Blizzard games were Diablo 1,2
Starcraft 1 and Vanilla WoW

They have been declining for the last decade

These are my opinions - that is all.

Very well and I respect that. But just as a reminder, Blizzard is still doing fine.

Torval said:

Watch Angry Joe's rant on CoD Mobile loot crates and then tell me they aren't in the front running for most aggressive. Naive people will say, "But but but that's Activision, not Blizzard." To which I say, you believe what you want cowboy it's surely working for you.

Anyway, am I missing something? Are you guys against cosmetics shop? Are you insinuating Blizzard games in the future will have P2W items? What it is? What are you against here anyway?

As a matter of fact, this thread is .. weird, lol, so i'll just leave this here : The fact that there are 5 (?) or so people on mmorpg.com who are permanently bashing anything which has Blizzard name on it, is a living proof that Blizzard is fine.

The moment we see you guys will stop speaking about Blizzard, will indeed be a moment to think if Blizzard has failed or not. Until then ..

Cheers!

Hmm, perhaps you don't understand who the players are of this (forum) game and what motivates their actions?

This should help.

https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/inside-the-mind-of-an-internet-troll-bdab32a0dc4e

Oh yeah, I am most definitely in there.

WarEnsemble · November 2019

People will complain about Blizzard (and they rightly should imo), and yet they will still line up to throw money at Blizzard. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.

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Blizzard is clearly not banking on the sub model

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Blizzard is clearly not banking on the sub model

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Comments

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

This have been a good conversation

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV