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Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

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Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#31

Post by ocdtrekkie »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

Overwatch is just feeling stale because OW2 has been in development so long. I'm sure they'll get a huge boost when it launches. But yeah, all their current titles are pretty much just rolling along with nothing new, people are going to go elsewhere in the meantime.

The FPS crowd is extremely cyclical, mostly owing to Call of Duty and Battlefield's annual release cycles. Gamers buy the latest FPS, play it for a few months until the next one comes out. A game like Overwatch just... feels old now, even though it's a high-quality well-balanced game.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#32

Post by derekdahmer »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

Plus Overwatch development has stagnated for the last year or so as their team has been focusing on Overwatch 2, which probably won’t even come out this year.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#33

Post by jandrese »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

Blizzard kinda killed the RTS genre with Starcraft 1. It's basically the perfect RTS so everything that came after it seems inferior. Even Starcraft 2.

There are still niches for specialized audiences, like historical battles with a more strategic bent, but for mass market RTS nothing has been able to beat a 23 year old game.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#34

Post by ketamine__ »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

How do you lose revenue as a gaming biz during a pandemic? Kotick needs to lean in and build out WOW.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#35

Post by aaomidi »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #31
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

Overwatch is just feeling stale because OW2 has been in development so long. I'm sure they'll get a huge boost when it launches. But yeah, all their current titles are pretty much just rolling along with nothing new, people are going to go elsewhere in the meantime. The FPS crowd is extremely cyclical, mostly owing to Call of Duty and Battlefield's annual release cycles. Gamers buy the latest FPS, play it for a few m…

If it launches, one of the major faces of that project has left. There's not a lot of trust @ Blizzard releasing good updates to games anymore.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#36

Post by abakker »

tibbon wrote: post #22
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

WoW also just got boring for me a long time ago. Sure, they keep adding new things, but it's still riding in very deep treads they dug long ago. It's still fundamentally the same game, and in my eyes showing its age. I'd love to play a new MMO that explores new ideas. WoW explores WoW.

given the graphics horsepower of many modern computers, I've been hoping for a "world of diablo" that focuses more on the gothic horror imagery and the backdrop of the much more exciting world that diablo is set in. Make it dark, atmospheric, and pack it with random dungeons, sorcery, and doom-style jump scares. Maybe as a bonus, put it in VR and innovate controls for attacking and spell casting.

I can dream, right?

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#37

Post by dstaley »

I've been an off-and-on World of Warcraft player since the Burning Crusade days, and I honestly think that Blizzard is struggling to evolve the MMORPG genre into something suitable for the modern day.

There was a great article in Kotaku[1] that illustrated this quite nicely. Essentially, what made World of Warcraft successful when it launched can't really exist today, especially with our hyper-connected world. Blizzard has made many attempts to make World of Warcraft more modern, more accessible to newer players (and some have even worked!), but nothing they've done has been able to recapture people in the same manner as it did originally. I think this isn't so much Blizzard's fault as it's just a factor of our world now; there's so much competition for our attention that the "average" gamer doesn't really have the motivation to immerse themselves into the game world (nor can they really when there's so much research you end up doing while playing).

The last truly transformational gaming experience I had was with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild back in 2017. I suspect much of that experience was due to the fact that, in those crucial first few days, there wasn't really anything online about the game. (Sure, there were articles here and there, but nothing near the vast amounts of information about World of Warcraft that exist now). To a lesser extent, I think a lot of the experience I had was due to the single-player nature of the game.

I've said this for years, and I still stand by it: Blizzard should create single-player games set in the Warcraft universe in the vein of Skyrim. They've spent so much time and effort crafting these elaborate stories and worlds that I think the best way to really experience them now is with a single-player game. I could be convinced to accept a group-up mechanic for larger enemies (sort of in the vein of Monster Hunter), but a single-player narrative-driven game set in the Warcraft universe (with art done by the cinematics team) could be a blockbuster if done correctly.

However, there's no indication that Blizard cares about crafting that sort of experience anymore. They seem to be almost commpletely focused on multiplayer, microtransaction-based gaming, which is probably the way to be the most profitable these days I guess.

[1] https://kotaku.com/world-of-warcraft-classic-maybe-you-cant-...

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#38

Post by nawgz »

sergiotapia wrote: post #6

Their games just don't feel like labors of love anymore. They feel like icky skinner boxes through and through. Every aspect of their games are a/b tested up the ass to convert as many MTX as possible and personally it's a total turn off. I downloaded Warzone and tried it out this weekend and uninstalled after 2 matches, it just felt off. Hard to describe. Like a AAA graphics Candy Crush. yuck!

Haha, Warzone is a great game with one of the worst UI/UX designs I've ever seen. As a player who got it 5 months ago or so, I fully disagree with your assessment. It has a horrible and confusing store, no pay-to-win aspects, and solid gameplay with some actual decent depth.

I am in no way condoning Activision, and I think their approach to Warzone maintenance has been pretty horrible (they are just turning a corner on that it seems), but Warzone is a good game without any gameplay-obtrusive MTX

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#39

Post by vntx »

tibbon wrote: post #22
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

WoW also just got boring for me a long time ago. Sure, they keep adding new things, but it's still riding in very deep treads they dug long ago. It's still fundamentally the same game, and in my eyes showing its age. I'd love to play a new MMO that explores new ideas. WoW explores WoW.

Riot is developing a MMO based on Runeterra. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

#40

Post by void_mint »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #8

I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but: They stopped development on Diablo 3 a long time ago. It doesn't have the staying power of more modern online games where new content is added continuously. They stopped development on HotS, which never achieved the same level of pull as League of Legends. Overwatch faces stiff competition from Valorant and other competitive small team FPSes, and also has over…

> I can't say what's driving all the playerbase losses but:

"The Blizzard Way" doesn't work anymore.

Fortnite releases content monthly/quarterly. Massive updates with huge out-of-game tie-ins, changing worlds, in-game events, etc. Other games have changed to match/compete. CoD and Valorant both implement similar season-pass style systems.

Blizzard, on the other hand, insists on delaying/cancelling games, releasing "only when ready", continuing to lose touch with their playerbase, etc. They made it public that there would be no more Overwatch updates until Overwatch 2 (and also made it public that Overwatch 2 is actually a PvE expansion). There is no release date for OW2, so Overwatch players will be sitting with no new content for over a year.

It is very obvious why Blizzard is losing players and not really competing in 2021.

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