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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

#41

Post by aaomidi »

TOSSAWAY_1 wrote: post #19

I quit playing overwatch and hots when they sided with SJWs (and by extension censorship and china). I also skipped tlou2 and other big titles. I'm old enough to stand up against censorship and for the right to use ugly speech. I'm not saying I expect blizzard to not exercise its rights as a private company, but I am saying I dont support companies that dont support unfettered free speech.

Good, players like you leaving makes the game a better and safer place for everyone.

Players like you, and Blizzard's inaction to do something about it is why I left.

Players Overwatch with my girl friends has been the worst experience. Players any multiplayer game as a woman just seems to be toxic. I expected more from Blizzard here.

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

#43

Post by taneq »

freshair wrote: post #29

"Do you guys not have phones?" -Blizzard staff in 2018, in response to booing fans upset that Blizzard wouldn't make a PC version of a game those same fans obviously wanted to play. This company has been contemptuous of their players for years. They fell into that classic trap of "If we [do something that will alienate all our customers] we can get 10x as many customers from [untapped market]" As anybody should have…

"Trust me, you think you want it, but you don't" - Blizzard, about vanilla WoW, a year before releasing WoW Classic.

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

#44

Post by Reason077 »

Grimm1 wrote: post #9

Blizzard has released only the WoW expansion and some minor hearthstone expansions in the last 3 years. They have not really pushed any major IP releases. Acti-Blizzard is as profitable as ever though largely because of the MTX they've baked into COD and other games, their mobile games, and things like their overseas market penetration working out for them. That combined with the fact they've lost a significant amoun…

Hearthstone actually gets regular, huge updates now days. Far more than it did in the first few years. Just today they dropped a surprise update for Battlegrounds. It's clear there's a major, constant effort going into developing new expansions, new game modes, etc.

They've figured out a clever model of rotating out the old content to make room for more new stuff. No doubt Hearthstone is very profitable for Blizzard!

Starcraft 2 and HotS, on the other hand, have basically been abandoned. Even Overwatch seems to be stagnating somewhat.

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

#45

Post by lsiebert »

It's anecdotal, but I know at least five or six people who stopped playing blizzard games, especially HS, after they punished a player and staff for expressing support for Hong Kong in a post tournament interview.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy

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

#46

Post by AlexandrB »

gmaster1440 wrote: post #5
nickstinemates wrote: post #3

Not surprising, Blizzard has lost its way and its brand doesn't mean what it once did. The fall from grace started with the advent of paid services, and in game cosmetic shop in WoW and all of the issues surrounding the launch of Diablo 3 (let alone the disaster that is OWL/Overwatch, complete abandonment in HotS, etc.)

What about Overwatch is a disaster?

I can only speak from personal experience. I absolutely adored Overwatch at launch but about a year ago I uninstalled it and never looked back.

What finally killed it for me is the role-based queueing. It locked in the developer-proscribed 2/2/2 meta and made the game feel very static and uninteresting. Previously, if you saw a gap on your team you could switch to a completely different role to fill the void. Though even before role-based queuing there was a (very annoying) portion of the community that believed you had to be playing the high-end "meta" even when you're at the lowest ranks or playing casually and would complain endlessly if you did anything different.

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

#47

Post by TOSSAWAY_1 »

aaomidi wrote: post #41
TOSSAWAY_1 wrote: post #19

I quit playing overwatch and hots when they sided with SJWs (and by extension censorship and china). I also skipped tlou2 and other big titles. I'm old enough to stand up against censorship and for the right to use ugly speech. I'm not saying I expect blizzard to not exercise its rights as a private company, but I am saying I dont support companies that dont support unfettered free speech.

Good, players like you leaving makes the game a better and safer place for everyone. Players like you, and Blizzard's inaction to do something about it is why I left. Players Overwatch with my girl friends has been the worst experience. Players any multiplayer game as a woman just seems to be toxic. I expected more from Blizzard here.

Exactly. I can tell where I'm not wanted. Enjoy!

Edit: sorry I caught this before your edit to include popular buzzwords like "toxic". Good for you, I'm actually looking for games and experiences that are outside the realm of sanitized things my mother would like.

And I'm sorry about your girlfriend, it was likely my girlfriend giving her so much shit. She's a real sailor when she gets going. And mean too!

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

#48

Post by mewse-hn »

I'm a WoW classic player and the company is a lot different than it used to be. You can't talk to GMs in-game anymore and they refuse to fix loot problems filed by guild loot masters. It's like they did a cost/benefit analysis before one of their waves of layoffs and decided they'll just automate everything.

They did a cosmetic pet thing recently, tied to donations to Doctors Without Borders and I found myself hoping it would fail. Instead of a fun thing where the community would come together it felt like being asked to donate to a charity at the walmart register in order to boost the company's profile.

As far as I know war 3 reforged is still screwed up. They acted shamefully during the blitzchung thing and then tried to post some twee black lives matter stuff during the george floyd protests last year. The people who actually cared about the games have fled, most recently Jeff Kaplan.

They'll still keep making money to appease the blizzard/activision shareholders but the soul is gone. RIP old blizzard

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

#49

Post by lhorie »

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…

> Starcraft 2 is basically dead. WC3 remastered flopped

Paradoxically, I've noticed an uptick of new creative Starcraft 2 content on Youtube (similar to those "can you beat the game by doing [insert crazy premise here]" types of videos you see in the Mario community).

I think the two company direction things that were noticeable for me were that they decided to try to embrace two major cop-outs: milking cash shop (skins, voice packs) and trying to pull Disney-like re-runs of classics (SC and WC remastered). Many in the community are lamenting that e.g. the dev team behind Starcraft is essentially disbanded. It's like they fundamentally gave up being a game company, and decided to be a collectibles company instead.

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

#50

Post by ocdtrekkie »

aaomidi wrote: post #35
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll miss Jeff, but he's not the end all of why Overwatch is a fantastic game. Bear in mind "faces" are often just that... the "face" of a large group, who generally is comfortable being in front of the crowds and talking with everyone.
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