do they have any good games still
SC1
which sadly isn't supported on M1, and who knows if Blizzard will ever release a patch for that.
Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
131–140 of 557 posts
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#132I 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.
> " I'm old enough to stand up against censorship and for the right to use ugly speech. " Then why are you hiding behind a throwaway account? > " I am saying I dont support companies that dont support unfettered free speech. " Which companies do you support? Are there any which support unfettered free speech on their platforms?
It's going to get real awkward when he realizes his comment was flagged, thus prohibiting his "free speech"...
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#133IMO video games are fundamentally unstable and everchanging things, because the customer base is continually growing out of it. Not to say adults wouldn't love to play, but how many people do you know that realistically have the time to get into videogames like the did in highschool, playing wow until sunrise fueled with energy drinks? Practically no one, especially people with families or a 9-5 job that punishes lack of sleep, and it's hard to get good enough at a video game to have a fun time that doesn't suck without having time to practice the mechanics. So even if you do squeeze in an hour here or there, that's not enough time to get even halfway decent at a new videogame, let alone understand anything about any meta that everyone else in the community will use against you in every game you play. It quite literally sucks to suck, and you end up not really playing video games as much because you just get slapped every match and you know you don't have the time to practice and actually get better.
Publishers need to continually cater to a fresh generation. They risk alienating their existing playerbase when this happens to a firm degree, which makes this an art. Blizzard has failed to compete at young peoples attention as well as other distractions on the market, for this new generation at least.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm with the GP, companies aren't there to censor (unless it's a kids game). I don't like the toxic nature of many who play games, but at most the company should look into harassment / abuse, not censor words. My reasoning is Poe's Law. One could be using a would-be censored word or phrase to describe something in a non-offending way. A farmer might say, "I have several bitches to sell, would you be interested?" Here…
Just want to chime in and say I'm actually personally very affable and I do not rant and rave online. I just have no issues with those who do.
Smells to me we're a couple of crying fat kids away from banning people for pulling a Leroy Jenkins.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#135I'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. Blizza…
They've already done this... with WoW. Having dipped back into it in winter, it's more or less an single player game now, with more effort put into phasing players into whatever type of game they want to play and getting them there as quickly as possible. Leveling is laughably fast, and the endgame is mostly done with arbitrary people that will have no investment in decent socialization within the game.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#136Earlier 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…
Or maybe Overwatch does not have staying power. It is quite interesting how CS still has million daily players... And they don't do that much either in terms of new content.
It's pretty amazing how evergreen the CS formula has been considering how simple it is.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#137I'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's a small thing, but the community really needs to get over these "layoffs". Companies execute layoffs at the volume Blizzard did all the time, they were not any kind of indication of any major strategic shift whatsoever.
Strategic shifts are the only reason mass layoffs exist. If it's a slow shift according to market pressure, then you expect the ratio of incoming:outgoing to drop slowly. If it's stable, you expect the ratio to be stable. If someone decides to a do a re-org, or a new strategy and this whole department is no longer necessary in the new model, the ratio drops fast.
Otherwise, why would you drop a whole slew of people suddenly? For the fun of it?
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#138"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…
Was it 2018? Wow that was fast. It must suck for them since that fiasco, losing online players during pandemic when we're all stuck at homes, doubles the pain at least.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!…
That's true, and I love Hearthstone and play regularly (I really prefer the rule sets in HS to MTG:Arena, for example) and have played since Beta... But, Hearthstone is also monetized like crazy today, as well. Especially as compared to 3 years ago.
I think they have actually struck a pretty good balance when it comes to paid content. There isn't really anything (except maybe some of the hero skins?) you actually have to pay for and can't get for free. You can be top-level competitive without spending a cent, so long as you play enough and spend your gold & dust wisely...
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#140It'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
This type of thing prevented me from starting playing anything Blizzard at all.