With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next? • Hacker News Board

Re: With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next?

#41

Post by vibrunazo » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 8:29 PM UTC

Negitivefrags wrote: post #23

vibrunazo wrote: post #19

I think the real money auction house in Diablo 3 will work tremendously well. So well that it will change MMOs. Blizzard will make most of Diablo's revenue from it, and competitors will follow. Blizzard will embrace this idea and will apply it to future games, maybe Titan will be free to play with a similar auction house. Which will also move a bit further away from the desktop. The player auctions are extremely scal…

I'm highly sceptical. Ignoring the auction house for a second, Blizzard makes money once though a large up front sale, and then has no monthly fee. The game is played entirely on online servers with no single player however. That means Blizzard makes the most money from a customer who plays though the game once (or not at all) and then doesn't play again. This philosophy seems to be present throughout the games desig…

The key difference between the subscription and the freemium model is the scalability with flexibility. A subscription is a fixed value the costumer pays for. If you set it to low, you're missing the opportunity to make more money from users willing to pay more. If you set it to high, you run the risk of users who would still be profitable not buy it at all.

Then you could try different tiers of subscriptions. But that only bandages the problems. Then came consumable virtual items, which automatically gives you infinite tiers of pay users. You can play the game for $15 a month, you can play it for free, or you can pay $3000 a month if you're willing to. And according to Zynga's report, many does, and that's where they get most of their money from.

That flexible scalability is why freemium is replacing subscriptions. And that's why I think the auction house will take over subscription. Because not only it's a freemium model, but it's a genius freemium model. It takes the best of the two main types of freemium (consumable and permanent virtual items) and put them together. It doesn't put a limit on how much a user can pay you. And it's also very attractive to users.

Re: With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next?

#42

Post by vibrunazo » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 8:30 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #26

georgekv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

knock knock "Hello, it's the IRS."

This is going to be interesting. Anybody selling "virtual items" will have a cost basis of "0" if self created, so everything is "profit" in the IRS' eyes. If Blizzard is collecting the payments they are obligated to track those transactions and report anybody that hits the minimum 1099 threshold. If you're in CA and sell to somebody in CA will you have to pay the state board of equalization too for sales tax? Very c…

Is it too much different from how ebay deals with it?

Re: With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next?

#43

Post by kbutler » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 8:34 PM UTC

Sounds like 2007 all over again: http://gigaom.com/2007/06/17/has-world-of-warcraft-finally-h...

Raph Koster (much of whose work I admire!) seems a bit off-base speaking of WoW in 2007: “This is how Open Big MMOs all go. A big rush, peaking a little bit after the launch. Then a plateau for a while, then a tailing off.” http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/06/15/how-open-big-virtual-wo...

I would not expect WoW to be around forever, but I wouldn't bet on its demise any time soon. Fading? Maybe.

WoW subscription history vs other games from: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png (from http://mmodata.blogspot.com/)

Re: With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next?

#44

Post by kbutler » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 8:36 PM UTC

neworbit wrote: post #39

rbii wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10.2 is the lowest it's ever been. Usually the numbers rise and fall depending on what other games are released -- every time a big-title MMO comes out, WoW generally loses 1-2 million players to it (and then they come back). If the figure stays around 10 mil (i.e. if SWTOR keeps them), I guess that'll be 'proof' that WoW is fading.

Surely you don't mean "ever been"? I don't know how long it took them to get to ten million players in the first place but I'm imagining it wasn't on day one :) And semantic point aside, ten million users is still mighty impressive!

Looks like 2005-2008 to get 10 million users: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png (from http://mmodata.blogspot.com/)

Re: With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next?

#45

Post by Negitivefrags » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 9:10 PM UTC

vibrunazo wrote: post #41

Negitivefrags wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm highly sceptical. Ignoring the auction house for a second, Blizzard makes money once though a large up front sale, and then has no monthly fee. The game is played entirely on online servers with no single player however. That means Blizzard makes the most money from a customer who plays though the game once (or not at all) and then doesn't play again. This philosophy seems to be present throughout the games desig…

The key difference between the subscription and the freemium model is the scalability with flexibility. A subscription is a fixed value the costumer pays for. If you set it to low, you're missing the opportunity to make more money from users willing to pay more. If you set it to high, you run the risk of users who would still be profitable not buy it at all. Then you could try different tiers of subscriptions. But th…

I'm not saying that auction houses can't work in general, I'm saying that it will not work in Diablo 3 due to it's design.

I'm well aware of the benefits of free-to-play, as I am a founder of a company making a free-to-play game!

Re: With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next?

#46

Post by mattbriggs » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #43

Sounds like 2007 all over again: http://gigaom.com/2007/06/17/has-world-of-warcraft-finally-h... Raph Koster (much of whose work I admire!) seems a bit off-base speaking of WoW in 2007: “This is how Open Big MMOs all go. A big rush, peaking a little bit after the launch. Then a plateau for a while, then a tailing off.” http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/06/15/how-open-big-virtual-wo... I would not expect WoW to be around…

With 10mil subs still they will take a long time to fade, but if you look at that chart, the first significant dip in its history was post Wrath of the Lich King, followed by the current dip which occurred after Cataclysm. They regained their subs after the wrath dip, but this one seems to be ~4x as big. It will be interesting to see what happens when Pandaria comes out, I doubt that they will ever return to their peak, but that is the point where we will _start_ to be able to make predictions on how long the demise will take.

Re: With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next?

#47

Post by zevyoura » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 9:55 PM UTC

joblessjunkie wrote: post #21

This is completely off topic, but does anyone know how to prevent extreme tech from redirecting my iPad to their awful mobile version every time?

Some third party browsers allow you to change the user agent; AFAIK this is the only way to avoid this.

Re: With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next?

#48

Post by benbritten » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 9:57 PM UTC

mrsebastian wrote: post #35

joblessjunkie wrote: post #21

This is completely off topic, but does anyone know how to prevent extreme tech from redirecting my iPad to their awful mobile version every time?

AFAIK (I'm the editor there) there's no easy way around it. I think we've recently rolled out another mobile layout -- but only for non-iPad devices (iPhone, Android, etc.) It's OnSwipe for WordPress, incidentally. Maybe there's a local hack you can perform to disable it -- setting a cookie, or something. Sorry I can't be of more help.

I have to agree with pagekalisedown, onSwipe is a scourge that needs to be destroyed. If you insist on using it to the detriment of your readers, then please please please give us the ability to turn it off easily and have it never come back on. Also a general note to all web devs: my iPad now has more resolution than any of your monitors, DO NOT force me to view your 'optimized for mobile' site if I dont want to. otherwise I will stop visiting your sites. Thanks!

Re: With World of Warcraft fading, what will Blizzard do next?

#49

Post by Zimahl » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 11:39 PM UTC

hellrich wrote: post #31

Zimahl wrote: post #8

I wouldn't expect WoW to lose any more players in the next quarter due to some austerity measures they are doing (the Diablo 3 offer, Scroll of Resurrection) but it is clear that see a down trend and are trying to stem the tide. They are not planning any new content until the next expansion which we can assume will be the standard November release (although no confirmation yet). That doesn't bode well since even I, a…

MoP (next expansion) beta started today, looks more like a summer release to me.

A Q2 2012 release is what it was on the April 2010 product schedule that was leaked and I suppose a that's not too far off. However, that same schedule had Diablo 3 and the SC2 expansion (Heart of the Swarm) as a Q4 2011 release. While Diablo 3 finally has a release date (6 months late), the SC2 expansion does not.

Having a beta in March is promising - WotLK beta invites went out around July 11th (2008) and Cataclysm beta invites went out on June 30th (2010). Unless they are farther along than usual, maybe we can expect a release in August?