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
#2do they have any good games still
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#3Not 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.)
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#4do they have any good games still
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Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#5Not 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?
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#6Their 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!
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#7do they have any good games still
The good ones (SC2, OW) are running on life support now with barely any updates. Blizzard died when they merged with Acti and now it's a slow descent to 0 players. D3 was also pretty good well after release (no RMAH) but that was released in 2012..
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#8I 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 overlapping audiences with battle royale FPSes.
Starcraft 2 is basically dead. WC3 remastered flopped. The RTS genre writ large is definitely in a waning phase.
IMO, when a gaming company doesn't make new games, it is going to see some losses in the playerbase. To me it's more remarkable that they've only seen this much of a dropoff.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#9Blizzard 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 amount of what constituted their top senior creative talent I'm going to say two things:
First they're probably a sound investment, they'll probably keep climbing as the MTX proliferates and as things like Diablo 4 on the horizon release and Warzone through Activision is still massively popular as ever.
And second they're probably not a place where you can expect massive innovation and polish in games any longer, and if you were a fan, like myself, that magical time is over, maybe look to Dreamhaven that some of that senior creative talent founded and others have gone to since leaving.
Re: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years
#10do they have any good games still
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