BLIZZARD RESPONDS - BLUE POST

[illutian]

And when they do release them, it will be a success they haven't seen in years.

Assuming they don't wait till it's too late.

[Winterflaw]

We do all realise though that the hiring of the Nost team could in the end be a job-terminating event for the existing WoW team?

Retail sucks. If players actually have a choice between Vanilla and Retail, Retail will empty and Vanilla will be packed.

If you were running Bliz, would you keep two dev teams, where one is making a product no one or almost no one uses, and the other is used by everyone or almost everyone?

[SikSan]

Retail sucks. If players actually have a choice between Vanilla and Retail, Retail will empty and Vanilla will be packed.

Honestly, it's not 100% true. These days a lot of ppl doesn't like challenging games. A whole generation grown up on some hello kitty like and mobile games. Vanilla is not an option for them

[Arucado]

We do all realise though that the hiring of the Nost team could in the end be a job-terminating event for the existing WoW team?

Retail sucks. If players actually have a choice between Vanilla and Retail, Retail will empty and Vanilla will be packed.

If you were running Bliz, would you keep two dev teams, where one is making a product no one or almost no one uses, and the other is used by everyone or almost everyone?

You are retarded if you think that.

Retail people don't want to play vanilla because:

- They already played it.
- They have cleared old content 1000 times.
- They don't like the old game mechanics.

And the last reason:

- They actually like retail wow and they are just waiting new content to come, not the old one.

[Docholy]

Most retail wow players won't go vanilla but they're a fraction of the player base that has since left. So retail lovers can easily be considered a minority in the big picture.

[Drain]

This was written by the same condescending retail shill douchbag that has been against legacy servers for as long as they've been asked for. He's, as usual, not doing anything for you, he's just trying to put out the fire. I question if this guy even played the game before Wotlk. He then defends Blizzard legally, when shutting down Nost was stupid and had no benefit once so ever for their company. If anything, they lost revenue and butchered it for the rest of 2016. You'd have to be totally detached from reality, as if in a deranged mental state, to think this shutdown was somehow good for their company. The only way it could have been spun as a good thing is IF they were going to host their own older versions of the game, and thus didn't want competition for it. But they still aren't. They're just trying to herd you over to retail, like the mindless sheep they see you as. They see you as runaway sheep, and want to bring you back into their fold where you'll pay them the sub again. But they still refuse to host any versions of the game you'd actually pay for. Like Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Blizzard has its head stuck up its own ass, living in a delusional business world that doesn't understand anything about consumers anymore. The games used to be for players. Now they're for cash shops full of pets, mounts, hats, and all other kinds of shit pointlessly sliced out of the game to be sold back to you.

[Docholy]

This was written by the same condescending retail shill douchbag that has been against legacy servers for as long as they've been asked for. He's, as usual, not doing anything for you, he's just trying to put out the fire. I question if this guy even played the game before Wotlk. He then defends Blizzard legally, when shutting down Nost was stupid and had no benefit once so ever for their company. If anything, they lost revenue and butchered it for the rest of 2016. You'd have to be totally detached from reality, as if in a deranged mental state, to think this shutdown was somehow good for their company. The only way it could have been spun as a good thing is IF they were going to host their own older versions of the game, and thus didn't want competition for it. But they still aren't. They're just trying to herd you over to retail, like the mindless sheep they see you as. They see you as runaway sheep, and want to bring you back into their fold where you'll pay them the sub again. But they still refuse to host any versions of the game you'd actually pay for. Like Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Blizzard has its head stuck up its own ass, living in a delusional business world that doesn't understand anything about consumers anymore. The games used to be for players. Now they're for cash shops full of pets, mounts, hats, and all other kinds of shit pointlessly sliced out of the game to be sold back to you.

They are indeed detached from reality due to their own hubris. Blizzard can't understand why people love vanilla, so much so even in their response to the petition they proposed Pristine servers. HAHA

Their research teams need to all be fired and Blizzard needs to realize the game was at its peak when everyone had a goal to reach, often times never reaching it.

[illutian]

They followed the money.

And the money is in the 'instant satisfaction'.

[melak]

This was written by the same condescending retail shill douchbag that has been against legacy servers for as long as they've been asked for. He's, as usual, not doing anything for you, he's just trying to put out the fire. I question if this guy even played the game before Wotlk. He then defends Blizzard legally, when shutting down Nost was stupid and had no benefit once so ever for their company. If anything, they lost revenue and butchered it for the rest of 2016. You'd have to be totally detached from reality, as if in a deranged mental state, to think this shutdown was somehow good for their company. The only way it could have been spun as a good thing is IF they were going to host their own older versions of the game, and thus didn't want competition for it. But they still aren't. They're just trying to herd you over to retail, like the mindless sheep they see you as. They see you as runaway sheep, and want to bring you back into their fold where you'll pay them the sub again. But they still refuse to host any versions of the game you'd actually pay for. Like Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Blizzard has its head stuck up its own ass, living in a delusional business world that doesn't understand anything about consumers anymore. The games used to be for players. Now they're for cash shops full of pets, mounts, hats, and all other kinds of shit pointlessly sliced out of the game to be sold back to you.

well said!

[r00ty]

They followed the money.

And the money is in the 'instant satisfaction'.

Well, I (and no I'm not claiming to be alone I think many people made this observation) noticed this some time ago.. Probably during MoP.

Blizzard don't want subscriber numbers. In fact the forums around the time of MoP made it quite clear. The kind of player that pays their sub and plays the game isn't who they want. They're far happier to have a lower number of subscribers that are so loyal to the brand that they'll buy anything Blizzard throw at them. So, in addition to subscription fee, they'll get whatever the latest store mount is, pay to xfer to whatever the latest "busy realm with the best PvPer on or whatever", pay for virtual blizzcon pass every year and throw money into Heathstone all day long.. Less customers, higher turnover.

It's no surprise they don't report subscriber numbers. Since they report revenue, and it's still fine. They're happy, the shareholders are happy.

So, I think anyone wanting the vanilla experience back has to realise you're not in their target market any more. After this much noise they had to say something. Maybe if they did something that would bring some players back without changing the current subscriber base they might do it. But, they're not motivated so much when they can make more money, on less hardware supporting less players. I'm not sure if they publish that much detail in their public accounts. But, I'd put money on the fact that revenue has stayed the same or increased while hardware/staff costs have gone down.

We're not in their demographic any more. Frankly beyond the C&D they're essentially required to send they probably don't even really care about private servers. The people playing them aren't really potential subscribers, and if they are they'll still be paying them anyway. If anything this might force their hand to act against more private servers because it's become a story people are following, but even that I doubt. They just want this whole debacle to go away quietly and the status quo to return.