BLIZZARD RESPONDS - BLUE POST

[illutian]

This forum needs a "like" or "+1" button.

[Reserverue]

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.

Killed it.

[Syphonize]

Are we really getting there? This just seemed like a very polite "No" to me, unless I'm being more jaded than I should.

It was a polite no.

But I think it is movement - prior to this, Bliz would not even acknowledge the existance of the Vanilla movement.

Point taken. Baby steps, I suppose.

[Winterflaw]

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

I think the issue is more fundamental than this. It's not even about easy vs hard. Retail just sucks. It's like... eating cardboard. I am of the view most accounts are on there because they've invested so much time in their characters over the years they can't bear to give them up. Those people would play Vanilla, because Vanilla *is profoundly and inherently better*.

[Winterflaw]

They followed the money.

And the money is in the 'instant satisfaction'.

Subs are about 6m now. They peaked at 11m.

[Winterflaw]

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.

Sounds reasonable. It's internally consistent and matches up with observable facts. However, this does not of course mean it *is* true. I think it's a pretty solid line of thought though.

Life eh? you're running your own lil' company just fine, and then those fucking customers get uppity.

[melak]

They followed the money.

And the money is in the 'instant satisfaction'.

Subs are about 6m now. They peaked at 11m.

6m? are you high? By my estimates they are about 3m now, they have not increased since 2015 going downhill fast

[Benny&thejetz]

I remember reading somewhere that in the US active playerbase was down to 790,000 & in EU around 500,000. Data taken from realmstats or some other site. Given the data that Blizzard last published, that could very well be true. They were in a nosedive in 2015 and stopped reporting at 5 million subs. I'm willing to bet they probably still have 2-3 million subs, with most of said players not even bothering to log in to play.

[melak]

I remember reading somewhere that in the US active playerbase was down to 790,000 & in EU around 500,000. Data taken from realmstats or some other site. Given the data that Blizzard last published, that could very well be true. They were in a nosedive in 2015 and stopped reporting at 5 million subs. I'm willing to bet they probably still have 2-3 million subs, with most of said players not even bothering to log in to play.

Yepp, that would be my guess 2.

[Winterflaw]

I remember reading somewhere that in the US active playerbase was down to 790,000 & in EU around 500,000. Data taken from realmstats or some other site. Given the data that Blizzard last published, that could very well be true. They were in a nosedive in 2015 and stopped reporting at 5 million subs. I'm willing to bet they probably still have 2-3 million subs, with most of said players not even bothering to log in to play.

I, uh, I spoke quite firmly for someone who saw a graph on the Internet and can't even remember where he saw it