Blizzard used to have one team. That team would work on a game, then cycle through to the next game and work on it, then cycle through to the next game and work on it. It was often cited that they'd finish a game in one universe, and move on with their resources to the next.
Then World of Warcraft launched in 2004 and had amazing success from the get go. And continued growing, and expanding. This quickly put development of Diablo and Starcraft in the background.
Then Blizzard North left around 2005, officially.
And then Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 took an additional 5 or 7 years to be released, whereas previously, the games were being released every 2-4 years in the franchises.
I believe that when Blizzard North left, and World of Warcraft began its rise to success, Diablo was entirely and effectively dead. Blizzard had their cash cow set in a fantasy universe, and it was not Diablo.
WoW went on to garner over 12 million subscribers, all the while we had seen or heard no word about Diablo 3. Until the time was right.
When Diablo 3 was announced in 2008, it was a period of prosperity for Blizzard, but the unusually long development time left many fans, including myself, mystified as to how it could be taking 8 years to develop a sequel to a game that was released in 2000 when its original game was released in 1997.
I believe, and you can debate this all you want, that Diablo 3 was announced as a way to control World of Warcraft when the time was needed.
Cataclysm was the time Diablo 3 was needed.
Cataclysm saw World of Warcrafts most overall subscription drop, and many players left the game, totally unsatisfied with the content of the expansion. The time was now or never to create a plan to keep World of Warcraft filled with its players, and the way to do that was to release something that offered their marketing tool, Diablo 3, for free.
Enter the World of Warcraft annual pass. The only business decision in history to completely give away a triple A title game for free, just for staying subscribed to World of Warcraft. Entirely belittling the 10 years many fans spent patiently awaiting Diablo 3's release. They were simply /giving it away for free/ if you continued to play World of Warcraft. And that's what Diablo 3 had become. A worthless marketing tool to keep World of Warcraft afloat.
Diablo 3 was released as barely a shell of a game and it was dead within a month, effectively, dead. Broken game design, poor mechanical choices, unsatisfying runes, awful story and poorly acted voice dialogue drove this game 6 feet under before the players could even smell the feces of the shit they were playing.
And why was this?
Because Diablo 3 was turned into a tool. A tool to keep World of Warcraft's integrity afloat during the most crisis the games faced since its launch in 2004. World of Warcraft is Blizzard's cash cow. It funds the entire company and the only thing the company wants to do at this point is make more money.
Those over 1 million subscribers to the annual pass could have, and very well might have, canceled their subscription during the year absence of additional content after Dragon Soul. But the promise of getting Diablo 3 entirely free kept over 1 million people subscribed to WoW, and it worked.
World of Warcraft lost over 1.1 million subscribers. That could have easily been 2 million. That would've been the most impact on subscriptions World of Warcraft has ever faced, and for a titan as large as WoW, for the gaming industry and media to see that it had lost over 2 million subscriptions would be the biggest loss of profit and largest hit to their reputation in the history of their company. It would've far outweighed anything that could come of Diablo 3. Or so they thought.
So what did they do to prevent such a hemorrhage of subs? They released Diablo 3 during the crisis period of Cataclysm, and roped in over a million annual pass holders to pad the subscription loss numbers. And they still lost over a million.
We got a sub-par broken game because Blizzard only cares about their World of Warcraft franchise.
StarCraft 2 was poorly accepted and many players did not want to move over from 1 to 2 because of its poor mechanical choices, and its watered down gameplay as well.
And why did all of this happen?
Because Starcraft and Diablo are ancillary products. Created only to form around World of Warcraft.
I was with this site since 2007. I had a hard time accepting Diablo 3 for what it was. Absolute shit. And now that I've finally accepted it, and I'm no longer in denial, I can safely say that Diablo was torn to pieces as a marketing tool.
Goodbye, Diablo.
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"When men are most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have then given views to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities"
u knew it, blizzard knew it and there aint much to do cus das the way it is... aslong blizzard got a pillow of dough.
im just glad Thrall didnt turn into a human or a zerg king...
Blizzard releases a game you didn't like as much as you thought you would. Explanation:
1. BLIZZARD CONSPIRACY!
2. BLIZZARD LIES!
3. BLIZZARD HAS DIFFERENT IDEAS THAN ME ABOUT WHAT MAKES A GAME GOOD, AND THAT MAKES THEM WRONG!
4. NOT EVERYTHING BLIZZARD MAKES WILL FEEL TAILOR-MADE FOR ME, BUT THAT'S LIFE!
lol. Just kidding about that last one. It's completely unreasonable.
...
Why do people need to construct such baroque narratives in which to couch their disappointment?
"When men are most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have then given views to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities"
Wow isn't dead, is monopoly dead? yea to me it is I don't play it, that does not make it dead.
Death is all in the eyes of the beholder.
In before necrophilia!
Actually death is not in the eyes of the beholder in a game that still has 9.1 million subs and would have closer to 8.1 if it wasn't for the annual pass gimmick.
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"When men are most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have then given views to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities"
Since we are so entranced by this word "death", could it be, then, that, those 9 million people rank amongst the most brainDEAD in the developed world?
A; No shit bud, Blizzard is a business. Making smart business moves kind of.... comes with the territory.
B; D3 took 5 years to develop, stop citing the start time as when Diablo 2 launched.
C; Yes, they took less time to develop their games at the start, and pooled all their resources into one game at a time. Why? Because they were a tiny company, and the games they made were really simple.
D; You give no actual facts or points as to why you think D3 is broken / sub-par / superdy duper bad, you just spout of those words.
E; People didn't want to move from SC1 to SC2 because SC1 was almost perfectly balanced, and it had become an Esport. Players had spent countless hours on perfecting their game to beat other players, it only makes sense some were hesitant.
I also like how you just assume the million annual pass subs would have just quit wow, I like making up numbers too!
TLDR; More QQ about Blizzard being a company, and a smart one at that, and you don't like a game they have made. Mind if I check up on you in a week, see if you still play?
Diablo is slowly dying for a vast majority,. I think a lot of people played it very fat thinking it was going to have more life to it than it actually had.
Once diablo is cleared in inferno really nothing left to play for, that was made so much easier with all the nerfs and tweaks and crap. Blizzard has made changes to this game practically every few weeks in order to fix, compensate or add something to keep it going...
personally for me D3 was a let down and still is, extra drops or pvp aint going to change that really.
My friend, I am pretty sure "clearing inferno" is not the goal of diablo.
Today's gaming generation simply has a heightened sense of entitlement - you believe given a certain amount of effort you DESERVE to have certain gear, certain rating, certain "achievements". WoW offers that to an increasing degree - and also likely your dayjob (although to some WoW and dayjob is a blurred definition). If that's what you think makes a good game, then Diablo ain't for you.
Diablo is all about the random excitement of something random dropping. It's like buying the lottery without the financial risk (apart from your time being spent). It might not be quite up there in randomness and adrenaline as, for example, EVE pvp, but it's its own cup of tea.
But again, this is from someone who got a kick of out pressing "Reroll" in Baldur's Gate for upwards of 3 hours before landing in Candlekeep hurr...
It was originally said that WoW would have 5 expansions. MoP is the 4th WoW expansion.
Blizzard sees itself as an MMO company at this point. With TITAN being their major plan for the future. Diablo, Starcraft and WoW will likely end around the time TITAN is released.
Keep in mind though, this isn't completely Blizzard's fault (though they did make a lot of bad decisions). The expansion of the console market, and the rise of micro-transaction (FTP) games has really diminshed Blizzard's ability to sell $60 games.
Their best hope for the future is to focus 100% on the MMO market and create one of, if not the only, MMO left that can convince users to pay a monthly subscription. That game would be TITAN of course.
The reason that WoW's subscription has dropped so drastically isn't just because the game has gone steadily downhill since WotLK... the FTP market has had something to do with it. But you can only keep a game going for so long. 15 million people for 6 years would be ridiculous. So many people quit even before BC came out.
It shouldn't really be a shock. Of course Blizzard is going to focus on the game that's the most popular and brings in the most money. It's pretty obvious they used D3 as a way to get people to prolong their WoW subscriptions.
Anyone who has played WoW can attest to the fact that the game gets EXTREMELY dead before an expansion comes out. Blizzard likely had to do something to stop the bleeding.
Like I've said before though, Blizzard is in for a rough few years until TITAN comes out. All their titles are extremely stale and there are A LOT of people who bought Cata / SC2 / D3, who will not be buying anymore Blizzard titles until TITAN comes out... myself included.
I have never read such drivel in my life. Take your conspiracy theories elsewhere. WoW subscriptions have ALWAYS fluctuated during periods of lack of content. ie. at the end of an expansion. Diablo 3 is a great starting point for a game. Is it the best it could be? Not even close. Is it still one of the best made games in terms of gameplay (not including loot drops, because we all know how crap they are 99.99% of the time)? Probably. It can only get better. The annual pass was merely a way to get players to get Diablo 3 for free if they knew they were still going to be playing WoW for a year. It wasn't forced on you. You had a choice.
Mists of Pandaria will more than likely increase WoW subscriptions by a huge amount, if not bypassing the highest amount of subscriptions WoW has ever had. Blizzard is a great gaming company and they know what they are doing. Did they milk the cash cow with Diablo 3? Yes. Is it biting them in the ass? Yes. Are they going to fix it and make it what it was supposed to be? More than likely.
Thank you, OP, for one of the most baseless and frankly hilarious conspiracy theories I've ever seen. Good laugh.
1. D3 (and SC2) were not in development for the entire time between their release and their prequel's release. It was actually more like 3-4 years each or so.
2. a game that lasts a month is a really good game. How many other games actually last that long? The people that managed to play D2 for years are the minority, and even they didn't play every day: they will have taken breaks. Also, you can't say a non-sub game is 'dead': it's something that can just be picked up again at a later date.
3. SC2 poorly accepted? So all those esports and competitions mean nothing, do they?
4. most of those subscribers that WoW lost were from 1 of 2 places: either they went to D3, or they were in the east which uses an entirely different subscription model. Western subs, for the most part, didn't change.
Honestly it's just funny. So many assumptions, no evidence, no logic. Just emotional garbage because you can't handle the fact that your tastes in gaming have changed. You can't take responsibility for yourself: it's always someone else's fault, never yours. Grow up.
I have never read such drivel in my life. Take your conspiracy theories elsewhere. WoW subscriptions have ALWAYS fluctuated during periods of lack of content. ie. at the end of an expansion. Diablo 3 is a great starting point for a game. Is it the best it could be? Not even close. Is it still one of the best made games in terms of gameplay (not including loot drops, because we all know how crap they are 99.99% of the time)? Probably. It can only get better. The annual pass was merely a way to get players to get Diablo 3 for free if they knew they were still going to be playing WoW for a year. It wasn't forced on you. You had a choice.
Mists of Pandaria will more than likely increase WoW subscriptions by a huge amount, if not bypassing the highest amount of subscriptions WoW has ever had. Blizzard is a great gaming company and they know what they are doing. Did they milk the cash cow with Diablo 3? Yes. Is it biting them in the ass? Yes. Are they going to fix it and make it what it was supposed to be? More than likely.
Troll #1: Bypassing the most they've ever had? LOL nice. WoW subscriptions flucuating? Flucuation is up and down, WoW subscriptions just go downward.
Thank you, OP, for one of the most baseless and frankly hilarious conspiracy theories I've ever seen. Good laugh.
1. D3 (and SC2) were not in development for the entire time between their release and their prequel's release. It was actually more like 3-4 years each or so.
2. a game that lasts a month is a really good game. How many other games actually last that long? The people that managed to play D2 for years are the minority, and even they didn't play every day: they will have taken breaks. Also, you can't say a non-sub game is 'dead': it's something that can just be picked up again at a later date.
3. SC2 poorly accepted? So all those esports and competitions mean nothing, do they?
4. most of those subscribers that WoW lost were from 1 of 2 places: either they went to D3, or they were in the east which uses an entirely different subscription model. Western subs, for the most part, didn't change.
Honestly it's just funny. So many assumptions, no evidence, no logic. Just emotional garbage because you can't handle the fact that your tastes in gaming have changed. You can't take responsibility for yourself: it's always someone else's fault, never yours. Grow up.
Troll #2:
1) The reason they weren't in development for the whole area of time since LoD's release is that, like the OP said, Blizzard used to move from game to game in their development. And it's obvious that from the time WoW was conceived, it was going to be Blizzard's focus. Honestly I still think Blizzard functions like this in a sense. You get the feeling that the people developing SC2, MoP and D3 are second class to whatever they're doing with TITAN.
2) A game that lasts for a month is NOT a really good game lol... You've been conditioned to think that games are meant to be disposable. In terms of $$$ per hour of entertainment it's great, but in terms of quality, 1 month is terrible.
A non-sub game can't be dead? Dead just means that people aren't playing it... pretty simple. I guarantee there are far less people playing D3 today than a month ago. Funny how you say non-sub too, since in a few years subscriptions won't even exist in video games. So I guess no game will ever be considered dead... especially FTP ones.
3) SC2 is a far better game than D3. But it's barely played in South Korea for example. "All those esports and competitions" The same ones that Blizzard explicitly doesn't support lol? Esports = Other people making money off of Blizzard's game, that's the truth. It's difficult for Blizzard to actually make money from supporting esports apparently.
4) Yeah, this is just wrong. WoW has been losing subscribers for a long time, D3 was released 3 months ago. Ask anyone at Blizzard and they'll tell you that FTP games are the biggest problem in losing subscribers (while others outside Blizzard would also point to the reduced quality of WoW).
Blizzard was undeniably the best game developer at the time when Vanilla WoW were at it's highest.
I really thought WoW was a great game up until WotLK. Particularly Vanilla was really enjoyable. It's gotten progressively worse though as they've put in more and more of the elements that cater too much to a casual audience. Everything has just been made way too linear. It's all about doing what Blizzard lays out for you in order to get a reward, without any uniqueness to it.
But then, for every 1 person who feels the game is too casual, there are apparently 900 who would prefer the game hand everything to them. Which is why video game audiences are getting more and more splintered today. Back in the day there were a lot fewer titles that a person would likely be playing, but today it's more about games that fill a particular niche.
So you end up with modern day Blizzard, creating games that appeal as best they can to the largest possible audience, but critically are a disaster. Unfortunately, this is why a lot of people don't think TITAN will be as great as it could be. It seems unlikely they would deviate from the current WoW model... but I really hope they do.
So yeah, i was playing this game called Dead Space.... it sucks. Everything about it is fail, the game developer is fail, the world is fail and any that disagree with me are total noobs with no clue what makes a good game.
Oh wait! that would be a personal opinion only... now change Dead Space to *any game title you like or dislike* and it means the same. Your opinion.
The drop in subs are not so astronomical thing for WoW, their revenue has gone up not down (pre-D3 sales figures too), they make content for the majority not minority.
I got bored playing wow, so guess what... I unsubbed and stopped playing. That is all, it is not a bad game, neither is rift, AoC, or the dozens of other mmo's... They all have their thing and can be quite fun. D3 was not some shit game that no one likes... Obviously people like it or there would be zero items on the GAH/RMAH which are still flooded (oh i know it is all those bots only, they are the only ones farming!!! BLAME THE BOTS!!! or chinese, cause fuck it they are asian why not right?) But seriously, stop being such a pedantic child about this...
You do not like a game that you paid for? Well next time do not rush into buying something, wait for a demo, or for a friend to pick it up and try it. You chose to buy the game, you are responsible for your choices, if you did not like the choice then tough luck. Blizzard has shown time and time again they listen very well to their community, and adjust their games to them.
If you would stop hunting for bigfoot and focus on reality and just provide constructive feed back on what you think would be an improvement that would be beneficial, the conspiracy and ranting how bad it is, well that does make you look quite childish.
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Blizzard used to have one team. That team would work on a game, then cycle through to the next game and work on it, then cycle through to the next game and work on it. It was often cited that they'd finish a game in one universe, and move on with their resources to the next.
Then World of Warcraft launched in 2004 and had amazing success from the get go. And continued growing, and expanding. This quickly put development of Diablo and Starcraft in the background.
Then Blizzard North left around 2005, officially.
And then Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 took an additional 5 or 7 years to be released, whereas previously, the games were being released every 2-4 years in the franchises.
I believe that when Blizzard North left, and World of Warcraft began its rise to success, Diablo was entirely and effectively dead. Blizzard had their cash cow set in a fantasy universe, and it was not Diablo.
WoW went on to garner over 12 million subscribers, all the while we had seen or heard no word about Diablo 3. Until the time was right.
When Diablo 3 was announced in 2008, it was a period of prosperity for Blizzard, but the unusually long development time left many fans, including myself, mystified as to how it could be taking 8 years to develop a sequel to a game that was released in 2000 when its original game was released in 1997.
I believe, and you can debate this all you want, that Diablo 3 was announced as a way to control World of Warcraft when the time was needed.
Cataclysm was the time Diablo 3 was needed.
Cataclysm saw World of Warcrafts most overall subscription drop, and many players left the game, totally unsatisfied with the content of the expansion. The time was now or never to create a plan to keep World of Warcraft filled with its players, and the way to do that was to release something that offered their marketing tool, Diablo 3, for free.
Enter the World of Warcraft annual pass. The only business decision in history to completely give away a triple A title game for free, just for staying subscribed to World of Warcraft. Entirely belittling the 10 years many fans spent patiently awaiting Diablo 3's release. They were simply /giving it away for free/ if you continued to play World of Warcraft. And that's what Diablo 3 had become. A worthless marketing tool to keep World of Warcraft afloat.
Diablo 3 was released as barely a shell of a game and it was dead within a month, effectively, dead. Broken game design, poor mechanical choices, unsatisfying runes, awful story and poorly acted voice dialogue drove this game 6 feet under before the players could even smell the feces of the shit they were playing.
And why was this?
Because Diablo 3 was turned into a tool. A tool to keep World of Warcraft's integrity afloat during the most crisis the games faced since its launch in 2004. World of Warcraft is Blizzard's cash cow. It funds the entire company and the only thing the company wants to do at this point is make more money.
Those over 1 million subscribers to the annual pass could have, and very well might have, canceled their subscription during the year absence of additional content after Dragon Soul. But the promise of getting Diablo 3 entirely free kept over 1 million people subscribed to WoW, and it worked.
World of Warcraft lost over 1.1 million subscribers. That could have easily been 2 million. That would've been the most impact on subscriptions World of Warcraft has ever faced, and for a titan as large as WoW, for the gaming industry and media to see that it had lost over 2 million subscriptions would be the biggest loss of profit and largest hit to their reputation in the history of their company. It would've far outweighed anything that could come of Diablo 3. Or so they thought.
So what did they do to prevent such a hemorrhage of subs? They released Diablo 3 during the crisis period of Cataclysm, and roped in over a million annual pass holders to pad the subscription loss numbers. And they still lost over a million.
We got a sub-par broken game because Blizzard only cares about their World of Warcraft franchise.
StarCraft 2 was poorly accepted and many players did not want to move over from 1 to 2 because of its poor mechanical choices, and its watered down gameplay as well.
And why did all of this happen?
Because Starcraft and Diablo are ancillary products. Created only to form around World of Warcraft.
I was with this site since 2007. I had a hard time accepting Diablo 3 for what it was. Absolute shit. And now that I've finally accepted it, and I'm no longer in denial, I can safely say that Diablo was torn to pieces as a marketing tool.
Goodbye, Diablo.
u knew it, blizzard knew it and there aint much to do cus das the way it is... aslong blizzard got a pillow of dough.
im just glad Thrall didnt turn into a human or a zerg king...
Starcraft is (very) fine.
World of Warcraft is dead.
You, sir, are one confused puppy.
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1. BLIZZARD CONSPIRACY!
2. BLIZZARD LIES!
3. BLIZZARD HAS DIFFERENT IDEAS THAN ME ABOUT WHAT MAKES A GAME GOOD, AND THAT MAKES THEM WRONG!
4. NOT EVERYTHING BLIZZARD MAKES WILL FEEL TAILOR-MADE FOR ME, BUT THAT'S LIFE!
lol. Just kidding about that last one. It's completely unreasonable.
...
Why do people need to construct such baroque narratives in which to couch their disappointment?
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Death is all in the eyes of the beholder.
In before necrophilia!
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Actually death is not in the eyes of the beholder in a game that still has 9.1 million subs and would have closer to 8.1 if it wasn't for the annual pass gimmick.
See what I did there?
Anyhow, since you are attracting some attention:
Check out my sig,
I'm having fun,
are you?
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B; D3 took 5 years to develop, stop citing the start time as when Diablo 2 launched.
C; Yes, they took less time to develop their games at the start, and pooled all their resources into one game at a time. Why? Because they were a tiny company, and the games they made were really simple.
D; You give no actual facts or points as to why you think D3 is broken / sub-par / superdy duper bad, you just spout of those words.
E; People didn't want to move from SC1 to SC2 because SC1 was almost perfectly balanced, and it had become an Esport. Players had spent countless hours on perfecting their game to beat other players, it only makes sense some were hesitant.
I also like how you just assume the million annual pass subs would have just quit wow, I like making up numbers too!
TLDR; More QQ about Blizzard being a company, and a smart one at that, and you don't like a game they have made. Mind if I check up on you in a week, see if you still play?
Once diablo is cleared in inferno really nothing left to play for, that was made so much easier with all the nerfs and tweaks and crap. Blizzard has made changes to this game practically every few weeks in order to fix, compensate or add something to keep it going...
personally for me D3 was a let down and still is, extra drops or pvp aint going to change that really.
Today's gaming generation simply has a heightened sense of entitlement - you believe given a certain amount of effort you DESERVE to have certain gear, certain rating, certain "achievements". WoW offers that to an increasing degree - and also likely your dayjob (although to some WoW and dayjob is a blurred definition). If that's what you think makes a good game, then Diablo ain't for you.
Diablo is all about the random excitement of something random dropping. It's like buying the lottery without the financial risk (apart from your time being spent). It might not be quite up there in randomness and adrenaline as, for example, EVE pvp, but it's its own cup of tea.
But again, this is from someone who got a kick of out pressing "Reroll" in Baldur's Gate for upwards of 3 hours before landing in Candlekeep hurr...
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4 months of WoW = $60.
Diablo 3 released May 15, 2012.
Mists of Pandaria released September 25, 2012.
It was originally said that WoW would have 5 expansions. MoP is the 4th WoW expansion.
Blizzard sees itself as an MMO company at this point. With TITAN being their major plan for the future. Diablo, Starcraft and WoW will likely end around the time TITAN is released.
Keep in mind though, this isn't completely Blizzard's fault (though they did make a lot of bad decisions). The expansion of the console market, and the rise of micro-transaction (FTP) games has really diminshed Blizzard's ability to sell $60 games.
Their best hope for the future is to focus 100% on the MMO market and create one of, if not the only, MMO left that can convince users to pay a monthly subscription. That game would be TITAN of course.
The reason that WoW's subscription has dropped so drastically isn't just because the game has gone steadily downhill since WotLK... the FTP market has had something to do with it. But you can only keep a game going for so long. 15 million people for 6 years would be ridiculous. So many people quit even before BC came out.
It shouldn't really be a shock. Of course Blizzard is going to focus on the game that's the most popular and brings in the most money. It's pretty obvious they used D3 as a way to get people to prolong their WoW subscriptions.
Anyone who has played WoW can attest to the fact that the game gets EXTREMELY dead before an expansion comes out. Blizzard likely had to do something to stop the bleeding.
Like I've said before though, Blizzard is in for a rough few years until TITAN comes out. All their titles are extremely stale and there are A LOT of people who bought Cata / SC2 / D3, who will not be buying anymore Blizzard titles until TITAN comes out... myself included.
I have never read such drivel in my life. Take your conspiracy theories elsewhere. WoW subscriptions have ALWAYS fluctuated during periods of lack of content. ie. at the end of an expansion. Diablo 3 is a great starting point for a game. Is it the best it could be? Not even close. Is it still one of the best made games in terms of gameplay (not including loot drops, because we all know how crap they are 99.99% of the time)? Probably. It can only get better. The annual pass was merely a way to get players to get Diablo 3 for free if they knew they were still going to be playing WoW for a year. It wasn't forced on you. You had a choice.
Mists of Pandaria will more than likely increase WoW subscriptions by a huge amount, if not bypassing the highest amount of subscriptions WoW has ever had. Blizzard is a great gaming company and they know what they are doing. Did they milk the cash cow with Diablo 3? Yes. Is it biting them in the ass? Yes. Are they going to fix it and make it what it was supposed to be? More than likely.
1. D3 (and SC2) were not in development for the entire time between their release and their prequel's release. It was actually more like 3-4 years each or so.
2. a game that lasts a month is a really good game. How many other games actually last that long? The people that managed to play D2 for years are the minority, and even they didn't play every day: they will have taken breaks. Also, you can't say a non-sub game is 'dead': it's something that can just be picked up again at a later date.
3. SC2 poorly accepted? So all those esports and competitions mean nothing, do they?
4. most of those subscribers that WoW lost were from 1 of 2 places: either they went to D3, or they were in the east which uses an entirely different subscription model. Western subs, for the most part, didn't change.
Honestly it's just funny. So many assumptions, no evidence, no logic. Just emotional garbage because you can't handle the fact that your tastes in gaming have changed. You can't take responsibility for yourself: it's always someone else's fault, never yours. Grow up.
Troll #1: Bypassing the most they've ever had? LOL nice. WoW subscriptions flucuating? Flucuation is up and down, WoW subscriptions just go downward.
http://news.yahoo.com/world-warcraft-loses-millions-subscribers-3-months-4-122800463.html
This is Yahoo! News we're talking about.
Troll #2:
1) The reason they weren't in development for the whole area of time since LoD's release is that, like the OP said, Blizzard used to move from game to game in their development. And it's obvious that from the time WoW was conceived, it was going to be Blizzard's focus. Honestly I still think Blizzard functions like this in a sense. You get the feeling that the people developing SC2, MoP and D3 are second class to whatever they're doing with TITAN.
2) A game that lasts for a month is NOT a really good game lol... You've been conditioned to think that games are meant to be disposable. In terms of $$$ per hour of entertainment it's great, but in terms of quality, 1 month is terrible.
A non-sub game can't be dead? Dead just means that people aren't playing it... pretty simple. I guarantee there are far less people playing D3 today than a month ago. Funny how you say non-sub too, since in a few years subscriptions won't even exist in video games. So I guess no game will ever be considered dead... especially FTP ones.
3) SC2 is a far better game than D3. But it's barely played in South Korea for example. "All those esports and competitions" The same ones that Blizzard explicitly doesn't support lol? Esports = Other people making money off of Blizzard's game, that's the truth. It's difficult for Blizzard to actually make money from supporting esports apparently.
4) Yeah, this is just wrong. WoW has been losing subscribers for a long time, D3 was released 3 months ago. Ask anyone at Blizzard and they'll tell you that FTP games are the biggest problem in losing subscribers (while others outside Blizzard would also point to the reduced quality of WoW).
I really thought WoW was a great game up until WotLK. Particularly Vanilla was really enjoyable. It's gotten progressively worse though as they've put in more and more of the elements that cater too much to a casual audience. Everything has just been made way too linear. It's all about doing what Blizzard lays out for you in order to get a reward, without any uniqueness to it.
But then, for every 1 person who feels the game is too casual, there are apparently 900 who would prefer the game hand everything to them. Which is why video game audiences are getting more and more splintered today. Back in the day there were a lot fewer titles that a person would likely be playing, but today it's more about games that fill a particular niche.
So you end up with modern day Blizzard, creating games that appeal as best they can to the largest possible audience, but critically are a disaster. Unfortunately, this is why a lot of people don't think TITAN will be as great as it could be. It seems unlikely they would deviate from the current WoW model... but I really hope they do.
1 billion people come to video game age every year
Paranoid ParrotConspiracy Keanu. Congrats man, you're an internet meme!Oh wait! that would be a personal opinion only... now change Dead Space to *any game title you like or dislike* and it means the same. Your opinion.
The drop in subs are not so astronomical thing for WoW, their revenue has gone up not down (pre-D3 sales figures too), they make content for the majority not minority.
I got bored playing wow, so guess what... I unsubbed and stopped playing. That is all, it is not a bad game, neither is rift, AoC, or the dozens of other mmo's... They all have their thing and can be quite fun. D3 was not some shit game that no one likes... Obviously people like it or there would be zero items on the GAH/RMAH which are still flooded (oh i know it is all those bots only, they are the only ones farming!!! BLAME THE BOTS!!! or chinese, cause fuck it they are asian why not right?) But seriously, stop being such a pedantic child about this...
You do not like a game that you paid for? Well next time do not rush into buying something, wait for a demo, or for a friend to pick it up and try it. You chose to buy the game, you are responsible for your choices, if you did not like the choice then tough luck. Blizzard has shown time and time again they listen very well to their community, and adjust their games to them.
If you would stop hunting for bigfoot and focus on reality and just provide constructive feed back on what you think would be an improvement that would be beneficial, the conspiracy and ranting how bad it is, well that does make you look quite childish.