I was curious as a new member whether there are any threads devoted to discussing Blizzard's strategy of release in terms of it's other products...
For example, how does their desire to promote or protect other products influence their decision to release this game? I would assume that they have started to plan for the demise of the WOW empire, but they have to know that there are a limited number of pc gamers, and that if they released D3 today, or SC2, then their wow population will be severely affected. Personally, I believe that they will eventually have their BNet subscription available for all their games to promote using multiple products without feeling the need to choose one or the other.
I often wonder if their strategic marketing and business planning is more of a factor than game readiness. I have come to the conclusion that protecting wow is their highest business priority, until they have decided how to capture all of the transitionary customer movement to new titles, they will not release another title.
Given the recent postponement of SC2, I believe they are still working on it. The delay relates to Bnet, and I have to assume that they want to ensure that their market stream of paid subscriptions is not adversely affected. I also am assuming that Bnet will be a paid subscription service or a tiered subscription service, although as I write this I figure this has been publicly discussed but I just haven't seen it yet. It is just hard to believe that Bnet will be free with the huge increase in online play since the original SC and D2 releases when Bnet was free.
Frankly, when you view the product release cycle from a removed perspective, how long do you think D3 or SC2 would have taken to release if WoW did not exist? Some of that surely relates to the immense success and personnel and resource requirements that the huge growth of WoW necessitated, but even considering that WoW had to be bigger than they expected or were prepared for, these titles have seen a looooong hiatus, and this is surely related to their desire to allow WoW and paid subscriptions to have as long a run as they could.
Anyways, I would appreciate any directions to official positions on this, and any comments regarding this subject. Have a great day!
WoW is not going to die anytime soon. Its population is still growing, and I believe 2 more expansions are expected by the majority of the community.
Bnet has been confirmed free, with possible "special" features that requires you to pay, but no need to pay to play online.
I also don't expect WoW to lose oh so many people for SC2 or D3. Most people that don't care enough about WoW will leave sooner or later. If these games make them quit, so be it. There was discussion about this in WoW forums, and most (but not all) said they wouldn't leave WoW for SC2 or D3, and would very well play both.
Beside, SC2 and D3 are -not- MMOs and do not require you to play as much as WoW. Besides, who only plays one game now? When I was playing WoW, I played a lot of other non-MMO games at the same time... I don't know anyone personally that strictly plays one game and must -leave it behind- to play another.
WoW is not going to die anytime soon. Its population is still growing, and I believe 2 more expansions are expected by the majority of the community.
Bnet has been confirmed free, with possible "special" features that requires you to pay, but no need to pay to play online.
Has Bnet been confirmed free!? AWESOME!
Ok, yea, I wouldn't worry too much about Blizzard's plans. They will release a game when it's ready. However, I doubt they will release Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 within 3-4 months. They already said they would release Starcraft 2 by the first half of 2010 and my guess is they will release Diablo 3 the second half of 2010. If not 2010, then 2011. Any more waiting and I'll be pissed cause i'll have to play during college...
Yeah, personally the only reason I even played WoW was because it was the closest thing we had to a Diablo 3. I think others who share my perspective may drop WoW for D3, but I don't think the SC2 community would effect WoW as much. Sure, it will mean some people will play their other games, but Blizzard wants you to play other games other than WoW, because that just means more time you have to purchase subscription. Blizzard must hate people like me that power-quest a WoW character 8+ hours a day (when I used to play) and end up 80 in a month.
Diablo 3 might take people away from WoW for a while, but I don't think it will take the true WoW fans away for long. However, people like me who will probably beat normal with one of every class/gender combination, get one of each class to 99, and keep playing them even though they are maxed out are going to have a lot to do before release and the first expansion.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
There are no stupid questions, just a bunch of inquisitive idiots.
Remember that since Blizzard removed lan-networking capability and expect all multiplay to be conduct via Bnet, charging connectivity would like cause a backlash with the community.
I would think for a gamer straddling between WoW and D3/SC2, D3/SC2 activities would likely revolved around WoW due to the relatively inflexible schedule required for WoW raiding/grouping.
Remember that since Blizzard removed lan-networking capability and expect all multiplay to be conduct via Bnet, charging connectivity would like cause a backlash with the community.
^ This.
And also :
Quote from "SFJake" »
WoW is not going to die anytime soon. Its population is still growing, and I believe 2 more expansions are expected by the majority of the community.
Just to clarify, they dont seem ready to put an end to WoW reign yet. If you followed WoW scene a bit, you probably stumbled upon this list of "planned" expansions for WoW :
Draenor Set
Azuremyst Isle - 1 to 10
Bloodmyrk Isle - 10 to 20
Eversong Forest - 1 to 10
Quel'thalas - 10 to 20
Hellfire Peninsula - 58 to 62
Zangarmarsh - 60 to 64
Terokkar Forest - 61 to 65
The Deadlands - 63 to 67
Nagrand - 64 to 68
Blade's Edge Mountains - 66 to 70
Netherstorm - 67 to 70
Shadowmoon Valley - 69 to 70
Northrend Set
Borean Tundra - 67 to 70
Howling Fjord - 67 to 70
Dragonblight - 69 to 72
Grizzly Hills - 70 to 73
Crystalsong Forest - 72 to 75
Zul'drak - 73 to 76
Sholazar Basin - 75 to 79
Storm Peaks - 76 to 80
Icecrown Glacier - 78 to 80
Maelstrom Set
Gilneas - 77 to 80
Grim Batol - 78 to 81
Kul Tiras - 79 to 82
Kezan - 81 to 86
Tel Abim - 83 to 85
Zandalar - 84 to 87
Plunder Isle - 86 to 88
The Broken Isles - 87 to 90
The Maelstrom - 89 to 90
Plane Set
Pandaria - 1 to 10
Hiji - 10 to 20
Wolfenhold - 1 to 10
Xorothian Plains - 10 to 20
The Green Lands - 88 to 91
The Dying Paradise - 91 to 94
The Emerald Nightmare - 94 to 97
The Eye of Ysera - 97 to 100
Deephome - 88 to 91
Skywall - 91 to 94
The Abyssal Maw - 94 to 97
The Firelands - 97 to 100
Legion Set
K'aresh - 96 to 99
Argus Meadowlands - 97 to 100
Mac'Aree - 99 to 100
Maw of Oblivion - 100+
The Burning Citadel - 100+++
This list was first leaked just before the release of the 1st WoW expansion, The Burning Crusade.
At first, I was like: Bah, they already know the content of the first expansion, they're simply bullshitting random places that we saw in the lore for the next expansions, nothing impressive.
But when the 2nd expansion(WotLK) was released, I googled again for this list, and I was more than surprised... There seems to have a few missing details, but this list proved really accurate!
So from this list, there would still be 2 expansions with an increase of the max level, to reach level 100, and then 1 "pure end game" expansion.
It seems pretty accurate for now, but nothing forces the company to make less expansions than they first planned. But something I'm sure of, is that they are working on at least 1 more WoW expansion.
I can't find the source anymore, but I've read it a few months ago, when the Ulduar content patch was just released. One of many journalist was invited in Blizzard's HQ concerning the next WoW expansion, and stated on his blog : (I'm quoting what I remember, using my own words)
I think it's pretty strange that I have no Idea of what will be in the next content patch, but I already know some of the new features that will be in the next expansion. And then said that he had probably already said too much, considering the NDA he signed, Blizzard was in right to come and kill him.
Probably a lot of people dont want to hear this(I'm one of them...) but I really think we'll meet another WoW expansion in Q4 2010, instead of a D3 release.
And about the '"Release strategy" the OP is talking about, I think you are trying to see too many things in what happens right now... Maybe you're right, but I dont think they'd push back releases after releases*while the game actually IS ready) only to make people more 'eager' for the game, and to avoid losing WoW players... Of course a few WoW players WILL switch game, and start playing SC2 instead(or D3 eventually) but they both are REALLY different kind of games, so I think both games will keep a distinct base of customers/subscribers.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you can't amaze people with your intelligence, confuse them with your bullshit.
I certainly don't like Blizzard's policies recently, and I wouldn't think paid B.net is impossible, especially later, once many games start switching to paying for everything.
I certainly don't like Blizzard's policies recently, and I wouldn't think paid B.net is impossible, especially later, once many games start switching to paying for everything.
Yeah you're right, more and more games turn to the fee-based approch, to prevent piracy, but the way I see it is: We wont include lan in our last releases, to prevent piracy, you'll have to log on battle.net to play any multiplayer.
So, we CAN'T charge a fee for Battle.net, since you will have to log on it for lan games, and we dont want you to have to pay a fee for lan games, only because we removed lan to prevent piracy...
Or at least, that's how I see it... if they do add a fee for StarCraft2 or Diablo3 monthly, it'll have to be VERY low, like 1$ / month(doesn't even worth it...) or they'll have to include a LAN playing mode.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you can't amaze people with your intelligence, confuse them with your bullshit.
I would like to add a few things to the topic regarding not losing wow players...
I have been playing wow since pre tbc, tho not since release, I was playing a lot of guitar in bands at the time and took some time off, plus my starcraft play was still going on and I never liked wc3 much. Most of the people I know of in established guilds are getting burnt out, and yes, the population keeps growing, but I have been noticing quite a bit more old friends going by the wayside... I have been in quite a few guilds and know a lot of people... 5 80s, 2 70s, and a few twinks here. Now I am on an older server, one of the originals, so maybe my sample is biased to older players. I also believe blizzards subscription statistics are heavily, HEAVILY influenced by 3rd party vendors of gold powerleveling, etc, not to mention the guys who create 50 accounts to then suicide in marketing slogans for gold sites in orgrimmar or whatever, go to such and such a website spelled out in corpses.
I would really like to see a stat breakdown of wow accounts in terms of activity, location, and IP frequency. Like how many accounts have lvel 80s, or whatnot. But I can tell you that on my server, when Starcraft 2 comes out a LOT of people will be absent, I know several guilds will go on hiatus as well. I dont think wow will DIE, necessarily, but I do think revenue will be hit. I also think that Wows very time consuming nature will differentiate players when D3 is an option. Spend months leveling a character and not being interested in Pugging raids? Or play solo D3 where you dont have your lowly status shoved in your face by everyone you see. Oh well, Please remeber I love Blizzards games, I am more conducting this discussion because I am curious about community development- I am a sociology student studying this stuff at UCSC.
In an unrelated point, for people who dont understand why blizz removed lan play from sc2 and how this relates to piracy, let me share a story.
When I travel through asia, like thailand, Internet cafes are very popular as infrastructure quality is low, even in bangkok, and people are pretty poor, that is, theres a smaller middle class by percentage. So people game at lan cafes. In NONE of the many cafes I visited could I play on live blizz servers for starcraft ow wc3, because they were all hacked accounts, with tons of mods and whatnot. Not seen much in the US or Europe, its more an asian phenomenon. You could by hacked versions of starcraft in real gaming stores, lol. BTW, some were pretty creative and cool!
Anyways, If they get to a population of 10 million playing on Bnet, I really would expect to move to a paid system. Personally, I feel it would be better anyways, as the services would be better. If they DONT do a paid system, they will be working hard to find other ways of monetizing Bnet through ads or partnerships anyways I am sure.
Now I know wow will continue for many years to come, but I bet they will see sharp activity fallout from new title release. Also, I think that the type of player who raids heavily will be dissatisfied at blizzards new ez loot ez raid inclusion strategy. Recently they changed the emblem system so you can buy leet gear and be raid ready by running heroics, and by raid ready i mean ulduar, or endgame content. This has generated a lot of dissent amongst hard core raiders, and I think this will decrease overall game lifespan for that type of player.
Oh well, I just foresee a universal subscription to Bnet that will include ALL blizzard games, perhaps they will create Bnet profiling so you can display your leetness on all titles in one profile, which will encourage people to play all titles compulsively, as e-status is a huge driver of play. Things like achievements for accomplishing milestones in all titles. Furthermore ladderstyle play and D3 PVP will be a huge part of gameplay now. I also foresee multi-title guilds developing with Bnet guild/clan management in which clans have players of multiple titles and stats that relate guilds to each other in terms of status, like a guild ladder/ranking system.
What I hope for most is that SC2 still has the amazing Use Map Settings creativity. One of the most remarkable blizzard feats to me was the SC map editor-tens of thousands of game maps and weird game offshoots created by the community, adding a dimension of playability unheard of from other titles.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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For example, how does their desire to promote or protect other products influence their decision to release this game? I would assume that they have started to plan for the demise of the WOW empire, but they have to know that there are a limited number of pc gamers, and that if they released D3 today, or SC2, then their wow population will be severely affected. Personally, I believe that they will eventually have their BNet subscription available for all their games to promote using multiple products without feeling the need to choose one or the other.
I often wonder if their strategic marketing and business planning is more of a factor than game readiness. I have come to the conclusion that protecting wow is their highest business priority, until they have decided how to capture all of the transitionary customer movement to new titles, they will not release another title.
Given the recent postponement of SC2, I believe they are still working on it. The delay relates to Bnet, and I have to assume that they want to ensure that their market stream of paid subscriptions is not adversely affected. I also am assuming that Bnet will be a paid subscription service or a tiered subscription service, although as I write this I figure this has been publicly discussed but I just haven't seen it yet. It is just hard to believe that Bnet will be free with the huge increase in online play since the original SC and D2 releases when Bnet was free.
Frankly, when you view the product release cycle from a removed perspective, how long do you think D3 or SC2 would have taken to release if WoW did not exist? Some of that surely relates to the immense success and personnel and resource requirements that the huge growth of WoW necessitated, but even considering that WoW had to be bigger than they expected or were prepared for, these titles have seen a looooong hiatus, and this is surely related to their desire to allow WoW and paid subscriptions to have as long a run as they could.
Anyways, I would appreciate any directions to official positions on this, and any comments regarding this subject. Have a great day!
Bnet has been confirmed free, with possible "special" features that requires you to pay, but no need to pay to play online.
I also don't expect WoW to lose oh so many people for SC2 or D3. Most people that don't care enough about WoW will leave sooner or later. If these games make them quit, so be it. There was discussion about this in WoW forums, and most (but not all) said they wouldn't leave WoW for SC2 or D3, and would very well play both.
Beside, SC2 and D3 are -not- MMOs and do not require you to play as much as WoW. Besides, who only plays one game now? When I was playing WoW, I played a lot of other non-MMO games at the same time... I don't know anyone personally that strictly plays one game and must -leave it behind- to play another.
Has Bnet been confirmed free!? AWESOME!
Ok, yea, I wouldn't worry too much about Blizzard's plans. They will release a game when it's ready. However, I doubt they will release Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 within 3-4 months. They already said they would release Starcraft 2 by the first half of 2010 and my guess is they will release Diablo 3 the second half of 2010. If not 2010, then 2011. Any more waiting and I'll be pissed cause i'll have to play during college...
Diablo 3 might take people away from WoW for a while, but I don't think it will take the true WoW fans away for long. However, people like me who will probably beat normal with one of every class/gender combination, get one of each class to 99, and keep playing them even though they are maxed out are going to have a lot to do before release and the first expansion.
Remember that since Blizzard removed lan-networking capability and expect all multiplay to be conduct via Bnet, charging connectivity would like cause a backlash with the community.
I would think for a gamer straddling between WoW and D3/SC2, D3/SC2 activities would likely revolved around WoW due to the relatively inflexible schedule required for WoW raiding/grouping.
^ This.
And also :
Just to clarify, they dont seem ready to put an end to WoW reign yet. If you followed WoW scene a bit, you probably stumbled upon this list of "planned" expansions for WoW :
source
This list was first leaked just before the release of the 1st WoW expansion, The Burning Crusade.
At first, I was like: Bah, they already know the content of the first expansion, they're simply bullshitting random places that we saw in the lore for the next expansions, nothing impressive.
But when the 2nd expansion(WotLK) was released, I googled again for this list, and I was more than surprised... There seems to have a few missing details, but this list proved really accurate!
So from this list, there would still be 2 expansions with an increase of the max level, to reach level 100, and then 1 "pure end game" expansion.
It seems pretty accurate for now, but nothing forces the company to make less expansions than they first planned. But something I'm sure of, is that they are working on at least 1 more WoW expansion.
I can't find the source anymore, but I've read it a few months ago, when the Ulduar content patch was just released. One of many journalist was invited in Blizzard's HQ concerning the next WoW expansion, and stated on his blog :
(I'm quoting what I remember, using my own words)
Probably a lot of people dont want to hear this(I'm one of them...) but I really think we'll meet another WoW expansion in Q4 2010, instead of a D3 release.
And about the '"Release strategy" the OP is talking about, I think you are trying to see too many things in what happens right now... Maybe you're right, but I dont think they'd push back releases after releases*while the game actually IS ready) only to make people more 'eager' for the game, and to avoid losing WoW players... Of course a few WoW players WILL switch game, and start playing SC2 instead(or D3 eventually) but they both are REALLY different kind of games, so I think both games will keep a distinct base of customers/subscribers.
Yeah you're right, more and more games turn to the fee-based approch, to prevent piracy, but the way I see it is:
We wont include lan in our last releases, to prevent piracy, you'll have to log on battle.net to play any multiplayer.
So, we CAN'T charge a fee for Battle.net, since you will have to log on it for lan games, and we dont want you to have to pay a fee for lan games, only because we removed lan to prevent piracy...
Or at least, that's how I see it... if they do add a fee for StarCraft2 or Diablo3 monthly, it'll have to be VERY low, like 1$ / month(doesn't even worth it...) or they'll have to include a LAN playing mode.
I would like to add a few things to the topic regarding not losing wow players...
I have been playing wow since pre tbc, tho not since release, I was playing a lot of guitar in bands at the time and took some time off, plus my starcraft play was still going on and I never liked wc3 much. Most of the people I know of in established guilds are getting burnt out, and yes, the population keeps growing, but I have been noticing quite a bit more old friends going by the wayside... I have been in quite a few guilds and know a lot of people... 5 80s, 2 70s, and a few twinks here. Now I am on an older server, one of the originals, so maybe my sample is biased to older players. I also believe blizzards subscription statistics are heavily, HEAVILY influenced by 3rd party vendors of gold powerleveling, etc, not to mention the guys who create 50 accounts to then suicide in marketing slogans for gold sites in orgrimmar or whatever, go to such and such a website spelled out in corpses.
I would really like to see a stat breakdown of wow accounts in terms of activity, location, and IP frequency. Like how many accounts have lvel 80s, or whatnot. But I can tell you that on my server, when Starcraft 2 comes out a LOT of people will be absent, I know several guilds will go on hiatus as well. I dont think wow will DIE, necessarily, but I do think revenue will be hit. I also think that Wows very time consuming nature will differentiate players when D3 is an option. Spend months leveling a character and not being interested in Pugging raids? Or play solo D3 where you dont have your lowly status shoved in your face by everyone you see. Oh well, Please remeber I love Blizzards games, I am more conducting this discussion because I am curious about community development- I am a sociology student studying this stuff at UCSC.
In an unrelated point, for people who dont understand why blizz removed lan play from sc2 and how this relates to piracy, let me share a story.
When I travel through asia, like thailand, Internet cafes are very popular as infrastructure quality is low, even in bangkok, and people are pretty poor, that is, theres a smaller middle class by percentage. So people game at lan cafes. In NONE of the many cafes I visited could I play on live blizz servers for starcraft ow wc3, because they were all hacked accounts, with tons of mods and whatnot. Not seen much in the US or Europe, its more an asian phenomenon. You could by hacked versions of starcraft in real gaming stores, lol. BTW, some were pretty creative and cool!
Anyways, If they get to a population of 10 million playing on Bnet, I really would expect to move to a paid system. Personally, I feel it would be better anyways, as the services would be better. If they DONT do a paid system, they will be working hard to find other ways of monetizing Bnet through ads or partnerships anyways I am sure.
Now I know wow will continue for many years to come, but I bet they will see sharp activity fallout from new title release. Also, I think that the type of player who raids heavily will be dissatisfied at blizzards new ez loot ez raid inclusion strategy. Recently they changed the emblem system so you can buy leet gear and be raid ready by running heroics, and by raid ready i mean ulduar, or endgame content. This has generated a lot of dissent amongst hard core raiders, and I think this will decrease overall game lifespan for that type of player.
Oh well, I just foresee a universal subscription to Bnet that will include ALL blizzard games, perhaps they will create Bnet profiling so you can display your leetness on all titles in one profile, which will encourage people to play all titles compulsively, as e-status is a huge driver of play. Things like achievements for accomplishing milestones in all titles. Furthermore ladderstyle play and D3 PVP will be a huge part of gameplay now. I also foresee multi-title guilds developing with Bnet guild/clan management in which clans have players of multiple titles and stats that relate guilds to each other in terms of status, like a guild ladder/ranking system.
What I hope for most is that SC2 still has the amazing Use Map Settings creativity. One of the most remarkable blizzard feats to me was the SC map editor-tens of thousands of game maps and weird game offshoots created by the community, adding a dimension of playability unheard of from other titles.