Bizzard's Cry for Help

I have been looking at a lot of the forums and been noticing people posting threads about How the Blizzard Expansion is bad or Blizzard is giving customers to SWTOR and GW2. I Played WOW in Vanilla and every expansion. I quit a month after Cata was released b/c I was tired of the constant change of classes and them trying to balance stuff too much. Also the content just got stale. I am a huge fan of SW:TOR. I was a SWG Vet and has always been a fan of the KOTORs and Star Wars in general. I have played the beta and SW:TOR is awesome.

Now that being said I don’t think Blizzard gave anything to SWTOR and to be honest I really don’t want them to lol. This is just a desperate act on Blizzards part. In the last earnings call for Blizzard they talked about how many Subs they had lost and felt they caused the problem with they’re last expansion but did say they were going to continue with their original plans. Also keep in mind that Pandarens have been requested by WOW players since Vanilla so I am thinking this is just a Marketing strategy for them to see if they can recover the loss and to keep who was thinking of leaving when the big wave of MMOs are released. Another attempt of trying to bring customers back is if you notice on their site which a lot of people are not looking at is that they announced they are tuning all the instances back to the way LK dungeons were. It’s in the fine print if you read the Expansion details lol. They also are offering Diablo 3 for free for the customers that had a registered acct on or before 10/18/11 and if you pay for a year contract for WOW. And with the large hype of Diablo 3 and them targeting the date of who can do this I see this being more of a WOW Vet perk.

Now let’s look at it from the view of Blizzard. Rift actually helped the gaming industry. I know Rift wasn’t the WOW killer that everyone wanted but up until Rift was released Blizzard didn’t have to worry about a whole lot because all the big titles that were coming out in the last 5 years were failing due to fast releases and/or Money issues. For example LORTO, Conan, Aion, Warhammer, Tabula Rasa and many more. So they seen no real threat. When Rift was put into Beta people were very surprised a game actually came out polished or in very good condition. Now take a look at SWTOR, the beta has gone really well so far and the game is in good condition. GW2 the same way of what i have heard and seen of leaked videos. I feel this is a great thing for the industry to help future titles be more successful. I won’t lie, I started to wonder if the new ideas that Dev's were coming up with were going to make it very far before Rift because everything that looked good just was to buggy and felt it was more of an Alpha beta. On top of it then the community just dragged it through the mud.

I am curious to see what everyone’s thoughts are on this, please leave a comment below on if you agree or disagree with my thoughts. Thanks for reading.

Abbner

MMO Game Companies Cutting Back

MMO Game Companies Cutting Back

With the recent annoucement of CCP reducing their staff by 20%, a question comes to mind. Is the MMO gaming Industry now seeing the wrath of the economy having issues or is the MMO gaming industry starting to see the issues of a flooded market?

Now when I start thinking about this question I know a lot of people are going to jump right onto the Economy side of the question which I could understand since a lot of companies are taking the hit from this. Now I want to look at the other side of this question, is the MMO gaming industry starting to see the issues of a flooded market? I feel both are hitting them. If you take a look at any MMO site and look at the game list, Notice how many games popped up during 2006 and 2007. I feel this was the time that MMO's started seeing an increase to player base. And at this time A lot of games were trying to mirror the biggest game out there and that was World of Warcraft.

Once Burning Crusade was released a lot of companies thought they could produce the same results as Blizzard did. And we seen that they were not. And at the same time World of Warcraft just kept growing. WOW has maintained growing up until Cataclysm and that I believe was the breaking point for Blizzard.

Now look at the other titles. Everquest II did ok for several years and was able to produce alot of content for the last 8 years. However they had been losing alot of player base in the last few years along with SWG and Everquest. SOE as a company was hurting to the point of letting 205 jobs off back in April and cancelling a MMO in production (The Agency).

Warhammer online is another example of a MMO that had big hype and failed due to not performing to their customers standards. Dont get me wrong it was a fun game but a lot of player base felt it lacked. Warhammer online with EA cut 60 - 130 jobs company wide.

Lets look at so many games going F2P to just try keeping the title alive and noticing that they may actually make more money this route. I guess why not go F2P instead of P2P. Well I feel a lot of your player base in the NA markets have not accepted F2P games. I know they are growing everyday but if you look at the number of people that are dedicated to 1 game, its normally P2P. And I think that is b/c they have a fear of micro transactions or they dont feel they are playing the whole game or if they pay $15 a month then it kind of forces them to play.

So is the MMO gaming Industry now seeing the wrath of the economy having issues or is the MMO gaming industry starting to see the issues of a flooded market? I feel both are hitting them but it depends on the company. World of Warcraft I feel some is due to both. But i think alittle more on the economy side and boredom. Now looking at the other big titles like EQ 2, LOTRO and FFXI I feel the MMO flooding hits them a little harder then the ecomony side of the questions. 2 out of the 3 went F2P just to try saving the title. I also feel that a lot of the games that flooded the market were not fully ready to hit the market which gave a lot of titles that should have been big titles just become a thing of the past.
Please comment below and let me know what you think of this and let me know if you agree with me or not. Take it easy Gamers.

Abbner
crazyonlinegamerz.blogspot.com