EPTPre-orders "outpaced" HotS - Page 3
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wjat
385 Posts
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nighcol
298 Posts
On November 03 2015 15:07 skatbone wrote: As Activision/Blizzard profits, the discussion across a lot of the new Blizz games seems to be about sacrifices in quality to meet deadlines and make money. I am happy for Blizzard but I do feel some ambivalence about the pressure to churn out content at the expense of quality. If that's what they're doing now it sounds like a short-sighted strategy that may give result in profit initially but will tarnish the reputation that Blizzard has worked long and hard to build. | ||
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KeksX
Germany3634 Posts
On November 04 2015 03:24 nighcol wrote: If that's what they're doing now it sounds like a short-sighted strategy that may give result in profit initially but will tarnish the reputation that Blizzard has worked long and hard to build. How about we just wait for that mulitplayer panel at Blizzcon and see what they have in store for us. | ||
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skatbone
United States1005 Posts
On November 04 2015 03:24 nighcol wrote: If that's what they're doing now it sounds like a short-sighted strategy that may give result in profit initially but will tarnish the reputation that Blizzard has worked long and hard to build. Well I thoroughly enjoyed the LotV beta but I agree with a lot of people who felt that the decision-making over the past two months has been rushed and/or inelegant due to the deadline of the game's release. Aside from SC2, I am thinking of the WOW commitment to churning out faster expansions. This decision has seemingly come at the expense of a raid tier (it remains to be seen whether they will add any more relevant/meaty content to WoD) and a lot of WOW players are already disenchanted by the quality of WoDs non-raid tier content. D3 has gone the other direction. I played at release and I found the patch prior to Reaper of Souls and much of Reaper to be a lot of fun, though I burnt out on the game. I have friends who are still playing due to Blizzard's commitment to improving D3 in spite of the fact that it is neither subscription based or micro-transaction oriented. So my earlier comment about the quality of Blizzard games vis-a-vis the seeming pressure to crank out expansions at unreasonable deadlines was a bit of an overstatement. Ultimately, if they can commit to improvements in the manner in which they have updated D3 since release, I am hopefully that what I currently find redeemable about LotV will continue to improve over time. | ||
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ProMeTheus112
France2027 Posts
On November 04 2015 03:24 nighcol wrote: If that's what they're doing now it sounds like a short-sighted strategy that may give result in profit initially but will tarnish the reputation that Blizzard has worked long and hard to build. That's definitely on the way, known publicly since Diablo 3 release. When Diablo 3 was released Blizzard took a really Huge HIT to their reputation, for that reason. And they gave no sign that they were going to change, they clearly lied about why they were doing things regarding the real money auction house and how all the itemization and even stats in the games were designed to maximize transaction profit through it, likely purposely not even fighting bots cause that brings transactions on the auction house! The decision makers at the top of the company go after the money not the quality, and leave little space (possibly no space) to the dev team to do what they want/imagine. If you go after the money you can rake a maximum amount of cash in a shorter time by doing bad quality that is attractive in a superficial way to everyone, as much people as possible, MOBA players, noobs, people who just like special effects, people who don't like micro, etc. I think with SC2, the goal is to get these people to WATCH pro matches which is where blizzard's money is through broadcasting rights and advertisement. The new units in LoTV may just be for easier defense for little experienced players so they start playing some 1v1 don't die early thanks to easy defense and start getting involved in watching pro matches. Generally, making it easier for them not to get obliterated and play longer games. That's what I suspect. For shareholders that's financially quite fine because after pillaging the company for a while they can just move their money somewhere else if needed. We experienced fans pay the price, and in the long runs, the games are the shadow of what they could be. | ||
HerrHorst
Germany140 Posts
On November 04 2015 04:06 ProMeTheus112 wrote: That's definitely on the way, known publicly since Diablo 3 release. When Diablo 3 was released Blizzard took a really Huge HIT to their reputation, for that reason. And they gave no sign that they were going to change, they clearly lied about why they were doing things regarding the real money auction house and how all the itemization and even stats in the games were designed to maximize transaction profit through it, likely purposely not even fighting bots cause that brings transactions on the auction house! The decision makers at the top of the company go after the money not the quality, and leave little space (possibly no space) to the dev team to do what they want/imagine. If you go after the money you can rake a maximum amount of cash in a shorter time by doing bad quality that is attractive in a superficial way to everyone, as much people as possible, MOBA players, noobs, people who just like special effects, people who don't like micro, etc. I think with SC2, the goal is to get these people to WATCH pro matches which is where blizzard's money is through broadcasting rights and advertisement. For shareholders that's financially quite fine because after pillaging the company for a while they can just move their money somewhere else if needed. We experienced fans pay the price, and in the long runs, the games are the shadow of what they could be. But Blizzard did change Diablo 3 massively and did improve the game a lot after they were cruzified by the community for their earlier decisions. If Legacy gets as much attention after Release as did Diablo 3, which was improved massivly and even got some cool new stuff like Kanai’s Cube recently, we could be happy. | ||
Excalibur_Z
United States12256 Posts
On November 04 2015 01:09 Brutaxilos wrote: So by that logic... Starcraft II > Starcraft 1? No, StarCraft I -> Brood War -> Wings of Liberty -> Heart of the Swarm -> Legacy of the Void. =) Anyway, the marketing approach to LotV has been great. It got me to preorder for the missions (played them in a night) and Artanis (whom I still have never played), which I normally never do. It's no surprise that preorders are up from HotS and their cross-promotion network is stronger than it's ever been. I'm actually quite excited for LotV if only to play some more 2v2s with friends in a new game, wrap up the story, and play some Archon Mode and Co-op missions should 2v2s get stale. | ||
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KeksX
Germany3634 Posts
On November 04 2015 04:06 ProMeTheus112 wrote: I think with SC2, the goal is to get these people to WATCH pro matches which is where blizzard's money is through broadcasting rights and advertisement. The new units in LoTV may just be for easier defense for little experienced players so they start playing some 1v1 don't die early thanks to easy defense and start getting involved in watching pro matches. Generally, making it easier for them not to get obliterated and play longer games. That's what I suspect. For shareholders that's financially quite fine because after pillaging the company for a while they can just move their money somewhere else if needed. We experienced fans pay the price, and in the long runs, the games are the shadow of what they could be. You think Blizzard makes money with broadcasting rights? From whom!? Who pays money to Blizzard to broadcast SC2? The big tournaments are pretty much the only ones paying Blizzard and there aren't many of them. Also not even HotS which I quit halfway in was a waste. I paid 40 bucks for tons and tons of gameplay hours so there's nothing to blame Blizzard for in that regard. If we're going down the route of "shadow of what it could've been" again this discussion becomes endless. Yes, games can always be better, thats why games have started to go down the "games as service route", which SC2 sadly hasn't done yet. But, as I keep saying, let's wait for that panel. There's so many assumptions in these discussions, its insane. | ||
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ProMeTheus112
France2027 Posts
Apparently also Kespa did a shady move by selling broadcasting rights of bw which doesn't make sense lol. It is a bit more complicated, I may speak too fast or this may no more be of actuality. I am very suspicious of blizzard now because of all these greedy bad moves and big loss of quality which I still believe were intended for commercial reasons. The stuff with the dumbed down chats in the games also, this is the kind of move I really resent, I think it was intended and I think it really really hurt the communities. | ||
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FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
On November 03 2015 14:49 Dracover wrote: I love this kind of stuff cause it tell you a lot of what they spend their money on. So for every $1 you pay to them 32 cents is profit 32 cents is to actually produce what they're selling you 14 cents is to pay for the development of their next game 22 cents is marketing sales and other "company stuff" or in other words 46 cents is for producing what your buying/what you might buy 54 cents is for stuff the customer doesn't value. EDIT: If only you can see this buy product. As a customer I value profit and marketing, too. The latter will make sure they sell more which means they have more money to develop even better games and the former is invested back into the firm that sells products I enjoy. | ||
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corydoras
161 Posts
On November 04 2015 05:42 ProMeTheus112 wrote: There is this old little article : http://www.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/blizzard-vows-to-protect-their-ip-and-esport-broadcast-rights ; but it doesn't say much, also this TL post : http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/127674-gom-tv-blizzard-sign-exclusive-broadcast-agreement. I don't know how it goes nowadays, does Dreamhack for example have to pay broadcasting rights? I am curious. But you are right, it seems there are not so many tournaments that it generates any very high amount of money. This, by the way, is a bigger issue which I noticed only when I was intalling LotV beta. Long story short: the license agreement is worded in a way that, with little to no effort, gives Blizzard control over whether not only a given tournament can be broadcast, but even whether the game can be streamed. And this "control", as of now", appears to be exercised in this policy and this policy. Tournaments with prize pool under $10k are somewhat limited but don't require entering into a specific license agreement. So Dreamhack needs a separate license which likely is not free, because nothing is  | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17877 Posts
On November 04 2015 01:09 Brutaxilos wrote: So by that logic... Starcraft II > Starcraft 1? we have to wait for SC3 for it to be a trilogy and Sigaty stated nothing more from Blizz is competing with SC2 for 10 years. as of now the Starcraft franchise is not a trilogy. On November 04 2015 04:06 ProMeTheus112 wrote: If you go after the money you can rake a maximum amount of cash in a shorter time by doing bad quality that is attractive in a superficial way to everyone, as much people as possible, MOBA players, noobs, people who just like special effects, people who don't like micro, etc. I think with SC2, the goal is to get these people to WATCH pro matches which is where blizzard's money is through broadcasting rights and advertisement. when your goal is to make billions every reporting quarter these silly schemes don't work. max cash comes from creating new genres and redefining old ones. pacman, super mario, pokeman, wow , skylanders. regarding your other stuff about making the dev team do stuff... ATVI doesn't care enough to superimpose any kind of conspiracy against the development team to coerce them into moving the game in some predetermined management direction. LotV is life-and-death to make $0.1 Billion and ATVI just bought some mobile games company for $5.9 Billion. | ||
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ProMeTheus112
France2027 Posts
On November 04 2015 07:29 corydoras wrote: This, by the way, is a bigger issue which I noticed only when I was intalling LotV beta. Long story short: the license agreement is worded in a way that, with little to no effort, gives Blizzard control over whether not only a given tournament can be broadcast, but even whether the game can be streamed. with this ? "For business reasons, there may be times when Blizzard will need to terminate your right to distribute or host a specific Production, and in such a case, Blizzard shall have the right to do so without notice or liability to you. A content use license is not unlimited: it permits the use of the Blizzard materials in your Production only for the 'event' that the license has been issued for, and in the specific methods outlined in the license. " they can "terminate your right to distribute or host a specific Production" even if you distribute / host it freely, E.G. if you use establish a free weekly stream on twitch where you criticize their game or something can they do that ? can they shut down specific youtube videos ? back in the D3 release days, there was a blog called Digital Castration with an anonymous author using the nickname Daeity. He wrote articles revealing information he had of events unfolding inside the company thanks to an insider + using sources online. He revealed for example that Blizzard delayed the release of D3 worldwide because they ran into a gambling non permitted lawsuit in Korea for their real money auction house and Morhaime making a trip to Korea for this, while lying to the community that it was for another reason, that time was needed to finish things even though there was no serious progress updates. And he revealed other sorts of events and plans the communication of the company was hiding to the community/public. It allowed him to predict some things, I think if I remember right he predicted that there would be no PvP at launch even though they made us believe because they changed the stats and item system in a way that was incompatible with PvP at launch so as to instead focus the system on optimizing the number of transactions happening on the real money auction house where company gets a cut per transaction. They really killed a lot of the game with that, they had a nice new stat system they presented to community before they changed it for that, and it had a horrible effect on the balance of everything, the spells, variety of possible builds and the item game, the uniques, etc. He also wrote articles that described a "black list" system for Blizzard against writers or influencial people that they no longer invited, communicated to, or allowed to get press access to their events. He showed that the type of websites or writers that they promoted and largely supported were those that simply blindly relayed their own press writeups with few advertisement-like information about their games, deliberately discouraging any criticism or in fact discussion by completely ignoring those that did. After a few months, during the release period itself, he wrote a last article saying that he had been threatened and intimidated IRL or by email or maybe phone (it was a bit unclear) and he felt he had to stop writing and that his blog may be shut down, which after a little while later was put offline permanently. It was me. Lol just kidding it wasn't me. | ||
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ProMeTheus112
France2027 Posts
On November 04 2015 07:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote:ATVI doesn't care enough to superimpose any kind of conspiracy against the development team to coerce them into moving the game in some predetermined management direction. LotV is life-and-death to make $0.1 Billion and ATVI just bought some mobile games company for $5.9 Billion. You may be right, I'm not sure.. But there must be directions coming from the top. I don't believe they don't have a plan and I don't believe they let a huge team work by themselves. [which btw I still think the best size for making a great game is not a huge team, the size has to be reasonable so that everyone is fully aware of the whole project and also has a lot of room for influencing the direction. How many people were they to make Starcraft, the coders and main artists? (not counting end of development joining people like voice actors) 10 times smaller team? but how big is the SC2 team now?]. Maybe they have stopped caring about it, but even then they must at least be trying something, good or bad. Kotick words, remember, "take all the fun away from making games". For me these words mean make sure there is no room for creativity and they do what we want them to. He says it is "for putting the value where the players see it" but to me that's just a liar's way of pretending he's doing something nice by making things more serious. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17877 Posts
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JackONeill
861 Posts
More seriously, about Blizzard's reputation : WoW was awesome. Burning crusade was awesome. SCII WOL was AWESOME. Wrath of the Lich king was meh. Diablo III without extension was absolutly TERRIBLE (never felt that ripped off). HOTS was total crap. So yeah they took a big hit to their quality reputation. But HeartStone and Heroes of the Storm made a massive smokescreen so people gained interest again. So did Blizzard loose they quality seal? Yes, for sure. Do they cut corners to meet deadlines? Yes, for sure. Is LOTV initial release gonna be total crap? Yes, for sure since their beta was after all, so short. Does that mean Blizzard products are as a whole bad? Nope. You just have to use critical thinking and watch footage of the game before you buy it. And that's were Blizzard shines : they're VERY good to make trailers and present you their product like awesome. Overwatch looks absolutly great. However, when you look closely, gameplay footage looks very messy, some capacity look cool but will be impossible to balance. So yeah don't let yourself be fooled by the trailers and the hype, and try to think about what you're paying for. I bought Diablo 60€, and everyone told me the extension made the game much better. However I refuse to pay 60+40€ to play a good game. And extension is additionnal content, not the think that make a 60€ game good. | ||
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StarStruck
25339 Posts
On November 03 2015 20:48 ThunderBum wrote: I think that is exactly what the statistic means if more people buy LotV over HotS. They may not be hardcore starcraft players but they'll try the game if they buy it. They will disappear as fast as they come like usual. | ||
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StarStruck
25339 Posts
On November 04 2015 04:17 HerrHorst wrote: But Blizzard did change Diablo 3 massively and did improve the game a lot after they were cruzified by the community for their earlier decisions. If Legacy gets as much attention after Release as did Diablo 3, which was improved massivly and even got some cool new stuff like Kanai’s Cube recently, we could be happy. When you release shit that isn't ready well shit. Good luck getting them to come back and buy into once again. In this day and age people are always looking for the flashy new toy. | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
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Fliparoni
205 Posts
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