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Comment by sl1ck731 | Hacker News Reader

I think they just lost the ability to be innovative. They had some real creative minds at the helm that got replaced by "business" people. Kind of like Steve Jobs being replaced. Blizzard was based on this cool innovative stuff and when the people who lived for it were gone they had no connection to their community anymore.

In terms of calculating grind, that was the big thing with WoW when I left a month after the latest expansion dropped. It was just so clear that the rails of the theme park ride you were on were designed to milk you. I mean all games by anyone not releasing them freely are intended to make some kind of money, but once I purchase it you better be very subtle about it.

Basically all they are doing is rehashing old games now as well.

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Blizzard games are not necessarily known for their innovation, but for their level of polish, lore and communities behind them. I mean RPGs existed before Diablo, MMOs existed before WoW, Warcraft was not the first strategy game and so on. Somehow Blizzard managed to make these representative for their genres.

The problem is they are in the same wagon with Activision which forces them into some questionable bussiness decisions, and their focus shift toward satisfying the market rather than continuing to make polished games.

It’s hard to imagine how a company that received $15 per month from 12 million WoW subscribers for 10+ years can go bankrupt, but I guess nothing lasts forever.

> It’s hard to imagine how a company that received $15 per month from 12 million WoW subscribers for 10+ years can go bankrupt, but I guess nothing lasts forever.

On the flip side, that may be the exact reason they are going bankrupt or facing hard time. Making $15 x a month from 12 million subscribers must have lured them into thinking it will last forever so they get sloppy, lose focus, etc.

> It’s hard to imagine how a company that received $15 per month from 12 million WoW subscribers for 10+ years can go bankrupt, but I guess nothing lasts forever.

I don’t think Activision is anywhere close to declaring bankruptcy? While the stocks of many gaming companies have been suffering as of late, many of them presumably rose too high from the hype surrounding esports gaming, etc.

Innovation in my context is more in appealing to the user. The mechanics. You don't have to make something new like the wheel to innovate. Look at Apple. They're called innovative all the time but have never "invented" anything from thin air. They packaged and purposed something that appealed to more people than all those pieces separately.

The games they made were unique and copied countless times by people because of a unique combination of gameplay mechanics and style.

They didn't capture the majority of their users on lore or polish. They captured them because they were fun to play.

Warcraft was not the first strategy game, but WCIII was hugely innovative. I can't think of any RTS game with the concept of heroes before WCIII, and it was popularized by it (Star Wars: Empire at War used the concept).

It also spun off the entire MOBA period from AOS (starcraft) and DotA.

AFAIK Diablo was the first 'action' or real time combat RPG. That seems pretty innovative.

That was more David Brevik's Condor that was subsequently purchased by Blizzard and named Blizzard North. They also had complete autonomy from Blizzard proper.

I mean, if you forget earlier real-time combat RPGs like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy Adventure / Secret of Mana, Shadowrun or The Elder Scrolls then yeah.

Correct, but that is one example from many years ago. I think his statement overall holds water.

Grind is really difficult to get right, outside of how long it takes. They stopped publishing subscription numbers, but it’s clear WoW subscriptions have fallen dramatically over time.

Personally, the Warlords of Draenor mission grind was interesting for a little while, but completely killed my interest in the franchise. Which I think is a central issue for long running games, you can drive people away vastly easier than you can pull them back.

The long term economics of video games is therefore tough, as surviving to tomorrow often means driving people away forever.

I think there are too many competing factors for them to make a "sweet spot".

The original grind appealed to people because it was hard and there wasn't anything you could do about it. It felt like an accomplishment.

The business side of the house wants a wide net so appealing to those people alone isn't enough, except that those are their core people who have paid their salaries. The faltering I believe is in part due to trying to continually grow and appease shareholders.

CoD seems to be doing fine so big business AAA games will still live on. Blizzard might pivot to doing something like this. I just believe big business is completely incompatible with the cult-like attraction of Blizzard's original IP.

From the estimates I have seen WoW subscriber count was higher at the end of vanilla than it is today. Various forms of micro transactions make up for much of the revenue difference, but I don’t think the current version has wider appeal.

It’s hard to say when peak appeal occurred as WOTLK had peak subscriptions, but slow growth. If anything Vanilla, BC, or WOTLK was the peak appeal and it’s just been down hill after that. Though their are plenty of ways to slice and dice the numbers.

> They had some real creative minds at the helm that got replaced by "business" people.

IBM >> Engineers at helm replaced by MBA. Goes down the drain. Plus many others I'm sure.

I think we can go on and on about how bean counters or business types or lawyers replace engineers at the helm, and end up destroying tech companies that were at the top.

I really wonder, why? Does it have to be that way?

There's this "toner heads" interview with Jobs, you've probably seen it but it fascinates me every time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614

Mr. Jobs was so eloquent in that interview.

But, lol. The irony.

He appoints Tim Cook to be his successor, who is NOT a product person but a supply chain specialist.

He definitely is not a product person. The same product team under Mr. Jobs may still be there, but I'd think most would agree Apple's been putting out new products that are somewhat lacking...

I'm sure Steve would have loved to put the product guy (Jony Ive) in charge but I bet Ive didn't want the job. This is why people like Steve Jobs are so rare: product guys who want to run the company and deal with all of the business stuff instead of rolling up their sleeves every day.

People criticize Steve Jobs for the fact that he was never an engineer. But he was never a suit either. He was more like Santa Claus: running around his workshop and getting so excited about all the new toys the elves come up with. He could play with your demo for a few minutes and tell you what was wrong with it, from the perspective of a non-engineer, and thus give you feedback on things that engineers take for granted.

People buy the Apple hardware but stay for the software. Scott Forstall might have been considered but he didn’t play well with a few other key design and hardware people at the time. In an alternative world where SF is CEO, you’d end up with an iPhone X that looks like iPhone 4/5 and might have had weaker hardware but largely compensated by better software (as demonstrated by iOS 12, early iPods and macs, etc.). Then with time, the skeumorphism would dial down and meet iOS 7’s extreme minimalism in the middle, like current iOSes are doing anyway. SF knew machine learning, so Siri would definitely have been his focus too.

There’s a niche of folks who are waiting for SF to make a come back the same way SJ did =)

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