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Posted By Nobunaga about 3 months, 3 weeks ago
"Sorry kids… not this year…"
Setting aside the loyalty of fanbases for a moment, the Blizzard Entertainment convention “Blizzcon” has been a bit of an eye-opener for many in the gaming industry. Attended by an estimated 30,000 people in 2011 with millions of gamers PAYING to watch it streamed live online and broadcast around the globe in different languages by DirectTV. However it seems this year we’re just going to have to do without…
While I’m certain the comments below (that’s your cue!) will be awash with speculation as to the reasons, Blizzard has announced that they are going to skip 2012 for Blizzcon, instead opting to hold the next one in 2013 on a date “…to be announced in the coming months…“. Stating a full workload and upcoming content as the reasons behind the decision, Blizzard has instead opted to keep it’s eSports circuit running and focus on other conventions…
Now I can see where they’re coming from, with the next World of Warcraft expansion “Mists of Pandaria” likely to be released during the third quarter of this year (during the time of Blizzcons past), the next chapter in the Starcraft 2 Trilogy “Heart of the Swarm” sometime during the second quarter and with Diablo 3 in the middle-stages of it’s beta testing and thus could see release late this first quarter (fingers crossed)… it’s pretty easy to see that exciting content for a Blizzcon this year isn’t exactly high.
With an expansion to Diablo 3 unlikely for at least a year from it’s date of initial release, the next World of Warcraft Expansion likely only a distant thought on a whiteboard somewhere and with the third chapter in the Starcraft Triology “Legacy of the Void” not even started yet, there would be very little to show. Now that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t sell out their tickets in less than 15 seconds (like the previous 2 years, literally, seconds) even if they had nothing to the show… I mean, around 27,000 of us went to the 2010 Blizzcon, after all.
However with nearly 2 million people having departed the World of Warcraft community (a figure no doubt about to see a dramatic rise since the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic) and millions more foaming at the mouth for more Starcraft 2 content, it can’t be denied that Blizzard’s customers are hungry. And while a convention isn’t exactly a way to sate that hunger, it is a way to reinforce the loyalty of your most dedicated customers and create buzz.
Yes, this WAS a costume at Blizzcon 2011…
On the other hand, even from speaking to Blizzard’s highest ranks myself, one of the things they wanted to avoid was having another 2010 Blizzcon, where content was low and anticipations were high. People expected to hear about Titan and instead were given Jersey Shorecraft and other jokes that had the majority of the community with their faces in their palms. Last minute content had to be created just to fill space and time during Blizzcon 2010. So that begs the question…
Is it better to disappoint your fans but give them transparency and unequaled access to staff for a few days, or do put it off and wait? Should they have held their convention (which by many staffer’s accounts they lose money on) or are they doing the right thing? I’d love to hear what you guys have to say on the matter…
The Winner of Blizzcon 2011 Costume Contest
If this is Blizzard’s way to protest against ESA, they are doing it wrong.
It’s funny, I’ve been such a hardcore fan of Blizzard for so long but even I’ve become completely disenfranchised with the company since the Activision takeover. I honestly don’t want to say that, or even admit it but, well, it’s true.
I’ve dropped WoW even before the coming of the last expansion and while I went back to check things out for a bit…yeah, wasn’t too pleased.
I’ve played Diablo since the very beginning. The online in II was fun up until a certain point where the bots and farmers take over any chance of loot online…Good god the corruption on that game was terrible. With the current system in III, I can’t see it doing any better. I’ll still play III.
I’ll play it online and only for a little bit, till I complete the game. The new policy of ‘online only’ doesn’t effect me even if it seriously pisses me off to think that I have family who DON’T have access to a consistent online connection who were actually looking forward to the game now can’t play. Not everyone lives somewhere where they can just jump online. Some places are completely cut off…It’s completely illogical to make this change…
Starcraft II…One game…Then two games…Now I just found out (late to the party it seems) that it’s going to be three games? Seriously? And full price for all three games which, it’s already been admitted that two of them wont even be full games?
Their service, their quality…everything about Bliz has been on a steady decline since the Activision take over. I’d like to believe the two events are unrelated but honestly, I just can’t…Blizzard has lost a great deal of respect, especially in the last year alone. Quite frankly, I’m glad they cancelled Blizzcon because I really don’t want to see them fall any farther by shooting themselves in the foot again.
I could care less about this tbf, I made a load of cool friends from Sweden, Norway and other parts of Europe who I am still friends with today through playing WoW, I enjoy playing Starcraft 2 from time to time and I am gonna get Diablo III.
On the list of things to care about, Blizzards corporate structure isn’t one of them, and if they don’t do Blizzcon who gives a shit.
The whole Diablo 3 real life auction house doesn’t concern me either You can either use it, or not, its that simple and I probably wont use it so there you have it folks.
That’s interesting, the vast majority of Europeans I met on WoW, or MMOing in general, were just rude dirtbags to the point that I actually grew to resent Euro-gamers, especially the French and English crowds. Guess I was just on a bad couple of servers for it.
You cant play on Euro servers if you live in the USA,while playing WOW.Unless they have changed that since when i cancelled my sub 9 months ago.I guess you meant other MMO’s.
No actually I meant the Euros who, for some reason, played on US servers. In fact mine had a large french guild that was so obnoxious many people thought it was a guild for the french people who were too rude to be tolerated by other french people.
Blizzard no longer give a fuck about their old customers. If they could just close the entire US and Europeans WoW servers and focus exclusively on China, they would do it. on the 7M+ WoW customers, more than 4M of them are Chinese, Blizzard is actually losing US and EU accounts while they boost their numbers with everything they got from China, because the ”popularity argument” sells…
the ”Mist of Pandaria” expansion pack only exists for the sole reason to attract the chinese players who actually leaves the game for Chinese local MMOs. the idea Pisses of a lot of hardcore players from long date.
StarCraft 2 ? it’s more popular in Korea than in the US and EU. Activision pays for massive commercials like artworks on Planes and shit, there’s a frickin National TV Channel dedicated to it… while in the US and EU, SC2 is a game, gently popular one but certainly not what it is in South Korea…
and since the announcement of that ”Real Money Auction House” in Diablo III, even though the game will surely get a gentle popularity, a LOT of people canceled their pre-order. cheap marketing moves.
add that stupid DOTA Ripoff which is not even ashamed to infringe ValvE’s and IceFrog’s Copyright, (At least League of Legend is subtle about the fact that it rips off DOTA…) and the next unannounced project, a MMO codenamed ”Project Titan” to contain in-game commercials…
considering the unsilent majority of peeps going to Blizzcon are Americans and canadians (Road Trip, cheap plane tickets, railroad…)
Blizzard is no longer that Trademark of ”Hardcore” that Activision used to cover their extremely bad reputation with actual real gamers. They slowly ruined it like everything else for a lot of fast money. as a corporate, it is maybe a good idea but as a Customer, this is pure shit… Blizzard just lost it… that is why there is no Blizzcon this year and surely not next year nor anytime soon : because Blizzard became what it finally deserve to become : just another studio.
Ok first, even though I highly disagree with pretty much everything you are saying about the popularity of the individual series and such, I will focus on only one of your points: Diablo III. The entire idea behind the implementation of the “Real Money Auction House” is actually quite ingenious. They are taking a page from the book of Free to Play MMOs like Maplestory, Last Chaos, Vindictus, etc., just to name a few. The idea is for customer’s to get extra benefits they don’t really need but may want if they spend some real life money. You are in no way obligated or ever forced to do this out of neccesity, its just an option thats available. This also holds a more serious hold on your money if you wish to get involved because its more of a risk/return system for you and everyone involved, which you can choose to get involved in or not.
I don’t understand why people would get so upset over this unless they were hoping to play Diablo III mainly as a PVP game… which would highly boggle me. PVP in Diablo 2 was idiotic, whirlwind barbs/zeal pallies completely tear through all but the luckiest of players. It wasn’t balanced in the slightest… now they might have fixed that in Diablo III, but that’s not why we have all waited so long for it… or at least I hope not. Diablo fans LOVE the pve aspects and getting hold of a class utilizing the skills available to tear through waves and waves of enemies on increasingly harder difficulties finding increasingly rarer loot.
Ok, so maybe you argue that this will remove the challenge if you can just buy all the best gear with money, but that only destroys the challenge (but not neccesarily the fun) for ONE person not everyone. You can easily choose to not party with or leave someones room that does that if you are so offended, but its most likely you wouldn’t know.
Needless to say, I don’t understand how you can be a fan of Diablo and yet cancel a pre-order for such a simple game inclusion… I would think you would be more upset about the fact that you have to be ONLINE at all times to play Diablo 3 (which I also don’t see much a problem with since Diablo is better multi-player than single-player anyways, but that is just me).
No, Blizzard does not have time to care about what every single individual fan wants, but they are staying true to their fans with hard-core games, with interesting and memorable Lore and fun and engaging gameplay. If it doesn’t suit your “needs” then move-on to another game, but don’t bash blizzard for “not-caring” they care plenty they just don’t like to listen to whiners complaining about problems they either can’t possibly fix or problems that don’t actually exist … that is all.
Good crap is there anything you don’t fanboy gush all over?
Ya know what the difference between Diablo III and F2P MMOs are? F2P MMOS ARE FREE. Diablo III is still a full price release. They’re charging full price for a game and profiteering off YOUR work. At least with F2P cash shops, you’re buying directly from the game, but here ActiBlizz is effectively making you pay to work for them.
Also, you project so hard you must have a satellite dish coming out of your head. Diablo fans love taking a class and wading through enemies and hate the PVP? You speak for everyone then? No, you don’t, you speak for yourself. You may even speak for the majority, but for the people who do PVP on Diablo, this could create a “pay to win” atmosphere which they have every right to speak out against. Also you don’t even KNOW if cash auction will become necessary or not because you don’t KNOW how the economy is going react to it. As far as we know there are no safe-guards in place to prevent inflation or exploitation of the system. Why would there be? If prices go up, Blizzard’s cut gets bigger.
Diablo is “better” as multiplayer? You have empirical evidence to back up that claim? Cause you’re not stating an opinion there, you’re stating it as a matter of fact. There seems to be a pretty large contingent of people who don’t care at all about or outwardly dislike the multiplayer aspect, but they don’t count cause they’re not playing the game the “right” way huh?
Oh and “whiners”? You must play WoW like 18hrs a day cause that’s “hardcore” WoWer talk. Anyone who speaks negatively of the game or Blizzard is a whiner, who cares if they have valid points or are displeased, they’re just whining because they don’t agree with the majority. You’d make a spectacular politician, remember all those “whiners” who were complaining about SOPA? Yeah they were just whining cause they weren’t hardcore enough to love SOPA. They were the minority, so their needs, wants, and expectations don’t matter.
Yet again you do this “if it doesn’t meet your needs you shouldn’t dislike it” crap. What the hell is that supposed to mean? If a game/console/sandwich/sexual partner doesn’t meet someone’s needs or expectations, they have every right and reason to complain about it because it isn’t what they wanted.
You are the most disgusting kind of fanboy. The kind that not only thinks their way of thinking is the only way, but also completely disregards and minimalizes every possible opinion that runs counter to that , and apparently you act like this for everything.
Well it is an Activision subsidiary, can’t be bothered to waste time or money on fans unless there’s profit to be had.
Maybe this will be an eye-opener and people will start to realize Blizzard honestly does not give a crap about you. You’re a wallet, and nothing more. Their new trend of half-baked, nearly-yearly WoW expansions, cutting SC2 into 3, full priced chunks, and Diablo III essentially being them finding a way to profiteer from gold farming here and abroad while still charging you full price for PC game they can start blocking you out of whenever they feel like shows a lot to support that.
Saddest thing is seeing people like Extra Credits drink the Kool-aid and actually support Diablo III’ cash market on the misguided belief that this will lead to cheaper games… ha.. yeah.. and then Mother 4 will come out in the US before Japan.
You seem to be implying that Blizzcon isn’t producing a huge profit margin. Between the huge ticket prices, lucrative DirecTV deals, and merchant booth deals, BlizzCon can’t help but make a profit. If profit were the sole driving factor, its easy to figure out how to make BlizzCon even more profitable. When you sell out an event in under a minute, you can boost ticket prices, use a location with a much higher capacity, or a combination of both.
I personally can’t fathom why a full workload can’t be planned around the cashcow that is the convention. They’re just taking a couple weeks to make buku bucks for stockholders. Maybe I’m just missing something, or SWTOR has hit the subscriber numbers much worse than we’re anticipating.
I’m not going to claim to understand the financial logistics of Blizzcon, but the article reported that it operates at a loss. Could they make it profitable? Maybe. I’m sure they have many well dressed, very smart, very evil men who have studied the numbers and determined if they could or not. But, higher price breeds higher expectations and it’s certainly possible they can’t provide an experience worth a profitable price tag, which would create a lot of negativity in the fan base, “I paid how much for THIS?”
My assumptions, however right or wrong they may be, are that Blizzard no longer cares, Activision won’t okay it, or due to the violence/behavior at 2011′s Con, they don’t want to do another one and open themselves up to litigation if it escalates. Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably the most logical reason.
So much for the official Titan announcement…
After six/seven years in development one would think, they would finally reveal everything about it.
And yeah, I’m one of the 2 million people who left WoW last year.
Also still bothers me that HotS campaign will be even shorter than the already short Human one in WoL. Never cared for the Multiplayer and probably never will.
My very last straw with Blizzard after the cooperate alterations in Diablo III (real money auction house, always-on DRM through Battle.net…) and the moment WoW jumped the shark IMO (the announcement of MoP) would be if it turns out, HotS will be a full price game like WoL.
And before I get downvoted, let me add this: I pretty much bought every single Blizzard game since the release of WarCraft II and still consider them to be one the very best PC developers out there. But since Activision entered the picture, they’ve suffered a slow and on-going decline in their community philosophy.
I still find it hard to take in we will have 3 new Blizz products released in 1 year.