I hate to say it, but Blizzard has become "The Man"

[jtusa]

Originally posted by: Gurck
Don't feed the trolls...

But they're so cute!

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Wingznut

Originally posted by: Muscles

Originally posted by: jtusa4

Originally posted by: Muscles
The fact that so many people are willing to shell out 12/month for WoW just tells me that there are a lot of people that are either:
1. A loser who has at least 4+ hours a day to spend to get anywhere in an MMO
2. Just stupid for throwing away money. There are so many better alternatives.
3. A person who lacks any kind of skill to play other online games which mostly include competitive play(IE Quake, UT, StarCraft, etc.). MMO's are designed so a 8 year old can play. The only limiting factor to make progess in an mmo is how much time you can deligate.
4. All of the above.

To the original poster: Blizzard is making an incredible profit and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. But should they lower prices? Put yourself in their shoes, no way. Why not take advantage of all the fools out there? God knows there are more stupid people than smart people in the world.

Feeling better about yourself yet? Do continue making fun of people that enjoy different things than you if you need to boost your self-esteem some more.

Errr why did you just waste time posting? How can my self esteem possibly be elevated from making an anonymous post on a thread of a website? I replied to the thread in the first place to post my views. If you're one of the people I described I'm so sorry I hurt your feelings :/

Seems to me that I don't fit any of your criterea...

1. I play a total of probably 12 hours per week. This is due to the fact that I have a wife, two kids, and a career. So, that probably rules out the "loser" tag, as well.
2. If I am entertained, why is it stupid. (Please be mature and keep in mind that entertainment is completely subjective. What you and I find as good way to spend our spare time can be totally different. Yet, neither is necessarily "better" than the other.)
3. I actually used to play FPS' with a clan in worldwide tournaments. (Best showing was second place. 😉 ) At any rate, sometimes I like to play FPS', sometimes I like to play RPG's, sometimes sports games, etc. I play whatever I find enjoyable.

What jtusa4 was referring to is the basic human reasoning as to why someone puts another person (or persons) down... It's because it makes them feel superior.

And that was the tone of your entire post... That you are better than those of us who play WoW.

Same situation here, except you can replace wife+kids with a bunch of friends I like to drink beer with.

It's funny, most "nerds" I know tend to be people with very active social lives, while most of the people who run around calling others loser, nerds, etc etc, are the ones who don't have any friends.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: EpsiIon

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot

Originally posted by: EpsiIon

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot
why do you "hate to say it", or is it just a figure of speech?

It's more of a figure of speech. It means that I regret the current state of affairs.

why do you regret blizzards success?

Umm... did you read the OP and the discussion following? It's not their success I regret, but the (apparent) milking of consumers. I've always thought of Blizzard as a "gamer's company" more than cash cow.

I could be drastically underestimating the costs of running an MMORPG, but it's hard for me to see the need for $18 million+ per month. It just seems to me like they could charge less and get more long-term subscribers. Of course, given their apparent load issues, they may not actually want more subscribers. 🙂

They may well lower the price, once demand cools. But as you have pointed out, they can't even service the customers they have right now, much less any new ones. It wouldn't make sense from a business or service standpoint to lower the price now...it would flood the already insufficent servers with even more subscribers. They're victims of their own success. In fact, the prudent thing to do at this point would be to raise prices to cool demand and catch up. But I don't think Blizzard feels that is a good idea because it would hurt their image.

Blizzard is a gamers company. They are perfectly willing to scrap partially developed games if they don't live up to their standard. (Warcraft Adventures) Which is a mark of a company that cares a lot about the quality of their products and reputation, IMO. Most gaming companies seem to take games that aren't working and just push them out the door anyway to recoup some lost costs.

So blizzard ran a simple game matching service for free on battle.net. Big deal. Throwing up an IRC chat room and matching up some games on a peer to peer system isn't exactly a costly endeavor. Its pretty cheap bandwidth wise I suspect, the system has most of its kinks worked out...and its not really critical that it function perfectly as its more of an addon than a integral part of the game. Running a MMORPG is a totally different animal. They are costly to create and costly to maintain. Its no surprise really that they're costly to play.

I think the MMORPG model is what it is...its to expensive for my tastes, but other people clearly find it a fair deal. And if that other thread about raising the monthly price is any indication....gamers would actually be willing to pay more than it currently costs.

I would think their runaway success with WoW would be a good thing to you WoW fans. As long as it keeps bringing in the dough, I would think that means they are going to be using that revenue to fund improvements and expansions to the online world.

 

[GasX]

I want to party with Muscles. That guy just oozes cool...

:roll: