Blizzard should take some lessons

Rydeson

I hate to say it, but Blizzard and other gamers could learn a thing or two from many of these Facebook games.   I have to say that the psychological mechanics of promoting a social "work together" game from companies like Zynga, are far superior then the BS raidcraft crap that Blizzard puts out..  Shouldn't MMO's be about socializing and finding reasons to accept and work together, instead of finding reasons (gear score) to exclude people from events or guilds.. etc etc.. 

Unless Blizzard has no intention of wanting a game like that.. as many of us feared that Blizzard actually wants to promote a guild wars esport end game..

I guess my subscription will stay inactive until someone makes a game that is a social sandbox, not a cliquie clubhouse.. lol

mrcalhou

Blizzard doesn't need to learn crap. You think they care about your subscription? They just made a few million dollars, in one day, on a flying pony.

Lethal920

After reading your post im not quite sure what you mean, I do agree things such as gearscore ruin a game and are a terrible idea, but facebook games?.....they may be fun, but who's gunna play farmville for more than a few months, that's why there are hundreds upon hundreds of them, they have no background, no storyline, no replay value..nothing besides a quick, cheap, fun for maybe a month

mrcalhou

I think that the point of this thread is that he wants the old SWG back.

Fdzzaigl

Zynga...

ZYNGA?

Z-Y-N-G-A?

 

*shudder*

Rydeson

I think you missed the whole concept of the topic.. Maybe I should spell it out for you in simple financial terms..

A financial research report issued this month by NextUp! Research indicates that the social game publisher Zynga is probably worth around $3 billion dollars. The report expects an annual compound growth rate of 35% for Zynga through 2014. NextUp! projects revenue of $460 million for Zynga this year, increasing to $1.1 billion by 2014. The company has grown its userbase from roughly 30 million monthly active users in April 2009 to 228 million  monthly active users in January 2010.

The fact is Blizzard hasn't shown any growth in subscription base for over a year.  This is not a "this game will destroy that game" post.. It's a simple observation that while some companies seem to struggle with subscription numbers, others have shown double digit increases in active customers and revenues..  Ask yourself why do companies like Zynga thrive where other markets fizzle.  Could it be they have learned to tap the "social" psychology to increase their market?

I and many others quit wow because if was becoming anything but social.. IMO    

jadedlevir

Play second life

and why would blizzard change the most succesful  mmo design ever in order to accomdate a tiny niche market of what is probably under a hundred thousand.

Now while i agree that blizzard really needs to focus more on the potential of their newly designed azeroth, and trying to get players back into world pvp, exploration and getting out there, i also know that they don't have to change anything and they would still be the top grossing mmo ever.

But blizzard is smarter then that, and thats why they're changing so many core parts of the game in cataclysm, cuz they know the have to keep people interested in face of new mmo's, being sw:tor, which is probably their biggest threat yet.

Lethal920

You can't disagree with those numbers, but if companies such a blizzard started following companies such as Zynga and creating games similar to Farmville and Mafia Wars, the gaming world would be a sad place indeed...

I also believe these games are so successful simply because they are based on Facebook and Myspace, many people will play these games just while waiting for a reply from a friend or while chatting with friends.

nyxium

I smell viral ads for Zynga here.

Rydeson

I think many of you are missing it..  no offence.. We aren't talking about changing the game that much, just changing the psychology of the game.   If you think WoW is the role model of what a good "SOCIAL" mmo game is, then all is hopeless.  The WoW of today is nothing like it was of yesterdays.  The game has turned into a dog eat dog Esport, where rankings achievements and gear score mean everything.   This is what I was addressing...  IMO after Cataclysm, the game will start to lose subscriptions once people find out the game hasin't improved, but only gotten worst..   I used Facebook games as an example because they are successful in designing games because of the SOCIAL attraction and interaction..

I and many others currently went back to playing EQ and loving it.. Atleast there we dont' have to worry about lame clique mechanics of gear score to find out if someone is allowed to go on a raid or not..  

Lethal920

But you see the social attraction is from the websites they are based on (Facebook/Myspace) not the games themselves.

Imagine how unsuccessful Farmville would be if it had its own website, and wasn't based on others.

Omali

Originally posted by Rydeson

I hate to say it, but Blizzard and other gamers could learn a thing or two from many of these Facebook games.   I have to say that the psychological mechanics of promoting a social "work together" game from companies like Zynga, are far superior then the BS raidcraft crap that Blizzard puts out..  Shouldn't MMO's be about socializing and finding reasons to accept and work together, instead of finding reasons (gear score) to exclude people from events or guilds.. etc etc.. 

Unless Blizzard has no intention of wanting a game like that.. as many of us feared that Blizzard actually wants to promote a guild wars esport end game..

I guess my subscription will stay inactive until someone makes a game that is a social sandbox, not a cliquie clubhouse.. lol

World of Warcraft isn't a social sandbox, which makes your argument obsolete. 

nyxium

WoW died for me when the LFG dungeon system threw me into groups of total shits who I didn't know and couldn't trust. The old mechanic of building up social contacts with players on your own realm so you knew how nice / nasty / skilled / hopeless / ninja they were kept me coming back.

LOTRO healed that a bit, but it was no WoW. Still a cool game though.

Rydeson

Originally posted by Omali

Originally posted by Rydeson

I hate to say it, but Blizzard and other gamers could learn a thing or two from many of these Facebook games.   I have to say that the psychological mechanics of promoting a social "work together" game from companies like Zynga, are far superior then the BS raidcraft crap that Blizzard puts out..  Shouldn't MMO's be about socializing and finding reasons to accept and work together, instead of finding reasons (gear score) to exclude people from events or guilds.. etc etc.. 

Unless Blizzard has no intention of wanting a game like that.. as many of us feared that Blizzard actually wants to promote a guild wars esport end game..

I guess my subscription will stay inactive until someone makes a game that is a social sandbox, not a cliquie clubhouse.. lol

World of Warcraft isn't a social sandbox, which makes your argument obsolete. 

TY for proving my pont.. LOL  WoW isn't a social sandbox.. infact there is lil SOCIAL about it anymore.. My observation was far from obsolete , it was dead spot on.. TY  for your confirmation and endorsement    

/chuckling

Phry

Sadly, Blizzard probably have learned something from zynga, zynga has games that try to force you to buy items for real cash, its insidious, personally i dont like zynga, i consider them to be little more than scammers, with an apparently 'legal' facade. But they are so 'profitable' that i guess it encourages others to use the 'cash shop' business model. The recent case with the celestial mounts in WoW have no doubt been very profitable, hopefully that will be the extent of zynga's influence on online gaming...

Kyleran

Originally posted by Lethal920

After reading your post im not quite sure what you mean, I do agree things such as gearscore ruin a game and are a terrible idea, but facebook games?.....they may be fun, but who's gunna play farmville for more than a few months, that's why there are hundreds upon hundreds of them, they have no background, no storyline, no replay value..nothing besides a quick, cheap, fun for maybe a month

Er, this pretty much sums up the state of most modern MMORPG's today I think.

I'm all for more socialization mechanics in games, but I think Blizzard does a pretty good job of learning (copying) from other games already and they are intentionally avoiding this element as they can get more than enough subs w/o it.

DerWotan

I agree that socialising should be part of every MMORPG. Anyway Everquest had it, so did Daoc and UO. Its a matter of game philosophy obviously Blizzard nowadays is only interested in the quick/big $ so I doubt you see some socialising elements soon.

I really don't give a crap about Facebook so I don't know what farmville is all about but you can't compare Browsergames to MMO's. Is farmville a P2P or "Free"2Play game?

You can bet your money that Blizzards next game will take us of Facebook and stuff like that (premium service!) but just don't count on socialising in a Blizzard game again.

riceae02

Apples and Oranges ... people will compare any game to WoW it seems (The price of being on top I guess).  Whats next ... comparing Wow to the way countries run their sociaties, should Zynga be consulted to end communism? j/k but u get my point. I really don't think Wow is hurting for money and their formula seems to have been working fine. If it ain't broke ... don't try and fix it.

shadowman465

Yeah you definitly can't compare a game like farmville to WoW. Farmville isnt even its own game its connected with millions on facebook. Plus farmville is free

Krypty

Originally posted by mrcalhou

Blizzard doesn't need to learn crap. You think they care about your subscription? They just made a few million dollars, in one day, on a flying pony.

LOL.

camrock79

Originally posted by Rydeson

I think you missed the whole concept of the topic.. Maybe I should spell it out for you in simple financial terms..

A financial research report issued this month by NextUp! Research indicates that the social game publisher Zynga is probably worth around $3 billion dollars. The report expects an annual compound growth rate of 35% for Zynga through 2014. NextUp! projects revenue of $460 million for Zynga this year, increasing to $1.1 billion by 2014. The company has grown its userbase from roughly 30 million monthly active users in April 2009 to 228 million  monthly active users in January 2010.

The fact is Blizzard hasn't shown any growth in subscription base for over a year.  This is not a "this game will destroy that game" post.. It's a simple observation that while some companies seem to struggle with subscription numbers, others have shown double digit increases in active customers and revenues..  Ask yourself why do companies like Zynga thrive where other markets fizzle.  Could it be they have learned to tap the "social" psychology to increase their market?

I and many others quit wow because if was becoming anything but social.. IMO    

Ok I know that you quoted a bunch of numbers blah blah blah. But here's the problem with reports like these. They don't take into account market saturation. Blizzard has virtually saturated the entire market, hence little to no shfit in its subscription base. To assume a continuous growth rate of 35% while possible, is highly improbable. As they begin to saturate the market and/or customer retention becomes an issue as mentioned earlier, that number will drop dramatically. It's like when those people that try and sell IRA's tell you that if you put $1000 in a bank account today at 10% interest you will be a millionaire in 20 years. Well guess what? the likelihood of a continuous 10% return is ridiculous. That's 10% mind you, so how quickly do you think that 35% return will shift? Also With (let's say I don't have actual numbers) 10 million subs a month blizzard makes $150 million a month for subs alone, that doesn't include paid services, retail purchases, digital downloads etc.

Another major difference between the two is that games like farmville is F2P via facebook and WoW is P2P. If Wow made all its profits through ads and item malls with no monthly sub, they would easily have subscription numbers at or above Zynga's user base. The fact is that those numbers sound nice and all but WoW as a giant in the MMO industry is obviously doing something right and will have difficulty grow only due to the fact that it is a P2P game.

Aetheus

These numbers are completely irrelevant, the only reason that the growth margins on those facebook games are so high is because it is easy to play. People waste hours of time on facebook, it is a social networking tool and they're usually bored while talking - so they start playing a little flash game.

World of Warcraft is client based, you can't get a flash based game's accessibility into a client based game, it is a totally different story. It is like saying "Okay, let's look at (X) game, lets try and bring their player base into our game and slap them with a huge learning curve of a real game and MMO."

I just don't think its a feasible comparison for analysis, but that's me.

lagerchobg

Originally posted by mrcalhou

Blizzard doesn't need to learn crap. You think they care about your subscription? They just made a few million dollars, in one day, on a flying pony.

Totally agree. And why should they care? And also Zygna are just milking the addicted gamers for cash if you take Farmville for example. Sooner or later you will pay mad money for a "secret sheep" or a cow... which seems kind of a pointless though. Anyway good job Blizzard! Just go on and make millions on our back.

Thillian

Originally posted by Rydeson

I hate to say it, but Blizzard and other gamers could learn a thing or two from many of these Facebook games.   I have to say that the psychological mechanics of promoting a social "work together" game from companies like Zynga, are far superior then the BS raidcraft crap that Blizzard puts out..  Shouldn't MMO's be about socializing and finding reasons to accept and work together, instead of finding reasons (gear score) to exclude people from events or guilds.. etc etc.. 

Unless Blizzard has no intention of wanting a game like that.. as many of us feared that Blizzard actually wants to promote a guild wars esport end game..

I guess my subscription will stay inactive until someone makes a game that is a social sandbox, not a cliquie clubhouse.. lol

 So you're criticizing the whole MMORPG genre, because World of Warcraft isn't social enough. It's like criticizing sports, because there is not much intelligence needed to become good in boxing. You know, there are games that enforce socializing and grouping, just like there are sports that promotes intelligence over fitness.

Rydeson

Wall.. talk about speaking to a wall..... lol

The TOPIC is the pyschology of SOCIAL behavior and mechanitcs..  Get on topic or don't post.. TY

Have a great day..

Fdzzaigl

Originally posted by Rydeson

Wall.. talk about speaking to a wall..... lol

The TOPIC is the pyschology of SOCIAL behavior and mechanitcs..  Get on topic or don't post.. TY

Have a great day..

How exactly do games from Zynga, like Farmville and Mafia Wars encourage social activities better than Blizzards games?

The only social aspect to them are the already underlying ones from facebook itself, for the rest it's just spending a couple of hours on virtual crops (ffs btw).