Blizzard: willfully engage in a business model that manipulates players into constantly looking for the next thing, and structures their games around that model to drive sales of microtransaction

Blizzard's Player Base: fills with people responding to that manipulation

Blizzard:

Players have no patience

/Looks at Baldur's Gate 3 sales

Uh huh.

This of their own making. That keep using FOMO and then get angry that people start to expect that feeling.

I'm ruining friendships by doing this, but idc. If a game is "Free to Play" but features a bunch of "Optional purchases." That's an immediate NO from me.

So many times this cycle has gone "Free to Play" but the game is only meaningfully playable and fun if you invest ??? money into it.

That's a NO, and a BIG no.

Share holders decide one-time payment games don't make enough money

CEO transfers their major IPs to a "pay as you go" service promising a steady stream of new content to be worth it

Degrades or drops older games that players still enjoy to force the new games-as-a-service model

Players expect new content that was promised in exchange for the seasonal payments they now make

Surprised Pikachu face

Yes, Blizzard, when you expect people to pay continuously, they expect something for their money continuously.

Did you imagine they were happy just to hand it over out of love and kindness for your profits?

Was anyone even asking for diablo to be a live game? Saying as politely as I can, we ran the same D2 campaign for YEARS and there was enough variety in just characters and play styles to keep us busy.

The bit of D3 I played seemed to come down to finding a cheese build, whirlwinding through increasingly large enemy hordes, and collecting a golden trinket at the end, one you'd never use because it didn't match the meta.

Now the only people left playing want to "zone out" and mindlessly tear through blizz content faster than they can pump it out, blizzard did this to themselves.

Fuck you blizz.. fuck you activi.. fuck off microsoft!

Almost feels like a little response to the anger from players about the 3 day early access for the new wow expansion.

Nah, I just wanna play Overwatch, why'd they have to kill it?

Blizzard have no shame. They want a lot of money for the game, more money for subscribtion and even more money for cosmetics in the store.

He's confusing his customers and shareholders.

What? Don't you have phones?

I mean… that is the live service beast.

Those smug assholes have been whining about "entitled" players since WotLK after the rightfully negative reception of the artistically lazy "Argent Crusade" gearsets that looked like tracksuits and were hard to tell apart from each other, class by class.

No... I just want to buy the game, and occasional expansions.

I don't want everything to be monetized.

Buy game + expansions + recurring battle pass + cosmetic shops +++.

I feel like games should limit their monetization to 2 methods, and not utilize FOMO like a battle-pass does. Any cash shops should be designed to be accessible to players not wanting to spend real money (either a game system to handle in-game currency exchange, or have players work it out by allowing players to directly trade in-game currency for either cash shop currency, or cash shop items directly - ensuring there are worthwhile things to purchase both with in-game currency as well, so cash-shop players are encouraged to participate).

Guild Wars 2 I feel does a good job of it. Occasional expansions to purchase, no sub, a cosmetic+convenience shop, but everything in it, can be purchased by converting earned in-game currency into cash-shop currency.

Yes, people want new stuff, problem is blizzard doesn’t know how to make games anymore. All of the giants who made the magic happen left the company before the sexual harassment shitstorm. All they do now is capitalize on nostalgia.

suck it nubliz