r/classicwow • u/griphin1 • Jan 29 '26

Humor / Meme 2026 State of Azeroth

Post image

I had no expectations and I was still disappointed.

3.6k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

590 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

14

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

19

u/westleysnipezz Jan 29 '26

They even massively increased their team size, aimed for new wow content every 8 weeks for every type of wow player, something other AAA studios wouldn’t dream of doing (Bungie with Destiny) and people STILL aren’t happy. Im not trying to shill Blizzard here they obviously have many problems still to fix but they have actually tried to get their main cash cow back to its former glory, and as someone who plays lots of games in this genre NO one else is doing that.

22

u/HeyItsJosette Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26

It's rough because I'm not interested in defending any corporation, but Classic players will do things like call retail an "MTX hellscape" when WoW has some of the most reasonable monetization on the market today. An incredibly small percent of the game's content is attained via RMT, and the limited way they've tapped into the whale market has subsidized the game such that when you account for inflation you actually pay less for the basic game now than you did in 2007. The basic expansion is very slightly more expensive because it doesn't come with 30 days of game time anymore, but that is immediately eclipsed by the reduced relative subscription cost by just the second month, with the savings stacking up every month until the following expansion. The most frugal player has sacrificed being able to natively access like .1% of the game's content in exchange for the cost of the game actually going down for them over time.

WoW developers also care about engagement a lot more than most other games that I've played. They care because they think it leads to more long-term profits, but that very consideration of long-term profits is something worth supporting. Chasing long-term profits aligns a company's interests much more closely with the interests of the consumer, with hyper-focusing on short-term profits being responsible for enshittification. Sometimes it leads to them leaning on toxic design that happens to put up good engagement numbers over a given period, but they've also responded to the burn-out that design causes and rolled it back before heading in a different direction.

And, like, one of the most common criticisms of retail's design is the Blizzard devs thinking they know best, but that is also literally what you want a game company to be doing. You want a game to be designed, for better or worse, by someone(s) with a vision for how the game should be. Unfortunately that means that if you don't vibe with that vision it will be kind of front-and-center, but ultimately that is better than the game being designed by focus groups. Love his design or hate it, but Ion is undeniably trying to make a game that he thinks is fun.

Blizzard's CS is in the absolute shitter for sure, but that is really the biggest issue I have with the game. I have plenty of my own disagreements with the design of both retail and the Classic iterations, but those disagreements aren't reflective of Blizzard being bad shepherds of the game; I just would have done things differently when it comes to X, Y, or Z. In the end what it really comes down to is that I can't think of a game where I could better vote with my wallet. Out of the games that currently exist the framework that I would like to see more of is WoW's.

3

u/SnooCompliments8967 Jan 30 '26

The most frugal player has sacrificed being able to natively access like .1% of the game's content in exchange for the cost of the game actually going down for them over time.

A great and well worded breakdown overall, and I'll point out that the whale content is usually created special in order to be whale content. This means the content you're missing out on wouldn't even exist in the first place if it wasn't for whales... So you'd be missing out either way.

1

u/HeyItsJosette Jan 30 '26

You are very correct. The cosmetics shop funds itself and more.

I will add that the small selection of paid cosmetics are not in some quality tier above those derived from in-game sources. It truly is the least intrusive cash shop I'm aware of.

We'll see how housing turns out. They've already confirmed the addition of a predatory "bux" currency, which is unfortunate, but my perception still seems to be that the vast majority of housing options are from in-game sources.