Blizzard Respecs for the Future

[Morreion]

Hearthstone and Diablo make up for World of Warcraft subscriber slide (Eurogamer)
Blizzard respecs for the future.

The number of people who subscribe to massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft fell to 7.1 million, Blizzard said - but the success of Hearthstone and Diablo is helping make up for it.

The November 2014 release of expansion Warlords of Draenor boosted the long-running MMO's subscriber count to over 10 million after 3.3m copies were sold in 24 hours. Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime said Warlords of Draenor "brought more players back than any previous expansion". But by the end of March 2015 subscribers had fallen by three million to 7.1m...

Card game Hearthstone has seen explosive growth since its launch, and now has a whopping 30 million players. Blizzard recently started beta testing the Chinese version of Diablo 3 and saw three million players sign up. Two weeks ago the open beta launched, with over 1m sales now in the bank.

"Strong recurring franchise diversification is in process inside the Blizzard portfolio, which sets us up for a bright 2016 and beyond." Looking to the future, Hearthstone is set for a new expansion, Blackrock Mountain, Heroes of the Storm launches proper in June, StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void will be pushed out to more players, and an Overwatch closed beta looms on the horizon.

[Laethaka]

I heard all the timed garrison crap is ruining WoW. People play the whole game without ever leaving instances.

[Morreion]

I've seen this complaint too. This seems to be a trend in mature games. LOTRO did the same thing (I forget what they called their instances now). It makes the world a barren place because people are getting better experience in instances. Not good- but then when you think about it, people aren't that social outside of guilds anyway now. But games look dead. Might as well be an FPS with a bunch of 'instances'.

[Laethaka]

I joined a hardcore guild in WoW a few months in and I don't think I ever ran instances with a pug again. I mean, why would I? WoW's group size was only 5 so it was easy to fill up with pure guildies (who were also wayyyy more geared and skilled than the average LFG).

Really insular group formation is important for making MMOs deep and immersive and truly social, but even that can feel meaningless if there's no context of a bigger world around it. A lot of devs don't understand that it doesn't matter if that world-context is nasty and corrosive. EQ1 guilds blocked spawns to monopolize gear. Eve corporations shamelessly betray and subvert each other. A guy in my WoW guild lost his job so we could camp the emerald dragons a competitor needed for Huhuran. Those are the unique and glorious things all players involved remember long after, but since Burning Crusade WoW's have been gradually trimmed away to clean the game up.