News Activision Blizzard drops 600 jobs

Activision Blizzard has announced 600 job cuts as it begins to lose its grip on World of Warcraft subscribers.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2012/03/01/activision-blizzard-drops-jobs/1

 

Drop the guys who design such linear and boring raids in cataclysm and bring in people who can design to the standards of vanilla and burning crusade expansions.

 

WoW will probably loose even more players with Pandaria expansion. I know many players who don't really feel that Kong fu panda belongs in the WoW universe. I have a feeling Blizzard lost the ball a bit with the Pandaria idea, since it seems to split the community in two: those who will leave when it comes out and those who loves the idea. Unlike Cataclysm which got many "old" players back into the game I think Pandaria will have the opposite effect.

-Jacob

 

+1

 

200 jobs here in Cork gone.

@suragh - the jobs are in support staff not designers, so mostly eastern European support staff working out of Cork office

 

+2

 

I think the panda expansion was just a terrible idea. I havn't played wow for a few years now but hearing the panda expansion just made me laugh, I honest thought it was a joke when someone told me about it.

I always wished that blizzard would release an expansion based on the Emerald Dream being overrun by a new enemy called Nightmare, so the expansion would be called the Emerald Nightmare. As a long time druid player, i would have loved that. But I wont be going back to wow so will never experience it.

However, re-release SWG in its original form, i would bloody jump on that game again. best MMO ive played where you can make tonns of cash and friends by playing non combat characters. No other mmo comes anywhere close to that sort of enjoyment.

 

It certainly is confusing that WoW continues to lose subscribers, yet they make a point of not dropping any WoW devs. Makes me wonder two things: are they simply trying not to scare current subscribers, or is WoW perhaps not losing as much money as some other project(s)?

Also have to love that PR spin. 60 less developers yet everything is still right on track. Riiiiight.

 

60 developers facing the chop.......not chopped.

We will see how it turns out.

Mayeb the console division got canned? Who knows......everyone just jumps on WoW.....but come on.....they arnt gonna sack 600ppl cause wow slows down.

The roles gone are more around the support team and possibly the retail teams.....as Digital distribution is taking over.

I dont think WoW had anything to do with these latest rumblings.

 

the gw2 beta is end of this month.. rumors are it's almost ready for release afterwards

they might be anticipating a fallout in subs least for this year

 

You yourself say you haven't played in years yet are quick to jump on the bashing bandwagon. Do you have any idea how much wow has evolved over the past 4 years... *sigh*

 

I think WoW is forecasting a fall in subs every year from here on out. I mean it'll never die, it'll probably not stop being the biggest MMO for years to come, but it's old, it's tired, and it's not going to be replacing players at the rate it loses them.

Also Diablo 3. That's going to hit the WoW player base hard.

 

I don't see how they can justify dropping people at all to be honest. Given the amount of money they have made over the years, I'm sure they could take a bit of a hit and find other projects for the employees.

 

Guild wars 2 is going to smash wow's subscriptions to 50% mark my words.

 

Haha yeah, I can definitely see this happening.

 

GW2 won't. It could easily be twice the game that WoW is, indeed it sounds at least twice as much. But a hell of a lot of WoW players are addicts, casuals and kids. They aren't going anywhere.

 

Blizzard hasn't released a quality product since the Diablo 2 expansion pack, and cutting jobs isn't going to change that. They're running on reputation and user base at the moment, and that won't last for ever.

WOW survives because it's the biggest, not because it's the best, and like social networking, search engines and so much else, being the biggest confers a huge advantage. Everyone wants to play the game everyone else is playing, the game their friends are playing, and up until now, that has allowed WOW to hold on to most of its player base. Once that starts crumbling, WOW is over.

 

Interesting that you mention casuals and kids as people who wouldn't be swayed by GW2. The subscription free nature of the game appeals to both of those markets quite well because it's relatively cheap and you can start and stop at your leisure.

On the subject of addicts, any MMO will have its "addicts". MMOs represent an accumulation of time and effort, every MMO player is hesitant to move to a new game as it represents giving up all that they've gained and starting over. Because of this no reasonably mature MMO will ever see anything near 50% playerbase loss in the short term, no matter how good the competition is.

 

a few of the asian kids i know were dropping wow cause of the school/economy and were playing league of legends. my older friends seems to be playing battlefield 3

 

whilst i agree with your first point, i think what you say about cataclysm tempting old players back isnt true. i played from vanilla up to wotlk with quite alot of my original guildies and most of us took a look at cataclysm and felt its the end of the road and didnt bother even buying it.
its not hard to miss the old world of warcraft though and i think its a shame what its become but theres no way back now