Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard; Impact MMORPG genre and Ashes, short and long term?

How do you feel about Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard?
Impact on MMORPG genre? Market share, WOW decline, other brands that could be MMO?
Impact on Ashes of Creation? recruitment, player base, pricing wars?
Short term, long term?
Would Microsoft step away from p2w for a single game?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Atama

Someone needed to straighten out Blizzard’s toxic culture. Maybe Microsoft can.

I think it has zero impact on AoC. Why would it affect this game?

daveywavey

I have no strong feelings about it at all. Presumably, they thought it made sense financially, and that's why they did it.
I don't see it having much of an effect on us here.

Nerror

In a general sense I don't like the consolidation of so many IPs under a single company, and I don't like those big buyouts or mergers. I have yet to see it really benefit the consumers. I guess we'll have to wait and see what MS does with WoW for example, if they revive it or make WoW 2 or some other MMO.

Specifically for Ashes I am not too worried of the impact in the immediate future.

Noaani

I personally think this is more a case Microsoft wanting the CoD franchise as Xbox exclusive games. Destiny, Overwatch and Diablo also being Xbox exclusive is likely to be an attractive prospect to Microsoft.

I doubt they really care all that much about WoW.

Azryil

It's unlikely that we will see any real change for at least a year or two, and even then unless they start changing up the team leads for WoW I doubt the overall direction of the game will change much.

NishUK

From the sound of them, they will focus on mobile gaming and convienence.

This is going to be an added promotion tool to convert people over to Windows 11 and whatever devices other than PC that contain that new OS.

This will have no impact on gaming that is dedicated toward those who take games as a main hobby at home.

CROW3

Heh. Maybe Microsoft will rez Titan.

It’s a smart move by Microsoft, they consolidate their investment in the top two FPS games. Not to mention the Diablo, Warcraft, and Overwatch IPs (and their licensing agreements).

There’s a part of me - the one that excitedly bought Warcraft 2 and stayed up till 4am making maps - that mourns the death of Blizzard.

My guess for some time has been that the real WoW-killer would be WoW itself. That the game would buckle under its own weight. Seems fairly close to reality.

Sawtooth

Double down on Ashes, monopolization is never a good thing. Microsoft is just buying the industry.
You would be wise to support small devs and grass roots projects like Ashes.

JustVine

I predict that if they even moderately fix WoW's current game play problems it will nerf FFXIV's population back to pre blizz collapse levels. This will have no effect on Ashes other than maybe draw back the WoW people hanging around depending on what they fix.

tautau

I suspect Microsoft will continue the trend towards mass marketed, more generic, profit oriented games.

Regarding AoC, I think that will make us more unique and a potentially stronger market position. AoC will fit into a Differentiated niche, which can lead to a profitable and healthy business (reference Porter's Five Forces model).

Boanergese

They probably did it because of the revenue from Call of Duty and Candy Crush. The mobile game market from King games actually generated a lot of revenue. If you look at the Activision stocks and quarterly reports money was being made by other games besides World of Warcraft. Blizzard was a good company before it was acquired by Activision. When it first made diablo, star craft, warcraft there was a game design to make the best AAA game and to release it when it was ready. World of Warcraft didn't really decline until after Lich King. I don't think the acquisition from Microsoft will affect FF14, WoW, or this game.

Aerlana

WoW is old,
WoW killed itself (it can do a comeback with good work, etc. but the time of wow is behind)

So this buy won't affect anything in MMORPG.

one thing could impact : gamepass.
Microsoft could use WoW to test to have no direct subscription, but just a little increase in the gamepass :
We would have so the gamepass, and gamepass + X$ to access to any mmorpg (in a subscription system, hoping NO cash shop... i know i dream awake ^^')

aside of that... nothing

McMackMuck

MS want game studios so that game releases go straight onto game pass without negotiations and license expenses. They can still choose to license games to other platforms, but that puts those competitors at a financial disadvantage.
I think MS will run their own ethics training program at Act Blizz within the first 12 months, which should be a breath of fresh air for decent employees and a wake up call for any remaining offenders from the old regime.

Overall I feel like the consolidation of power is a bad thing. MS, like all the big players, try to monopolize markets by simple inobtrusive (ok, $68.7b stands out!) incremental steps that seem reasonable until you step back and look at the big picture. Setting up Game pass for market domination is just another one of these.

It's okay so long as there is effective competition keeping each specific market healthy. The console market is a 2.5 horse race at the moment, which makes me think Sony and Nintendo probably need to combine to try to compete with Xbox, but there are obstacles to that.

No impact on Ashes in the next ten years, I feel. Beyond that, too many variables to speculate.

daveywavey

McMackMuck wrote: »

which makes me think Sony and Nintendo probably need to combine to try to compete with Xbox

Nintony?

McMackMuck

SONY would be the major partner, I assume.
SONYNTENDO works the same(slightly better) in katakana characters as it does in English as far as I can tell.
If Nintendo believe they can survive with exclusive IP, a loyal fan base and lower spec consoles then there's no reason for them to sell out to Sony.

Ironhope

There won't be any notable impact in the near or medium future I expect.

It's not like WoW will become a good game now or WoW 2 will come out.

The MMO-RPG genre has been creativelly bankrupt for almost two decades and this recent acquisition isn't going to change anything.

Maybe AOC will change this. Based on what it promissed its got a good chance of doing that.
Maybe not.

We'll see.

Ironhope

Boanergese wrote: »

World of Warcraft didn't really decline until after Lich King. I don't think the acquisition from Microsoft will affect FF14, WoW, or this game.

The game started rotting since late vanilla patches but it only started smelling by Cataclysm.

Flying for everybody, instance finder, old expansion content simply being forsaken, the story being trash and a ''here let me hold your hand baby'' game philosophy, started showing their ugly head long before sub numbers started dropping and the magic dissipating.

The main reason WoW sub numbers kept growing until cata was because WoW's core was a good one.

Sure, some good changes such as arenas, perfected raiding, achievements, etc were also still appearing up until WOTLk, that is true.

The lesson game devs like Intrepid should note here is that decline usually doesn't come in the form of a bullet to the head. It's often a death by a thousand needles.

FF14 also showed that success (relative at least) sometimes doesn't come in the form of a big over-night hit but is often if not even most times a long journey.

Nerror

Imagine WoW with monthly or even quarterly proper content patches, with servers that can handle 500+ players in PvP, with developers and a publisher that actually listen to their community. All included in the gamepass+. It would explode their numbers again. I am not saying I think that will happen, but if they are smart, they are sitting on a goldmine right there, and one that actually might affect Ashes.

The whole Warcraft/Starcraft IP is incredibly popular. Warcraft 4, Starcraft 3, Hearthstone 2. Massive moneymakers if made well.

Ironhope

Nerror wrote: »

Imagine WoW with monthly or even quarterly proper content patches, with servers that can handle 500+ players in PvP, with developers and a publisher that actually listen to their community. All included in the gamepass+. It would explode their numbers again. I am not saying I think that will happen, but if they are smart, they are sitting on a goldmine right there, and one that actually might affect Ashes.

The whole Warcraft/Starcraft IP is incredibly popular. Warcraft 4, Starcraft 3, Hearthstone 2. Massive moneymakers if made well.

Imagine a Classic+ (new expansions starting from where wow vanilla ended BUT in the spirit of vanilla wow) done right.

Now that would be a big thing for the genre and a big money maker.

But realistically, none of these will ever happen.

It's just going to be the same degenerate-perverted-pseudo-Blizzard sending the checks from the WoW earnings to someone else realistically.

Don't get me wrong.
I wish I things would change for the better. But realistically they wont.

Sathrago

Well, can this move make WoW any worse? I think regardless of the answer it will be a "good" thing for Ashes of Creation. If it gets better we have more competition to keep Ashes on its toes, if it doesn't you get a larger pool of potential players.

Child Item