#blizz was NEVER this reactionary with any of the previous competition

[elfyourmother]

@kunstpause yeah re: Blizzard’s fuckery, the problem is WoW really had no viable competition for the longest time and they rested on its success and it didn’t matter how terrible the shit they were shoveling out was, where were people really going to go? then you had people like me who basically quit playing years ago but held onto subs because of sunk cost fallacy/nostalgia (I literally kept mine towards the end just to look up things for my fanfic lmao)

but everything they’ve been doing for the last 5 or so years in particular with that game has really smacked of desperation to me because they’ve been bleeding subs like crazy and need to staunch that somehow. that’s how you get shit like trying to bring Illidan back and vanilla servers and all this nonsense. this latest thing is just vile though and healthy games don’t do that. the difference in philosophy is so stark and it’s not to say SE is perfect and yoshida can do no wrong. but even with their mistakes and missteps there is a genuine love of the player base that you never saw with wow. Can you imagine any of those ding dong bros sticking themselves into the game to thank their players once a year? (rather than just putting self inserts to fuck blue chicks). I think a lot of that is certainly down to cultural differences but also failing so spectacularly out of the gate the way xiv did I think had a way of making SE humble. yoshi p & team are immensely grateful for that second chance and it shows. For all the cash shop jokes we make, we’re not treated as walking wallets.

on top of all this it’s been very obvious for a long time now that XIV has blizz scared like no other competing MMO ever has. back in the day everyone used to crow about the hot new mmo being a wow killer and none of them ever were, it was a running joke even. Conan, Warhammer, etc were all supposed to kill wow. The only game that’s even still around of that lot and was moderately successful is GW. but XIV is the one that’s going to do it though, it already has the knife to the jugular and that was obvious to me even back in Stormblood but especially now

nowadays all you see even on my small server are sprouts with Azeroth derivative names and every other day on reddit there’s a “I’m a wow refugee” thread. like I said I noticed this during SB even when I was new but ShB really accelerated it. I think it’s a combo of the critical acclaim it’s gotten and bofa being the nadir of the game according to everyone ever. It was like the perfect storm of factors. I really don’t think XIV will stay #2 in numbers for much longer. I don’t think anything will reach the numbers Blizz had at wow’s peak just because the market is so much more saturated now and mmorpgs have largely been supplanted in mainstream popularity by battle royales. But XIV will definitely catch them it’s just a matter of time