Activision Shares Down Thanks to World of Warcraft Slide

[DTWolfwood]

so I guess no one is gonna count SWTOR into the equation? lol

Glad to see almost 2 million people have regain their senses. Congrats on beating that addiction folks.

Its ok when Diablo3 ships Activision should see a nice boost. Not to mention Heart of the Swarm.

Then there is next years COD

 

[samsonguy920]

Because then you are saying you want Kotick to make nothing but crappy business decisions and then just let Vivendi sell Activision/Blizzard off piecemeal.
I don't see Bobby doing that. Activision's one fault is overdoing some titles, but otherwise they do have strong business sense. They don't embrace crap DRM like EA or Ubisoft(snip)

Time for another ...
OBJECTION !!!
Crappy business decisions ?
My - look the way WoW handles balancing before Kotick and with Kotick at the helm. It ain't pretty.
Not supporting local Lan mode for the most important game in competitive RTS history ?
Not embracing DRM like Ubisoft ? Sorry, have you heard of Battlenet 2.0 ? What gives you the idea that this always on DRM would not be DRM ?
Not supporting Mods for Diablo 3, map marketplace for SCII ?
Those decisions will throttle the creative scene around these games, and in the case of D3, it outright kills it.

NOT SMART. Blizzard games are successfull because they can be played forever and ever after. If you butcher user created content, you have to ramp up your own development for several years to make up for the creativity your fans would give you for free.

It gives Torchelight 2 ample amunition against its competitor, as it can brag "Why yes, you can play your game anytime, anywhere and how you like it!"
The only way they got away with Bnet2.0 is because there is 0.0 competition for Starcraft2. Nothing comes even close to it.

With WoW it's an entirely different cup of tea. They slept for too long to realize that the market has developed way ahead of them. The technology, the storytelling and the mechanics have grown over the years - but WoW only imitated during those times. They addepted some promising concepts from other games and integrated them into WoW, but never as successfull as other mmos. Now, a fair share of their customers outgrew them too. The IP, for what I know about it, has been used up. Unless you reroll the scenario completly it simply can't generate enough convincing story to support several years of gaming. They are down the barrel with this expansions... pandaren COULD have been cool, if they where presented more like the kick-ass samurai/ferocious monks etc. But no! gotta apease the kids... make em´fuzzy grinning cuddly bears!
Get your carebear sticker on your way out, see you in another MMO. (GW2 for me)

Bnet2.0 for Starcraft can be left offline for the single player campaign. I doubt that will change just because they want to treat Diablo 3 as an MMO. I am confused by the rest of your argument since it actually sits in line with what I said. I do not support WoW as it is anymore. It is a tired and used up game that 800k people woke up and realized. As far as I know, Battle.net is Blizzard's property only. Activision does not use it for any of its titles, nor would I expect them to. Considering Activision's biggest title is known for its multiplayer, people are going to be online for it anyway.
As I said, if Acti/Blizz wants to prevent a serious plummet, they need to put serious thought into just putting all effort in Blizzard's second MMO, and when that releases, shut WoW down and get it renovated with new content and a new engine. They can keep the old engine to run on smartphones by then.

They specifically said last year that they are keeping it under covers until October 2012 at the earliest.

Specifically or not, last year they were sitting pretty with a player base that hadn't just hit a pothole. Business decisions can change those kinds of things on a whim at any time.
As it is, I have to wonder if the turnout for Diablo 3 will hit their forecast, because if it doesn't(as it shouldn't with the crap they've put into it between the auction house and online only DRM),then that is going to be another wack to the old stock price. About then, Vivendi's board will start wondering if there shouldn't be some people getting fired from Blizzard.

 

[LorienvArden]

Bnet2.0 for Starcraft can be left offline for the single player campaign. I doubt that will change just because they want to treat Diablo 3 as an MMO.

It has been confirmed that the D3 client will not have the necessary data to act as a server by istself to prevent piracy. Meaning: Without a stable connection you can't play it, period.
Also, You can only play the campaignmode of SC2 without access to Bnet - no custom maps, which make up quite a large portion of the gameplay for many people. With the centralized server structure , we will not be able to play D3 at several of our lans over here because there simply is no way to get internet for 40 people at a sufficient quality to play it lag-free. We play more WcIII then ScII (around 8-10 people on different Towerdefenses at any given time, perhaps one or two rounds of SCII if any) How's that for your salesfigures ? Outclassed by your own product.

I objected to the quoted paragraph. As you can see, I stand by it that Blizzard isby no means a stranger to DRM and is using it very much in the way other publishers do.
And that Kotick is making some incredibly stupid decisions .

 

[isometry]

The press releases don't break down the numbers so we can see how many players they are losing in the east and the west. I'd imagine monthly fees are highest in North America and Europe, so if most of the lost customers are coming from the west it would hit them harder. That's probably the case, from the way people generally talk about WoW these days and from how hard the shareholders took it.

 

[Aeshi]

Yay 2 million people are "free" of the Grind of WoW and can be immersed in the not-grind-honest of "Not-Cool-To-Bash MMO otherwise identical to WoW 12801831"

 

[samsonguy920]

Bnet2.0 for Starcraft can be left offline for the single player campaign. I doubt that will change just because they want to treat Diablo 3 as an MMO.

It has been confirmed that the D3 client will not have the necessary data to act as a server by istself to prevent piracy. Meaning: Without a stable connection you can't play it, period.
Also, You can only play the campaignmode of SC2 without access to Bnet - no custom maps, which make up quite a large portion of the gameplay for many people. With the centralized server structure , we will not be able to play D3 at several of our lans over here because there simply is no way to get internet for 40 people at a sufficient quality to play it lag-free. We play more WcIII then ScII (around 8-10 people on different Towerdefenses at any given time, perhaps one or two rounds of SCII if any) How's that for your salesfigures ? Outclassed by your own product.

I objected to the quoted paragraph. As you can see, I stand by it that Blizzard isby no means a stranger to DRM and is using it very much in the way other publishers do.
And that Kotick is making some incredibly stupid decisions .

There is no doubt what is being done with Bnet and Diablo 3 is downright insane and ludicrous, but I have yet to hear that Kotick had anything to do with it. Though Blizzard is the minority "partner" in Activision Blizzard, it is still autonomous in much of its own administration from Activision. If there is one thing that does reek of influence by Bobby Kotick, it is the auction house in Diablo 3, as that is only meant to bring more money in for the company, and probably to help offset the cost of having servers running Diablo 3 ala Ubisoft style. Which actually establishes some brains for Blizzard as opposed to Ubisoft hoping they sell enough games to afford their "DRM servers." I have reservations about the auction house in that it could set up a system of embezzlement by cashiered players where they can hold certain very rare items hostage over others who don't have their own Scrooge McDuck safe. One wonders if Blizzard isn't set to safeguard against this happening, that there isn't some federal investigation to occur. This would make me think that Kotick isn't administering this, as he has in the past shown to be quite savvy in keeping the company's financial practices under the radar. At least where he has been in direct control.