They R A COMpanY They are meant 2 make MONEEYS!

Kotick makes me sick. Just because they're a company doesn't mean money has to be their first priority. I never thought it was Blizzard's, I also didn't think it was BioWare's. But I did think it was Activision and EA's goal (EA seems to have loosened their grip on the ropes though). I didn't think this was the case with Valve but meh, L4D2 changed me in that regard.

Just because a company needs money to survive doesn't mean it shouldn't screw over it's customers. Even worse is that Blizzard DOESN'T HAVE TO. They don't NEED more money. They already have over 10 million subscribers (that we know of). At least HALF of those pay the $15 US a month necessary to play the game.

5 million customers paying $15 US each every month is a gross income of $75,000,000. If 10 million players paid that we'd double that number and get $150,000,000. This is not every 4 months, or even every year. THIS IS EVERY MONTH. Every 31 DAYS.

Times 75 million by 12 and what do we get? $900,000,000. Times 150 million by 12 and we get $1,800,000,000. In either case, they'll get a gross income of nearly ONE BILLION DOLLARS. This is WITHOUT adding faction and race changes, realm transfers, name changes or character customization costs to the equation.

I highly doubt it costs Blizzard 1 billion dollars to run World of Warcraft. I could understand it being quite high to pay all their employees, and all the bills to pay to even have the game running but their profit margin will still be HUGE.

And THEY WANT MORE? No, they never ruled out the idea of micro-transactions but they're no longer ruling out much ideas these days due to adding stuff in now that they said they'd never add in years ago. But I don't blame Blizzard, because this is not the Blizzard I knew. Who made great games like Diablo, StarCraft and WarCraft.

This is a company led by money-driven company, led by a money-driven bastard of a man. A man who doesn't care for your satisfaction, only his own. He cares not for anything about you, except your wallet.

And yet, we still pay his forsaken company to play his half-assed games. Because, let's face it, WoW is awesome. But I still don't see any reason to pay for all these ridiculous things. I'm sure Kotick's motto is something about doing less work but getting more money for it.

Eh, just don't buy any games that aren't fun.

The problem with his logic is that if he tries to suck the fun out of video games and grab as much money as he can out of players, then Activision will ultimately fail. Having fun games = more players.

I'm hoping that EA will eventually knock Activision Blizzard off of its high horse, because EA still seems to care about making fun games. Especially when they have developers like Valve and Bioware on their side.

If Activision truly had as much pull as you guys think, Starcraft II would have been out months ago, broken as all hell.

The fact that it's been delayed by two full quarters should give an indication that there are still areas of Blizzard devoted to bringing the games out when they meet their own standards of quality. I've never been disappointed by a Blizzard game, and I am eagerly waiting for Starcraft II.

True, maybe they will fail, but I see no reason to doubt a company that hasn't done so to date. I'm looking forward to SC2, D3, and Cataclysm, and I don't really care about whatever Activision does on the side. If they do let me down in the future, then I will call foul, but for now I'm putting some faith in a company that hasn't failed yet.

Side note: Why the hell do people care about these stupid micro transaction vanity pets. They're useless and confer no in game advantages. I don't have any, I don't want any, but I don't care if other people do. They're pets. If it was gear or money this would make sense, but they're pointless little pets.

It doesn't matter anyway though; judging by the number of these things I've already seen around my own server, they're selling quite well, despite all the people ranting in the posts here.

Activision, Eidos and EA. I never used to think much of any of them. All 3 of them, at least to me, were just out for my money.

We know this is true where Activision is concerned. Kotick makes no attempt to hide it and, whilst I can respect his forthright attitude in that regard, I will NEVER respect the way he deals with his company and his clients.

Eidos seem pretty quiet but they've made some mistakes too. The one thing I dislike about them is they wouldn't sell the rights for Deus Ex to Warren Spector (one of the creators of the original game) and for me, being a hardcore fan of Deus Ex was sad to hear this because now Eidos Montreal are probably going to rape my favourite game of all time even further with this third game.

EA used to be my number one Big Bad. Simply because they raped good games like Command and Conquer and the Need For Speed series. Hell, they're still doing so to those two aforementioned series but I could actually play the latest C&C games. C&C: Generals, for example, WAS HORRIBLE (hated it). NFS is OK but they ALWAYS screw it up near the end and this is not the developers fault but rather, EA's - the publishers - fault.

EA have been known to give extremely tight deadlines. Need For Speed had tight deadlines, for example, which is why the game is all good and dandy until the very end. At the end it's incredibly hard and feels very rushed and some of the developers realised this and said they hate it, but they couldn't do anything else in the allocated time interval given to them.

Patience is a virtue. I would much rather wait another 3 years for a game to come out and be of decent quality than for it to come out ASAP and it be absolutely horrible. Whilst you might lose a bit more money because of the longer development times you will gain more long-term because more people will be happier with your game, more people will recommend your game to other people, more people will buy your next games thinking they'll get the same decent quality.

EA seem to have loosened up a bit. But I don't buy many EA games (I won't buy anymore Battlefield games because they're just pointless now, I can't stand WW2 games anymore because it's the same boring crap over and over again), with the exception of BioWare's games.

@Mazoku

"If Activision truly had as much pull as you guys think, Starcraft II would have been out months ago, broken as all hell.

The fact that it's been delayed by two full quarters should give an indication that there are still areas of Blizzard devoted to bringing the games out when they meet their own standards of quality. I've never been disappointed by a Blizzard game, and I am eagerly waiting for Starcraft II."

Yet the fact that they've decided to split the game into three full price retail versions instead of one sequal isn't ringing any alarm bells? I can't help but think that in the past Blizzard would have released this content as one full game and two expansion packs or something similar.

I don't have a problem with people making a profit at the expense of loyalty, quality and passion for their craft, I just wish they'd do it with something almost no one cares about. For example Bobby Kotick is welcome to go bring his practice to pencil manufactor, I couldn't care less about the quality of my pencil so he's welcome to screw around in that market all he wants.

"I don't have a problem with people making a profit at the expense of loyalty, quality and passion for their craft, I just wish they'd do it with something almost no one cares about."

What craft? Kotick has talent for making money, I'll give him that, but he has no tact. At all. He doesn't care for the consumer, he would rather his developers have as LITTLE FUN AS POSSIBLE. I'm pretty sure the quote above proves it.

"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

The saddest thing about all this is, is that Activision was once a bastion of quality and creativity. They were the first third-party publisher for consoles. They were the first company to give the developers credit for their games. And then Kotick took over. The company was in trouble, IIRC correctly they lost a huge lawsuit. He managed to keep them afloat, and looking at his tactics, you can tell why. But he is not a person you want in charge of a successful company. He sees us as walking ATM machines and the products as just a means to our cash.