World of Warcraft: Where Blizzard Gets it Right


I’ve been hearing about the restrictions surrounding Final Fantasy 14 and someone I learned how someone I’ve occasionally played World of Warcraft with ended up getting banned for streaming the game to a private set of users. Apparently, even a private stream broke the NDA. But today I heard that the game has further streaming restrictions when it comes to the sound and music. What’s the point?

Compare this scenario to Hearthstone where Blizzard essentially has opened up their closed Beta to streamers in order to promote the game. By allowing streamers to broadcast their game to streamers’ most hardcore fans, Blizzard essentially has created a free marketing buzz for their product that has generated a huge amount of buzz where people are buying closed beta keys on the neighborhood of $300 off of auction sites. I mean, this game is going to be free in the end, yet people who hunger for new content and game play are rushing to pay for this because of how streamers world wide are demonstrating what a fun product Hearthstone can be.

You see, this is where Blizzard absolutely gets the social media thing and are taking advantage of some of the newest avenues for broadcasting their products with very little cost. Streamers from Twitch TV are quickly becoming some of the most important people to the gaming industry as they pretty much act as pseudo celebrities who can broadcast these studios’ products to fans that might not even give a game a chance.

For myself with regards to Hearthstone, I never was interested in card games. I’ve never played games like Magic the Gathering and had zero desire at first to give such a game a chance. After watching people such as Kripparian, WoW Hobbs, Reckful, Toweliee, etc. broadcast their games, I now feel compelled to give the game a try. Heck, I might even pick up a pack of paid for cards. That’s because I see how much these streamers are enjoying themselves and get to see how the game plays out. In the end, I felt that it’s going to be worth giving it a shot.

Contrast that with Final Fantasy 14 where stability and strict NDAs have pretty much soured me on giving the game a shot. I mean, Final Fantasy 14 sounded fun at first after watching Yoni’s stream. However, seeing one of her friends get banned, the problems of logging on and Kripparian’s issues at first both with the strict NDA for streaming and his inability to connect with friends on the server have convinced me in a huge part that Final Fantasy 14 will end up being a shit game. People are only playing it now because it’s the big flavor of the month (FOTM). But in watching the streamers it’s clear that on top of these other issues, the game has other problems such as lack of PVP (despite me not being a PVP type) and lack of a clear end game vision.

I suppose if you’ve been a Final Fantasy fan for a long time, this game might entice you. But for someone who already is invested in another MMORPG, as much as I complain about the game, I’ll probably continue to stick with World of Warcraft. And part of the reason is that Blizzard (slowly) does a reasonable job at iterating over the problems from the community’s mass feedback loop.

With Final Fantasy, I have a severe lack of trust in Square Enix because of it’s Japanese imperial owners (yes, I’m Japanese in ethnicity but that doesn’t stop me from calling a spade a spade). Square Enix structurally just is archaic. While they might have an edge on the graphics, sound and interface to a degree, I cannot respect a company that refuses to catch up to the way other gaming companies are progressing in the area of distribution and marketing.

Sure, I take breaks from Blizzard’s games like World of Warcraft, but that’s because I’m waiting for things to improve or get fixed. Usually, they’re pretty good about most major issues (Diablo 3 might be an exception but it’ll be a while before we see how that turns out). Yet compared to other game companies like Square Enix or EA, Blizzard still does a pretty decent job all things considered for a large conglomerate.

Going back to Blizzard’s marketing team, you have to admit how pumped you get for their games more than most companies. Like seeing the patch 5.4 trailer, despite it only being a trailer, you salivate at the desire to nail Garrosh for his crimes. Or the new Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls trailer where you have this burning need to give the Crusader class a go. Or the original Mist of Pandaria trailer that came out for Blizzcon. People ripped on the Pandaren as an April Fools joke (despite it not being April Fools), but I was really looking forward to questing in Pandaria. That whole buzz aspect is something that Blizzard is hard to match against.

Again, I’m pretty critical about Blizzard but I think I’m also fair for the most part. I’ve been a long time gamer and have seen companies and games come and go. I know what I really like in my products and I have to believe in both the game and company/team to really support it. If I didn’t have this level of passion for what I write about, I would just remain silent and sit masturbating all day and night in my bedroom (as opposed to just the afternoon).

One thing I have to respect about Blizzard is their marketing team.

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