@@akirameru675 The guy in charge of the story of WoW right now claimed that what was happening in Shadowlands has been part of the plan since Warcraft 3, or at least has implications reaching back that far, which was long before they were even considering an MMO. So people have basically been using it to dump on/mock Steve Danuser and the current WoW team.
mybe stop spreading misinformation around. u all believe everything this drama-loving UA-camrs say and what is currently popular drama on Reddit until this da u still don't have a single proof of anything. because it all probably made up for social media clicks
My thoughts here are that selling Acti-Blizz was Bobby's endgame. It's what he does and is hardly surprising. I do not think this was sudden, in fact, I think its the reason there's been no real push to fix Blizzards games in a very, very long time. This also tells me that lawsuit with the state is going nowhere except to a point where a check gets written to the state (settled) and Bobby will retire with a golden parachute to convince the employees at Blizzard that Microsoft changed things for the better. I'd be surprised if Bobby Kotick is at Activision Blizzard for longer than 9mos to a year and I would hazard a guess to say they only need him around as long as it takes to settle the lawsuit, transition the company and step down "for the good of the company".
Actually according to a few other articles, it looks like Bobby got himself outmaneuvered by Microsoft. They say that Bobby didn't want to sell even after the workplace harassment scandal, but the diving stock prices and issues have made him unfavorable with the board, and it's rumored the board may have "helped" this merger by immediately accepting it without Bobby specifically agreeing to it beforehand. Microsoft essentially bought Bobby out by shares with the approval of the board. It also says Bobby will no longer be CEO 6 months after the merger, whereby Phil Spencer will take over that duty
@@KrazzeeKane Apparently he will be CEO until the merger is complete and then he's leaving. Though I do have to wonder if Bobby being gone was part of the deal with him basically being told by Microsoft to either walk or be fired once they transition took place because even his ridiculous termination fee is literally chump change to microsoft. As always walking is much better than being fired on your resume.
@@Speedracer6 lol yeah basically he got Kaiba'd, though with the insane golden parachute he is getting I'm sure Bobby will not be too sad on his yacht parked at his own private island lol, bastard is gonna get away scot free
This has most likely been planned for a while, Microsoft definitely see this as a bargain, and ABK are afraid they can’t turn the tides.. it makes a lot of sense, and Microsoft has one of the best M&A departments in the world
100% this is MS throwing AB a life ring. They wait another couple years AB's brands are significantly damaged, probably beyond repair. The ship was sinking and Kotick just slammed on some Flex Tape, and sold it to MS. He gets the golden parachute and MS gets iconic brands.
No it hasn’t microsoft came out with a statement a couple weeks ago that they don’t know how they’re going to move forward with activision blizzard because of all the allegations against them.
people that spread such rumors around with any actual proof are the only one really being evil. and peopel that play victim. people that make such things up just to get click on social media.a nd those dram UA-camrs who spread such missinformation around just to get a lot of money off of youtube
@@JordanKennedy CoD and Blizzard draws eyeballs and PR. Mobile brings in the money to bolster that. Seems like that's how actiblizz worked before the scandals at least
This ads some layers to when Phil Spencer said the recent scandals was making MS reconsider their relations with Activision. Surely MS must've gain some leeway with all this happening
I imagine Microsoft picking up the dirty and dusty rug that is activision and beating the shit out of it, cleaning it. And all the offenders falling into hell
i still cannot get over how phil apparently once said for bobby to basically get his shit together or they would have to reevaluate their relationship with activison....and then he pulls a disney on them
32:22 fkin finally someone who's looked up to put it into words for everyone to hear!!! I DO NOT FKIN NEED TO MIN-MAX TO DO A STUPID +6 OR A NORMAL RAID! and this is not just pugs, guilds were like this too. it was easier to find a relaxed well-paying job than to find a decent guild in WoW...
Yep. I doubt this will suddenly change Blizzard's direction and writing. There might be some hope for Starcraft 3 and Warcraft 4 though with a proper RTS team working on it like it did on Age of Empires 4. Maybe ACTUALLY fixing Reforged. But that is all silly hope for now. Unless Blizzard sees some REAL change and direction from the current mess, I don't think this will entice me to return.
I said, when Microsoft bought Bethesda, that them buying Activision-Blizzard next would probably be the most scary thing ever, but also the only way I see Activision-Blizzard, WoW and their other IPs recovering. I expected it (Microsoft or another corp) to happen, but never in my wildest dreams would I have expected it to happen this damn soon. Oh, and no, this one is definitely one where they are already making clear Bobby will hand over the keys and fuck of with his chunk of the Billions and Microsoft will 100% take over.
WoW with a controller is easy as just copying FFXIV's system, which as far as I know is either not patented or is but is available for use by anyone with no licensing fees because they wanted other people to use it to increase accessibility to MMOs.
You can already play with a controller with the right addons, it's a bit sketchy but works well on lower apm classes. What I'm somewhat concerned about is that FFXIV is designed around including console players in job, encounter and UI design (no "mandatory" addons/plugins) while WoW is absolutely not.
Bobby cashed out for the shareholders. He is a major shareholder himself, so he is making billions of this deal. So one would think he yoinks off as soon as the transition is done.
Hes actually holding less than a 1% i think hes like 0.45% or something like that. So youre like kinda right but if we include 300m for his termination
Well I think this may be good for Blizzard games. Only because I think of Minecraft which has received tons of updates since under the control of Microsoft. Age of Empires another game owned by Microsoft now made the Age of Empires 2 definitive edition which players really liked. But despite this being a good move now. I'm absolutely not a fan of Microsoft becoming a growing monopoly for popular games.
Personally horrible news. The less studios goes into MS or Sony the better. Console exclusivity is the cancer of gaming. D4 exclusive title on XBox, you hear it here first, folks.
@@TildeSymbol Let me fix that for you : The console market is the cancer of gaming. Just to make it clear. The console market, not console gaming in itself. BTW, arpgs like Diablo and PoE are mostly played on PC, so who cares if it's console exclusive. It's like giving a dam if the next call of duty is released on switch.
@@TildeSymbol Big doubt that they would lock a game like Diablo, whos fanbase is vast majority on pc to console, plus I mean ffs HALO was on pc day 1. I'd be more worried if they were bought by Sony, best thing about Microsoft rn is not having to own their console to play their games lol. Edit: I do agree with you that exclusivity is the worst tho!
@@thesunryze4658 I don't care how people play games on console. The fact that I either have to buy a shitty gaming device just to play a game or wait for years for it to be released on PC is what pisses me off. Console was monumental for the history of gaming industry. But the ptedatory practices of these companies are the issues.
@@nepd3stiny Halo Infinite is F2P not P2P, they need as much active playerbase as possible to get them to buy microtransactions. Not the best comparion, considering the fact that with Xbox gamepass you can get exclusive freebies in the game too.
@@Giliver free, except for large amounts of content that you do need to pay for. Free ESO is like a free trial, a large one sure but not the complete game. Seems pretty comparable to me.
@@Giliver The arguments you make makes it less likely that WoW would become free on Gamepass, not more likely... lol Microsoft is not going to give up on $15/month times 3-4million players (45m+ in monthly revenues). That's idiotic to even think about.
Hopefully this is true, and Microsoft is abusing the dip in ActiBliz's value as an opportunity to buy out and reform the company. Time will tell, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft is one of the better western companies out there. At least, you never hear about some Windows controversy.
Just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Acti-blizz is evil in the "We want all the money and don't care about anything else" sense. Microsoft is evil in the "We want you to live in a pod and be plugged into the metaverse 24/7" sense.
Dude, Windows department since 2015 hasn't made large amounts of revenue compared to Azure cloud which is tenfolds more profit margin and reveues. So I bid you read the shit first before commenting on it.
They "want" to sell. Why wouldn't they? Kotick and the Board get to watch the shares jump, they sell and they jump ship to invest elsewhere. I'd be surprised if this wasn't their hope the whole time. You have to remember these people aren't looking for long term survival and/or long term business plans. They want a return within 3 years and gouging a business for profit and then selling it off is just that. This is "mission accomplished" for Bobby despite all the drama.
@@h0lyhandgrenade indeed it is. That why final fantasy franchise hasn't see any innovation for the last 20 years. And why u all are getting played by social media content farmers
From what I've seen online is that Phil got in contact some time late last year to see if a deal could be made, and Bobby didn't want to, but basically lost to the board
Pls Pls add chat to most of this , part of the interaction of good streamers like preach is speaking/talking with the audience and chat is part of that
To quote Asmongold, along the lines of: "We've rolled a 3 on a 20 sided dice With Activision buying Blizzard, so Microsoft buying Acti-blizz feels like a reroll of that dice." Thing can stay the same, or it cant be better. It might even reach a 10 and still be mediocre. This is very interesting and I look forward with cautious optimism on this deal.
Don't worry Preach, there's an entire line of business on putting a dollar amount to human life and that's Life Insurance. I agree it's ghoulish and creepy. On another note! Nice and balanced video about this
I actually really want wow for xbox, i would love to get my friends into it who arent able to buy a PC :) Even if its not brilliant, i just want to get them involved and have someone to play it with
It will be consoles gonna be cloud, i took a free trail for cloud gaming 5 yrs ago turned a potato laptop into a 1080ti i7 32gb ram worked fine, you will be able to plug in mouse and keyboard and having gaming pc specs on xbox cloud.
if its on Game Pass then it's a win in my book, right now Game Pass PC is $9.99 monthly and can stop subscription at anytime where with WoW its $12.99 for 6mo lock-in and $14.99 monthly
I guess the best case senario is that Activision Blizzard goes more the way of Mojang. The only thing the Mojang-Microsoft merger really did to Minecraft was allow the developers to take their time and have more money in the war chest.
To be honest, if there is a company that could fix Activision-Blizzard-King it is Microsoft. There is no other company in my mind who could. Sure, there is Valve but Valve is not interested in getting into other Studios.
First order of business, get rid of Bobby, force him to step down or step out. Then, start to look at the developers, World of Warcraft along with Overwatch is their real money makers....start fixing the division and get rid of the developers and hire some real talent and fix WOW, watch people come back in droves.
@@Dwayneff Set time in between the steps. You need to get a judgement of how much of the bad development gamewise comes from the bad development and culture of the company itself.
I would expect the HR teams at Microsoft to take over fairly quickly, synchronization of policy etc. They'll probably leave the Development teams on their own to rebuild after the 80 odd people they have to replace. MS usually does fairly well at retaining good people. They study their aquisitions, redeploy resources and then invest where needed. WIth their cash at hand its a good thing.
I know a couple folks in the Zenimax sphere and while they were apprehensive at first, they've only said positive things about their experiences. Still relatively recent but it's a good sign.
Microsoft gaming has been doing ok by me, with bringing the age of empires series back. and they were one of the first to condemn ABK, im hopeful that things will get better.
Recently - Age of Empires, Forza 5, Halo Infinite( apart from the battle pass system) has been superb. So there is definitely hope for Blizzard games to get good again.
@ZETTON i have played way too much aoe2de and haven't had game crashes since like the first few months of launch. Certainly not within the past 12 months.
Preach talking about his Vanilla / BC friend coming back to the game and bailing 2 weeks later is definately the frog jumping into the boiling pot vs the frog sitting in the water as it's heated up.
@@Giliver You might want to update your info on him. He is no longer "just a greedy asshole". There are accusations of him harassing women, threatening them etc.
"I thought King was part of their proper name now" yeah, it is, but their stocks are still listed as ATVI, and Blizzard built its fanbase chiefly through the PC platform so nobody wants to talk about King at all. Like how many WoW or CoD players do you know who won't STFU about their Candy Crush progress?
@@Shagedog10 It is, and you're absolutely right. This is what really matters. But to pivot over to mobile gaming and making that the priority to chase those dollars while also taking a big shit on the customers that already bought into your product on a completely different platform still feels bad.
wrath had "weekly raid quest" and they said something like "people need to have freedom to do these whenever they want" next expansion came and more and more daily grind lol
I dont really like this , a company slowly buying every other competitor is not a good thing. I guess it's better for that company to be microsoft instead of something else like sony since microsoft learned a few things from their disaster days back during the xbox one reveal
I'm surprised it took this long for MS to start swinging their multi-trillion dollar schlong around and just saying "fuck it" and buying everything. I'm really concerned for the lack of competition in the industry. What's even going to be left to fight back? I doubt they'll stop with just Zenimax and Actiblizz.
while it is concerning I do want Microsoft to atleast compete with Sony in the exclusives dept. to atleast have their console compete with Sony's. as it stands right now Sony owns the console market because of the sheer amount of good exclusives coming to their console.
@@prodigous21 Microsoft is no longer playing the "consoles" game, they are more interested in getting their games into the hands of as many people as possible regardless of platform. Exclusivity is Sony's only chance at selling consoles when you look at the incredible value of Game Pass, and even then a lot of 1st party Sony games are coming to PC which is a win for Microsoft
"Lack of competition"? Gaming is one of the most competitive spaces in the entertainment industry. New studios sprout like mushroom after rain. There's tons of competition.
According to anti-trust people online, while this is huge in gaming, it's not huge in corporate, and because its an arm of Microsoft, its still vertical integration rather than horizontal
Anti-trust is a thing of the past sadly because they are so powerful they make all the rules. Everything is owned by a few Mega corporations and monopolized now. It's like the Borg and everything small will be assimilated, resistance is futile.
There will probabaly be a legal proceeding (like a hearing). But in reality the acquisition will be legal. This deal is huge in this industry but not as much as for example the Heinz-Kraft merger which was over $100 billion. Furthermore the videogame industry has a lot of companies remaining competing, enough that it is not considered a monopoly.
@@WhatIfTheories I bid you to re-read entire Anti-trust sheriff law and also the last case of anti-trust was AT&T which was in 1920's. So don't go around spewing shit without reading stuff on it in first place.
It's funny that people are acting like this is a done deal. There is one HUGE wrench in this deal and that is the US Government. The likelihood of the US government allowing this merger is very slim considering Microsoft already owns X-Box, their own gaming studio, Bathesda, and Minecraft.
Imo this shows blizz undersold to Acti. They undervalued wow because they still saw it as a game instead of a virtual world with staying power Edit: now with metaverse talk tho people are starting to get it Edit 2: I don't think this was as sudden as we believe. Bobby just made a lot of money. It could have very well been his plan to groom these companies for a big sale. That explains all the short term milking strategies
The problem for WoW console is raid healing tbh. I don't really know how you easily do that. FF is limited to 8 party members to scroll though. Not 15, or 20, or even 30.
Fair, but that could be solved with some good UX design. Like having 1 button that makes a cursor appear in the middle of the raid frames and then you can select with the analog stick and releasing the button. Basically like using a mouse with 1 extra button.
@@GamerFlair nah you’d just disable the camera while the raidframe select button is held down and use the camera stick :) d-pad would make it take long enough that 20-30 people becomes impossible I think Come to think of it, that’s the same in wow. You cant move the camera while selecting a target to heal unless you have weird camera keybinds in which case i am surprised and disgusted :p Saw someone in newcomer chat who was using q and e to pan the camera, the poor bastard :(
@@6105boe I dunno. Don't think it's any quicker if it's box select rather then cursor based. The stick is good for precise 360 movement. The dpad is designed for up down across inputs which is all navigating that sort of interface is.
@@GamerFlair Nah, moving a cursor with the stick is really cancer, especially if you have to do it quickly. It really lacks precision. And I often play heal on controller in FF14, never uses the virtual mouse. I agree with GamerFlair, the D-pad is much more suited to navigate through the party list, even a 4*5 boxes list.
Honestly after the second email I would take a vacation for 3 weeks, setup beginning to look for other work and then come back and work until ice got another job and resign.
"For more than 30 years our incredibly talented teams have created some of the most successful games," said Bobby Kotick, CEO Activision Blizzard between sips of breast milk.
Btw, for 70 Billion, they get the following IP: World of Warcraft. Warcraft Starcraft Diablo Hearthstone Heart of the Storm Overwatch Crash Tony Hawk Sekiro (Yes, FromSoftware made game IP is OWNED by Activision.) King's Quest Prototype Guitar Hero DJ Hero Ceasar series Hexen Phantasmagoria (the OG horror game) Pitfall Police Quest Quest for Glory Space Quest Zork Soldier of Fortune series (so much promise but just died when Activision bought them out) True Crime series, which were awesome games almost on par with GTA and could've been just as big with some love. And a flurry more I can't even remember. And then there's King, which was one of the biggest mobile games publishers and fizzled out under Activisions wings they tried not to even mention them on some investor calls. Microsoft is getting a whole lot of IPs and active games with potential.
See you're looking at Bobby's letter all wrong, it's 100% true. A true letter to investors with some flowery word-service to regular employees. Everything of substance was regarding "opportunity", "Metaverse", "technologies", etc... all of which are sales pitches/assurances to ever growing profits.
I say there is no way someone would buy Acti-Blizz in their current state without a plan behind it, friend says I'm naive to think so. Really curious to see how this turns out.
37:00 As someone who played since TbC religiously this is why I quit. I was not going to grind all that stuff just to raid. I keep waiting for them to fix the system and it just gets worse.
They paid over a 45% premium on the share price at paying $95 a share considering it was $65 a share before the news dropped!!! ouch!!!! $21.6 Billion over market share price!
I really hope that his will benefit the real talents that came with it, like the entire WoW Art-Team for example and so many many more. Also that poor guy who just wanted to PvP and even grinded his honor Gear just to learn how much of a way lies before him. This is sad.
Wow will be on the Xbox cloud, gaming pc specs with mouse and keyboard. I already did a trial 5 yrs ago could turn a tablet or spud laptop into a 1080ti i7 32gb ram worked well 5yrs ago.
First Bethesda, now Activision | Blizzard, next is Take Two Interactive at Survivor Series, that's where Undertaker was born, Microsoft learned about streaks from Undertaker, the legend the phenom! 21-0 at WrestleMania.
1 billion dollars is equal to 10 full crates of $100 bills. That means that if what they said is true, this all cash transaction was nearly 690 crates ( a crate would weigh 10 tons if it's filled with $100 bills) Holy. Fuck.
This was the jailer's plan all along
It's a story told in three acts and this was always planned as the third act
And the do not forget about the water that we can walk on! Very important!
lol u might be right. i guess he won
@@karlrassmann4604 Weaving threads from the time before time existed
plotted since WC3
This was part of the plan since Warcraft 3😁
OMEGA LOL
LOL
I don't understand this meme
@@akirameru675 The guy in charge of the story of WoW right now claimed that what was happening in Shadowlands has been part of the plan since Warcraft 3, or at least has implications reaching back that far, which was long before they were even considering an MMO. So people have basically been using it to dump on/mock Steve Danuser and the current WoW team.
@@akirameru675 basically this was jailers final plan since Warcraft 3 came out, for Microsoft to buy the universe LOL
Hands off is something Blizzard really needs to learn about.
They will now. That’s how normally MS operates. I only hope they do a clear out once the deal is finished.
@@stefannedevski6760 looks at windows ye blizzard is fucked
@@stefannedevski6760 lol yea right
mybe stop spreading misinformation around. u all believe everything this drama-loving UA-camrs say and what is currently popular drama on Reddit until this da u still don't have a single proof of anything. because it all probably made up for social media clicks
@@GamingDualities Your point?
My thoughts here are that selling Acti-Blizz was Bobby's endgame. It's what he does and is hardly surprising. I do not think this was sudden, in fact, I think its the reason there's been no real push to fix Blizzards games in a very, very long time. This also tells me that lawsuit with the state is going nowhere except to a point where a check gets written to the state (settled) and Bobby will retire with a golden parachute to convince the employees at Blizzard that Microsoft changed things for the better. I'd be surprised if Bobby Kotick is at Activision Blizzard for longer than 9mos to a year and I would hazard a guess to say they only need him around as long as it takes to settle the lawsuit, transition the company and step down "for the good of the company".
Actually according to a few other articles, it looks like Bobby got himself outmaneuvered by Microsoft. They say that Bobby didn't want to sell even after the workplace harassment scandal, but the diving stock prices and issues have made him unfavorable with the board, and it's rumored the board may have "helped" this merger by immediately accepting it without Bobby specifically agreeing to it beforehand. Microsoft essentially bought Bobby out by shares with the approval of the board. It also says Bobby will no longer be CEO 6 months after the merger, whereby Phil Spencer will take over that duty
@@KrazzeeKane Apparently he will be CEO until the merger is complete and then he's leaving. Though I do have to wonder if Bobby being gone was part of the deal with him basically being told by Microsoft to either walk or be fired once they transition took place because even his ridiculous termination fee is literally chump change to microsoft. As always walking is much better than being fired on your resume.
@@KrazzeeKane So bobby got Kaiba'd as Gozaburo from yugioh
@@Speedracer6 lol yeah basically he got Kaiba'd, though with the insane golden parachute he is getting I'm sure Bobby will not be too sad on his yacht parked at his own private island lol, bastard is gonna get away scot free
Its just annoying that he gets to walk away with another wad of stacks and no reprocussion for the problems he allowed under his "leadership"
Imagine destroying your reputation so much people are happy to see a different, and larger company buy you out and take over like lmao
This has most likely been planned for a while, Microsoft definitely see this as a bargain, and ABK are afraid they can’t turn the tides.. it makes a lot of sense, and Microsoft has one of the best M&A departments in the world
100% this is MS throwing AB a life ring. They wait another couple years AB's brands are significantly damaged, probably beyond repair. The ship was sinking and Kotick just slammed on some Flex Tape, and sold it to MS. He gets the golden parachute and MS gets iconic brands.
No it hasn’t microsoft came out with a statement a couple weeks ago that they don’t know how they’re going to move forward with activision blizzard because of all the allegations against them.
@@sheesh3214 I guess they fuckin figured it out, didn't they?
@@sheesh3214 simple..we buy them out fix it. Instead of partnering up.
@@Klokinator if you can’t beat them join them I guess but it’s still fuck Bobby Kotick
Agree with Preach. Bobby will be gone in 6 months, but has a tremendous golden parachute. Sad that someone so evil can profit like this.
WSJ has already confirmed hes leaving the moment the deal closes.
about 290mil looking at the investor report.
people that spread such rumors around with any actual proof are the only one really being evil. and peopel that play victim. people that make such things up just to get click on social media.a nd those dram UA-camrs who spread such missinformation around just to get a lot of money off of youtube
@@GamingDualities go get vaccinated
@@GamingDualities We know this is your alt account Bobby
Mike's ability to keep a straight face through "Bobby's Message" is worthy of an Oscar nomination.
King Games is the big get from this. That company prints more many than the rest of the portfolio.
Agreed. Obviously IPs like CoD and the Blizzard portfolio are lucrative but that Candy Crush and other Mobile money is the real gem of the acquisition
@@JordanKennedy CoD and Blizzard draws eyeballs and PR. Mobile brings in the money to bolster that. Seems like that's how actiblizz worked before the scandals at least
This ads some layers to when Phil Spencer said the recent scandals was making MS reconsider their relations with Activision. Surely MS must've gain some leeway with all this happening
Price definitely went down as ABK increased drastically in brand risk. Which is crazy cause it already 70 billion.
Suddenly turns it into a gigachad move.
For the starcraft fans this might be the best news since 2010
Lets just say: Microsoft is an improvement for all the games included
since they focus on the metaverse u can bet u get a ton of nft´s on top.
I would take it with a pinch of salt. An improvement than the current Acti-Blizzard, but I wouldn't take Microsoft as saints.
I imagine Microsoft picking up the dirty and dusty rug that is activision and beating the shit out of it, cleaning it. And all the offenders falling into hell
Monopolies sure aren't though.
Doubtful, Microsoft only recently bought these studios since like 2018 so we haven't really seen any games out of it so far... To early to say.
Big Phil doesn't fuck around. Hope this signals the start of a new chapter for WoW.
i still cannot get over how phil apparently once said for bobby to basically get his shit together or they would have to reevaluate their relationship with activison....and then he pulls a disney on them
@@gmoddude12 Bobby will be home within 6 months
Copium. Imagine thinking this is a good tjing
@@omensoffate Can't be any worse then ActiBlizz has already been lately.
@@Saaaamlfw most likely as the deal is completed
I feel like this is a good thing, and if they get rid of bobby I won't feel shit paying a sub. I hope they can fix wow
I'm optimistic about this
32:22 fkin finally someone who's looked up to put it into words for everyone to hear!!! I DO NOT FKIN NEED TO MIN-MAX TO DO A STUPID +6 OR A NORMAL RAID! and this is not just pugs, guilds were like this too. it was easier to find a relaxed well-paying job than to find a decent guild in WoW...
Unless the lead devs for all these Blizzard games get swapped out, nothing will change.
The lead devs, the writers, the system designers, basically all of management and more than a few staff.
Yep. I doubt this will suddenly change Blizzard's direction and writing.
There might be some hope for Starcraft 3 and Warcraft 4 though with a proper RTS team working on it like it did on Age of Empires 4. Maybe ACTUALLY fixing Reforged. But that is all silly hope for now. Unless Blizzard sees some REAL change and direction from the current mess, I don't think this will entice me to return.
I said, when Microsoft bought Bethesda, that them buying Activision-Blizzard next would probably be the most scary thing ever, but also the only way I see Activision-Blizzard, WoW and their other IPs recovering.
I expected it (Microsoft or another corp) to happen, but never in my wildest dreams would I have expected it to happen this damn soon.
Oh, and no, this one is definitely one where they are already making clear Bobby will hand over the keys and fuck of with his chunk of the Billions and Microsoft will 100% take over.
The only way WoW will recover is if Danuser, Ion and the entirety of the sub-intellectual mess that is Team 1 is fired.
WoW with a controller is easy as just copying FFXIV's system, which as far as I know is either not patented or is but is available for use by anyone with no licensing fees because they wanted other people to use it to increase accessibility to MMOs.
You can already play with a controller with the right addons, it's a bit sketchy but works well on lower apm classes.
What I'm somewhat concerned about is that FFXIV is designed around including console players in job, encounter and UI design (no "mandatory" addons/plugins) while WoW is absolutely not.
Bobby cashed out for the shareholders. He is a major shareholder himself, so he is making billions of this deal. So one would think he yoinks off as soon as the transition is done.
Hes actually holding less than a 1% i think hes like 0.45% or something like that. So youre like kinda right but if we include 300m for his termination
Well I think this may be good for Blizzard games. Only because I think of Minecraft which has received tons of updates since under the control of Microsoft. Age of Empires another game owned by Microsoft now made the Age of Empires 2 definitive edition which players really liked.
But despite this being a good move now. I'm absolutely not a fan of Microsoft becoming a growing monopoly for popular games.
Personally horrible news. The less studios goes into MS or Sony the better. Console exclusivity is the cancer of gaming.
D4 exclusive title on XBox, you hear it here first, folks.
@@TildeSymbol Let me fix that for you : The console market is the cancer of gaming.
Just to make it clear. The console market, not console gaming in itself.
BTW, arpgs like Diablo and PoE are mostly played on PC, so who cares if it's console exclusive. It's like giving a dam if the next call of duty is released on switch.
@@TildeSymbol Big doubt that they would lock a game like Diablo, whos fanbase is vast majority on pc to console, plus I mean ffs HALO was on pc day 1. I'd be more worried if they were bought by Sony, best thing about Microsoft rn is not having to own their console to play their games lol.
Edit: I do agree with you that exclusivity is the worst tho!
@@thesunryze4658 I don't care how people play games on console. The fact that I either have to buy a shitty gaming device just to play a game or wait for years for it to be released on PC is what pisses me off.
Console was monumental for the history of gaming industry. But the ptedatory practices of these companies are the issues.
@@nepd3stiny Halo Infinite is F2P not P2P, they need as much active playerbase as possible to get them to buy microtransactions. Not the best comparion, considering the fact that with Xbox gamepass you can get exclusive freebies in the game too.
This is great news actually, CAN YOU IMAGINE IF THEY MERGE THE WOW SUBSCRIPTION WITH GAME PASS!?!?
well they need to do something to fill the WoW servers back up?
Don't hold your breath on that one.
On ESO the premium sub isn't included in gamepass. They're likely going to handle WoW the same way.
@@Giliver free, except for large amounts of content that you do need to pay for. Free ESO is like a free trial, a large one sure but not the complete game. Seems pretty comparable to me.
@@Giliver The arguments you make makes it less likely that WoW would become free on Gamepass, not more likely... lol
Microsoft is not going to give up on $15/month times 3-4million players (45m+ in monthly revenues). That's idiotic to even think about.
Hopefully this is true, and Microsoft is abusing the dip in ActiBliz's value as an opportunity to buy out and reform the company.
Time will tell, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft is one of the better western companies out there. At least, you never hear about some Windows controversy.
Probably unrelated to the fact that media charities see a lot of revenue from the gates melinda foundation.
Just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Acti-blizz is evil in the "We want all the money and don't care about anything else" sense. Microsoft is evil in the "We want you to live in a pod and be plugged into the metaverse 24/7" sense.
Dude, Windows department since 2015 hasn't made large amounts of revenue compared to Azure cloud which is tenfolds more profit margin and reveues. So I bid you read the shit first before commenting on it.
Activision has to sell, they can never remove the stain on their brand.
They "want" to sell. Why wouldn't they? Kotick and the Board get to watch the shares jump, they sell and they jump ship to invest elsewhere. I'd be surprised if this wasn't their hope the whole time. You have to remember these people aren't looking for long term survival and/or long term business plans. They want a return within 3 years and gouging a business for profit and then selling it off is just that. This is "mission accomplished" for Bobby despite all the drama.
what stain? u mean bunch of misinformation being spread on social media by UA-camrs so they can get clicks and money off of youtube
Perfect time for brand rename
@@GamingDualities ignorance is bliss in your world
@@h0lyhandgrenade indeed it is. That why final fantasy franchise hasn't see any innovation for the last 20 years. And why u all are getting played by social media content farmers
I'm hopeful about this acquisition. I might even resub for 12.0
It will take years for any changes to take hold in blizz
From what I've seen online is that Phil got in contact some time late last year to see if a deal could be made, and Bobby didn't want to, but basically lost to the board
Pls Pls add chat to most of this , part of the interaction of good streamers like preach is speaking/talking with the audience and chat is part of that
Man that Venruki video is so good. The delivery is similar to a stand-up comedy routine
To quote Asmongold, along the lines of: "We've rolled a 3 on a 20 sided dice With Activision buying Blizzard, so Microsoft buying Acti-blizz feels like a reroll of that dice." Thing can stay the same, or it cant be better. It might even reach a 10 and still be mediocre. This is very interesting and I look forward with cautious optimism on this deal.
Don't worry Preach, there's an entire line of business on putting a dollar amount to human life and that's Life Insurance. I agree it's ghoulish and creepy.
On another note! Nice and balanced video about this
I actually really want wow for xbox, i would love to get my friends into it who arent able to buy a PC :) Even if its not brilliant, i just want to get them involved and have someone to play it with
It will be consoles gonna be cloud, i took a free trail for cloud gaming 5 yrs ago turned a potato laptop into a 1080ti i7 32gb ram worked fine, you will be able to plug in mouse and keyboard and having gaming pc specs on xbox cloud.
This is Bobby’s final self-enriching master stroke before he retires.
56:26 godammit I spat out out my coffee this is fucking gold LMFAO
if its on Game Pass then it's a win in my book, right now Game Pass PC is $9.99 monthly and can stop subscription at anytime where with WoW its $12.99 for 6mo lock-in and $14.99 monthly
Warcrush? Candyablo? Can't wait for the memes to flow on this one
I guess the best case senario is that Activision Blizzard goes more the way of Mojang. The only thing the Mojang-Microsoft merger really did to Minecraft was allow the developers to take their time and have more money in the war chest.
To be honest, if there is a company that could fix Activision-Blizzard-King it is Microsoft.
There is no other company in my mind who could. Sure, there is Valve but Valve is not interested in getting into other Studios.
First order of business, get rid of Bobby, force him to step down or step out. Then, start to look at the developers, World of Warcraft along with Overwatch is their real money makers....start fixing the division and get rid of the developers and hire some real talent and fix WOW, watch people come back in droves.
@@Dwayneff Set time in between the steps. You need to get a judgement of how much of the bad development gamewise comes from the bad development and culture of the company itself.
@@Dwayneffalready confirmed he's leaving after acquisition is completed
I would expect the HR teams at Microsoft to take over fairly quickly, synchronization of policy etc. They'll probably leave the Development teams on their own to rebuild after the 80 odd people they have to replace. MS usually does fairly well at retaining good people. They study their aquisitions, redeploy resources and then invest where needed. WIth their cash at hand its a good thing.
Imagine that, Call of Duty: Microsoft first party exclusive
...
With a bit of luck it could actually be a halfway decent game again
I saw the headline Bobby was leaving and I immediately thought "Bye Felicia!" 🤣
Guess it makes sense. Acti-Blizz stock has been in tank for months, which made it a tempting takeover target.
They gonna push WoW and other Blizzard games to Xbox Cloud Gaming (Game pass?). Which means you can play some of the games on your mobile.
As a Heroes of the Storm player this is the best hope my dead game has! 😭
I hope HOTS gets revived.
Lol is having a revive tho with there tv series and soon a lol mmo
The Jailer planned it.
Smells of a hard reset to me, which would be a good thing.
I know a couple folks in the Zenimax sphere and while they were apprehensive at first, they've only said positive things about their experiences. Still relatively recent but it's a good sign.
Shit they leaked the ending of Shadowlands. So this was Zovaal’s 5D chess plan
Microsoft gaming has been doing ok by me, with bringing the age of empires series back. and they were one of the first to condemn ABK, im hopeful that things will get better.
Recently - Age of Empires, Forza 5, Halo Infinite( apart from the battle pass system) has been superb. So there is definitely hope for Blizzard games to get good again.
Copium
@@Giliver yes, did no phrase it properly. Thanks for pointing it
AoE 2 remaster still crashing in the middle of games for literally no reason after like 2 years of complaints.
Very caring company yes.
@ZETTON i have played way too much aoe2de and haven't had game crashes since like the first few months of launch. Certainly not within the past 12 months.
Bobby's Powerful improved Speech, almost brought a tear to my Eye xD
Great vid preach, appreciate your take on this.
Preach talking about his Vanilla / BC friend coming back to the game and bailing 2 weeks later is definately the frog jumping into the boiling pot vs the frog sitting in the water as it's heated up.
I just imagined Master Chief calling Mak'gora on the next Warchief.
I used to play wow with a controller back in Wrath and it was pretty solid. a couple of built in QoL would make it even better.
So instead of going to prison, Bobby cashed out.
He was always going to cash out.
@@Giliver You might want to update your info on him. He is no longer "just a greedy asshole". There are accusations of him harassing women, threatening them etc.
@@georgesmirnov6600 accusations do not equal guilt you absolute clown
"I thought King was part of their proper name now" yeah, it is, but their stocks are still listed as ATVI, and Blizzard built its fanbase chiefly through the PC platform so nobody wants to talk about King at all. Like how many WoW or CoD players do you know who won't STFU about their Candy Crush progress?
King probably brings in more money than acti and blizzard combined.
The mobile game market is the absolutely richest gaming market in the world.
@@Shagedog10 It is, and you're absolutely right. This is what really matters. But to pivot over to mobile gaming and making that the priority to chase those dollars while also taking a big shit on the customers that already bought into your product on a completely different platform still feels bad.
wrath had "weekly raid quest" and they said something like "people need to have freedom to do these whenever they want" next expansion came and more and more daily grind lol
I dont really like this , a company slowly buying every other competitor is not a good thing. I guess it's better for that company to be microsoft instead of something else like sony since microsoft learned a few things from their disaster days back during the xbox one reveal
It's super concerning, just look at what companies Disney bought over the last years.
I'm surprised it took this long for MS to start swinging their multi-trillion dollar schlong around and just saying "fuck it" and buying everything. I'm really concerned for the lack of competition in the industry. What's even going to be left to fight back? I doubt they'll stop with just Zenimax and Actiblizz.
yeah well its same with amazon they also are buying off everything gonna be interesting to see whats going on 20 years or so from now :D
while it is concerning I do want Microsoft to atleast compete with Sony in the exclusives dept. to atleast have their console compete with Sony's. as it stands right now Sony owns the console market because of the sheer amount of good exclusives coming to their console.
@@prodigous21 Microsoft is no longer playing the "consoles" game, they are more interested in getting their games into the hands of as many people as possible regardless of platform. Exclusivity is Sony's only chance at selling consoles when you look at the incredible value of Game Pass, and even then a lot of 1st party Sony games are coming to PC which is a win for Microsoft
Didn't they buy Bethesda a while ago?
Edit: had a brainfart. Misread the comment
"Lack of competition"? Gaming is one of the most competitive spaces in the entertainment industry. New studios sprout like mushroom after rain. There's tons of competition.
That story from Ven is a great example of why PvP templates were a good idea.
Curious how this isnt an anti-trust issue given the size of both companies regardless of how much this might help Acti-Blizz.
According to anti-trust people online, while this is huge in gaming, it's not huge in corporate, and because its an arm of Microsoft, its still vertical integration rather than horizontal
Anti-trust is a thing of the past sadly because they are so powerful they make all the rules. Everything is owned by a few Mega corporations and monopolized now. It's like the Borg and everything small will be assimilated, resistance is futile.
There will probabaly be a legal proceeding (like a hearing). But in reality the acquisition will be legal. This deal is huge in this industry but not as much as for example the Heinz-Kraft merger which was over $100 billion.
Furthermore the videogame industry has a lot of companies remaining competing, enough that it is not considered a monopoly.
@@WhatIfTheories I bid you to re-read entire Anti-trust sheriff law and also the last case of anti-trust was AT&T which was in 1920's. So don't go around spewing shit without reading stuff on it in first place.
Anti trust doesn't exist anymore unless it goes against the state. See any social media and major companies like Google or Amazon.
It's funny that people are acting like this is a done deal. There is one HUGE wrench in this deal and that is the US Government. The likelihood of the US government allowing this merger is very slim considering Microsoft already owns X-Box, their own gaming studio, Bathesda, and Minecraft.
Disney???
Imo this shows blizz undersold to Acti. They undervalued wow because they still saw it as a game instead of a virtual world with staying power
Edit: now with metaverse talk tho people are starting to get it
Edit 2: I don't think this was as sudden as we believe. Bobby just made a lot of money. It could have very well been his plan to groom these companies for a big sale. That explains all the short term milking strategies
The problem for WoW console is raid healing tbh. I don't really know how you easily do that. FF is limited to 8 party members to scroll though. Not 15, or 20, or even 30.
Fair, but that could be solved with some good UX design. Like having 1 button that makes a cursor appear in the middle of the raid frames and then you can select with the analog stick and releasing the button. Basically like using a mouse with 1 extra button.
@@6105boe It would need to work of the d pad tbh flicking between frames. You'd need analogue sticks movement, one for character one for camera.
@@GamerFlair nah you’d just disable the camera while the raidframe select button is held down and use the camera stick :) d-pad would make it take long enough that 20-30 people becomes impossible I think
Come to think of it, that’s the same in wow. You cant move the camera while selecting a target to heal unless you have weird camera keybinds in which case i am surprised and disgusted :p
Saw someone in newcomer chat who was using q and e to pan the camera, the poor bastard :(
@@6105boe I dunno. Don't think it's any quicker if it's box select rather then cursor based. The stick is good for precise 360 movement. The dpad is designed for up down across inputs which is all navigating that sort of interface is.
@@GamerFlair Nah, moving a cursor with the stick is really cancer, especially if you have to do it quickly. It really lacks precision. And I often play heal on controller in FF14, never uses the virtual mouse. I agree with GamerFlair, the D-pad is much more suited to navigate through the party list, even a 4*5 boxes list.
Honestly after the second email I would take a vacation for 3 weeks, setup beginning to look for other work and then come back and work until ice got another job and resign.
Wow on console would bring a ton of people to the game I think.
"For more than 30 years our incredibly talented teams have created some of the most successful games," said Bobby Kotick, CEO Activision Blizzard between sips of breast milk.
And calls where he threatens to murder employees.
@@Heldemon Now now, he only threatened to HAVE her killed after all. rofl
@@sqidvishus Wouldn't want to get blood on his breast-milk stained hands now would we?
Did Oneal lie in her official statement? I don't understand
Pretty sure Bobby planned this all along. With a massive cash out at the end. Criminal.
i died when the fallout music started during bobby's letter
God I hope they gouge out the WoW dev team.
They have to clean house. First Bobby, then his friends. But you have to becareful of witch hunts....
Btw, for 70 Billion, they get the following IP:
World of Warcraft.
Warcraft
Starcraft
Diablo
Hearthstone
Heart of the Storm
Overwatch
Crash
Tony Hawk
Sekiro (Yes, FromSoftware made game IP is OWNED by Activision.)
King's Quest
Prototype
Guitar Hero
DJ Hero
Ceasar series
Hexen
Phantasmagoria (the OG horror game)
Pitfall
Police Quest
Quest for Glory
Space Quest
Zork
Soldier of Fortune series (so much promise but just died when Activision bought them out)
True Crime series, which were awesome games almost on par with GTA and could've been just as big with some love.
And a flurry more I can't even remember.
And then there's King, which was one of the biggest mobile games publishers and fizzled out under Activisions wings they tried not to even mention them on some investor calls.
Microsoft is getting a whole lot of IPs and active games with potential.
Yup seems ppl don't get its not only the company but all those ips
@@FrVitoBe On top of that, Microsoft is a publisher.
Activision is a publisher.
Activision is defunct under this deal.
1:15:00 to skip the AFK at the end.
Not everything has to be made public, this deal was in the making for years
See you're looking at Bobby's letter all wrong, it's 100% true. A true letter to investors with some flowery word-service to regular employees. Everything of substance was regarding "opportunity", "Metaverse", "technologies", etc... all of which are sales pitches/assurances to ever growing profits.
All I want out of this is Pitfall on the Edge browser.
I say there is no way someone would buy Acti-Blizz in their current state without a plan behind it, friend says I'm naive to think so. Really curious to see how this turns out.
From one black book entry to the next.
Gotta mention how great his hair is looking
They said bobby will stay during the transition period, after that he is fucking gone
Sky news report said that Microsoft plans on keeping Bobby in his post
Screw the "Metaverse"
So this means world of warcraft VR on xbox?
I like how Preach's accent changes when he talks to his wife.
37:00 As someone who played since TbC religiously this is why I quit. I was not going to grind all that stuff just to raid. I keep waiting for them to fix the system and it just gets worse.
hands on approach or no deal
one of the shitty thing about this is that even if and when bobby walks he'll still be getting a hefty severance package
Soo.. is the wow sub going to be included in gamepass?
They paid over a 45% premium on the share price at paying $95 a share considering it was $65 a share before the news dropped!!! ouch!!!! $21.6 Billion over market share price!
"Does he have his own special rules?"
Of course he does, he's a CEO. C-levels always have custom agreements.
I really hope that his will benefit the real talents that came with it, like the entire WoW Art-Team for example and so many many more.
Also that poor guy who just wanted to PvP and even grinded his honor Gear just to learn how much of a way lies before him. This is sad.
WoW's art team isn't really that amazing tbh. Their use of colour is fucking awful and their designs are pretty boring
13:50 Yesssss 100% agree
Can they get rid of Ion too.
Wow will be on the Xbox cloud, gaming pc specs with mouse and keyboard. I already did a trial 5 yrs ago could turn a tablet or spud laptop into a 1080ti i7 32gb ram worked well 5yrs ago.
First Bethesda, now Activision | Blizzard, next is Take Two Interactive at Survivor Series, that's where Undertaker was born, Microsoft learned about streaks from Undertaker, the legend the phenom! 21-0 at WrestleMania.
Oh, Hodir rep! What fond memories ;-)
Did kotik know of this when he said he will only take bare minimum salary?
1 billion dollars is equal to 10 full crates of $100 bills. That means that if what they said is true, this all cash transaction was nearly 690 crates ( a crate would weigh 10 tons if it's filled with $100 bills)
Holy. Fuck.
THEY'VE SET THIS ONE UP SINCE WARCRAFT 3
Should a full 1 hour stream be in a highlights channel? : /