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"Trust me, you think you want it, but you don't" - Blizzard, about vanilla WoW, a year before releasing WoW Classic.

by taneq 6y ago

scruple 6y ago
Yeah, JAB (who the quote is attributed to) is now the President of the company, too... To be fair to him, however, he did admit his failure on that one.
knuthsat 6y ago
The thing with most companies optimizing addiction (user engagement) is that they use these weird optimization loops that improve metrics one by one (+x% then +y%) but then end up with a product so far from the long-term equilibrium. There's no context as to what each player wants. The loop just works across the whole player base, not really aimed towards any context of the player.
- SuoDuanDao 6y ago
  This is so true, and most people in these spaces will still defend the metrics they're using. I've encountered this a lot when trying to suggest how advertising could be a social good.
- inteoryx 6y ago
  Something like how gradient descent may be able to find a local maximum but unable to find superior global maximums. Or, how if you add one more ad to your website you may increase revenue, but if you keep doing that you will eventually destroy the site's usability, drive off your traffic, and, perhaps irreversibly, crater your revenue.
schlupfknoten 6y ago
Was it really a year before? I thought it was many years earlier that he said that.
- taneq 6y ago
  Sorry, you're right - it was announced the next year but took several more years to release. (I believe that was said at Blizzcon '16 based on eg. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4dqtvj/you_think_you_do_but_you_dont_blizzard_responds/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4dqtvj/you_think_yo... and WoW Classic was announced at Blizzcon '17 https://diaryofdennis.com/2017/11/04/official-vanilla-world-of-warcraft-servers-announced-during-blizzcon-2017/ https://diaryofdennis.com/2017/11/04/official-vanilla-world-...)

"Trust me, you think you want it, but you don't" - Blizzard, about vanilla WoW, a year before releasing WoW Classic.

by taneq 6y ago

"Trust me, you think you want it, but you don't" - Blizzard, about vanilla WoW, a year before releasing WoW Classic.

Yeah, JAB (who the quote is attributed to) is now the President of the company, too... To be fair to him, however, he did admit his failure on that one.

knuthsat 6y ago

The thing with most companies optimizing addiction (user engagement) is that they use these weird optimization loops that improve metrics one by one (+x% then +y%) but then end up with a product so far from the long-term equilibrium. There's no context as to what each player wants. The loop just works across the whole player base, not really aimed towards any context of the player.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago
This is so true, and most people in these spaces will still defend the metrics they're using. I've encountered this a lot when trying to suggest how advertising could be a social good.
inteoryx 6y ago
Something like how gradient descent may be able to find a local maximum but unable to find superior global maximums. Or, how if you add one more ad to your website you may increase revenue, but if you keep doing that you will eventually destroy the site's usability, drive off your traffic, and, perhaps irreversibly, crater your revenue.

schlupfknoten 6y ago

Was it really a year before? I thought it was many years earlier that he said that.

taneq 6y ago
Sorry, you're right - it was announced the next year but took several more years to release. (I believe that was said at Blizzcon '16 based on eg. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4dqtvj/you_think_you_do_but_you_dont_blizzard_responds/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4dqtvj/you_think_yo... and WoW Classic was announced at Blizzcon '17 https://diaryofdennis.com/2017/11/04/official-vanilla-world-of-warcraft-servers-announced-during-blizzcon-2017/ https://diaryofdennis.com/2017/11/04/official-vanilla-world-...)