Wow (pun intended), that came out of nowhere for me!
 

How long before the Alliance and the Horde are Minecraft characters, or Steve is leading armies in WoW???? ;)
 

They didn't pay $70m for Blizzard. They paid $70m for Activision-Blizzard-King. Blizzard was probably the least attractive of the three, King the most.
 

Wow. Pun not really intended but I can't help it. I was just minutes ago reading today's Wall Street Journal front page article about ActiBlizzard's sexual harassment problems. Guess Microsoft doesn't care.
 

I think Microsoft actually got a great deal.

Despite all the drama people seem to forget that the Blizzard part of Activision Blizzard isn't the biggest part of the company $$$ wise.

Call of Duty Vanguard and Cold War were the number 1 AND 2 best selling games last year.

King made 652 Million in revenue in Q3 alone. And it's revenues are growing faster then Blizzards at 22% year over year versus Blizzards 20%.

Actiblizz as a whole made 2.07 Billion in Q3.

The truth is most gamers don't even know about the toxic work environment at Actiblizz and I'd bet any effects from the bad press are negligible to the overall companies revenues.

Now was a great time for Microsoft to pick up the company while their stock is down and Bobby Kotick is looking for a golden parachute.

I'm interested in seeing what happens to Battle.net and if we'll see WoW get rolled into Gamepass for PC in the next few years.
 

I am pretty sure all the IP act-blizz owns is worth a pretty penny too, on top of their actual value.
 

Hopefully some good will come out of the change. Phil claimed in a recent article (can't remember which one) that they've learned lessons from how they approached studios in the past and that they won't repeat past mistakes. I think Activision's acquisition of Blizzard was a failure, Blizzard seemed worse off for it. Microsoft is going big in the games industry though, they acquired Zenimax last year and now AB this year - those are some huge investments. Luckily there's still a place for indie games and small studios which can get massive coverage via social media.
 

From a player point of view, if for example a WOW subscription is included in the PC GamePass, this will be a nice benefit.
 

@ Jogy

WoW still needs a full revamp. Or, at least, going back to its roots: good content, great story, great quests, not too much timegating, etc. Modern WoW feels like a glorified "mobile" and removing the monthly fee wouldn't make any difference, in that sense.
 

Well, Classic WoW seems to be doing okay. I'm almost tempted to go back for a visit. But I suspect the money is in the mobile style, nowadays, and the old-style MMORPG is going to be a niche experience a most from now on.
 

Classic is doing ok for people like us, the "old guard". It's not going to last forever. My kids (12 and 15) as well as their friends in the same age range can't even understand how we (the adults) may like it. "Dad, it looks like a game from the stone age". They tried it, the level 1-20 experience was "ok" but they laughed hard at almost every aspect of the game. The word "old" came out multiple times.