Should Blizzard reveal current subscription numbers?

[Vynestra]

If sub numbers were high then the pessamists would say "OH JUST WAIT TIL NEXT QUARTER THEY'LL SUCK THEN"

If they were low "HA WOW IS DYING IT SUCKS"

literally no winning with those people, just creates a negative atmosphere.

[melodramocracy]

They should only report how much they have made to their Stock holders...anything we "non investor" types hear? Is just fodder for ...this board.

They're a publicly traded stock, thus the details they give also have to be public information.

[Deleted]

This is an interesting, yet delicate topic.

It's not very interesting though, unless you happen to own ATVI shares?
And even then it's just one of the properties that makes up the value of that stock.

For my personal enjoyment of the game itself, it has no meaning.

- - - Updated - - -

They're a publicly traded stock, thus the details they give also have to be public information.

They file regular SEC reports, they're available here: http://investor.activision.com/sec.cfm?view=all

[corebit]

It's not very interesting though, unless you happen to own ATVI shares?
And even then it's just one of the properties that makes up the value of that stock.

For my personal enjoyment of the game itself, it has no meaning.

The OP is only interested in furthering his vanilla/legacy server crusade. He doesn't play current WoW so that is his one and only purpose on the MMO-C forums. He wants to see subscriptions numbers so he can point fingers and say: "see? see? numbers are declining here and here! bring back vanilla nau!"

He is just sad that nobody gives a shit about the Nostalrius thread anymore so he feels the urge to start new threads like this.

[Pantalaimon]

Shareholders should know if they're thinking of seriously investing in Blizzard. A company that wouldn't provide that information for you wouldn't be very trustworthy when it came down to it.

As for the players all I have to ask is why do you really need to know the numbers? Is your opinion so swayed based on vocal opinion and/or popularity that you don't want to decide to play a game or be involved in entertainment otherwise? If not, then what is the big deal about not knowing. You're either the kind of person who is more likely to play something because they like it or you're less likely to be close to that kind of person.

[Deleted]

Shareholders should know if they're thinking of seriously investing in Blizzard. A company that wouldn't provide that information for you wouldn't be very trustworthy when it came down to it.

You do know you can't actually invest directly in Blizzard?
They're a business unit of Activision-Blizzard. ATVI stock is the only stock you can invest in.

And as you might know, WoW is not the only product offered by ATVI.
So in similar vein, as an ATVI investor it should be equally interesting to know how many players Destiny, Skylanders or CoD has. Or Candy Crush.
How interesting is that for en an investor though? Not very.
What you want to know is trends, cost-effectiveness, product development, quarterly earnings etc.
And they do publish that stuff - http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...mary_FINAL.pdf

Only angry WoW nerds are interested in sub numbers. No one else gives a shit.

[Ehrenpanzer]

Never see the "fanbois" (god what a stupid term and you should feel bad for using it) Bitching about the lack of sub numbers though, only doomsayers lacking some ammo to shoot.

Then you either:
1) Have selective eyesight
2) Don't read MMO-Champ in the first 6 months of the last 3 expansion launches
3) Had the point of what I said go over your head completely, since you seem to think fanbois (and I really don't give a crap what some random person thinks of the words I use, its an established gaming word, get over yourself) complain about the LACK of sub numbers, when what they use the data for is the complete OPPOSITE

[Morrigenn]

No they shouldn't.

Blizzard owes you nothing.
Shareholders are interested in profit and not subscriptions.
It is only of high interest to forum posters and doomsayers and nobody else

^^^ This sums it up nicely. They are legally obligated to report certain things. I'm very sure they're reporting what they're obligated to.

They are NOT obligated to report numbers that are irrelevant to their position as a publicly traded company and beholden to their shareholders.

And they're really not obligated to report numbers so forum doomsayers can twist them to suit their own "WoW is doomed! I told you so! Give us X and it will be better again!" threads.....

[Deleted]

You do know you can't actually invest directly in Blizzard?
They're a business unit of Activision-Blizzard. ATVI stock is the only stock you can invest in.

And as you might know, WoW is not the only product offered by ATVI.
So in similar vein, as an ATVI investor it should be equally interesting to know how many players Destiny, Skylanders or CoD has. Or Candy Crush.
How interesting is that for en an investor though? Not very.
What you want to know is trends, cost-effectiveness, product development, quarterly earnings etc.
And they do publish that stuff - http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...mary_FINAL.pdf

Only angry WoW nerds are interested in sub numbers. No one else gives a shit.

Exactly what I been saying 10 pages back.
/signed and /tread.

[Vineri]

^^^ This sums it up nicely. They are legally obligated to report certain things. I'm very sure they're reporting what they're obligated to.

They are NOT obligated to report numbers that are irrelevant to their position as a publicly traded company and beholden to their shareholders.

And they're really not obligated to report numbers so forum doomsayers can twist them to suit their own "WoW is doomed! I told you so! Give us X and it will be better again!" threads.....

They are not obligated to, but it's a good gesture, non-the-less. It gives more credence to claims that "We Can Do Better" (please don't unsubscribe), Ghostcrawler ~2011.

The overall vibe is not what they are obligated to do, but rather what they "should" or "should not" do. Blizzard was a company that broke the norm before, it's not a bad idea to continue the trend towards their customers. They are (or at least were) in a position to dictate how other MMORPG's operate. Better to burn out than to fade away.

[Lightning-]

Should they reveal current subscription numbers? -No
Would I like to know current subscription numbers? -Yes, why not, but I don't care if I don't know it.

[MoanaLisa]

No one else reveals subscription numbers. Why should they?

WoW is only a piece of Activision's financial reporting and not a giant piece at that. OP is wrong to assign it more importance than it warrants. There are no shareholder's in Blizzard. This comes up all the time here and is always wrong. Now that King Digital has been acquired by Activision it's more true than ever. Blizzard is an important part of Activision but WoW now has plenty of company with new Blizzard titles that are generating a lot of revenue on their own. And again, that's just a piece of what "shareholders" are interested in with Activision. Just wrong to think anything else at this point.

[Thoughtful Trolli]

Should we let the few remaining humans know that 98% of the life forms they live, work, interact, and relate with are robots?

Nah. Doesn't make a difference. Really.

[Deleted]

The only reason people would want to see the subscription numbers again is so they can engage in their little circlejerk fluctuating numbers posts and threads.

The less shitty threads spurned on by irrelevant info the better. No thanks.

[Jazzhands]

No. People can't handle them, and will always spin them into a negative situation in some way. Let's say 6 months after Legion hits subs are way up so Blizzard releases them, people would just yell that Blizz is a bunch of hypocrites and is only showing the numbers because they're up, and will stop as soon as they drop ect.

Besides, they're really only important to Blizzard. You either are having fun with the game or you aren't, the over all number of people in the game shouldn't make a difference in that, only the ones you directly play with. This is why games with less than 100k active players, or even 1000, are still fun.

And WoW is now a cyclical game, they simply cannot make enough content up to their standards at the pace needed to keep some people busy for 6-10 hours a day every day. Subs going up and down is just the nature of the beast when you have a multi-million player MMO with people who play anywhere from 8 hours a week to 8 hours a day, and some people simply cannot accept that subs dropping doesn't mean a game is failing. Even during the shittiest expansion they've ever done, WoW has maintained a population multiple times that of any subscription MMO, most of them are lucky to hit 1 million active subs at any point in their life time, let alone maintain multiple over 12 year.

[Thoughtful Trolli]

The only reason people would want to see the subscription numbers again is so they can engage in their little circlejerk fluctuating numbers posts and threads.

The less shitty threads spurned on by irrelevant info the better. No thanks.

Wait really what's wrong with the circle jerks? Not only have I heard that all publicity is good publicity but giving the fans their circle jerk signal would be quite pleasing to them no?

[Cæli]

They should not report anything, it's none of anyone's business, if they don't belong to blizzard.

[Sundreamer]

subscriptions numbers as a player to me are uninteresting - what do i care about how many others are playing? i'm enjoying the game, so i play it. there are enough players to do things like raids and pvp, so why would i need to know how many subscribers they have?

if they'd share it with stockholders fine - even though it doesn't say too much, they have so many different forms of income - but it's not neccessary for the public

[Queen of Hamsters]

This is not true. Subscription numbers assist to gauge a games health, beyond added-value expenditures.

The number in itself doesn't mean much, but the change in number from month-to-month, or quarter-to-quarter is of high interest.

... Depends on who you ask, really. SOME people blow 150k active players up to be "proof of success and demand!!" for certain things, and then they turn around and claim that 2 million or 5 million+ = the game is dead.

I go by how active my servers are, and they've been pretty damned full these past weeks. Blizzard "shouldn't" do anything other than focus on current and future content.

[Seranthor]

They are not obligated to, but it's a good gesture, non-the-less. It gives more credence to claims that "We Can Do Better" (please don't unsubscribe), Ghostcrawler ~2011.

The overall vibe is not what they are obligated to do, but rather what they "should" or "should not" do. Blizzard was a company that broke the norm before, it's not a bad idea to continue the trend towards their customers. They are (or at least were) in a position to dictate how other MMORPG's operate. Better to burn out than to fade away.

I strongly suspect that Blizzard MIGHT be more inclined to make that kind gesture share those numbers IF (pay attention here Vineri) there wasn't a contingent of individuals that used that gesture to attempt to beat them the fuck up every time those numbers were announced.

The lesson here is how long do you be nice and continue to reach out if the other person is going to abuse the fuck out of that situation?

Let that sink in