Earnings Call: PR talk for WoW translated

[cparle87]

By definition cherry picking is selecting data that only fits your narrative... So nice try, I guess?

So if I'm the CEO of a company giving my report on the earnings we've made that quarter, and I tell them the earnings, but not that we had to lay off some people or that one of our factories burned down in a fire, then that makes the earnings I've reported a lie?

Besides that, isn't the point of an earning report to, I dunno, report the earnings? It's not a report of everything that's going on in Blizz good and bad. It's a report of the earnings, which is what we got.

[styil]

I wasn't talking for shareholders, I was talking for players.

For shareholders, both numbers are good. They want to see a living game, not just a bunch of subscribed numbers where off many could be done already.

A 10% increase in activity for a subset of players we have no idea about is not helpful for anybody.

[Dhrizzle]

What you are saying with this is that there is some "real" level of subs plus there are spikes at launches / big patches. I will reformulate what I am saying in terms of this then - WoD and Legion are different from previous expansions in that they have a much lower base level of subs and much bigger spikes.

Yes WoD and Legion have a lower base level than other expansions, because WoW has been steadily losing subs since the end of WotLK. They also get bigger spikes than previous expansions because they have a larger pool of ex-players to return to the game.

If anything you should be looking to MoP as the start of this pattern as it was the first expansion to have a multi-million boost at the start.

(You think there's a lot of difference, but there isn't, it's the same thing to what I am saying. The change of a viewpoint only rephrases in exactly what way WoD and Legion are bad. I mean - OK - let's not talk about WoD / Legion "losing" tons of players, let's just talk about them "failing to retain" them - UNLIKE previous expansions. /shrug)

Why are you ignoring the fact that Cata and MoP also failed to retain 100k subs a month LIKE WoD did?

[Lochton]

A 10% increase for a subset of players we have no idea about is not helpful for anybody.

Helps more to have an insight on activity than just a number that cannot describe activity. A subscriber doesn't mean active user.

[Deleted]

From the first page:



I love the words they are choosing, and most of all the things they are choosing to report on.

Translating from PR-speak:

* WoD was a bad expansion which lost a ton of people. 2015 was a terrible year. Legion added enough people in the end of 2016 so that 2016 is better than 2015.

* Legion launched on the border between August and September. That means Q3 got one month of Legion and Q4 got three months. The number of people playing declined sharply after launch, but the second three months were still larger than the first month (partly because we encourage purchasing gametime in portions larger than one month).

Happy for Overwatch, etc.

PR-Translation:

We stopped giving sub numbers, because piece of shit people like you, who don't have any basic knowledge to comprehend basic information or how the game industry works, predicting and analyzing our results. Besides - regardless of 20M people or 1M people are playing WoW, you will keep your doomsaying crusade going on(and SWTOR wasnt the end of us).

Here we are with all our mistakes, still keeping millions and millions of people entertained(you will keep crying because you dont have better to do).

Bye.

[styil]

Helps more to have an insight on activity than just a number that cannot describe activity. A subscriber doesn't mean active user.

A subscriber means mean an active account, however. From this we are able to at least able draw some conclusions.

How is knowing that some portion of the playerbase (which is not specified) had a 10% increase in activity useful to anything? We cannot draw any conclusions from this metric because we have no idea who is being included in this subset of players.

[rda]

Yes WoD and Legion have a lower base level than other expansions, because WoW has been steadily losing subs since the end of WotLK. They also get bigger spikes than previous expansions because they have a larger pool of ex-players to return to the game.

They have lower base level and bigger spikes - if we talk in your terms - because players are less willing to play WoW for long. As in, less willing than before (and we have to insert "much" before "willing", too, because base level got much lower and spikes got much bigger - again, if we talk in your terms).

The pool of ex-players was always very big. In fact, if you reduce the number of everybody who'd return to WoW from just "everyone who played the game" to "everyone who played the game in the last X years", expansions prior to WoD / Legion had bigger pools than them. Math.

If anything you should be looking to MoP as the start of this pattern as it was the first expansion to have a multi-million boost at the start.

You have a point here, MoP did have a sizeable spike, but its size was about a half that of WoD / Legion proportionally (as in, MoP gained and lost ~30%, WoD / Legion gained and lost ~60%+). MoP also held very stable for a very long time after - unlike WoD and unlike Legion so far. Still, I guess it would be prudent to change what I am saying from "the big spikes started with WoD / Legion" to "we had small spikes before, had a more sizeable spike in MoP, then it grew significantly and now we have really big spikes in WoD / Legion".

Why are you ignoring the fact that Cata and MoP also failed to retain 100k subs a month LIKE WoD did?

Not ignoring, I agree it's important. It's just that my objection is first and foremost to the speed / size of the spikes which are playing bigger and bigger role, and less to the constant bleeding (and this thread in particular was about Blizzard painting a rosy picture where there is none). Although it's that constant bleeding that will eventually kill it all, and I agree it's a very important factor and Cata / MoP both failed at it same as WoD / Legion.

[Deleted]

They always are when there is the slightest hint of negativity. Sad part is that people are so used to negativity on this forum now that people will attack at the slightest perceived threat to WoW/Blizzard/their opinion, whether the "threat" was intended or not.

The only negativity here is, how OP is spreading BS. There are no "facts" to defend, only people with hurt ego trying so hard with "I want blizz to fail"attitude(which again makes no sense). I hope you see that?

If you cant see that, then I gladly give you a round of verbal BS(just to keep the standard).

[rda]

The only negativity here, is how OP is spreading BS. I hope you see that?

If you cant see that, I gladly give you a round of verbal BS(just to keep the standard).

What specifically in what I am saying is BS, dear?

Can't answer, right? That's what I thought. You aren't replying to posts, you are replying to feelings you get from these posts. With your own feelings. Well, that's not the only way to communicate.

[Lochton]

A subscriber means mean an active account, however. From this we are able to at least able draw some conclusions.

How is knowing that some portion of the playerbase (which is not specified) had a 10% increase in activity useful to anything? We cannot draw any conclusions from this metric because we have no idea who is being included in this subset of players.

I would say, that knowing an active user still strikes a better number than knowing an active account that might not have an active user.

[Deleted]

What specifically in what I am saying is BS, dear?

Can't answer, right? That's what I thought.

Who are you to translate something? Im just wondering.

Because my translation might be different.

[Banquetto]

Yes, it is dying. Not car-crash dying with everyone gone in a few months, but declining very seriously in terms of the number of players between expansions.

So what you're saying is that at some point in the next decade or so they're going to put a pin in it and say "welp, we only made twenty billion dollars or so out of that idea, guess we were idiots and rda was a genius"?

[Sixy]

The BS is in "people seem to like Legion".

WoD started the tradition of big declines right after launch - this was not happening before (WotLK had no decline at all after launch, one of Cata / MoP had a very mild decline - something like a loss of 15% to where WoD's lost 60%+). Legion did not overturn this, it did not become the expansion that fixed what WoD did, it continued the tradition. The decline for Legion is as big and as fast as it was for WoD. People came, looked, tried, then left.

These declines are overall - a combination of player activity levels as measured by warcraftrealms, raid / achievement participation charts here, raid kill rates on wowprogress, arena ladder sizes on various arena trackers. They all agree with each other. When Blizzard were still publishing sub numbers, the sources agreed with the sub numbers as well.

Sum total, Legion is not doing great. It might end up doing better than WoD in the end - we'll have to see - but it is already perfectly clear that it is not going to even start undoing the damage that WoD did. It will only - maybe - lose less people proportionally. That's what's behind the rosy statements in the earnings call.

Based zero facts period. All anecdotal.
Here is my "personal" experience to counters yours. During WoD myself and more then 50 of my in game friends quit the game before even 5 months in. During legion only about 10 of my friends have quit at nearly 6 months.
Of course this is a very small sample size. But since you have no actual numbers or facts yourself, this point is just as valid.

[Erwarth]

What specifically in what I am saying is BS, dear?

Can't answer, right? That's what I thought. You aren't replying to posts, you are replying to feelings you get from these posts. With your own feelings. Well, that's not the only way to communicate.

All of your point are based on unprovable assumption. So they're nothing more to say.

Your post is full of BS. Your sources are the less reliable sources in the web (Seriously, warcraftrealm is a dead beaten horse and others aren't that great to measure activity or population). The only valid thing you said is about the PR talk.

Yes, Blizzard is doing PR talk, juste like .. you know... every company ever ? Just because they add cream and cherry on the cake, that doesn't mean the cake is bad.

[Deleted]

Guys, let's read OP again:

Originally Posted by rda
"Yes, it is dying. Not car-crash dying with everyone gone in a few months, but declining very seriously in terms of the number of players between expansions."

This is like when Satan wants to review the Bible.

People like him should be shut out of the community. They don't bring anything constructive.

[rda]

I would say, that knowing an active user still strikes a better number than knowing an active account that might not have an active user.

Look, you are lost in a forest of three trees total.

Game A has 2,000,000 active players per month with logging for free allowed. Game B has 5,000,000 active players per month with logging for free allowed. What game is doing better financially? "Financially" matters for both investors (obvious) AS WELL AS for players - because when a game does not do well financially, it stops getting content updates and starts getting shop mounts. So, what of the two games above is doing better financially? Can't say, right? Can't even approximate, because you need to know what paid-for options are in each game and at what rate the people are buying them. Both these things vary widely, a typical player in one game can *easily* spend 10x that of a typical player in the other game.

Now try with subs.

Game A has 2,000,000 subs, a sub is $15. Game B has 5,000,000 subs, a sub is the same $15. Which game is doing better? Easy to answer. You don't have to be super-precise either, it's understandable that we are talking about rough averages, but you can see it with your own eyes (and that's called "the health of the game").

Hope this helps.

- - - Updated - - -

So what you're saying is that at some point in the next decade or so they're going to put a pin in it and say "welp, we only made twenty billion dollars or so out of that idea, guess we were idiots and rda was a genius"?

When saying that they will add "and 99% of it came from Overwatch and other titles, and the extent of good news for WoW is that we just celebrated its X birthday (and had players attending, we won't tell how much, because that's not an important metric)". :-)

[drakath]

http://warcraftrealms.com/weeklyacti...hp?serverid=-1

I don't think this data is very accurate. It's collected through an addon that hasn't been updated in 3 months, and only gets 675 downloads/month, or a total of 189k downloads since 2006. The graph linked only shows data from players playing between 6pm-11pm. So we're talking about representation of players that have come into contact with the few players that have this addon during a 5 hour window. In fact, if you go to the census on the webpage, they've only managed to collect data on 1.5 million characters, with some servers scoring in the low hundreds. Considering how many alts people tend to have, I'd wager those numbers to be pretty low.

[styil]

I would say, that knowing an active user still strikes a better number than knowing an active account that might not have an active user.

How so? No one knows who or how many players have actually increased their activity and in what way. For all we know, the 10% increased monthly user activity could be attributed to increased botting.

[rda]

(Seriously, warcraftrealm is a dead beaten horse and others aren't that great to measure activity or population)

Warcraftrealms activity numbers correctly reflect relative levels of activity. Arena trackers correctly reflect the number of people in PVP ladders. Etc.

Hey, let's wait for MMO-C to publish its regular chart regarding raid participation. That would add to the numbers. Easy prediction: Legion tier 1 is going to lose to WoD tier 1, perhaps significantly, same for tier 2. Expansion-over-expansion decline.

[Deleted]

Where are all these other 12 year old games that are still growing in terms of playerbase and new players and player retention for people to draw comparisons between? Where are the games that after 12 years, kicked on to scale new heights? It's not needed to defend activision/blizzard. How many of us are thinking about going out and buying FIFA 2005? Or if you want a title that hasn't had a sequel, Jade Empire.

The only answer to WoW is dying is - of course it is. So is every game we ever play, in fact, so are the computers we play the games on... and surprisingly enough... so are we.

Funny how that works isn't it. I could genuinely get on board with criticism over groups like doctors as to why we're still dying when they've had so much time to fix it.