Earnings Call: PR talk for WoW translated

[styil]

Data compiled from MMO-C would be even less accurate.

For me, the only acceptable data for these kind of discussions is the data Blizzard makes public.

Why is that? We were given a monthly active user statistic and we have no idea how it was calculated, who was included, how long a monthly active players for, etc. Let alone if the data was gathered correctly or if there was any manipulation. This is right after HIDING and becoming less transparent by no longer publishing subscriber numbers.

At least the statistics gathered by third party websites are public and transparent.

[Ehuehuecopter]

and pretty skewed, you forgot

[rda]

Ah. As I said earlier, though, even Armory scans are skewed. It's using an API which wasn't implemented to provide the type of data you're trying to determine.

Are you talking about the difference about measuring, I don't know, interest in particular content, vs how many people actually did it? If so, yes, this discrepancy exists, but we can still compare expansions between each other based on the same metric (completion rates).

Or are you talking about armory errors / it not being updated with 100% reliability? I am not sure that's a big factor, but anyway, we can still compare expansions between each other based on the same metric with the same assumptions regarding reliability.

This all averages out.

An armory scan can't give you the number of subs, that's true. But if you do the same type of scan regarding the same things year over year, you can (a) compare the data points, and (b) knowing what the subs were from previous data points, find out where they most likely are for new data points. Yes, there are error bars, obviously, things are changing, etc, but for big qualitative differences it's going to work fine. (And, again, this is getting confirmed at every turn by everything else you can measure.)

- - - Updated - - -

You need a reliable source of data to make reliable statistics.

Warcraftrealms is reliable for big relative differences. That's how numbers work. They have plenty more than is necessary to be fine for that.

[Seranthor]

Are you talking about the difference about measuring, I don't know, interest in particular content, vs how many people actually did it? If so, yes, this discrepancy exists, but we can still compare expansions between each other based on the same metric (completion rates).

Or are you talking about armory errors / it not being updated with 100% reliability? I am not sure that's a big factor, but anyway, we can still compare expansions between each other based on the same metric with the same assumptions regarding reliability.

This all averages out.

An armory scan can't give you the number of subs, that's true. But if you do the same type of scan regarding the same things year over year, you can (a) compare the data points, and (b) knowing what the subs were from previous data points, find out where they most likely are for new data points. Yes, there are error bars, obviously, things are changing, etc, but for big qualitative differences it's going to work fine. (And, again, this is getting confirmed at every turn by everything else you can measure.)

Why should we believe the assumptions and made up numbers you yank out of your ass as opposed to the numbers Blizzard has?

[Ehuehuecopter]

o boi i would really like to see a warcraftrealms comparison between wotlk mop and wod

[rda]

and pretty skewed, you forgot

What is the skew?

Humor me. :-)

Explain what skew is in WR numbers.

[Niwes]

i had a good laugh when i read blizzards "extravagant" wordings. so sweet.

its sad that they are too stupid, or believe most of their customers are stupid enough, to realize that ppl would respect them way more when they have the balls to just say how it is (by simple numbers), regardless how low they are, instead that pathetic behaviour. it says more than 1000 words when you look at that acting, what they think about how stupid we are. and it says more than 1000 words what company you are, when you go that way.

its a shame.

but at least its funny to read

[Deleted]

League of Legends, growing since launch in 2009.

If you said your phrase in 2013 = MoP (by that time WoW was already declining for a couple of years), LoL would have been a direct and complete answer to your question.

Let's wait four more years, I guess. :-)

But right now there still isn't a comparison, but even if there is, then its just WoW ultimately didn't do as good as the new benchmark title for longevity. As I said, the game doesn't need defending, its a game. To be honest, if you're looking for reasons to attack or defend a game - you're doing it wrong. If you've played it and had fun with it, then its served its purpose. Perhaps I'm just looking at it naively, but it's still in the territory or what no other game has done to date.

Just to be obtuse, and play devils advocate, even though it doesn't really matter that much... how much is LoL's monthly fee? Even if you overcome that argument, you can then be more difficult and say "but LoL's not an MMO" so the goalposts can always be shifted. My point is just that so far in gaming, we've not had anything go that way.

Also @styil do the metrics really matter, when there is no other game in general that you can really compare with.

[Ehuehuecopter]

Why should we believe the assumptions and made up numbers you yank out of your ass as opposed to the numbers Blizzard has?

because blizzard is evil and dont wanna show us that wow is dying because for rda and his minions, wow is dying because he doesnt have 20billions active players like lol

[rda]

Why should we believe the assumptions and made up numbers you yank out of your ass as opposed to the numbers Blizzard has?

You replied to a post that talks about armory data.

Start reading what you are replying to. If the number of words is too big and you get tired, ask your grandma to help or something.

[Relapses]

Why is that? We were given a monthly active user statistic and we have no idea how it was calculated, who was included, how long a monthly active players for, etc. Let alone if the data was gathered correctly or if there was any manipulation. This is right after HIDING and becoming less transparent by no longer publishing subscriber numbers.

At least the statistics gathered by third party websites are public and transparent.

Because there's no way to substantiate the data gleamed from third party websites? They're perfectly acceptable to mark trends but the most they can do is provide a "best guess" about subscriber levels. The result? Threads like this which try to use that unsubstantiated data to form entire narratives about the state of the game without having any frame of reference whatsoever. People are welcome to have their opinions and they can try to back it up with whatever information they feel relevant but it's important to interpret information from third party datasets with a grain of salt.

[Desparil]

Boy OP, you really are gonna beat your meat when WoW eventually shuts down, won't you.

Spilled coffee all over damn screen but thx for laugh

[Ehuehuecopter]

What is the skew?

Humor me. :-)

Explain what skew is in WR numbers.

dont wanna to spolier you :-)

you will see next week in classroom

[Relapses]

Are you talking about the difference about measuring, I don't know, interest in particular content, vs how many people actually did it? If so, yes, this discrepancy exists, but we can still compare expansions between each other based on the same metric (completion rates).

Or are you talking about armory errors / it not being updated with 100% reliability? I am not sure that's a big factor, but anyway, we can still compare expansions between each other based on the same metric with the same assumptions regarding reliability.

This all averages out.

An armory scan can't give you the number of subs, that's true. But if you do the same type of scan regarding the same things year over year, you can (a) compare the data points, and (b) knowing what the subs were from previous data points, find out where they most likely are for new data points. Yes, there are error bars, obviously, things are changing, etc, but for big qualitative differences it's going to work fine. (And, again, this is getting confirmed at every turn by everything else you can measure.)

I get what you're saying but there's simply way too many factors which could affect this data for it to be accurate. For example, if the API used to grab the data in 2015 is much less refined than the API used in 2017 the numbers are going to be less congruent. (I'd wager the variance would be large enough to dismiss the data completely, but this is just a hypothetical example.) It'd be interesting to see this data, but I still don't think it would get us any closer to knowing the real subscriber count than any of the other "best guess" websites that are out there.

[Seranthor]

You replied to a post that talks about armory data.

Start reading what you are replying to. If the number of words is too big and you get tired, ask your grandma to help or something.

I read it... I have read everything you have written, sadly. And you are still frantically trying to defend your claims... As far as asking my grandmother, perhaps you can come over and help me dig one of them up so we can try and ask them... I'll be waiting.

[Ilir]

rda is the biggest wow fanboy ever.

[Niwes]

Ordinarily I'd agree, but corporations misrepresenting their earnings is a big fucking deal. Blizzard (an overall successful company, despite what anyone's personal opinion of World of Warcraft is) would be committing suicide by doing something like that.

Ever hear of Enron? If Blizzard lied about their earnings, they'd be the next Enron.

So, with so much to lose, and nothing but immediate short term gain (we're talking, hours, maybe), I'll take them at their word.
If they had lied, we'd already know about it, it would be international news.

exactly thats the reason why their lawyers use that extravagant wording. its "looking very good" without lying. PR standard...

[TheVaryag]

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.

The fanboys have already arrived to defend their motherland I see.

Legion Is still no better, and won't be any better Q1 2017, Imean what do we have to show for It? I doubt at the end of this month, February we'll get anything of substance to drive the game up. Nighthold Is 2 patches late of launching which has never happened In the history of WoW that a launch-specific raid launches after a patch or two.

Even Blackrock Foundry, which was released too soon for the taste of many raiders got 6.1 on the 27th of Feb, whilst the raid released 3rd Feb 2 years ago. And even then 6.1 was not a content patch, just a mini patch. Same amount of content that we got from 7.1, so none at all. A silly raid, Karazhan who nobody plays anymore and ran for like a few hours and that's It, and continuation of the Suramar storyline which should've been there already before the patch. They simply cut up the Suramar story, and released It in a patch to make It look like they're giving more content. But that content was already there, no reason to hold It back anymore. Not with their phasing technology especially.

So far I'm glad people see WoD being mostly abandoned for Legion, which did nothing to make Legion a grand expansion, and that the hype train has gone off tracks In a horrible disaster. All the time abandoned from WoD to make Legion didn't serve them well. It's a grindy, unrewarding, unInteresting expansion.

With stories crafted ONLY to be tailored to the outcries of fans "We want Alleria/Turalyon (Which I did too, but not like this), will Illidan return? We want Demon Hunters.. we want Azshara, we want Nightmare Raid, we want the Vrykul back"

All of that? Is just the loudest suggestions fans had, and they looked at them after seeing how WoD failed and were like "Uhh, yeah we should probably listen now, maybe they won't stop playing WoW If we do!"

Don't listen to fans, they don't know what's best for the game, they don't. Not unless they're 12 year long players since Vanilla that Is, then they might know. But even then, look what listening to fans caused, zones to be created that has little to no connection and only serve to cator to fans and what they've always wanted. "Yey Vrykul, Illidan, Nightmare!"

Hell even the nightborne and their story Is a copy of the blood elven struggle of arcane withdrawl from their sunwell. There's NOTHING original In Legion that I can see. Even the legendaries dropping from wolf's guts Is a copy from Diablo 3, the whole story of Legion Is a copy from Starcraft.

I see WoW failing within a few years at this rate, WoW Is at It's all time low. And If there's been anytime to say this, It is now: WoW Is dying.

The subs are at a good 3 mil or less. And don't forget a good amount of those are just fanboys who will keep playing until the death spiral of wow, bot-users, hackers, goldshire people (Ahem) & RPers who simply RP for the story and char development of their guild or their char, rather than the content WoW releases. Those players are here to stay until the very end, the rest of those 3 mil will leave your azz once you stop making a good story.

Don't just copy stories from your other games, make a good story. Wrath had a great storyline, It helped that we were killing Arthas and we all were hyped for It by Warcraft 3. But you can make good storylines, Blizz... you're just not trying anymore. Even the game Is too easy to play, we're close to beings gods, and one-shotting everything - that Is not fun.

[Dhrizzle]

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.



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".



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.

I wouldn't say MoP stayed stable for a long time, just like WoD and Cata after 6 months the subs had dropped to below the lowest number for the previous expansion.

Regardless, the picture these numbers paint is of an ageing game that has gradually and consistently lost players willing to subscribe for an extended period but still pulls in a lot of players for new expansion. After a dozen years I think that's a pretty good position for WoW to be in and expect Blizzard are happy with its performance. I bet a lot of other MMOs would love to "fail"one WoW's last few expansions.

[styil]

Because there's no way to substantiate the data gleamed from third party websites? They're perfectly acceptable to mark trends but the most they can do is provide a "best guess" about subscriber levels. The result? Threads like this which try to use that unsubstantiated data to form entire narratives about the state of the game without having any frame of reference whatsoever. People are welcome to have their opinions and they can try to back it up with whatever information they feel relevant but it's important to interpret information from third party datasets with a grain of salt.

I would argue that they provide more information about subscriber levels than Activision Blizzard's "10% increased monthly active users" statement. As I've said, we have no idea how it was calculated, who was included, how long a monthly active players for.

I don't know why you would find "10% increased monthly users" "the only acceptable data" simply because Blizzard said it.