Earnings Call: PR talk for WoW translated

[Blackmist]

Lets be honest, most investors aren't even looking at the BS they write about subscriber numbers/unique interactions/whatever.

Statistics can say whatever you want, but the only thing an investor is looking at is the share price.

[Deleted]

OP is claiming WoW is dying WITHOUT ANY evidence and by trying to spin blizzards word negativ.
12 years in and nothing new to see here....

[Ishayu]

* World of Warcraft saw an increase in total play time for the quarter, surpassing the Q3 expansion launch quarter and all non-launch quarters in the last four years.

This is the most important thing to me. This proves that the game doesn't have to be "cyclical" as long as they provide a steady stream of good content.

Good **** Blizz. Keep it up.

[rda]

This is the most important thing to me. This proves that the game doesn't have to be "cyclical" as long as they provide a steady stream of good content.

Good **** Blizz. Keep it up.

You are talking about the increase from the quarter that had 1 month of a new expansion to the quarter that had 3 months of it right after. Such an increase does not mean at all that the game stopped having big spikes - to the contrary, it's entirely expected for the game with big spikes to have the very first month still be less than the next 3 months combined (because we didn't yet - and likely / hopefully will never - get to the point where the spike is so short-termed, everything ends in a month or less).

Moreover, the entire notion of deducing something from MAUs on the switch of expansions is bogus. Players had little to do at the end of WoD, so average "MAUs" per player were likely significantly lower in Q3 than in Q4. If you want to compare MAUs, compare them for Legion vs Legion (and to disprove lack of decline / falloff from spike / however you want to call it, it's already late - it already happened).

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PS: Substitute "play time" for MAUs, if you want, it's the same thing for the purposes of the post.

[Pann]

If you want to compare MAUs, compare them for Legion vs Legion (and to disprove lack of decline / falloff from spike / however you want to call it, it's already late - it already happened).

What will be interesting to see is how the Q1 MAUs perform like-for-like.

[ryanmahaffe]

I mean we don't get sub numbers, but the past 4 years of non-launch content includes MoP. So if you wanted to dig up sub numbers you could probably figure out what they are based on that. 10% more play time compared to Legion launch, all of WoD (minus WoD launch) and all of MoP (minus launch).

Q1 for WoD which is the one AFTER launch had 7.6 million people. Q1 in MoP (which is 4 years ago, and is a non-launch) had 8.3 million players, with Q2 having 7.7 million and the last quarter of MoP being 7.4 million.

Playtime doesn't equate to subscription numbers however. Legion is grindy, so higher play hours could be deceptive, but at the same time one could garner that subscription numbers certainly aren't in the dumpsters. I wouldn't want to take a guess on what they are, but I highly doubt they are at the last recorded sub numbers or lower.

Get your silly logic out of here and let Rda tell us how terrible Wow is and how the game that sold 3+ million copies in a day is a flop.

Also, for your rda. This isn't PR BS as you put it, the earnings reports aren't for us, they are for shareholders and investors, it is however, basically mandatory that they be made public. It's not "PR" bs, it's good reports for investors to see.

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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.

Legion is doing great, WoW is still a money making titan even if it only had 4M subs (Please don't say you think numbers are in that range...) WoW is still far more popular on websites like Twitch than it was in Wod and is about MoP levels. Legion isn't peak, but it is doing exceptionally well.

[rda]

What will be interesting to see is how the Q1 MAUs perform like-for-like.

Well, yes. Although the moment any of these comparisons become bad, they will stop publishing numbers for them as well.

[Benomatic]

i thought wow already died?

[rda]

Also, for your rda. This isn't PR BS as you put it, the earnings reports aren't for us, they are for shareholders and investors, it is however, basically mandatory that they be made public. It's not "PR" bs, it's good reports for investors to see

...

Legion is doing great, WoW is still a money making titan even if it only had 4M subs (Please don't say you think numbers are in that range...) WoW is still far more popular on websites like Twitch than it was in Wod and is about MoP levels. Legion isn't peak, but it is doing exceptionally well.

The numbers are cherry-picked to make you think that things are better than they are.

No, I don't think WoW is at 4 million subs. I think it is larger than that. But I think - unless 7.2 / 7.3 / further? really deliver - it will lose like 2 million overall - and that *will* put WoW at 4 million. (And if 7.2 / 7.3 deliver, it will still lose like half of that, quite a bit of the damage has been done already.)

[alturic]

The numbers are cherry-picked to make you think that things are better than they are.

No, I don't think WoW is at 4 million subs. I think it is larger than that. But I think - unless 7.2 / 7.3 / further? really deliver - it will lose like 2 million overall - and that *will* put WoW at 4 million. (And if 7.2 / 7.3 deliver, it will still lose like half of that, quite a bit of the damage has been done already.)

The most hilarious part? People think you can't have a game at even 150k sub (like Ultima Online, the granddaddy of MMOs) and still have active development and are all 'Oh noes! WOW is at/under 4 million subs!!!!11!!!', which is still more than any other subscription MMO (probably free too) out there.

[Deleted]

Sometimes i just hope that Blizzard will shut down WoW for good without warning, just to see this kind of threads stop forever and be forgotten into oblivion. But, since i am not a idiot/evil/bored/troll/professionalwhiner (whatever you prefer), i can understand that maybe, just maybe, someone still like this game and have fun playing it, and whining, shitting, crying on it it's totally useless and make you appear like an addicted to drugs, unable to stop caring about something you do not enjoy anymore (pro-tip: i know you care about WoW or how it's used to be "good", but nothing you can say here will change developers mind, so either you take it or drop it).

My two cents.

P.S: if you like something, you care jack ass if there are 100k or 1 million people playing, as long as the low pop makes you impossible to play (and it's still not the case).

P.P.S: at moment i unsubbed because i was bored, and you know what? I am not opening threads on threads about why WoW is boring (or is dead) or what cuold be done to make it less boring for me.

[rda]

The most hilarious part? People think you can't have a game at even 150k sub (like Ultima Online, the granddaddy of MMOs) and still have active development and are all 'Oh noes! WOW is at/under 4 million subs!!!!11!!!', which is still more than any other subscription MMO (probably free too) out there.

You are making a weird comparison. Because Ultima Online has much less paying players, they can put much less effort into updates.

I mean, I get the argument that once upon a time 100k monthly subs was enough, but Blizzard had years to grow into the money they were getting. This always goes only one way - you extend until you can use all that money that you get, it's only prudent. If WoW right now loses all players except 1 million and has to live on that, there is a *very* good chance that they will have to quickly wrap up whatever the hell they are doing in 7.2, cutting relentlessly, then choke up a patch that tries to make the game F2P (no new content, just a rethink of existing content in order to charge extra here and there and everywhere). It will be quite a shock.

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Sometimes i just ...

Word of advice: when you decide to post, try posting something interesting. You are complaining about the complainers so to speak. That's useless.

[Nfinitii]

Another earrings call more doomsayers. There is only one thing that matters, do u enjoy wow? Yes, then keep playing and having fun. No, them move on and stop trying to ruin wow for everyone else.

[Wildmoon]

I have quitted WoW for like 6 months due personal reasons but man this community is still quite pathetic and keeps making
silly threads -_-.

[Teri]

The most hilarious part? People think you can't have a game at even 150k sub (like Ultima Online, the granddaddy of MMOs) and still have active development and are all 'Oh noes! WOW is at/under 4 million subs!!!!11!!!', which is still more than any other subscription MMO (probably free too) out there.

WoW could survive at let's say 150k subs per region, however they need to cut down servers so drasticly to only maybe 1 pve/1 pvp server per language at MOST and even that would stretch people thin between factions.

So maybe even like 1 pvp, 1 pve, 1 rp , and 1 rppvp TOTAL per region to keep any semblance of community. Even tho that'd be complicated for Europe.

CRZ illiusions dont work now, and dont work then.

Even for 4 million (example numbers) we have way too many low pop servers left over from the glory days of 12 million, yes they did connect realms but that was already years ago.

Of course wow progress/realmpop numbers are highly inflated due to people potentially having 12 characters per realm (even more on connected realms) 30650 horde on Draenor EU doesnt mean 30k seperate subs just how the site works.

[Lothrik]

Turn this around for a second and pretend Blizzard just said all of their games lost 20% of the players they had relative to last year. How, in all honesty, does this impact you? Is there some other game you're going to migrate to? I don't know about you, but I've tried pretty much every alternative out there. The majority of them are steaming piles of garbage.

I don't play Blizzard games because they have more players, I play them because they're actually enjoyable. When their development team(s) fuck up and it stops being fun, I stop playing for a while. It's not rocket science, and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with subscriber count.

I don't get this topic at all, you're literally trying to analyze and misrepresent information presented to stockholders to shit on a game you don't even play. What is the goal here? It's not like there aren't, you know, actual things worth criticizing in Blizzard's games that have nothing to do with subscriber count.

[Plutarch78]

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.

You must be new to quarterly reports. Every company does a PR spin to their reports.

[IceMan1763]

Legion is going to be a massive failure on the same level as WOD, and the data corollaries we have seem to agree.

If Legion were successful, Blizzard would be proud to actually release sub numbers again.

IMO, the current devs are both extremely egotistical and clueless, a dangerous combination.

[alturic]

You are making a weird comparison. Because Ultima Online has much less paying players, they can put much less effort into updates.

I mean, I get the argument that once upon a time 100k monthly subs was enough, but Blizzard had years to grow into the money they were getting. This always goes only one way - you extend until you can use all that money that you get, it's only prudent. If WoW right now loses all players except 1 million and has to live on that, there is a *very* good chance that they will have to quickly wrap up whatever the hell they are doing in 7.2, cutting relentlessly, then choke up a patch that tries to make the game F2P (no new content, just a rethink of existing content in order to charge extra here and there and everywhere). It will be quite a shock.

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Word of advice: when you decide to post, try posting something interesting. You are complaining about the complainers so to speak. That's useless.

How is is a weird comparison? You're saying less playing players would = less effort into update. Sure? So when WoW gets to sub-1million subscribers updates won't be as polished. When they get to sub 150k paying users (they would probably be smart enough to take it F2P before that happened) they would just "put much less effort into updates". So I'm confused how it's a weird comparison.

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WoW could survive at let's say 150k subs per region...

I know it could, which is why I said what I said. The main point I was making (and this is someone who hasn't touched WoW in 3-4 years and even THEN people were saying WoW is dying) is that people think there's some magical number like... 3-4 million where a game is 'dead' (see, a ways off for WoW), not realizing that almost no other game out right now even has THOSE numbers.

[lanesia24]

WoW is doing fine. Some of you people need to accept that it doesn't need to get back to 10 million people to be succesful or continue to create content. I guarentee you any other MMO company on the planet would be happy to be where Blizzard is right now. From my personal experience Legion has filled my friends list back up 10 fold from WoD and MoP.

Also playing time isn't always a good gauge of how many people are subbed. I took a break from WoW for about a month and a half but still maintained my sub during that time. Legion has been a very positive expansion and if they continue to deliver expacs similar to it then WoW will still have a strong future. It has problems of course but the good outweighs the bad imo.