ACtivision/Blizzard Earnings Call - Legion "slightly" better than WoD...

[xanzul]

Saw this on the forums:

You do understand wow isn't Blizzard's only game right? Not to mention the fact Activision has many, many, many of its own games and publishes games for many other developers. Shareholders don't give a fuck about the insider politics of this game.

People making these stupid threads need a perm ban.

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With the way the gear treadmill works now it's not really surprising. It's the D3 phenomenon where you get better gear just for the sake of getting better gear, not for tackling new content. It's a very unrewarding and hollow way to design a MMORPG when after a while you start asking yourself why you are doing it.

A core component of this mmo and most mmos is gear progression. Stop acting like these things are new. It doesn't further the discussion and it certainly isn't doing anything to help improve the game. Only thing hollow here are these kinds of posts.

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I'm sure they weren't talking about subs, as subs are a bad way to measure performance. They are probably talking about profit in general, and WoD did very well at that. The game is still making them tons of money, so where's the problem?

The problem is that despite all the doomsaying and whining and bitching and moaning Wow is not only not dead but it is still profitable. A lot of people here are extremely bitter about that.

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Considering how the shop is cancer for the game, subs should be the ONLY thing that matters.

Premium services for Wow are products whether you like it or not. Disliking their existence doesn't mean it isn't good for Blizzard as a company or shareholders as investors and considering how we can buy them now with gold maybe it is time to quit the bitching about it.

[Chickat]

I have no idea why they included the word slightly. They could have just said better, and people could have read this all differently.

[Thage]

My guild/friends list confirms this. I know its anecdotal, but still...its FAR more full than it was back in BRF.

I feel you. My friends list before I quit WoD for FFXIV was a ghost town; it's pretty full up these days and it's pretty even odds whether they're in WoW or Overwatch.

[Eleccybubb]

I have no idea why they included the word slightly. They could have just said better, and people could have read this all differently.

Yep instead we have this "sky is falling" attitude.

[xanzul]

They are referring negatively to whatever metric someone who wants to bash the game wants it to be.
Subs were proven to be a measure that the community was too damn stupid to appreciate.
If subs went up, either blizzard were lying, or catering to the wrong audience.
And if subs went down they were absolute proof of some specific gripe amongst a large number of other changes.

This is why we can't have nice things like transparency.
Stupid people.

And those people are now making the same claims about the time spent metric despite many of them having suggested it as a better metric in the past.

[TriHard]

I mean, come on. Anyone who's saying they're not losing subs are as delusional as they can get. Log onto the servers and check for yourselves, there's not nearly as many people on the high pop servers ( at least on EU) as there used to be, sure, there's a bunch of people there and I am not saying there's few players playing the game. But it is still going downwards, but you can't really fault Legion for that as Legion itself is a good expansion. The game cannot reach a second prime, it's impossible. It's what, 13 years old or so now? While the visuals might get updated, they're still far behind current standards even if it's cartoony.

You can also feel how limited the game is due to it's old and outdated Warcraft engine.

[Leodok]

Doesn't "performance" mean "money earned", in this case?

[xanzul]

Yes, they now only report MAUs instead of subscribers.

Take a look at what the report said about WoW's MAUs.



Notice anything? They don't even mention WoW. If MAUs were up, or close to WoD, they would have put it in the report. They are simply hoping people gloss over this.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...ss_Release.pdf

You do understand Blizzard doesn't have to report ANY of these numbers right? They don't have to hope people gloss over jack shit they can just cut all the information they consider negative and only report what they are legally required. Again these numbers are meant to give the shareholders context of what happened during that quarter (both good and bad) not to be PR or marketing or any of the other nonsense you people come up with.

[Kallisto]

I mean, come on. Anyone who's saying they're not losing subs are as delusional as they can get. Log onto the servers and check for yourselves, there's not nearly as many people on the high pop servers ( at least on EU) as there used to be, sure, there's a bunch of people there and I am not saying there's few players playing the game. But it is still going downwards, but you can't really fault Legion for that as Legion itself is a good expansion. The game cannot reach a second prime, it's impossible. It's what, 13 years old or so now? While the visuals might get updated, they're still far behind current standards even if it's cartoony.

You can also feel how limited the game is due to it's old and outdated Warcraft engine.

Very few people are saying wow is gaining subs at a substantial rate. The arguments have always been why. Between certain fans of previous iterations of WoW (Vanilla-Wrath heavily) thinking if we go back to their favorite expansion or other reasons like game gets old so it's obvious it's going to go down until it reaches a certain level. With few other arguments in between including the likes which I feel have merit (along with age) like today's gaming community just are not into MMOs like those 10-15 years ago were. Less free time and harsher economic climate has made one off purchase or free to play drop in, do what you like, drop out and be done for the day style games (Moba/Team shooters etc) being today's fashion in games.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Very few people are saying wow is gaining subs at a substantial rate. The arguments have always been why. Between certain fans of previous iterations of WoW (Vanilla-Wrath heavily) thinking if we go back to their favorite expansion or other reasons like game gets old so it's obvious it's going to go down until it reaches a certain level. With few other arguments in between including the likes which I feel have merit (along with age) like today's gaming community just are not into MMOs like those 10-15 years ago were. Less free time and harsher economic climate has made one off purchase or free to play drop in, do what you like, drop out and be done for the day style games (Moba/Team shooters etc) being today's fashion in games.

Probably slowed down but we can't see the numbers now anyways. Still Blizzard does well for themselves tbh.

[ComputerNerd]

And those people are now making the same claims about the time spent metric despite many of them having suggested it as a better metric in the past.

There isn't a single metric which is always good.

Content cycles will absolutely result in subs moving up and down.
As well as the market changing significantly, with more competition than ever from a business model completely very different from that of WoW.
Free to Play rather than subscription, which is now the exception by a long way.
Last time someone tried to work out the likelihood of wow players simply migrating to another MMO, the numbers suggested that instead some were leaving MMO's entirely making WoW not the problem alone, not the only reason they left.
Because they weren't going to another one.

Time played isn't that good either as very little content is designed around a certain duration.
Depending on your willingness to grind world quests for instance, as well as flying reducing your work if you still aim at a certain result pre-flying.

[Mlz]

Which WoD are we talking about? Release WoD or mid/end WoD?

Keep in mind WoD did hit the highest numbers WOW had seen in a long time.

You're delusional if you think they wouldn't shout it everywhere if they actually had the highest numbers for WoW in a 5+ year period. The fact they are wording it in a way that doesn't ring massive bells but still looks like a positive outcome (which it, relatively to WoD, kind of is), speaks for itself.

[Deleted]

It's the D3 phenomenon where you get better gear just for the sake of getting better gear, not for tackling new content. It's a very unrewarding and hollow way to design a MMORPG when after a while you start asking yourself why you are doing it.

It's inevitable with the "everyone must see everything" design philosophy -- I just don't see any way to make an interesting game with that constraint. Gear can no longer exist as means to an end (progression into new content) and rather must be an end in itself. And there isn't even any real gear progression, since in every patch you're guaranteed a new set of gear regardless of whether you do LFR or Mythic, so the gear doesn't really even serve as a trophy of effort and skill.

[Pua]

I'm sure they weren't talking about subs, as subs are a bad way to measure performance.

They seem to be talking about time spent in-game.

If it's only "slightly" up on Warlords of Draenor, arguably the most cynical MMORPG expansion ever released, that's worrying. At this point, content starvation had already set in and players logged in for garrison missions and not much else.

It's a shame, because Legion is very, very good. If it hadn't doubled down on triple-random rewards and an interminable grind for artifact power, there'd be precious little to objectively criticise.

[Siglius]

i'm sure they weren't talking about subs, as subs are a bad way to measure performance. They are probably talking about profit in general, and wod did very well at that. The game is still making them tons of money, so where's the problem?

you. I like you!

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Yep instead we have this "sky is falling" attitude.

I mean thats pretty much the permanent state of MMOC regardless. If the spergs don't have any facts to back up their stupid posts, they just make something up.

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Doesn't "performance" mean "money earned", in this case?

Yeah. It's an investors call. All they care about is money, thats kinda the whole point of it.

[Kathranis]

They're talking overall Q1 performance, which means they're likely comparing a variety of factors (I would assume chiefly player engagement, but also microtransactions and subscriptions) to where Warlords of Draenor was during the same timeframe relative to launch (AKA months 5 through 8).

Of course, you now see them pulling WoW back and treating it as just another part of their online games portfolio, which is to be expected given the increased diversity of that portfolio and how successful Hearthstone and Overwatch have been.

Compare to the Activision division, where all they've really got going on is hype for upcoming games.

[HordeFanboy]

Legion is basically wod 2.0. Current dev team is a disease. Only F2P or new (experienced in making mmo) devs can revive this game.

[Teri]

Legion is basically wod 2.0. Current dev team is a disease. Only F2P or new (experienced in making mmo) devs can revive this game.

F2P will only kill things off faster since they will add premium stuff like every other game.

Kaplan is staying at Overwatch, game aint going back to old days.

[Deleted]

Of course, you now see them pulling WoW back and treating it as just another part of their online games portfolio, which is to be expected given the increased diversity of that portfolio and how successful Hearthstone and Overwatch have been.

They have explicitly stated their goal of diversification away from WoW for a long time in these calls. They also stated (after Titan failed and was turned into Overwatch), that they would not do such big projects anymore and instead would focus on exploiting their existing IP with smaller and simpler games. Which makes sense -- why spend hundreds and hundreds of millions on something like WoW 2 and make $60+$15/month, when you can just make a simple card game and get people to pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for it.

[coprax]

Reposting this from the news-thread:

Legion's overall performance is slightly ahead of the prior expansion.

And since WoD was a disaster I wouldn't interpret this as too much of a positive note.

But, thing is, from a gamer's perspective Legion has been much better than WoD, so I think we will never see new peak numbers and the MMO market is just in decline.