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

[Kazlofski]

So basically it has a stable 5-6M playerbase? That's great! Far from dying then.

[Deadite]

So basically it has a stable 5-6M playerbase? That's great! Far from dying then.

Sounds like a bit of a disaster to me. Did they not say they were at or just over 10 million sub just after Legion hit? So they lost half the player base and that was before the 7.2 shit show? Now if they still have 5 million players they those are some great numbers but they lost just as many.

[Erolian]

Sounds like a bit of a disaster to me. Did they not say they were at or just over 10 million sub just after Legion hit? So they lost half the player base and that was before the 7.2 shit show? Now if they still have 5 million players they those are some great numbers but they lost just as many.

Its actually fucking amazing that a game over 10 years old is only now starting the typical cycle of dropping 50%+ of its player base a few months after release. That's extremely normal. It happens to almost every single new game release that you see within a couple of weeks. People really want to be negative about WoW and compare it to when it was by far the biggest game ever but forget that it still stomps on 99.9% of games released on any platform or genre. I'm sure they're extremely pleased.

[Deleted]

He and many of those devs were present for the trainwreck expansions that followed WotLK, so, they aren't really relevant here.
Don't need it.

That's not really true. Most of those devs left after WotLK was realeased and moved over to work on project Titan. The decline in quality makes total sense.

[Kazlofski]

Sounds like a bit of a disaster to me. Did they not say they were at or just over 10 million sub just after Legion hit? So they lost half the player base and that was before the 7.2 shit show? Now if they still have 5 million players they those are some great numbers but they lost just as many.

It's normal, most of the old population of WoW that started back in the days grew up and don't have as much time to play or the interest anymore, so the past 2 expansions or so it became more of a "Oh patch/expansion released, let's check it out! (expansions much more than patches ofc)" then after few weeks tops after they consumed the main content without the extra grindfest, they quit and play later again.

[Magnagarde]

If we are comparing the numbers to the numbers the game had this much time into WoD, then the numbers are great. Besides, WoD was massively profitable to Blizzard and in terms of finances, it wasn't a fluke. Players are comparing WoW's best days in terms of subscriptions with the present, which is an inaccurate comparison to draw. Blizzard's services affiliated to WoW that rack in money are no longer only tied to subscriptions. They've got tokens(helped them deal with gold sales out of the game) and various other stuff and they're out for profitability.

The reason why there are not as many players as there were during WotLK is because Blizzard needs to catter to a whole new generation of players and attract them to the game. We've got people who are well into their adulthood that play this game; I've personally not encountered anyone in Legion that isn't an adult already and I'm playing since the start of the expansion. WoW is played by the people who've been attracted to the game through the RTS games and those who have played WoW early on and Blizzard needs to market WoW a lot better to new generations. On the other hand, they've got games like Overwatch and various MOBA that cover this part of the audience, which is why they probably don't feel like they have to do anything about it.

[Deleted]

I cant see WoW in a bad spot since blizzard has not used the shop at all in Legion other then a benifit pet.
And if blizzard needs money to keep on making content then use the shop for some extra funding.

[Deleted]

Sounds like a bit of a disaster to me.

Name the MMOs that have ever had a 5-6M playerbase?
Now name the ones that have managed to stay alive for 10+ years
Now name the ones that have had that 5-6M playerbase (or over) during that peried.

Seems to me like a WoW is a bit of a edgecase. Normally MMOs have a stable playerbase that hovers around 300-500k. Some of them peak momentarily and then fizzle out. From investor point of view, it really doesn't sound like a disaster at all to me.

Not that investors are really interested in that kind of numbers. They tend to go concentrate more on the financial performance.

[Rogalicus]

I cant see WoW in a bad spot since blizzard has not used the shop at all in Legion other then a benifit pet.
And if blizzard needs money to keep on making content then use the shop for some extra funding.

They've increased the service prices by 20% in EU instead.

[Deleted]

They've increased the service prices by 20% in EU instead.

inflation, its only normal that prices rise ever few years.

[Deleted]

inflation, its only normal that prices rise ever few years.

Nope. That was actually clear price hike.

[Demithio]

In short, the game isn't as popular as it used to be. For a number of reasons.

[Tharkkun]

Pure BS again, there was an increase in TBC, a pleateau in WotLK, and Cata and MoP saw only marginal drops in the second quarter, and took years to see the huge drop that WoD got right after being released.
You're ridiculous.

FFS are you guys for real ?
5,5 was one year after the release of the expansion (because they stopped releasing sub numbers after that) and WoD was very low on sub because it crashed extremely rapidly.

Are you all deluded or just actually blind ?

Anyone posting on MMO-Champ should be familiar with this :



But it seems you need to actually have it shown to you again so you can actually get some facts instead of your fantasy world.
You're welcome to show how "sub crashes after every expansion" (lol) or how "5,5 was the end of WoD" or how "WoD didn't crash".

5.6 million was on 8/4/15 when 2nd quarter results were released. That was 1.5 months after HFC was released. 1st quarter of 2015 the subs were at 7.1 million. The end of the expansion lasted over a year. No one denied WOD was bad you idiot.

If you match it per the current timeline we could assume it's more than 7.1 million.

- - - Updated - - -

Nope. That was actually clear price hike.

No. It wasn't inflation either. It was to due to the EURO losing value compared to the dollar. It was correcting the exchange rates where people in the EU actually paid less for services than the US in comparison.

[hyphnos]

5.6 million was on 8/4/15 when 2nd quarter results were released. That was 1.5 months after HFC was released. 1st quarter of 2015 the subs were at 7.1 million. The end of the expansion lasted over a year. No one denied WOD was bad you idiot.

If you match it per the current timeline we could assume it's more than 7.1 million.

- - - Updated - - -

No. It wasn't inflation either. It was to due to the EURO losing value compared to the dollar. It was correcting the exchange rates where people in the EU actually paid less for services than the US in comparison.

We could assume it's 7.1 million or even 1 billion. But that also assumes that Legion launched to 10 million players, which is a ridiculous assumption to make. We just scammed and pissed off a bunch of people who fled at a 50% rate, so let's assume that all those people fall for the next cash grab.

People are dumb, they are not that dumb.

[Deadite]

Name the MMOs that have ever had a 5-6M playerbase?
Now name the ones that have managed to stay alive for 10+ years
Now name the ones that have had that 5-6M playerbase (or over) during that peried.

Seems to me like a WoW is a bit of a edgecase. Normally MMOs have a stable playerbase that hovers around 300-500k. Some of them peak momentarily and then fizzle out. From investor point of view, it really doesn't sound like a disaster at all to me.

Not that investors are really interested in that kind of numbers. They tend to go concentrate more on the financial performance.

1. Plenty of free Asian mmos boasts hundreds of millions of users. Dungeon Fighter Online has 400 milion for example and it made more money that WoW last year.

2. UO is about to hit 20 years. Once again there are plenty of mmo that have been alive for 10+ years.

3. Games like Runescape and Maplestory and other crap like that as well a the aforementioned asian mmos have dwarfed wow for years. WoW was only the King of the sub based mmos.

Now wow has always been the King of the Sub based mmo world but it obviously can't compete in a playerbase fight with plenty of games. Don't get me wrong it is still doing well for an old warhorse and will chug along for years to come but it is a shadow of its former self.

[Sabever]

A year ago everyone said how great Legion was and how Legacy servers were not good because blah blah blah. I told everyone Legion would be almost dead. Guilds unsubbed. Youtubers unsubbed. Still people denied it. The game has no community. The game is faaaaar to easy. I mean if Kungen can get to be the top ranked tank in 4 weeks, the game has become silly.

Wow is not dead, but it is certainly on a long slow decline. They keep pumping out garbage and you keep eating it. Instead you could regain the community by promoting legacy. Maybe people would want to join a crappy version of the game from time to time, while enjoying the good version (Vanilla, TBC).

[Coffeh]

A year ago everyone said how great Legion was

Legion didn't exist yet a year ago :P But anyway, never thought I'd miss WoD, but Legion is just awful to me. Progression replaced with randomness. Hell, everything replaced with randomness. WoW should just be renamed Slot Machine Simulator.

[Tharkkun]

We could assume it's 7.1 million or even 1 billion. But that also assumes that Legion launched to 10 million players, which is a ridiculous assumption to make. We just scammed and pissed off a bunch of people who fled at a 50% rate, so let's assume that all those people fall for the next cash grab.

People are dumb, they are not that dumb.

Legion didn't launch to 10 million players though. We know that. The statement specifically says that numbers are slightly up compared to Warlords. Since it's mmo-champion everyone will assume it's up from the lowest rock bottom number available for their agenda. Which is exactly why Blizzard is vague about it. If you take the numbers from Q2 for WOD then the numbers were at 7.1 million at that time. This was the Q2 quarterly report...

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

We had content that played itself in WoD.

We had content that required you to grind a ton in Legion.

I mean at this point what else is there to try? Going back to Vanilla where you needed 40 man raids and attunements?

Not saying it's time to throw in the towel, but maybe it's time to accept that there is no "recovery" for WoW, only treading water?

[hyphnos]

Legion didn't launch to 10 million players though. We know that. The statement specifically says that numbers are slightly up compared to Warlords. Since it's mmo-champion everyone will assume it's up from the lowest rock bottom number available for their agenda. Which is exactly why Blizzard is vague about it. If you take the numbers from Q2 for WOD then the numbers were at 7.1 million at that time. This was the Q2 quarterly report...

The quote from the earnings report is this:

"World of Warcraft time spent grew [year over year] and Legion's overall performance is slightly ahead of the prior expansion."

We know that Legion didn't launch to 10 million players, yet somehow magically we have the same number of players that that Q2 WoD did? Hardly.

They said NOTHING about subscription numbers as you can see from the above quote. What they said was positive sounding PR gibberish. Without a definition of "overall performance" (which can mean whatever the fuck they want it to), they have said nothing but spin. There is no way in hell there are 7.1 million players now and they most certainly did not say that there was and if they were to speak to subscription numbers they would make it very clear they were doing so since they have said that they will no longer release them.