Is Blizzard going downhill?

[DesoPL]

Wow. It's been 10 years and people still don't understand how Activision-Blizzard works.

It is cool that you lie yourself? It is obvious like day, that only Activision exists now, but no one will officialy admit it to avoid panic.

[G3istly]

They've been at the bottom of the hill for a while now and now they're digging down.

[Riistov]

There is no info about Legion subscribers ...

They stopped using that metric to measure performance a couple years ago. Based on everything they have said on investor calls, WoW revenue remains strong.

[Skoll Shorties]

The answer is no.

[Poppincaps]

WoW? Yes and no. It's gone downhill from WotLK or Cata obviously, but this is likely the lowest it's going to get until they run out of ideas, which they probably have 2 expansions before that happens.

Hearthstone? Don't really know since I'm not really into Hearthstone, but they consistently come out with new expacs, so I'd imagine it's doing pretty well. I dunno if it's at its peak but it doesn't seem like it's declining.

HotS? The opposite. It's never going to be as big as LoL or DotA, but its Twitch viewership is rising steadily and it seems like the game is doing quite well ever since 2.0.

Diablo 3? The Necromancer breathed a little life into the game, but the game is obviously dead for anyone but big fans of D3. It's time for D4.

Starcraft 2? I think so? Isn't Legacy of the Void the last expac? I'm sure the game still has a few years left in it, but it's obviously going to decline steadily.

Overwatch? lolno have you been paying attention at all?

Blizzard has more successful franchises than they've ever had before. Even if none of their franchises are as popular or lucrative as WoW in WotLK the combined success of all their games means they are quite likely making way more money than they have been in the past.

[Riistov]

To be fair, you can easily see the higher pop servers compared to how they used to be.

There's definitely a big decline in subs compared to in the past.

They raised the server caps years ago, so thats not really an accurate comparison.

[Craaazyyy]

Oh so you keep hearing that some of your 1-5 friends and some pro players are leaving the game, guess its dead then, oh well they still sold 20 million copies poor blizzard

diablo selling copies doesnt mean that the game is actually popular.. or good..

[MoanaLisa]

To be fair, you can easily see the higher pop servers compared to how they used to be.

There's definitely a big decline in subs compared to in the past.

To be fair you probably are unaware that they increased realm capacity for all realms by a great deal some time ago. Overnight, full realms were not full, etc. "How they used to be" is comparing apples and oranges.

This is one of those things that I wish everyone knew because it's really annoying to have to explain it over and over. Just to use some random numbers, if you have a theoretical realm capacity of 50,000 and usage is at 98% (49,000) and you increase realm capacity to 100,000 (still 49,000 users) the realm is no longer full at 49%.

This was done to avoid the massive problems they had with the Warlords launch. And Legion seems to have been somewhat better in that respect.

On topic: Blizzard is doing fine. Every game studio on the planet would love to be "going downhill" like Blizzard is.

[Saverem]

I agree with what you say, but this part is wrong. In their earnings call, they said that Legion is doing slightly better than WoD and that is in money coming in, not sales numbers. Both Legion and WoD sold 3.3 million on their opening days.

Like it or not, WoW isn't doing great these days, which is fine for Blizzard as a whole because they have plenty of other strong titles holding them up. So to answer OPs question, no Blizzard isn't going downhill, even if some of their titles are in decline or stagnant.

That's actually not true. Yes, you can say WoW is not doing as good as it was in its glory days of WotLK when it had like 13-14 million subs, however, it's still the most ~ACTIVE~ subbed MMO in the planet even with its, I think it's at around 4 to 6 million active subs now, world wide.

Even FF14 which has the number 2 spot has less than half of that, world wide.



So although it is much less popular than it was before, it's still the most popular.


With that said, I would like to see a WoW2 come out. We're pretty much nearing the end of the lore of this game now that we've defeated literally our biggest foe lore-wise, the Legion. All we have left now are small fries like Old Gods and Azshara, which are ants compared to Sargeras.

[Eleccybubb]

Considering their quarterly financial reports and consistent success with Overwatch, Hearthstone and WoW I extremely doubt it.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Yeah.

They're only growing their profits each year, and have titles that have been "dying" or even "dead" for 12 years or more earning them near to a billion dollars a year. Clearly, they're in a bad state!

[Wallmaker Yahzarah]

No, actually it just takes a google search of Overwatch.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/04/w...ing-franchise/

But please,tell us how its not doing well.

That fact that your google search sent you a venturebeat website, i wont even explain myself nor ask where I implied the game was not successful. Im just pointing out how people are stupid to buy into ad campaign and promotional circus. You have absolutely no grounds for whatever numbers blizzard puts up, unless they are bold enough to post said numbers on their actual website, like they ever so confidently, used to do. Dont get sensitive because Im not talking about your favorite game in the same loving light as you would. Get over yourself.

[seventysix]

minus 0.98% you must be very happy, indeed...

What for the day? Way to go genius, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about or you'd know shares have nearly doubled the past year from a 35ish to the current 60.

[jellmoo]

You're kidding, right?

Hearthstone: https://venturebeat.com/2017/01/28/s...llion-in-2017/

Overwatch: https://gamerant.com/overwatch-most-...-pc-game-2016/

Legion: https://tagn.wordpress.com/2016/09/0...past-launches/

and of course...

Blizzard 2016: https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/9/145...arnings-record

Yeah... Clearly going downhill...

[Aggrophobic]

Since when was Overwatch on the decline? Just keeps getting more popular last time I checked.

I'm sure Overwatch is doing fine but where do you get actual numbers from?

[Dug]

I'm sure Overwatch is doing fine but where do you get actual numbers from?

https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/o...-sales-numbers

https://www.polygon.com/2017/4/28/15...ase-30-million

From Blizzard themselves. That's just unique number of players (and people who bought it twice I would guess) so not active players which is the number that matters to be sure but if more and more people are buying the game that's a gain for Blizz

[Wallmaker Yahzarah]

Or that the numbers of players they're reporting has been increasing. They kind of can't lie about that to investors or they will be in serious shit.

Nothing to do with advertisements, ya walnut.

They are not reporting any numbers. They are reporting estimation that can be from 1 player to 3 billion. Investors will invest if there is ad revenue, period. Its a 1 time purchase game, with retards that believe ads and promotion = a profitable game. Just because you like, doesnt make it a profitable game. Only thing profitable about Overwatch is the ad revenue it brings to other companies.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/o...-sales-numbers

https://www.polygon.com/2017/4/28/15...ase-30-million

From Blizzard themselves. That's just unique number of players (and people who bought it twice I would guess) so not active players which is the number that matters to be sure but if more and more people are buying the game that's a gain for Blizz

Let Blizzard post those numbers on their own website and ill believe it. lol

[McFuu]

-WoW still retains millions of players
-New expansion coming to Hearthstone
-Last info on Overwatch was 30 million players and rising
-Starcraft constantly getting DLCs
-A DLC just came out for Diablo III, with more coming most likely
-HotS getting a new Hero every 3 weeks

Yea, totally on decline...

Let's not forget that WoW, even at its worst is the most popular mmorpg of its ilk.
Overwatch is gaining almost 5 million new players every couple of months.
Diablo III is the most sold PC game of all time.
SCII is still very popular in its circles and sees new content all the time
Hearthstone is extremely popular.
HotS is probably the weakest title Blizz has, and it prints money for them.

Blizzard is better than its ever been.

[Felaris Stormrage]

Yet, another lame anecdotal claim. Anyways, I do agree that Blizzard is no longer in their "glory days", however I think it is slightly far fetched to say that every single one of their IPs are on the decline.

The games are doing fine.

[Orangetai420]

Decline? No. But it hasn't been the same since Blizzard North team left after d2