Patch 7.3 - Antoran Charhound and Gloomhound, Investor Call, Tweets

[chaud]

Community Highlights: Perfect Jesseth Scythe, Fan Art Wallpaper

What Decks are the Hearthstone Pros Playing? 5 Decks You Need to Try!

Patch 7.3 - Antoran Charhound
Patch 7.3 adds the Antoran Charhound mount.

Patch 7.3 - Antoran Gloomhound
Patch 7.3 adds the Antoran Gloomhound mount.

Activision Blizzard Investor Call
The latest earnings call had a few interesting points!

• Blizzard had the biggest quarterly online player community in its history with a record 46 million MAUs, up 38% year-over-year. MAUs have doubled since early 2015.
• Blizzard had all-time record DAUs
• The Overwatch community continued to grow more than a year after launch, setting another all-time MAUB record with the release of two seasonal events in the quarter
• Hearthstone MAUs grew year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter to an all-time record, driven by its expansion, Journey to Un'Goro
• World of Warcraft time spent grew year over year, and Legion continues to outperform the prior expansion.
• Blizzard plans to release another large content drop this quarter, with more details at Gamescom.
• There are multiple dedicated incubation teams working on new games, experiences, or IPs being lead by some of the most experienced game designers at Blizzard. The company is thinking about different platforms, especially mobile.

Blue Tweets

PvE
If the internal raid team has spent hours on testing KJ, why did take you so long to apply necessary adjustments to the boss?
Seeing a top guild wipe repeatedly and get nowhere on an encounter for a day or two is not uncommon (e.g. Dark Animus, Blackhand). (WatcherDev)
There's a narrow line between "this is VERY hard" and "this is TOO hard"; it took time because we weren't yet sure they were necessary. (WatcherDev)

Lore
Still not explained how Sargeras went about acquiring the titan souls. Retcon from Chronicles?
Eonar kind of explains this, in the time since the Chronicle he's managed to gather them all, except her, and has already turned Aggramar. (Muffinus)
I know only so much can be expressed in game, I just wish it was explained better. Question is more how sargeras got souls from keepers.
I don't want to get too deep into it, but Sargeras has has quite a while to work on his plan. (Muffinus)

Do the human turned worgen become immortal, or live at all longer than they wouldve normally?
I don't think anything in lore indicates that they live longer, but I might be wrong. (DaveKosak)

Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.

How friendly should developers get with community sites/leaders? I feel like if they are too friendly it gives a bad impression and feels cliqueish where their concerns are addressed more often than random players.
I would say very friendly. Those community sites are providing an enormous service for both you and players.

I agree there is a risk of you appearing to make game changes just because they request them. On the other hand, maybe they advocate those changes because they are representing the views of a lot of players who visit their site.

I’ve been in situations where we kept community creators and leaders at arm’s length, but I don’t think that stance makes sense. Consider this: gaming news sites want news because that drives visits to their site. They are going to provide news whether or not you as the developer are involved. But if you can give them something to talk about (and it doesn’t just have to be a content exclusive), then they are getting what they need out of the relationship, but you’re getting something as well.

I feel quite indebted to all of the folks who ran Age of Empires, World of Warcraft, or League of Legends sites over the years. (Source)

FinalBossTV #151 - Enhancement Shamans
FinalBossTV focused on Enhancement Shamans last week.

[MrExcelion]

"World of Warcraft time spent grew year over year, and Legion continues to outperform the prior expansion."

Love me some AP grind

Kidding, lol. Not a big fan of that metric but its an investor call

[Deleted]

I do wonder where they take the information about wow from; "World of Warcraft time spent grew year over year, and Legion continues to outperform the prior expansion." Is it just played time or do they actually think people LIKE the game right now?
OFC WE SPEND A LOT OF HOURS ON THE GRIND FEST THAT IS LEGION.. Outperform my ass when you have to play every hour of everyday to stay competitive.. (do not correct me)

[Stacie]

So we find out what new patch stuff will be in a week or so?

[DesoPL]

Nothing mentioned about HOTS as expected.

[randomnamegenerator16]

OFC WE SPEND A LOT OF HOURS ON THE GRIND FEST THAT IS LEGION.. Outperform my ass when you have to play every hour of everyday to stay competitive.. (do not correct me)

Hard to correct such high amount of bullshit.

[McNeil]

Another barebones investors call for WoW. Performing better than WoD doesn't tell much at all, considering people actually had high expectations for WoD to be good while with Legion their standards were lowered to a bare minimum.

[Kynario]

I do wonder where they take the information about wow from; "World of Warcraft time spent grew year over year, and Legion continues to outperform the prior expansion." Is it just played time or do they actually think people LIKE the game right now?
OFC WE SPEND A LOT OF HOURS ON THE GRIND FEST THAT IS LEGION.. Outperform my ass when you have to play every hour of everyday to stay competitive.. (do not correct me)

Doesn't matter shit. People are playing the game whether they "enjoy" it or not. If people didn't enjoy it at all they wouldn't be paying a subscription right?

Simply said, people are playing and paying and that's all that matters

[Decisive The Hallowed]

Blizzard plans to release another large content drop this quarter, with more details at Gamescom.

Wonder if that will be 7.4 or New Expac? I guess they mostly save their Expac announcements at Blizzcon...

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

Nothing mentioned about HOTS as expected.

People still play that game?
When I tried to get those OW skins the queues were dreadfully long.
I actually gave up and played some other game.

[Maerad]

* Blizzard had all-time record DAUs

Heh, that made me chuckle, because it's true, just in another way. In german we have the "dümmster anzunehmender user", like dumbest assumable user in english (is this an acutal acronym in english or known?!). Anyway, it's just so true it hurts

[KrakinTauren]

Wonder if that will be 7.4 or New Expac? I guess they mostly save their Expac announcements at Blizzcon...

This quarter means July, August and September, So it most likely (most def) 7.3 and the Argus zones. Should probably release around end of August/start of Sptember. Just as with Broken Shore, releasing new zone a few months before new raid tier.

[Rilas13]

Blizzard plans to release another large content drop this quarter, with more details at Gamescom.

I actually find this pretty interesting. I was expecting 7.3 to be the last major patch. It feels through rumor and foot stomping that xpac 7 will be at blizzcon. And they have more or less said 7.3 is feature complete. 7.3.5 could be what they are talking about. But I didn't think 7.4 was possible. but based on time tables, if they make a 7.4, it could lead right up to 8.0 without a massive content drought. I already expected that time to be smaller with the patch release of Legion which imo has been a big improvement.

At any rate I will focus a bit more at gamescon than I thought I would.

*Edit: unless that was just reiterating 7.3. But still.

[Donald Hellscream]

People still play that game?
When I tried to get those OW skins the queues were dreadfully long.
I actually gave up and played some other game.

The longest queue I've ever had on the european server is about 2 minutes and that was with a newly released hero that everyone queue'd as, normally my quick match queues are around 30 seconds at most.

[fathom81]

Wow is great, been playing since vanilla, stop now and then when i get bored, dont do highend raiding so i dont farm, i only do what i want, when i get bored i watch rick and morty.
That mount...they gave DH a purple and gold bat, then pick the model and do a decent mount...meh

[Elim Garak]

World of Warcraft time spent grew year over year, and Legion continues to outperform the prior expansion.

Despite this, WoW is still dying.
~Former Vanilla Players

When the games key metric is changed from subscriptions -> money -> "time spent in game"... this is WoW's OKR now. How much time players spend in the game, hence all the time gating, grinding and other fun activities of a f2p game.

[Aeula]

What metric are they using to calculate time spent in game?

As in players are spending more time playing (despite being fewer in number).

Or the hours added up of every player in game? (Because there are more players, thus bumping up the amount of hours spent) year over year makes it sound like it's increasing every year so I doubt this is the metric they're using considering the drops the last few expansions.

If it's the former then that's probably because of the grind.

I doubt it's the latter.

[Elim Garak]

What metric are they using to calculate time spent in game?

Average session length (and the number of sessions in a day, week, month, etc), while doing stuff obviously. AFK is not counted.

[Doffen]

When the games key metric is changed from subscriptions -> money -> "time spent in game"... this is WoW's OKR now. How much time players spend in the game, hence all the time gating, grinding and other fun activities of a f2p game.

There are two statements there, and easy to read it wrong. What they mean is what you wrote, people spend more time on the game(competing with Warlords of Garrisons, doooh) BUT it also outperforms it, wich is more on the economic side of it.

[Elim Garak]

There are two statements there, and easy to read it wrong. What they mean is what you wrote, people spend more time on the game(competing with Warlords of Garrisons, doooh) BUT it also outperforms it, wich is more on the economic side of it.

No, you are reading into it. It's about the time spent metric. It doesn't mention any money at all because it would be silly.to compare two different metrics.