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  1. #781
    Quote Originally Posted by Metallikiddd View Post
    GC would do a better job if Kalgan wasn't there to screw it all up.
    I really don't know the heirarchy of who's there. What exactly does GC and Kalgan do for current WoW Expansion Development?

    I'd love to know who I should throw a brick at in regards to Cata breaking all my fun I was having from Vanilla > Wrath...

  2. #782
    Quote Originally Posted by mvallas View Post
    I really don't know the heirarchy of who's there. What exactly does GC and Kalgan do for current WoW Expansion Development?

    I'd love to know who I should throw a brick at in regards to Cata breaking all my fun I was having from Vanilla > Wrath...
    GC is the lead systems designer and Kalgan is the lead game director/designer. Both were at Blizzcon talking about WoW. I wish someone at Blizzcon threw a brick at Kalgan's head and ended this nightmare already.

  3. #783
    Quote Originally Posted by Metallikiddd View Post
    GC is the lead systems designer and Kalgan is the lead game director/designer. Both were at Blizzcon talking about WoW. I wish someone at Blizzcon threw a brick at Kalgan's head and ended this nightmare already.
    Thanks... by that note I'd brick them both in the face. GC for screwing up the mob/dungeon health pools changing the core of them... and Kalgan for not catching that, allowing things like raiders of the lost uldum to happen, and a WHOLE host of other problems I'd list if I didn't wish to totally derail this thread. :P

  4. #784
    Quote Originally Posted by mvallas View Post
    I really don't know the heirarchy of who's there. What exactly does GC and Kalgan do for current WoW Expansion Development?

    I'd love to know who I should throw a brick at in regards to Cata breaking all my fun I was having from Vanilla > Wrath...
    Totally agree. I am wondering how could a expansion ruined a epic game like Cata did!!! It is really a hard work to fulfil. Making a bad decision is common, but making all bad decisions at one time....

  5. #785
    Quote Originally Posted by sabermetrics View Post
    The new active sub number is 10.3 million. Fresh off the conference call. Said most of the losses were in Asia, and because Cataclysm content was "consumed too quickly."
    good thing MoP is PANDERING to the asian market.

    see what I did there?

  6. #786
    Quote Originally Posted by Papavoikos View Post
    It's servers, support, rent, and various expenses. Like I said it's not 20 million per month on servers, they probably spend 3x as much paying GMs and people at callcenters than severs alone
    In regards to that number, It's highly unlikely that of the $20 million that $15mil goes towards staffing call centers and gm's, and leaving $5mill so actual server maintenence, etc... More likely is that the number is reversed. Personally, I'd be interested in the exact numbers if Blizzard would actually publish it.

    Add that it's also highly unlikely at this point that any of it is actually going towards box sales of Cata as the sub numbers are dropping and not going up.

  7. #787
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lusitan View Post
    finally someone that actually can read and understand a quarterly report.

    Well done, very well done[COLOR="red"]
    Actually he is missing something very important - the only number in that report that matters is the non-gaap (non-deferred) mmo revenue number. The gaap and the first number he quotes included deferred revenue from expansion sales, while the 2010 comparison has none of that since there was no expansion released in q4 2009.

    ---------- Post added 2011-12-01 at 02:48 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Mynsc View Post
    I'm sorry if this has been posted before (not going to read 33 pages just to check), but Blizzard made MORE MONEY from WoW this year compared to 2010, even with the decreasing subscriptions. 200 million $ more...


    Online subscriptions = revenue from all World of Warcraft products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties, and value-added services.

    Source for all this: http://investor.activision.com/relea...leaseID=622018

    Reasons:
    - most of their subscriptions loss comes from China, which is not a very profitable market right now for WoW.
    - the first 9 months of 2011 caught a nice chunk of Cataclysm sales, while the first 9 months of 2010 didn't catch too many WotlK ones.
    - paid digital services have been on the rise for both Activision and Blizzard.

    Bottom line is, money wise they've done great this year. Losing subscribers is indeed something to be afraid of, but no real reason to start the doomsday rumors.
    This is a fairly bad and wrong way to look at it. You are including q1.2.3 of 2011, which includes almost all the revenue of cataclysm box sales (it gets deferred), versus 3 quarters of 2010 which didn't have any nearby expansions.

    A more accurate and honest measure is to use the non-deferred revenue numbers for each quarter, remembering that q1 2011 did have enough box sales to jack it up. Blizzard comparison numbers year over year the last 2 quarters have been lower than 2010 for wow.

  8. #788
    Subs will go down until Blizzard stops lazy and makes sure every content patch has a large raid(or two), and some dungeon and PVP content.

  9. #789
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    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    Mynsc: those numbers went up primarily because of box sales for Cata. Looking at non-GAAP numbers for Q3, actual recurring income is in decline from the previous year's quarter. Say that again: quarterly revenue without deferred Cata sales is lower than the lowest point of Wrath.
    Worth adding (you know already of course) that when you get back into comparisons in bc-era, blizzard was gettnig substantially less from the9 than they now do from netease. Imagine backing out that difference. Revenue would be in the late-2007.early2008 area, as far as comparisons.

  10. #790
    just waitin for blizz to combine servers so there is more access to player base

  11. #791
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    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    Morhaime in the Q2 call said China activity was up. For Q2 at least, it's reasonable to infer that China "subs" were also up, and that all the losses (and then some) were from the rest of the world.
    netease stated growth in world of warcraft existed for them in q1. Its revenue, not subs, but since their model is hourly and they are expanding geographically anyway I think people who insist about this (not you) are being willfully obtuse.

    At least Morhaime finally said over half their subs are in china so I don't have to 'debate' that point anymore.

    ---------- Post added 2011-12-01 at 02:54 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Crashdummy View Post
    Replace WotLK with Cataclysm in your post, both markets grew with WotLK.
    wow during the na/eu wotlk timeframe had an exciting 2% annual growth rate. Based on comments in calls and from netease, I think it is possible almost all net growth after dec 2008 till dec 2010 was china. The revenue picture does support this theory as well.

  12. #792
    10.3 million is pretty awesome. This number obviously doesn't include people that buy cards to play if they don't have a card to be billed on. Blizzard will never state how many active accounts they have though instead of spamming sub numbers which fluxuate. :/

  13. #793
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crashdummy View Post
    That's not an accurate chart.

    Even the CEO of Blizzard said (before this quarters numbers) that the numbers were dropping faster than ever in Cata but he tried to justify that by saying that a lot of people came at the beginning of the expansion and thats why they had such a big loss.

    Cata launched in China this quarter. 800k loss most of them are from China, the quarter that is launched into...
    the revenue picture says 300-350k were western sub losses. this is less that half, consistent with Morhaime/s comment.

    ---------- Post added 2011-12-01 at 02:59 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by runeb1980@hotmail.com View Post
    I was anticipating a steady loss of 100k per month. To learn that this trend has now doubled before Diablo III, SWTOR, GW2 etc. are even out... wow. We can defo say that WoW's glory days are behind it.
    apples and oranges. the west probably did lose about 100k a month, but the total sub number includes china, which is not getting the games you list, at least not anytime soon (maybe they do get d3, the other two i doubt at all).

    I think the western sub base is now around 4-4.5m, depending on how you estimate their total value-added service revenue.

    ---------- Post added 2011-12-01 at 03:01 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Stevoman View Post
    Given that most of the subscriber loss is from China, and that China is not very profitable for them, I don't think that financially this will hurt Blizzard very much.

    However, it is a huge slap in the face for them, and it would seem they recognize the problem: Cataclysm content (or lack thereof) being consumed too quickly. Now to see if they actually fix said problem...
    300-350k of those lost subs in q3 were western. You have to look at the revenue change, not the headline sub number.

    ---------- Post added 2011-12-01 at 03:03 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Crashdummy View Post
    And that doesn't mock its playerbase. Or one that doesn't try to induce its playerbase into thinking one solution is better than another to a problem, by presenting two options, one in a ridiculous way and another in a serious one.

    Ghostcrawler's communication to the playerbase is the worst i have seen in my life from someone in an important place.
    There is a guy on this forum who worked for blizzard for some time who described some of ghostcrawlers behaviors. It is really quite shocking, though it does provide a context for some of those widely unpopular inexplicable decisions that get brought in from time to time on changes.

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