7 days till the *hit hits the fan. Or maybe not?

[Deficineiron]

This is so true. aha.

If I'm not mistaken there are only 5-6million people subbing in EU/US? I'm sure I read it somewhere.

try 4 million. over half of wow subs are in china, plus you have korea/taiwan...

---------- Post added 2012-02-09 at 08:52 PM ----------

no its is true NA/EU make up 6 millon of WoW the accounts while the other 4 Mill is the asian market (KR,TW)

the opposite is true, as long as you include china in asian market.

[papaz]

good evening fellas. My popcorn is ready. Lets get it oooooon!!!

Bring the sub numbers and the shitstorm!

Brace yourselves!!

[Kevyne-Shandris]

Warcraftrealms isnt a reliable source why do pple keep thinking it is ?

Because it's at least UNBIASED data.

Can't trust the extremes, as they are biased!

[Corysi]

annual pass 'members' won't be buying d3 however.

They will spin it by saying annual pass sales are WoW sales now and when D3 comes out they will say annual pass sales call it D3 sales. They'll do it some shady way but somehow it's still legit.

[connectz]

EDIT:
So even if it falls down to 9 million subs, the sky still isn't falling. I would say the sky is falling at 6 million, when it falls below 50% of its peak subscribers. Because at that point although the game would still be highly profitable it's safe to say that people are by-in-large no longer satisfied with the game.

Sorry but you are dead wrong, if it drops to 9 million it creates a major problem for Blizzard.

If you're running a business that loses 25% of it's customers in one year, that is a bigger loss than you think. That's 25% of steady revenue, 25% of the company. It's a big enough loss, where technically they have enough reason to downsize the wow department. Which in turn will either deliver content slower, or deliver more recycled crap. You can't look at it as "oh 9 million x $15 is still a boat load of money"... It is a shit ton of money, but that money has expenses, it has an overhead and it needs to be maintained in order to maintain the service.

If you're investing into a company that lost 25% of its customers in one year, you would be thinking "oh shit, i'm pulling my money out". And you can bet your ass that's whats going on. Especially since Kotick saw it coming and sold 45% of his shares.

[mvaliz]

They will spin it by saying annual pass sales are WoW sales now and when D3 comes out they will say annual pass sales call it D3 sales. They'll do it some shady way but somehow it's still legit.

Or basically they're not going to even mention D3 sales until the game comes out. Why bother talking about D3 potential losses when the game's not even out yet?

Also, this is a conference call to INVESTORS. Trust me, Blizzard is going to try to steer the goal of this call to a positive future... this call isn't for pleasing the players. :P

Also, your "shady" theory has another angle too - the RMAH. instead of talking about overall shelf sales... they'll talk about how much money the RMAH brought in. :P

Lastly, I believe they'll have the downloaded version of the game to players count towards "The total number of units SHIPPED". WHich is often a clever tactic of skirting around the real question of "how many units were actually SOLD to consumers."

[artem123]

I always find it funny how the Asian market apparently counts for nothing when it's a sub loss, yet when people want to brag about "10 million subscribers" then suddenly they count again.

\
i know eh, its like No well they dont effect us, its nothing, there just a majority, but hey their on the other side, who cares. But when we advertise... thats when those 10million come into play, we gotta show them how many play this game

[Dazzy]

doesn't matter if they lose 1 million, 4 million or gained 6 million, the stock will barely move as WoW will still be 100% pure profit.

[hulkgor]

WoW has roughly 5.2M EU+US subscribers (mmodata.net). The rest are asian accounts, mainly chinese who don't pay for a subscripton. so yea, the 11-12M numbers have to be read into.

[TimeTravel]

doesn't matter if they lose 1 million, 4 million or gained 6 million, the stock will barely move as WoW will still be 100% pure profit.

Markets are driven on emotion not logic

[Deleted]

Thing is.. people who whine on forums are not gonna quit WoW. It's like with suicide, people who really intend to kill themself just do it, they don't talk about it. People who talk about it are crying out for help.

L-O-L

Of all the conceited, retarded analogies i've seen, this has to top them all. And thats saying a lot. Quite an impressive signature i have to say.

[Deficineiron]

WoW has roughly 5.2M EU+US subscribers (mmodata.net). The rest are asian accounts, mainly chinese who don't pay for a subscripton. so yea, the 11-12M numbers have to be read into.

wow had that many western subs before the disaster of 2011. all q1 and q2 losses were western, and almost half of q3.

[mvaliz]

Sorry but you are dead wrong, if it drops to 9 million it creates a major problem for Blizzard.

If you're running a business that loses 25% of it's customers in one year, that is a bigger loss than you think. That's 25% of steady revenue, 25% of the company. It's a big enough loss, where technically they have enough reason to downsize the wow department. Which in turn will either deliver content slower, or deliver more recycled crap. You can't look at it as "oh 9 million x $15 is still a boat load of money"... It is a shit ton of money, but that money has expenses, it has an overhead and it needs to be maintained in order to maintain the service.

If you're investing into a company that lost 25% of its customers in one year, you would be thinking "oh shit, i'm pulling my money out". And you can bet your ass that's whats going on. Especially since Kotick saw it coming and sold 45% of his shares.

Pretty much this.

You got to remember, thanks to WoW sending them cartloads of money - Blizzard is probably 10x larger than it used to be than when it was first developing WoW. Back in the original days prior to WoW, Blizzard just focused on ONE game, and maybe ONE expansion for said game and that was it. Then they'd switch to another game. The only unique situation they got in was with Diablo's case - sign a contract with a different dev house and have them develop that one.

Right now - Blizz has Titan, Pandaria, whatever expansion five is, Diablo III, Diablo III expansion, SCII: Heart of the swarm, and probably the third SCII expansion + WCIII in development. That's at LEAST 7 titles minimum that they're working on RIGHT NOW. One of those titles specifically is probably on the same level of complexity and staff-size as World of Warcraft.

Blizzard are no longer like Bethesda or the developers of GW2. They aren't just focusing on 1 game every now and again. EQ and GW2 can turn an easy profit simply because their expenses are ridiculously low. Blizz has now grown to the point where they're doing massive press tours and conventions and making a BUNCH of titles. And all of that is currently funded via one basket of eggs...

[rhorle]

Because it's at least UNBIASED data.

Only collecting Activity Data during prime time hours is not unbiased. That is clearly biased data.

[Seiklis]

Not expecting much difference since I think the people locked in on Annual Passes will offset the losses...plus there's always a jump when a new patch hits

That said, Blizz is setting themselves up for a horrible loss come October when those annual passes end....that to me is the date to watch for

[mvaliz]

L-O-L

Of all the conceited, retarded analogies i've seen, this has to top them all. And thats saying a lot. Quite an impressive signature i have to say.

And the sad part is that person isn't tranaslating things properly. People aren't just ragequitting and vocalizing on the forums for attention - they're ragequitting and vocalizing on the forums IN HOPES TO GET THE GAME CHANGED!

If you look at my history of posts, I often complained about why I quit WoW a year ago over he horrible horrible designs implemente from Cataclysm. About how my fun-filled Wrath-heroics turned into hour+ long CC snorefests.

Then they announced Pandaria, and a slew of potential changes - specifically sighting things I said I hated about the difficulty of dungeons. Got me interested...

Then 4.3 came out and they actually IMPLEMENTED some of those changes. That, to me, makes my vocalization on the forms 100% worth it. And now I'm back playing as it's much more enjoyable than it was at Cataclysm's launch. Granted, it's still not Wrath-level... but it's enough to get me back. :P

[TimeTravel]

Well my prediction was a drop of around 200 000 this Q and another 500 000 next Q

[mvaliz]

Not expecting much difference since I think the people locked in on Annual Passes will offset the losses...plus there's always a jump when a new patch hits

There's been 2 patches prior to 4.3... there wasn't a jump at all in either of those. Instead they stumbled down an even steeper slope...

[Ghul]

there so many information on blizzards working orders and processes to be found in a forum from a fansite, its unbelieveable!
very educational!(?) mvallas must be an industrial spie among their midst!

anywho, if the subs drop im gonna be like "so what?!" and if they dont drop im gonna be like "in your FACE bitches!"

[Deleted]

Titan is coming in a year or 2 and Blizzard will do fine. Nuff said!