Activision Blizzard Q4 2022 Earnings Results

Originally Posted by Osmeric

LOL. The number of people who post on forums is a tiny fraction of the number who have quit the game. OBVIOUSLY most people who quit do not post here, complaints or otherwise.

This forum peaked at around 250,000 users online. It now averages around 85-100. I don't remember seeing 250,000 "I quit" threads.

Originally Posted by Sensa1

Your name is ironic...considering how hard you keep trying to make the same argument over and over...in that thread people pointed to every available indicator from every source and past history to arrive at a common sense conclusion that sales were down and people like yourself just refused to accept it...I can speculate as to why but its not necessary...and ironies of ironies in this thread with way less evidence than anyone in the other thread used to try and convince you the sales numbers were down used you decided that "I think it's more fair to say that the people who quit in Shadowlands quit because they moved on with their lives and fewer people were enticed by Dragonflight." That's the definition of hyprocrisy.

Your inability to read is astonishing. Please, find a single fucking post where I said that sales in DF weren't down. One. Find one fucking post where I said these words.

You won't. Because I never did. And I never have. Not even once. You've created this alternative universe in your mind where simply questioning the authenticity of imaginary numbers means that I'm white knighting Blizzard or some other ridiculous bullshit. People like you are the precise reason reasonable discourse about this video game is impossible to have.

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Originally Posted by Osmeric

Relapses, I want to see the data you used to reach that conclusion. Because using less than perfect data is a grievous sin, right?

In the absence of any qualified data we shouldn't resort to gut reactions and immediately blame the preceding expansion for things which overtly and demonstrably weren't its fault. It's apparently a tall ask for this community to simply not be bitter, miserable and cynical.

edit: just for fun, here's a post from Saturday where I looked at a bunch of numbers and came to the exact conclusion that this QR told us.

The fact they admit it gives me more respect for them. So much better than Q2 reports during Shadowlands that said superficial shit like "Subscriber count rose 200k and feedback has been positive!" Like fuck you guys, it absolutely has not

Originally Posted by Cynical Asshole

"Post-launch subscriber retention in the West is higher than recent expansions"

Maybe because there is jackshit else to play until at least the 2nd half of 2023.

There was also the year sub mount

Originally Posted by MiiiMiii

Now we have a game noone really has anything to complain about.

.

I'm sure this is true if you ignore the people that complain

Blizzard reported its highest quarterly net bookings to date, driven by strong growth for Warcraft and the reinvigoration of Overwatch and Diablo, that's the most important part there they mention string growth for Warcraft!

It's quite funny that WoW can simultaneously have significant year-over-year growth and at the same time fall so short of sales numbers. Really shows how the public's view of a company affects the bottom line.

Originally Posted by Usernameforforums

There was also the year sub mount

There's been many before

Originally Posted by qwerty123456

You do realize if we use your logic then the Dragonflight Retention being higher relies on the Shadowlands numbers right? If the pandemic made people join then leave then the retention rate is massively lower for Shadowlands than it normally is for an expansion making the Dragonflight had better utterly meaningless.



Retention has relevance to players. If you gotta constantly gear up new tanks for your guild or can't find enough high level players to pug something after the first month then you are likely going to set up your playtime based around that. If most people quit arena after 4 weeks into a season then you might want to get your wins in those first 4 weeks so you aren't only competing against good players later on. If only bad players wait till the last minute to get their games in then maybe you wanna only play area in the last couple weeks to make it easier on yourself. ETc....

So when the game was popular and had higher ratings the people who left did so cause they moved on and not because the game sucked? Color me amazed . And again you don't have to tell Blizzard why you quit so how can he know exactly why people quit?

The ghostcrawler quote is someone what misleading in my opinion. He's says the majority reason people quit is stuff like their friends quit. Well why did their friends quit? since they aren't evidently drilling down its entirely possible that their friends quit because the game was shit and that drove them to quit as well.

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Originally Posted by Otaka

Nah, we quit because the game sucks more than ever.

But still lurking here in hopes of the game becoming good again, classic was only a temporary breath of fresh air.

Dragonflight might be considered good by many

Like theirs a tendency now to blame shadowlands for how shitty DF is performing and its really shows how little confidence these people have in the game or the developer. They want to defend a product they like because the developers made decisions they welcome even if its wildly unpopular and didn't sell to anybody. DF offers very little to anybody who isn't a raid logging mid tier shit heel. Or wants to run endless m+

Originally Posted by Huntermyth

'' Activision Blizzard increased representation for those who identify as women or non-binary to 26% globally, as of the end of November, versus 24% a year earlier ''

why is this relevant in any way ? why would i care what gender is the game developer / producer ? can anyone enlighten a foreigner ?

because different people provide different perspectives; that is why diversity is a good thing. if you have a bunch of people who are exactly the same when it comes to gender, background etc, chances are they are going to think the same way and that is limiting when it comes to ideas

Originally Posted by Relapses

Brother, GC was WoW's lead system designer. If you don't think that he had an intimate relationship with the game's retention data you're either completely unaware of the purpose of retention for a subscription model or are simply arguing in bad faith. I also take absolutely zero stock in online ratings because they are prone to brigading and circlejerking. (See: TLoU2's metacritic scores.) And, once again, I'm not saying that game design is completely irrelevant when discussing the reasons people quit WoW... just that its importance is often very overstated on forums. This kind of feedback is great if you just want an internet high five from somebody because you both thought Shadowlands sucked. It's less great if we want the developers to read this kind of feedback and convert it into making the game better. Personally, I feel this community is really, really good doing the former and probably one of the worst at the latter. Instead of helping the developers make the game better, we're just really good at agreeing that the game sucks (or sucked).

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Gotcha -- yeah, it's a bit contradictory. I get that. I'm mostly ever arguing the latter though there are times where I've used sales figures to support an argument so I'll concede there's at least a smidge of hypocrisy there.

You think the lead system designer was pouring over the data himself as well as designing the game? No someone gave him some data or told him about it. Data that 1. we have never seen 2. was data from a time when the game was beloved 3. we have no idea how accurate it was. And no you didn't say game design was completely irrelevant you said that its people moving on that results in the subs being lower which you had no proof what so ever of except for a decade old quote we can't verify the accuracy of. I didn't even say the game was bad as the reason why I said there was a bunch of reasons why people were leaving. They literally had to bring Chris Metzen back to help with the story because it became so shit please tell me how that is evidence to people only leaving because they are just moving on. Why bring him back if everything is perfect? Why admit to mistakes if people are only leaving cause they went off to college?

You seriously think people lie for internet clout but wouldn't lie to keep their job or to defend bad decisions?

Originally Posted by MrLachyG

because different people provide different perspectives; that is why diversity is a good thing. if you have a bunch of people who are exactly the same when it comes to gender, background etc, chances are they are going to think the same way and that is limiting when it comes to ideas

Diversity CAN be a good thing, and it can limit the project heavily. The issue comes from FORCED diversity, where there are better people for the job, but they dont get it because of their gender or race - ironic, when you think about it. I believe they have a word for that, but i can never remember it.

Originally Posted by Selah

I mean, this really is what it boils down to. And one thing that has become glaringly obvious to me over the last couple of years as I've made my foray into other games is that outside of raiding, M+, and PvP (sorta), WoW really is lacking in a lot of other areas and is just an inferior product in these areas. I hope they continue to expand the game to support other aspects of the game.

They won’t. “Other aspects of the game” means solo playing, and Blizzard has zero interest in making the game more solo friendly, it should be quite clear as of now.

Originally Posted by qwerty123456

You think the lead system designer was pouring over the data himself as well as designing the game? No someone gave him some data or told him about it. Data that 1. we have never seen 2. was data from a time when the game was beloved 3. we have no idea how accurate it was. And no you didn't say game design was completely irrelevant you said that its people moving on that results in the subs being lower which you had no proof what so ever of except for a decade old quote we can't verify the accuracy of. I didn't even say the game was bad as the reason why I said there was a bunch of reasons why people were leaving. They literally had to bring Chris Metzen back to help with the story because it became so shit please tell me how that is evidence to people only leaving because they are just moving on. Why bring him back if everything is perfect? Why admit to mistakes if people are only leaving cause they went off to college?

You seriously think people lie for internet clout but wouldn't lie to keep their job or to defend bad decisions?

I have no reason to believe GC would lie about something so completely inconsequential. He used his knowledge of WoW's retention data to make an incredibly valid observation about the nature of internet discourse and how developers learn from it. Forums, Twitter and reddit are often full of the players most disillusioned by a product and these players are often not very good at verbalizing their dissatisfaction. That is to say that a lot of them may not even know why they dislike something, just that they dislike it. That's fine, it's the internet. Updoots to the left. My problem isn't that this kind of discourse exists. It has always existed and always will exist. My issue is that it's often pretty boring stuff like what the guy who started this entire exchange said: "Nobody's playing Dragonflight because Shadowlands sucked." Like, put yourself in a developers' shoes. How does a vague statement like that help anybody improve the game? It's just something somebody says to feel better about disliking something, often seeking validation from other people with other vaguely negative sentiments. It's my personal belief that the amount of this type of negative groupthink present in the WoW community (see: Hirumared's excellent video on negativity bias) is part of the reason the game is the way it is. Players are no longer interested in using critical thinking skills to explain why they dislike something and instead just want the instant gratification they receive when somebody else on the internet agrees with them.

edit: To be clear, what I'm getting at here is that while I cannot prove unequivocally that more people simply aren't playing Dragonflight for reasons intrinsically related to the prior expansion's quality, a generalized statement which doesn't assume malicious intent on behalf of the potential WoW-consuming playerbase is more likely to be true. Glass half-full, instead of, "throw the glass out the fucking window and run over it with a convoy of fully loaded 18-wheelers," if you will.

Originally Posted by Osmeric

Some people, when snubbed, just leave instead of complaining. Blizzard needed to figure out the reasons for those people leaving. I don't think they ever have.

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Relapses, I want to see the data you used to reach that conclusion. Because using less than perfect data is a grievous sin, right?

There is a limit about how much you can address issues, though. IMHO leavers are 90% solo players like me (yes, I unsubbed again, will blast D3 S28 and then will stick with D4, the story progression tied with renown, that I absolutely HATE grinding, was the final nail in the coffin).

Blizzard (or whatever company in its shoes) can’t properly address this category of players without fokkin up group players. This is not Diablo (a single player game with optional parties), this is a MMORPG (a party game with optional single player content). I still love many WoW aspects but I just can’t waste my few spare time anymore with a game that gives me zero power progression if I don’t do group content.

Originally Posted by chiddie

There is a limit about how much you can address issues, though. IMHO leavers are 90% solo players like me (yes, I unsubbed again, will blast D3 S28 and then will stick with D4, the story progression tied with renown, that I absolutely HATE grinding, was the final nail in the coffin).

Blizzard (or whatever company in its shoes) can’t properly address this category of players without fokkin up group players. This is not Diablo (a single player game with optional parties), this is a MMORPG (a party game with optional single player content). I still love many WoW aspects but I just can’t waste my few spare time anymore with a game that gives me zero power progression if I don’t do group content.

You must, by now, realize that this is your choice... right?

WoW is not a single player game and it isn't beholden to satisfy people who refuse to engage with the game's main reward infrastructure. If I wanted to play Dark Souls exclusively with a banana and Wii remote nunchuk, I'd rightfully be laughed at by the developers if I asked them to make the game slightly easier for people who want to play Dark Souls with a banana and Wii remote nunchuk.

Originally Posted by ONCHEhap

Dragonflight however seems to be overall very liked by players, and yet has lower sales, how else do you explain that?

how about that SL came out at during early pandemic, when a lot of people were home, trying to kill some time, while DF came out after pandemic, during which some people died and a lot lost their jobs and burned their savings so they had to cut luxuries like videogames?
not saying that is only reason why sales are lower, there are definitely more, but why do some people seem to think not reaching sales of expansion that was (briefly) FASTEST SELLING PC GAME IN HISTORY means sales are low?

World of Warcraft delivered significant year-over-year growth in reach, engagement and net bookings in the fourth quarter

What does this even mean? Besides being corpo speech of course.

Originally Posted by Ringthane

You've been here almost as long as I have, and that's what you come up with? Do you read the posts on these forums at all? The last time someone just left instead of complaining was in 2015.

wait what? someone left without making whinethread every week?! thats not possible!

Originally Posted by Relapses

You must, by now, realize that this is your choice... right?

WoW is not a single player game and it isn't beholden to satisfy people who refuse to engage with the game's main reward infrastructure. If I wanted to play Dark Souls exclusively with a banana and Wii remote nunchuk, I'd rightfully be laughed at by the developers if I asked them to make the game slightly easier for people who want to play Dark Souls with a banana and Wii remote nunchuk.

The comparison is totally flawed. But anyways, I already said that WoW will never address solo issues for the well know reasons.

Being it fine or not depending on the side you’re looking at, it is like it is.

At least they won’t hopefully ruin Diablo with horrible multiplayer stuff aside from world events.