Activision Blizzard Q4 2022 Earnings Results

Originally Posted by VMSmith

I've seen @Osmeric say none of that, this is entirely an invention of your own mind. Maybe if you white knights stopped pretending that the occasional drive-by shitposter represents the views and opinions of everyone that isn't a true-blue Blizzard lover, you'd actually get the points that people like Osmeric are making and a worthwhile discussion that goes beyond "No U!" could be had.

lmfao, yeah. Sorry to interrupt your precious negativity circlejerk. If your idea of "worthwhile discussion" amounts to jacking off to the idea of WoW dying on a WoW fan forum, maybe the problem isn't the fans.

Originally Posted by Kiwijello

"but community feedback on the title has been positive"

Where? Not here for sure, and not on the official forums. Twitter maybe? Or IG? Just curious where I can read the positive remarks

You can't deny that Dragonflight is better received than SL.
There is no annoying farming, no power creep, no annoying factions/conduits you have to farm,... you can have a really good stuff only doing mm+/chest/crafts
I dont have a guild anymore I play with a few friends and the game is enjoyable even without a guild.

I think I'll stick around for tier 2, in SL I quit after 2 months as most of my guildmates at that time

Originally Posted by Relapses

lmfao, yeah. Sorry to interrupt your precious negativity circlejerk. If your idea of "worthwhile discussion" amounts to jacking off to the idea of WoW dying on a WoW fan forum, maybe the problem isn't the fans.

Sorry, but you need to brush up on your mindreading skills. They are clearly woefully inadequate.

This is just more of the same hyperbole and wailing of a white knight, exactly like the post I responded to. Please point to any post of mine that constitutes a "negativity circlejerk" or "jacking off to the idea of WoW dying". You won't be able to because I've never said anything remotely like that. You, nor any of the other white knights here, ever engage with what people are saying and instead constantly resort to strawmen you erect, just like you did here.

For some people the trajectory of the game is interesting and what suppositions can be gleaned from the data available interests them. You are clearly not interested in any of that, resorting to a constant stream of "YOU DON"T KNOW THE ACTUAL COMPLETE NUMBERS SO YOU CAN'T HAVE AN OPINION!!!", which is fallacious and ignorant on the face of it. And that's it, that's your schtick, insisting we can't even contemplate anything based on what evidence we have and insisting that anyone that does is "circlejerking to the death of WoW".

When you're ready to grow up and talk about what the numbers we have could or couldn't mean, then a discussion can be had. In the meanwhile there's little point in engaging with you since all your group ever wants to do is "NO U!!". WoW can be doing poorly and you can still fully enjoy it, y'know. I'm enjoying Dragonflight pretty well right now and still recognize that Blizzard has done some serious damage to the game over the years and feel the numbers and info we do have point that out pretty well. But that's like, my opinion, man.

Originally Posted by heltvild

sales at the start was bad because of horrible shadowlands, but feedback is positive and the retention rate is better than previous expansions

I said I wouldn't even try DF because I was sure it would suck after SL but I was wrong, same for the friend who plays with me

Originally Posted by vashe9

You can't deny that Dragonflight is better received than SL.
There is no annoying farming, no power creep, no annoying factions/conduits you have to farm,... you can have a really good stuff only doing mm+/chest/crafts
I dont have a guild anymore I play with a few friends and the game is enjoyable even without a guild.

I think I'll stick around for tier 2, in SL I quit after 2 months as most of my guildmates at that time

It is well-received, by a certain group of players. But, honestly, every expansion is well-received by one group of players or another. WoD, BfA, Shadowlands ... they all have their fans. And the "best" expansions like Wrath, MoP, and Legion have their detractors.

I think what can definitely be said, and maybe this is what Blizzard is alluding to, is that "content creators" are definitely more favorable of Dragonflight. And they possess a louder megaphone and audience that tends to agree with them than the random WoW player, so they are more likely to be heard.

Originally Posted by VMSmith

I've seen @Osmeric say none of that, this is entirely an invention of your own mind. Maybe if you white knights stopped pretending that the occasional drive-by shitposter represents the views and opinions of everyone that isn't a true-blue Blizzard lover, you'd actually get the points that people like Osmeric are making and a worthwhile discussion that goes beyond "No U!" could be had.

He literally goes out of his way to come to this forum, a wow fan forum, to more or less proclaim that the game is bad, will get worse and/Or will not be focused on by Blizzard. In a thread about the success of wow and most of the other IPs Blizzard have.

I am no Blizzard white knight, cause why would I be? Im just calling out certain doomsayers that has been going strong for soon two decades. "wow is dead", "Blizzard wont focus on wow anymore" and a billion other things have been proclaimed by ppl like him since BC launched. Thats when the doomsayers started, and they wont stop until wow one day is shut down and they can all scream "I TOLD YOU SO!" into an empty void. Fair enough, cause they will be right. One day. But not on this side of 2030.

the damage done to the retail warcraft brand from BFA and Shadowlands was permanent. keep in mind the wow subscription #s are heavily boosted by wrath classic which represents the peak of the classic era.

the covid lockdown bump is also a one time event in active numbers.

it was a good run.

Originally Posted by probert

the damage done to the retail warcraft brand from BFA and Shadowlands was permanent. keep in mind the wow subscription #s are heavily boosted by wrath classic which represents the peak of the classic era.

the covid lockdown bump is also a one time event in active numbers.

it was a good run.

If you only use the raidlogs as indicator, yes, more people are raiding classic BUT what about mm + ? In classic after your raid night you're done, dungeons are useless. I've been playing this game since 2005 (EU here, so day 1... or 3 remember those bad times when servers were full hehe... good memories I guess) and I couldn't play any extension without mm+ anymore (so nothing before Legion)

I don't understand people claiming that woltk was the "peak" of the game. Only in terms on subscribers but the core game (raids and dungeons) is way better in retail now that we have a true talent system in retail too...

Originally Posted by Usernameforforums

Aight let me rephrase it, there was a free murloc mount with a purchase of a year sub. People like murlocs, especially older fans of the game. And honestly, pretty much every single 6month mount sucks ass besides the dread wake mount.

and thats your opinion, some people might think murloc sucks and other promotion mounts are cool, personaly i dont like big mounts in general so i wouldn sub for murloc mount... and honestly, i dont think ive seen anyone used it, like ever...

Originally Posted by Kiwijello

"but community feedback on the title has been positive"

Where? Not here for sure, and not on the official forums. Twitter maybe? Or IG? Just curious where I can read the positive remarks

There's always one person who ignores the countless threads about an expansion being fun and focuses on the negative handful of threads I guess. I haven't seen feedback this positive on a WoW expansion since at least legion.

Originally Posted by mbit2

"Early Dragonflight sales have not reached the level of the prior expansion"

No surprises, they did a discount offer already about a month after release. Was pretty self evident sales weren't running as well as desired.

If they expected it to sell as well as SL after SL broke records (mostly due to it being released during lockdown) they had unreasonable expectations. That said it's still doing well because player retention is the best it has been in ages. It's also competing with Wrath Classic which released shortly before DF did, and a lot of people enjoy Wrath.

Originally Posted by voskopoula

IT is terrible and a huge sign they fuckers in blizzard high up or well the managers of all this dont give shit for the customers.

or that chinese do whatever they want and blizz could do nothing about it...
which, given the cheap wow copy that floated around here literaly day after wow went south in china, seems more likely...

and tbh, what exactly should or to be more precise COULD we do about it?

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Kiwijello

"but community feedback on the title has been positive"

Where? Not here for sure, and not on the official forums. Twitter maybe? Or IG? Just curious where I can read the positive remarks

just bcs you decided not to see something doesnt mean its not there...
even on this forum, where moving two pixels in game means wow is dooooooooomed, has been positive threads...

I think the damage done by Shadowlands to WoW has been significant - loss of players through mechanics and story et cetera.

And it seems that we are seeing the long term results of that.

Originally Posted by probert

keep in mind the wow subscription #s are heavily boosted by wrath classic which represents the peak of the classic era.

source on classic having anywhere near retail sub count? your ass as per usual with similar "facts"?

Originally Posted by probert

the damage done to the retail warcraft brand from BFA and Shadowlands was permanent. keep in mind the wow subscription #s are heavily boosted by wrath classic which represents the peak of the classic era.

the covid lockdown bump is also a one time event in active numbers.

it was a good run.

Yes I'm sure after the trainwreck that was Cata and then WoD it was SL that did permanent damage to WoW. If you're still playing WoW at this point you're not going to stop because of a bad expansion. You said it yourself, the COVID lockdown bump was a one time thing, and if it wasn't for that SL wouldn't have sold as many early copies as it did.

What do you think these people that have permanently left WoW are playing for an MMO? FFXIV's popularity has waned since the bump it got last summer, New World flopped, there was that grindy Korean MMO that lasted about a month.

And as someone who runs a raiding guild in Classic I can certainly tell you that Wrath is only the peak of the Classic era nostalgia. Recruitment pools are much smaller than they were during Classic or Classic TBC, and my guild personally lost quite a few players to retail and we have several more who are actively playing both versions of the game.

If you read more about the story from the chinese company side, it seems blizzard messed up or let it go intentionaly. They didnt care for the players, if it were me i would have kept them even if the profit would be lower from swapping companies etc in China.

Originally Posted by RoKPaNda

What do you think these people that have permanently left WoW are playing for an MMO?

Speaking personally (and assuming I'm permanently gone, which is a good bet absent unlikely changes from Blizzard): not playing MMOs at all.

What this all says to me is the following:

-The silence regarding actual numbers for DF is deafening. While it's entirely possible it did as well as most xpacs have historically, I'm more inclined to believe it was a bit below even that. Certainly not total doomer mode "It totally flopped" levels of sales, but ones that likely would have been viewed negatively by investors if openly reported.
-The better retention rate is the "But actually..." spin for DF. This is also a number that's very much up to speculation, but I think just about everyone paying attention saw it coming. Will DF be in a better spot in terms of numbers than SL by the end of the xpac? Only time can tell. Definitely warrants keeping a sharp eye on what metrics are actually available to the viewing public, imperfect as they may be.
-Having both Retail and Classic get new releases in Q4 made the improved metrics listed sort of a "no duh" moment.
-OW2's launch surpassing OW1's launch in terms of player engagement isn't really surprising, nor is Blizz's earnings spike between it and WoW coming out, and DI still being relatively new.
-Their wording regarding DI's engagement comes off as stating "Player falloff has slowed to a crawl as of the holiday season". Good for the near-term stability of DI, but does raise an eyebrow to me regarding any falloff (or lack thereof) during the rest of Q4.

Overall, not really much in terms of huge surprises. To Blizz's credit, I think for DF, they were more concerned about retention than player expansion, and on that front, they seem to have succeeded comparatively well.

Originally Posted by Niwes

tbh, what did ppls expect after the SL fiasko?

when you loose half of your customer base, because your game is highly cost effective cheap shit, resulting in low quality, while being more interested in cash grab than in good game design, well, then for sure the next xpac will not sell well in the beginning.

ppls act like everyone that quitted cause of SL is back on track day1 when DF launches. jesus, that company gambled A LOT with the trust of their customers. and they heavily lost their trust. getting it back is a looong and hard task.

in short: the fact that SL sucked and Blizzard sucked in 2021+2022 directly results in low sales of the next xpac. they lost all trust of their customers. so what did ppls expect when DF launches?

All of the classic launches also had massive amounts of drop off a few months after launch.

Is it because they, and therefore WoW has always, sucked?

Is it expected that 18 year old games are supposed to get more popular with time?

Originally Posted by Chilela

What this all says to me is the following:
Overall, not really much in terms of huge surprises. To Blizz's credit, I think for DF, they were more concerned about retention than player expansion, and on that front, they seem to have succeeded comparatively well.

best comment in this whole thread.

instead of a complete collapse of the brand, they leaned into player feedback and focused on stemming the atrophy.

MMOs are a habit, once you break the cycle many players move onto something else that replaces it. at least they're not losing players as fast now.

Originally Posted by Tentim

I mean on the official forums and twitter. People are complaining about down time but only the smallest of minorities have been complaining about the content and most of their threads are just people telling them to sod off.

If you ignore every complaint then yes it becomes a minority.