Potential Activision Blizzard Layoffs Next Week
Bloomberg is reporting that Activision is planning to cut hundreds of jobs next week.

Activision Blizzard Inc. plans to announce job cuts Tuesday in the face of slowing sales, according to people familiar with the matter, bringing fresh upheaval after spotty results roiled stocks this week. The shares dropped as much as 2.5 percent to $42.88 on Friday.

The layoffs, which could number in the hundreds, are part of a restructuring aimed at centralizing functions and boosting profit, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the changes haven’t been announced. Activision employed 9,800 people at the end of 2017.

The game maker, one of the largest in the world, acknowledged on a November conference call that some key titles, such as Overwatch and Hearthstone, were seeing flat or declining numbers of users. After disappointing sales of Destiny 2: Forsaken, the company parted ways with its developer, Bungie Inc., a move that could reduce annual revenue by as much as $400 million.

Patch 8.1 Hotfixes - February 8, 2019
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes

Dungeons and Raids
  • Battle of Dazar’alor
    • Jadefire Masters
      • Marksmanship Hunters’ Trick Shots now correctly deal damages to Force.
    • Stormwall Blockade
      • Fixed a bug preventing Sister Katherine and Brother Joseph from correctly using Translocate if they were channeling Tidal or Storm's Empowerment.
      • Fixed a bug preventing some Voltaic Flash patterns from hitting players on the docks on Mythic difficulty.

Events
  • The most-rare item containers from holiday bosses, such as Big Love Rocket, now drop for player characters at level 110 or higher (was level 98).

Items

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Love is in the Air Rewards – Level Requirement
The annual holiday, Love is in the Air, begins on February 12 and ends part way through the day on February 26. For this, we are applying a hotfix that makes it so only characters who are level 110 or higher will be eligible daily to receive the box that contains the most-rare items from this event’s bosses (for the last two years it’s been set to level 98). You will also see this reflected in the next official Hotfixes update post.

As a result of this, if you are hunting the Big Love Rocket you will want to get characters to at least level 110 for the event.

Good luck collection hunters!

is it still stupidly rare? You seem to be actively encouraging people to farm it on as many characters as possible which doesn’t strike me as a healthy gameplay habit to be encouraging.
The drop rate hasn’t changed. We are aware of how some people push to farm it and wanted to avoid anybody feeling like there was a stealth change while we keep the availability focused on more active play. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Holiday Rewards – Level 110 Requirement
Got some info back on this one, the Big Love Rocket mount will now only drop from the Heart-Shaped Box that players level 110 or higher receive from defeating The Crown Chemical Co.

(This will also be the case for Coren Direbrew and the Headless Horseman later this year.) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 8.1 Hotfixes - February 8, 2019, Holiday Rare Rewards - Level 110 Requirement started by chaud View original post
Comments 202 Comments
  1. FelPlague's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ThatsOurEric View Post
    I hope you're not serious.

    Blizzard has input limits to how many times a character can do a dungeon, which is shared by all characters in all servers.
    You'd have to make sure an hour went by before you would be allowed to do another dungeon.

    So making new characters and deleting them would not only be a colossal waste of time, it would absolutely just not work
    in getting around that restriction.

    Out of all the bullshit reasons they'd have to keeping this level gating content, what you're suggesting would definitely not
    be one of them.
    ummm what? you don't know how it works do you, are YOU serious?
    it is a daily, so no, people would make many characters, and then run it as many times as they could each day...

    are you serious?

    also anyone can do the dungeon, this just stops lower levels from being used to farm the mount.

    also lol level gating content? is EVERYTHING "time gated" now? remember back in vanilla when the shitty fucking devs level gated raids? what fucking scum forcing people to pay months of sub just so they could raid!
  1. ThatsOurEric's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by FelPlague View Post
    ummm what? you don't know how it works do you, are YOU serious?
    it is a daily, so no, people would make many characters, and then run it as many times as they could each day...
    Even though its literally in one area, the encounter is still inside of a dungeon, and in order to get to this, you
    have to que up for it. Ergo, it counts as a dungeon run, regardless of how fast it is.

    I've farmed this on multiple alts that were at the level to do it in Legion. 12 toons max, and at the most IIRC,
    I could do the dungeon maybe 10 times with different alts before the game would hit me with a, "you have
    entered too many instances recently", jargin, forcing me to have to wait at least an hour before I could finish
    with the other alts.

    So no, just because its a daily quest doesn't mean anything. You still have to wait.

    also anyone can do the dungeon, this just stops lower levels from being used to farm the mount.
    I again ask, is there a **good** reason for this? Your answer isn't, and so far others have had more plausible
    ones (i.e. Blizzard is fucking greedy). So do YOU have an actual intelligent and legitimate reason as to why?

    also lol level gating content? is EVERYTHING "time gated" now? remember back in vanilla when the shitty fucking devs level gated raids? what fucking scum forcing people to pay months of sub just so they could raid!
    Your example doesn't work because for one thing, they didn't gate raids via level, they gated them via quest lines and attunement,
    which they eventually dropped due to how unpopular they were.

    Your example also doesn't work because you're comparing content that is always available vs. content that is exclusive to a holiday
    event that is around for at least 2 weeks.

    You should probably stop, you're not very good at this.

    There are only 2 big draws for these events, to get the meta achievement for the meta mount, OR to obtain the cosmetic
    items (toys and mounts) that are available. Some things you can get at any level (Xmas tree event), while others require
    players to be at a set level, the lowest being the level that begins the new expansion content and max level.

    So seeing as how most people are farming for those mounts & toys, there's no good fucking reason to make it so that you
    have to be max level to get a mount drop, considering that you can enter this dungeon as low as level 15.
  1. FelPlague's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ThatsOurEric View Post
    Even though its literally in one area, the encounter is still inside of a dungeon, and in order to get to this, you
    have to que up for it. Ergo, it counts as a dungeon run, regardless of how fast it is.

    I've farmed this on multiple alts that were at the level to do it in Legion. 12 toons max, and at the most IIRC,
    I could do the dungeon maybe 10 times with different alts before the game would hit me with a, "you have
    entered too many instances recently", jargin, forcing me to have to wait at least an hour before I could finish
    with the other alts.

    So no, just because its a daily quest doesn't mean anything. You still have to wait.



    I again ask, is there a **good** reason for this? Your answer isn't, and so far others have had more plausible
    ones (i.e. Blizzard is fucking greedy). So do YOU have an actual intelligent and legitimate reason as to why?



    Your example doesn't work because for one thing, they didn't gate raids via level, they gated them via quest lines and attunement,
    which they eventually dropped due to how unpopular they were.

    Your example also doesn't work because you're comparing content that is always available vs. content that is exclusive to a holiday
    event that is around for at least 2 weeks.

    You should probably stop, you're not very good at this.

    There are only 2 big draws for these events, to get the meta achievement for the meta mount, OR to obtain the cosmetic
    items (toys and mounts) that are available. Some things you can get at any level (Xmas tree event), while others require
    players to be at a set level, the lowest being the level that begins the new expansion content and max level.

    So seeing as how most people are farming for those mounts & toys, there's no good fucking reason to make it so that you
    have to be max level to get a mount drop, considering that you can enter this dungeon as low as level 15.
    and with 10 chars per day you can still easily do 50 chars in 5 hours... or 100 chars in 10 hours... and that would mean having to make room.
    looks like you were caught not thinking, and now your trying to backtrack.
    the trason for this is to stop people spamming low levels.
  1. RobertoCarlos's Avatar
    the blizzard I once respected has long been dead. Since about the release of Diablo 3/warlords.

    Glad to hear their greed and shortsightedness has cost them dearly.

    Quality > Greed
  1. ryanmahaffe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by FelPlague View Post
    1. oook
    2. you really think 8 months before bfa launched they went "this is gunna be a failure, you wanna know how we can fix that? add a mount that is given to free to a massive amount of our playerbase, and allow the rest to sub to get it, or buy it latert if they rather not sub!!!"
    yeah... quite the buisness move..
    3. the chinese pig here was going to happen, it was just bad timing it lined up with the others.
    and again they always do a fair few of these kinda things around the holidays, just so happens people were "mad at the game" around the holiday season.
    1.) Well. I didn't see how I was supposed to respond to that.
    2.) Yes, I think they saw knew it wouldn't be a finished product at release and a lot of the major systems would be controversial and planned accordingly. That or they just prepared for a standard expansion sub drop off after the first 1-2 months.
    3.) I don't remember them ever doing a "these are going away foreverrr so buy them now" sale IF it were just a sale that would be fine but creation some artificial scarcity and having a new store mount and having a holiday mount is just a lot for such a short time period.
  1. Knaar's Avatar
    It made me laugh seeing them talk about a 2.5% drop in value... how about we talk about the 50% drop in 4 months instead? loll
  1. FelPlague's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Knaar View Post
    It made me laugh seeing them talk about a 2.5% drop in value... how about we talk about the 50% drop in 4 months instead? loll
    Because the entire market crashed, not just blizz.
  1. Felixon's Avatar
    Yes,kick cut the job for those,who are working there since the very beginning of World of Warcraft and hire more people,who are capable to draw more pet/mounts for the store and make more recolors of already existing playable races!
  1. Kallisto's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Knaar View Post
    It made me laugh seeing them talk about a 2.5% drop in value... how about we talk about the 50% drop in 4 months instead? loll
    You mean when basically every company on the stock market world wide crashed. Or we forgetting that part on purpose to push agendas.

    I mean people do realise we're in what's best a correction in the markets right now. At worst 2007/8 all over again.
  1. RobertoCarlos's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kallisto View Post
    You mean when basically every company on the stock market world wide crashed. Or we forgetting that part on purpose to push agendas.

    I mean people do realise we're in what's best a correction in the markets right now. At worst 2007/8 all over again.
    blizzard is doing fine nothing to see here.

    Whats their newest project btw? Warcraft 3 and wow classic?

    Yeah nothing to see here, blizz is doing fine not needing to cash in on older classics rather than inventing new IPs
  1. Astalnar's Avatar
    There was a time where I would think this a sad news. Now I see it as a deserved. As long as we have LGBTQIABC characters revealed in Overwatch every so often, there is no problem at Blizzard. N problem at all. No problem with uderpayed developers, no problem with the direction of the company, no problem with Blizzard's attitude toward its customers.

    Everything is just fine at Blizzard. Just fine.

  1. eduwneso's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Zyky View Post
    Hopefully they get rid of Ion and Josh. Two under-qualified idiots who ignore feedback and concerns of the playerbase.

    - - - Updated - - -



    If the WoW team is only, in Ion's words, "around 180 people" then the hots team was never that large in the first place. With them using the term "hundreds" of people being laid off, it's very likely that many people from EVERY franchise will be losing people.
    Hell yeah, fire them! they are the only ones who read the feedback! no one else does, the only thing they do is read stupid messy, I mean constructive feedback and laugh at it, fire them!!, Oh, all the other members of the team, you are doing allright, it's only the fault of those two, if we fire them it will all be fixed, revolution!!

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Zyky View Post
    I mean, he's right though. When an allied race is released token prices skyrocket, when token prices skyrocket Blizzard is making money. People can say "lol I'm spending gold for it" but the reality is someone spent $20 on that token for you to get $15. The same thing applies too when a store mount or pet is released, the token prices skyrocket and this is fact with evidence in the history of token prices.
    I'm not that smart for this kind of stuff, and If i'm getting it wrong please correct me but blizzard can't make way more money with tokens now than they did without them, because the profit per 2 players in a monthly based subscription would be 2€ here in europe.

    Let's just think about the case where everyone buys tokens, one player doesn't pay but the other one pays 13€ + 15€ from the token + monthly subacription. Meaning 28€ instead of 26€.

    If we go that way generally speaking of course, blizzard has indeed made the subscription cost 1€ more.

    Also, I'm pretty sure that blizzard put tokens in the store and not all of them are from players who sold them, and if they do, they are certainly giving us "money" for "free".

    I've yet to meet a wowplayer who has sold tokens for gold and I know quite a lot that buys tokens.

    So this means that if blizzard puts tokens then they are certainly not taking that much profit from this system, and those claims are just people who repeat what others said and don't stop to think about it even two seconds.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by RobertoCarlos View Post
    blizzard is doing fine nothing to see here.

    Whats their newest project btw? Warcraft 3 and wow classic?

    Yeah nothing to see here, blizz is doing fine not needing to cash in on older classics rather than inventing new IPs
    I think if they have any new project they would certainly not announce it, first, they learned from titan, and second, having seen the hate of everything they do, they don't want to risk announcing anything they don't think it's solid enough to announce, and solid to announce ofc doesn't mean the game is finished and it's perfect, it means that they are now sure they are going to do it and can show us something solid, as they did with OW and it was perfect, from my point of view.

    No saying they are doing perfect or everything is perfect, stating facts. Also, a lot of companies with old IP's are remaking games since 2010 or before I think, blizzard, as always is coming late to the party and that's why it's like a flare in the middle of a clear sky on the night.
  1. Vorkreist's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Orby View Post
    It;'s sad that people on this forum have dark twisted minds and just crave people to fail instead of encouraging them to succeed. What twisted demented fucks you must be to see Blizzard go out of business and see many more hundreds of more people to lose their jobs. Wish for better not for the worst.

    People tend to forget all of the hard working devs and writers that have nothing to do with the BS the publishers and shareholders put out. Because when Blizzard does go out of business those scummy people get richer and are not affected at all and the real heroes of blizzard like the sound designers, the developers, and the creative writers get he short end. Those stockholders, those publishers, they don't mind, they'll get a massive cheque at the end.

    I want Blizzard to get better not go out of business and thats what we all should be encouraging from these companies.
    Go patch your bleeding heart elsewhere and stop talking like they provide some kind of charity and have not received billions of dollars and support over the years just to betray it all and fuck all the long time fans in the ass.
  1. Zyky's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by eduwneso View Post
    Hell yeah, fire them! they are the only ones who read the feedback! no one else does, the only thing they do is read stupid messy, I mean constructive feedback and laugh at it, fire them!!, Oh, all the other members of the team, you are doing allright, it's only the fault of those two, if we fire them it will all be fixed, revolution!!
    I'm not going to explain this again, so I'll break it down in smaller words for you. When people are at the head of a department they are responsible for what does or doesn't happen.



    Quote Originally Posted by eduwneso View Post
    I'm not that smart for this kind of stuff, and If i'm getting it wrong please correct me but blizzard can't make way more money with tokens now than they did without them, because the profit per 2 players in a monthly based subscription would be 2€ here in europe.

    Let's just think about the case where everyone buys tokens, one player doesn't pay but the other one pays 13€ + 15€ from the token + monthly subacription. Meaning 28€ instead of 26€.

    If we go that way generally speaking of course, blizzard has indeed made the subscription cost 1€ more.

    Also, I'm pretty sure that blizzard put tokens in the store and not all of them are from players who sold them, and if they do, they are certainly giving us "money" for "free".

    I've yet to meet a wowplayer who has sold tokens for gold and I know quite a lot that buys tokens.

    So this means that if blizzard puts tokens then they are certainly not taking that much profit from this system, and those claims are just people who repeat what others said and don't stop to think about it even two seconds.
    No you're wrong. Every token has to be purchased by a player first. This is common knowledge.
  1. Not A Cat's Avatar
    Aren't a lot of big gaming companies suffering though? I kept reading nonstop last year that most of the revenue in the gaming industry comes from smartphone games. A lot of big gaming companies are hurting these days.
  1. MoanaLisa's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Not A Cat View Post
    Aren't a lot of big gaming companies suffering though? I kept reading nonstop last year that most of the revenue in the gaming industry comes from smartphone games. A lot of big gaming companies are hurting these days.
    This is true. ATVI stock took a 10% hit the other day just on revenue reporting from EA and Take-Two Interactive. 2019 looks to be a difficult year for gaming generally.

    Source for those who will demand one: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/repo...publisher.html

    Personally not expecting much of any news about WoW in the layoffs but anything can happen. I do expect that anyone associated with Destiny that is still employed by ATVI (marketing, support, social media) is going to be gone.
  1. eduwneso's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Zyky View Post
    I'm not going to explain this again, so I'll break it down in smaller words for you. When people are at the head of a department they are responsible for what does or doesn't happen.
    Firing Ion and Lore won't fix everything that is bad right now, and that you blame everything to them, as your hater ancestors with kaplan and ghost did, is wrong as hell. When blizzard fails at something at wow it fails as a team, blaming everything on Ion, and Lore (a community manager not even a developer like firing him would do something you are delusional) is stupid. Maybe if we fire Ion we could get someone who does better, but I won't risk it, not having this shitfest that it's happening with activision, I prefer having Ion that any other director that acti-bliz could put, the fact that all of you asking to fire him don't take that into account justifies the clames that you guys are on a hate train to shitshow island.


    Quote Originally Posted by Zyky View Post
    No you're wrong. Every token has to be purchased by a player first. This is common knowledge.
    Of course the token is purchased by a player first, then he sells it. Seems like you ignored, even if it had a lot of "if's" all of what I said about the margin profit from it from blizzard, and specially the part that they probably, if not 100% sure put tokens to fill what other players don't buy.
  1. Zyky's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by eduwneso View Post
    Firing Ion and Lore won't fix everything that is bad right now, and that you blame everything to them, as your hater ancestors with kaplan and ghost did, is wrong as hell. When blizzard fails at something at wow it fails as a team, blaming everything on Ion, and Lore (a community manager not even a developer like firing him would do something you are delusional) is stupid. Maybe if we fire Ion we could get someone who does better, but I won't risk it, not having this shitfest that it's happening with activision, I prefer having Ion that any other director that acti-bliz could put, the fact that all of you asking to fire him don't take that into account justifies the clames that you guys are on a hate train to shitshow island.
    The reality is, as I said, as heads of the department they are responsible. This is how it works in ANY company. Since Ion has taken over he has done nothing good for the game, he's made changes to the game that the players have hated and resisted, he's told people to "get over it", he's told people that he wants players to play a certain way, not the way they want to. I'm sorry, but this is an mmorpg, not a single player linear game. Ion and Josh are responsible for their departments failings, that's the bottom line.




    Quote Originally Posted by eduwneso View Post
    Of course the token is purchased by a player first, then he sells it. Seems like you ignored, even if it had a lot of "if's" all of what I said about the margin profit from it from blizzard, and specially the part that they probably, if not 100% sure put tokens to fill what other players don't buy.
    Why even open your mouth with "ifs", when it isn't how it works.
  1. eduwneso's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Zyky View Post
    The reality is, as I said, as heads of the department they are responsible. This is how it works in ANY company. Since Ion has taken over he has done nothing good for the game, he's made changes to the game that the players have hated and resisted, he's told people to "get over it", he's told people that he wants players to play a certain way, not the way they want to. I'm sorry, but this is an mmorpg, not a single player linear game. Ion and Josh are responsible for their departments failings, that's the bottom line.
    I agree with you, that at the bottom line, it's their fault, because they are the heads of their respective departments as you said, but the part about "he's told people that he wants players to play a certain way, not the way they want to" I can't see anything wrong with that, that ofc will make people flee, as has happened with BFA, but at the same time is not wrong if they want you to play the game how they designed it, if they change that or not is their problem, I'll stop playing as soon as I don't have fun anymore, as I have done with every other expansion.

    Quote Originally Posted by Zyky View Post
    Why even open your mouth with "ifs", when it isn't how it works.
    "If's" in examples such as every player pays the subscription with a token from in-game gold. Please tell me how it works so we can have a middle ground to discuss, you are just saying "this is not how it works" and nothing more, as far as I know 1 person buys a token with real life money and another buys it with in-game gold.
  1. Zyky's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by eduwneso View Post
    I agree with you, that at the bottom line, it's their fault, because they are the heads of their respective departments as you said, but the part about "he's told people that he wants players to play a certain way, not the way they want to" I can't see anything wrong with that, that ofc will make people flee, as has happened with BFA, but at the same time is not wrong if they want you to play the game how they designed it, if they change that or not is their problem, I'll stop playing as soon as I don't have fun anymore, as I have done with every other expansion.
    WoW didn't become successful because the developers pushed you into playing the game a certain way. WoW is failing because the developers are forcing you to play a certain way.



    Quote Originally Posted by eduwneso View Post
    "If's" in examples such as every player pays the subscription with a token from in-game gold. Please tell me how it works so we can have a middle ground to discuss, you are just saying "this is not how it works" and nothing more, as far as I know 1 person buys a token with real life money and another buys it with in-game gold.
    Your exact words were:

    Quote Originally Posted by eduwneso View Post
    Also, I'm pretty sure that blizzard put tokens in the store and not all of them are from players who sold them, and if they do, they are certainly giving us "money" for "free".
    You're "pretty sure" Blizzard puts tokens in the AH, they do not. Players have to buy the tokens, post them, then other players have to buy them. This is exactly how the system works, and we know this because there have been several times where there are zero tokens available for purchase with gold. So no, you're attempting to go back on what you claimed you were "sure of" by saying "if if if"

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