Activision Blizzard Q2 2020 Earnings Call

Originally Posted by Azerate

None of this suprises me at all.

I'm actually playing the game, unlike many forum whiners here. It's incredibly active, more so than potentially ever. Even legacy farming spots for obscure achievements and reps have been crowded throughout the last months. Game is more alive than it has been for years. Shadowlands hype is real too, and it's bringing many old players back / attracting many new players.

Despite all the toxic bullshit the usual bad actors are spewing on youtube and twitch, the game is doing great, and I love it!

Same, and that's why the haters hate us! ^_^

Also, for the haters: EU count (not counting Russia) for High/Full pop servers: 79.
That's up by 13 since 8.2, and more than Classic has servers IN TOTAL ACROSS THE WORLD. Remember, Retail servers have higher pop capacity.

But please, do continue pretending that Blizzard's lying on quarterly reports (illegal) meant to keep their investors in the loop because the figures hurt your feels.

Blizz can go stuff those stupid Chinese sellout phone games up Bobby's ass.

Originally Posted by Heartbreaker23

Why would it increase because of players being banned?

I wasn't talking about the short spike that was bound to drop again, I'm talking about the decline at the end of the expansion that always happens because people stop playing.

Quite simple if you know what Gallywix is. If you are interested you can look it up

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Originally Posted by Dracullus

It's not increasing, it turned into rollercoaster. Instead of 165-175k (all EU prices), it's like 140-200k right now. I think we need few days for new price to settle in.

If it hasnt yet, it will. Its not a question of if or perhaps. Its going to happen. Supply and demand

Originally Posted by Azerate

None of this suprises me at all.

I'm actually playing the game, unlike many forum whiners here. It's incredibly active, more so than potentially ever. Even legacy farming spots for obscure achievements and reps have been crowded throughout the last months. Game is more alive than it has been for years. Shadowlands hype is real too, and it's bringing many old players back / attracting many new players.

Despite all the toxic bullshit the usual bad actors are spewing on youtube and twitch, the game is doing great, and I love it!

It's totally opposite on my server when it comes to guilds active and their players, my own guild have maybe 6-7 people active once a week, on sundays for m+ or potential raiding, but the latter falls short every time for a couple of months now. But anecdotal evidence is just that so it's hard to point out how alive it really is. According to raider.io there is a record in how many mythic+ that have been done in a patch, 8.3, 4.3 million characters I believe that has done at least a +2. But guilds raiding in 8.3 is at it's lowest for at least 4 years. Interestingly enough, more guilds have done at least Wrathion Mythic in Ny'alotha, which is more than Worldbreaker Mythic in Antorus. So there are a good amount of players active, that's for sure.

But since we got sharding, it will always feel somewhat alive. Which is cool and shows that sharding can indeed be useful for different kind of things. I am pretty sure WoW is in a good spot and can't wait for Shadowlands, or at least pre patch to arrive myself.

Originally Posted by Doffen

But since we got sharding, it will always feel somewhat alive. Which is cool and shows that sharding can indeed be useful for different kind of things. I am pretty sure WoW is in a good spot and can't wait for Shadowlands, or at least pre patch to arrive myself.

Pretty much this. I enjoyed 8.3 for a solid 6 months, but i did everything i wanted to do, so i've just unsubbed to play other games till SL hits.

Originally Posted by BALLS BALLS BALLS BALLS

Wow look at all these defensive replies.

You can only blindly repeat whatever Blizzard decides to squeeze out of their sphincter.

I'm pretty sure it is illegal to lie during an earnings call.

Normal people: "Man, WoW sure sucks since Activision merged with Blizzard".

Blizzard fanboys: "They're still different companies, get your facts straight, and stop criticizing our Lord and Savior Blizzard!!!"

Normal people looking at the earnings call: "Well the Activision part is doing well, but Blizzard games are kind of stagnating".

Blizzard fanboys: "They're the same company you dumbass, so it doesn't matter what you say, Blizzard is doing great, now fuck off".


Me: *inserts Wat meme here*...

Originally Posted by Azerate

Even legacy farming spots for obscure achievements and reps have been crowded throughout the last months.

You can't really base yourself on that information. Sharding was literally made to balance populations within zones. There's no way for you to tell if a zone is popular (1000 players split into 100 shards of 10 players) or barren (10 players combined into a single shard).

Originally Posted by Raamul

Just curiosity, I think I am curious to know. are you not ?

Considering the only fucking thing players would ever do with subscriber numbers is incorrectly correlate subscriber losses or gains with features they like or dislike, no. I have absolutely zero desire to know that information, even out of curiosity. Now, if Blizzard released subscriber levels along with all of their internal retention data including, you know, the actual reasons people quit WoW, instead of, you know, the imaginary reasons people on forums like to pretend they quit over, then sure. I'd support it. But given that Blizzard doesn't release that data for the very specific reason that it would directly benefit their competitors, I can't see a world where knowing subscriber levels does more than provide baseless talking points for shitty internet arguments.

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Originally Posted by Raamul

think the concern was about blizzard's claim on "engagement" and other subjective things. there is no way to tell how correct/incorrect blizzard's estimates/projection are.

LOL dude. Yep, you figured it out. Just another case of mean 'ol Blizzard lying in their Quarterly Reports while the enlightened forum posters own the devs with facts and logic. Nevermind the fact that Blizzard stands to lose their entire fucking reputation in the games industry by falsely reporting metrics... nah. Internet sleuths like you are thankfully here to question the very foundation of the billion dollar establishment with your pointed supposition... "what if they're not telling the truth, huh? WHAT THEN, SMARTY PANTS??"

As a person who got out from the meaningless drivel that is the forum community of World of Warcraft..i must tell you this much.
Is quite a view to constantly watch you guys saying the exact same things everyday for years.

Changes
WoW dead
WoW bad
WoW good

Youtube: Changes, please change this, please change that, changes changes changes

What a weird thing...

Originally Posted by Shadoowpunk

As a person who got out from the meaningless drivel that is the forum community of World of Warcraft..i must tell you this much.
Is quite a view to constantly watch you guys saying the exact same things everyday for years.

Changes
WoW dead
WoW bad
WoW good

Youtube: Changes, please change this, please change that, changes changes changes

What a weird thing...

Its not a weird thing being passionate about something you care about though, is it?

Originally Posted by Melliodas

Its not a weird thing being passionate about something you care about though, is it?

But the "changes" thing is completely insane.
Every youtube video content creator...is a "changes guy"
They even say the word multiple times..

Originally Posted by otaXephon

Can you please, in your infinite wisdom, explain what relevance subscriber numbers have for us as players? They barely meant anything to us when we did get them, why would they matter any more now?

Oh right. I forgot. You need them to construct your carefully worded thesis about how modern WoW sucks and the number of people playing it is directly proportional to the quality of the game. Keep up the big brain plays my dude.

the subscriber count was entirely relevant to the state of the game and could be used as both a positive metric for showing growth in the game and showing that it was expanding to new audiences, but also negatively when talking about the utter decimation of the playerbase, it became especially important when the game was no longer bound by the monetisation model it had, had for years leading up to the point when they added the store mounts to the game adding a supplementary income stream for the game that wasn't purely just subscription prices.

To expand on that, showing the subscriber numbers was also a way for the general playerbase to see what content was available and if it was worth coming back to the game based on player numbers at a given point in time, even though subscriber numbers kept falling post cataclysm release there were periods where the drop wasn't as pronounced because of a new content patch seeing players who had quit return, or new players start playing, furthermore, because of how at the time certain language was perceived in business even after the catastrophic drop in player numbers blizzard never once said anything about 'server mergers' or similar because of the negative connotations the term and other similar language would bring for investors causing them to back out or not invest to begin with, which is why they invested time/resources in making cross realm tech work, because over time if they could convince people that servers didn't matter anymore then they could do with them what they wanted behind the scenes (server connections as they became known) and not have any issues with the business side of things.

At last estimate there's less than 2 million total active players worldwide (not counting china), when blizz stopped reporting player numbers that count was well above 4-5 million, and over the last few years especially we have seen them switch from subscription based income to more microtransaction based income to squeeze the whales out there to prop up their earning figures, it had been an unspoken/unwritten fact when they first added the in game store that this transition was happening but now it's out in the open.

i hope this helps answer your question somewhat because it was actually very important for them to reveal their player numbers, not doing so gave them the freedom to do things that would have otherwise been impossible and not seen favourably by the community.

Originally Posted by Shadoowpunk

But the "changes" thing is completely insane.
Every youtube video content creator...is a "changes guy"
They even say the word multiple times..

They are broadcasting content from the beta where a lot of things change daily, its only normal for them to talk about them.

Maybe they could use different wording, perhaps say "developments" instead?

Originally Posted by Raamul

First of all its up to people how to look at it and these numbers are not just for the players, they are primarily for shareholders/investors.

Oh. Is that so? The malevolent, completely unbiased and totally undefined "people" should determine how to interpret data for which they absolutely zero context to properly understand? That's cute. I'll give you bonus points for at least realizing the intended audience of the QRs. Now go ahead and put on your thinking cap and realize that the QRs have always only ever been for the investors/shareholders and you might figure out why these numbers have always been pointless ammunition for terrible internet arguments by players way too obsessed with whether or not their beloved game is succeeding or failing. (I'll give you a hint: Re-read my post for the answer!)

Originally Posted by Raamul

I don't know why you are upset with me. Perhaps you are pissed in your life and just putting words in my mouth. I didn't say anything. Also perhaps you didn't know companies much bigger than Blizzard/Acti lied in reports and scammed shareholders and investors. Grow up.

Really? So your defense of the incredibly shitty argument "maybe their info isn't accurate" (you know, a phrase eerily synonymous with the concept of 'lying') is "well, other companies have lied in the past....HMMMMMMM"? Your argument sucks, sorry you don't like that I called you out for it.

When should we be expecting the Q3 call?

Originally Posted by rogoth

the subscriber count was entirely relevant to the state of the game and could be used as both a positive metric for showing growth in the game and showing that it was expanding to new audiences, but also negatively when talking about the utter decimation of the playerbase, it became especially important when the game was no longer bound by the monetisation model it had, had for years leading up to the point when they added the store mounts to the game adding a supplementary income stream for the game that wasn't purely just subscription prices.

To expand on that, showing the subscriber numbers was also a way for the general playerbase to see what content was available and if it was worth coming back to the game based on player numbers at a given point in time, even though subscriber numbers kept falling post cataclysm release there were periods where the drop wasn't as pronounced because of a new content patch seeing players who had quit return, or new players start playing, furthermore, because of how at the time certain language was perceived in business even after the catastrophic drop in player numbers blizzard never once said anything about 'server mergers' or similar because of the negative connotations the term and other similar language would bring for investors causing them to back out or not invest to begin with, which is why they invested time/resources in making cross realm tech work, because over time if they could convince people that servers didn't matter anymore then they could do with them what they wanted behind the scenes (server connections as they became known) and not have any issues with the business side of things.

At last estimate there's less than 2 million total active players worldwide (not counting china), when blizz stopped reporting player numbers that count was well above 4-5 million, and over the last few years especially we have seen them switch from subscription based income to more microtransaction based income to squeeze the whales out there to prop up their earning figures, it had been an unspoken/unwritten fact when they first added the in game store that this transition was happening but now it's out in the open.

i hope this helps answer your question somewhat because it was actually very important for them to reveal their player numbers, not doing so gave them the freedom to do things that would have otherwise been impossible and not seen favourably by the community.

Citation needed? To begin with, you're misrepresenting my argument. My argument isn't simply that subscriber numbers are a bad metric to determine whether the game is doing well. It's that without unknowable information the metric itself is entirely meaningless to players. The arguments players like to make about subscriber levels often exist in a vacuum where the periods of growth for WoW consisted only of people beginning to play WoW and never quitting -- ie, the game is "good" -- and periods of contrition where no new players are generated and the game only loses subscribers -- ie, the game is "less good". The inherent problem with this view point is that a.) people have been quitting WoW since the day it was released, even during its periods of extreme subscriber growth and b.) WoW's existing subscriber base consists of two entirely undefinable groups of people: new players and returning players. When you factor in that Blizzard has never released either their attrition data or their new player generation data, the entire concept of subscriber levels becomes a massively complex equation that has far more moving parts than any baseless internet argument could ever hope to encapsulate.

"But if the metric is 'meaningless' why did Blizzard release that information in the first place?" you ask. This is an easy one. It was released because it was in a Quarterly Report. You know, the thing that companies release to let investors and shareholders know your company is doing well. And for a long time, Blizzard Entertainment was... well, just WoW. They had other properties but WoW was the only title that was consistently filling their coffers so the best way for investors to properly correlate whether Blizzard Entertainment -- the company that makes WoW and only WoW -- with its industry performance. Turns out, around mid-2015 Blizzard had successfully begun to shift their business model away from "just WoW" to "WoW and OverWatch and Diablo and HearthStone and Heroes of the Storm," thereby greatly lessening the need for investors to know how well Blizzard Entertainment -- the company that up until this point time had made WoW and only WoW -- is doing by sole virtue of WoW's subscriber count. The oft-cited conspiracy is that they stopped releasing it because of the sharp decline in subscriber levels post-WoD is what most players seem to associate with Blizzard deciding not to release subscriber levels anymore but I think this is a pretty surface level take-away and doesn't really account for the fact that if Blizzard was really actually embarrassed by the performance of WoW post-WoD launch then they would have never released that data in the first place. Could it have informed the decision? Definitely. But there's a lot of shit going on here that is far, far more complicated than bad arguments that associate the introduction of the LFR with the "downfall of WoW."

Originally Posted by otaXephon

Citation needed? To begin with, you're misrepresenting my argument. My argument isn't simply that subscriber numbers are a bad metric to determine whether the game is doing well. It's that without unknowable information the metric itself is entirely meaningless to players. The arguments players like to make about subscriber levels often exist in a vacuum where the periods of growth for WoW consisted only of people beginning to play WoW and never quitting -- ie, the game is "good" -- and periods of contrition where no new players are generated and the game only loses subscribers -- ie, the game is "less good". The inherent problem with this view point is that a.) people have been quitting WoW since the day it was released, even during its periods of extreme subscriber growth and b.) WoW's existing subscriber base consists of two entirely undefinable groups of people: new players and returning players. When you factor in that Blizzard has never released either their attrition data or their new player generation data, the entire concept of subscriber levels becomes a massively complex equation that has far more moving parts than any baseless internet argument could ever hope to encapsulate.

"But if the metric is 'meaningless' why did Blizzard release that information in the first place?" you ask. This is an easy one. It was released because it was in a Quarterly Report. You know, the thing that companies release to let investors and shareholders know your company is doing well. And for a long time, Blizzard Entertainment was... well, just WoW. They had other properties but WoW was the only title that was consistently filling their coffers so the best way for investors to properly correlate whether Blizzard Entertainment -- the company that makes WoW and only WoW -- with its industry performance. Turns out, around mid-2015 Blizzard had successfully begun to shift their business model away from "just WoW" to "WoW and OverWatch and Diablo and HearthStone and Heroes of the Storm," thereby greatly lessening the need for investors to know how well Blizzard Entertainment -- the company that up until this point time had made WoW and only WoW -- is doing by sole virtue of WoW's subscriber count. The oft-cited conspiracy is that they stopped releasing it because of the sharp decline in subscriber levels post-WoD is what most players seem to associate with Blizzard deciding not to release subscriber levels anymore but I think this is a pretty surface level take-away and doesn't really account for the fact that if Blizzard was really actually embarrassed by the performance of WoW post-WoD launch then they would have never released that data in the first place. Could it have informed the decision? Definitely. But there's a lot of shit going on here that is far, far more complicated than bad arguments that associate the introduction of the LFR with the "downfall of WoW."

I would like to correct a few wrong assumptions you made, first off within in the subscriber count (before it was augmented) blizzard used to provide both active/inactive/new/returning player values as part of the whole report, many people at the time did not bother to look further than the surface level of 'omg look at that subscriber loss number!!11!!11' etc, and while it could be argued that you didn't need to that data was always there so there was no 'unknowable information' as you put it in that regard.

Furthermore when looking at total active players the game from release until ICC release had done nothing but grow (especially during TBC era which saw the most explosive and prolonged periods of growth in player numbers), due to the lull in content at the end of wrath player numbers dropped to around the same level they were at the start of the expansion after seeing the record setting 12 million active players milestone not long beforehand, the cataclysm release saw player numbers surge back to that number but when people realised what was on offer as a result of the entire world change as well as the +5 max level cap instead of the (up to now) standard +10 cap it put people off right away, add to the fact that many of the in game systems were overhauled and changed to be unrecognisable to returning players which compounded the fall off of player numbers.

In regards to your statement regarding blizzard only being known for WoW, that's a pretty disingenuous statement, sure it was their biggest IP at the time, but they were more known for their RTS games and the Diablo franchise more so than WoW and it was the success of these previous franchises that gave them the funds to actually make WoW to begin with so no, i very much disagree with that statement.

Lastly, the management were extremely unhappy with how WoW had gone in terms of WoD and such, embarrassed by the sheer lack in quality that they had been known for but that wasn't the deciding factor behind the change in policy, as you say yes it likely had an impact on the decision but was the defining reason, it was thanks to the former 'project titan', to this day they still haven't said what 'failed' and what lead to that 'failure' it's all been very vague and left to conjecture but ultimately this severe setback for the company that was riding a wave of positivity and financial growth unprecedented it's likely this that caused the shift from being an open and transparent company to the jaded and secretive company it became and is today.

Originally Posted by rogoth

I would like to correct a few wrong assumptions you made, first off within in the subscriber count (before it was augmented) blizzard used to provide both active/inactive/new/returning player values as part of the whole report, many people at the time did not bother to look further than the surface level of 'omg look at that subscriber loss number!!11!!11' etc, and while it could be argued that you didn't need to that data was always there so there was no 'unknowable information' as you put it in that regard.

Furthermore when looking at total active players the game from release until ICC release had done nothing but grow (especially during TBC era which saw the most explosive and prolonged periods of growth in player numbers), due to the lull in content at the end of wrath player numbers dropped to around the same level they were at the start of the expansion after seeing the record setting 12 million active players milestone not long beforehand, the cataclysm release saw player numbers surge back to that number but when people realised what was on offer as a result of the entire world change as well as the +5 max level cap instead of the (up to now) standard +10 cap it put people off right away, add to the fact that many of the in game systems were overhauled and changed to be unrecognisable to returning players which compounded the fall off of player numbers.

In regards to your statement regarding blizzard only being known for WoW, that's a pretty disingenuous statement, sure it was their biggest IP at the time, but they were more known for their RTS games and the Diablo franchise more so than WoW and it was the success of these previous franchises that gave them the funds to actually make WoW to begin with so no, i very much disagree with that statement.

Lastly, the management were extremely unhappy with how WoW had gone in terms of WoD and such, embarrassed by the sheer lack in quality that they had been known for but that wasn't the deciding factor behind the change in policy, as you say yes it likely had an impact on the decision but was the defining reason, it was thanks to the former 'project titan', to this day they still haven't said what 'failed' and what lead to that 'failure' it's all been very vague and left to conjecture but ultimately this severe setback for the company that was riding a wave of positivity and financial growth unprecedented it's likely this that caused the shift from being an open and transparent company to the jaded and secretive company it became and is today.

Blizzard has never released the number of people who quit WoW nor have they ever released how many players joined. The only number that was released is subscirber numbers because it's the only number that mattered to investors. If you have some kind of proof of these numbers existing, please enlighten me because the best I could do is find some boring QRs from 2009 which doesn't say any of the shit you're implying it did. (Admittedly I didn't look too hard because frankly scouring decades-old investor reports for a shitty internet argument is peak pedantry imo.)

Without knowing this information any argument made which relates subscriber levels with changes made to the game is just inserting an opinion onto numbers without context. It's fine to do this -- it happens with remarkable frequency in many debates about why WoW sucks today but didn't at whatever indeterninate point in time somebody's nostalgia goggles best preferred. But it's a bad argument for all the reasons I've explained in my last few posts and I won't be changing my mind on that position until I can see actual data correlating the reasons people quit with changes made to the game. Since that definitely won't be happening any time soon, I'd encourage you to read this fascinating blog post by Greg Street on why players actually quit games. (I use this example because he's seen WoW's attrition data and I have little reason to believe he'd lie about that.) I doubt this will change your mind because it seems pretty evident by your replies that you feel as if your opinion is infallible and the "numbers" support it. I still think it's a great read and a unique insider persepctive you rarely see from people in the games industry.

Finally, if you don't think WoW is what defined Blizzard from 2004 until approximately 2015 when they stopped releasing subscriber numbers, I don't quite know what to tell you. Yes, Blizzard's prior IPs certainly helped catapult the success of WoW (especially early on) but their business was absolutely dominated by the game during its periods of growth and for a very long time was the only thing which mattered to its investors.