Ion on Raid Release Timing, Activision Blizzard Q3 2020 Investor Call

Shadowlands Arrives November 23

Castle Nathria and Shadowlands Season 1 Go Live December 8

Ion on Raid Release Timing
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
I think delaying raids til jan would be just as bad. would get even more hate “OMG, we hit 60 then have to wait 2 months to do content wtf blizzard”. It’s a no win situation. If they delayed ONLY mythic, then farming heroic for several weeks before mythic, will ruin mythic
Honestly, this pretty much nails it. We do "try to" avoid these conflicts whenever possible, and the ideal answer would have been to release the game, well... right about now, but it just wasn't ready.

Launching but delaying the raid further would ruin overall pacing; delaying the whole game to avoid the Mythic conflict wouldn't be right for everyone who's been patiently waiting. (Source)

Activision Blizzard Q3 2020 Investor Call
The Activision Blizzard earnings call is this afternoon. We've highlighted some of the written results below.

  • Activision had 111 million MAUs in the third quarter, down from 125 million in Q2 and up from 102 million in Q1 2020.
  • Blizzard had 30 million MAUs in the third quarter. This is down from 32 million Q1 2020 and Q4 2019.
  • World of Warcraft MAUs were stable year-over-year.
  • World of Warcraft franchise engagement is at its highest level for this stage ahead of an expansion in a decade, with Shadowlands presales well ahead of any prior expansion.
  • Hours played in Hearthstone grew year-over-year in the third quarter, with the Battlegrounds mode seeing sustained strong engagement since its release last November.
  • Overwatch continues to have a large and dedicated community, with 10 million MAUsD in the quarter, over four years since launch
  • Diablo Immortal will soon enter external regional testing.
  • The Shadowlands release date is the 16 year anniversary of the original World of Warcraft release!


This article was originally published in forum thread: Ion on Raid Release Timing, Activision Blizzard Q3 2020 Investor Call started by chaud View original post
Published on 2020-10-29 08:52 PM
104 Comments
Comments 103 Comments
  1. Sentynel's Avatar
    Diablo Immortal lol.
  1. McNeil's Avatar
    I wonder where this drop for Blizzard in MAU came from
  1. Jonsse's Avatar
    Still not ready, but here we go..
  1. Valcrist09's Avatar
    lol still just riding stupid HS and OW...
  1. apustus's Avatar
    Unironically one of the worst release dates. Probably not enough delay to fix whatever was so damn broken and makes the raid a nightmare. 1 more week of delay for release and going back to 3 weeks before raid opens instead of 2 would have been fine if they really are so afraid of the angry patient waiters; but 3 more weeks of release delay and raid in January would have been even better.
  1. smityx's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sentynel View Post
    Diablo Immortal lol.
    You do have a phone right?
  1. Kathranis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sentynel View Post
    Diablo Immortal lol.
    You can laugh but that game is probably going to be incredibly profitable in Asia.
  1. Sentynel's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kathranis View Post
    You can laugh but that game is probably going to be incredibly profitable in Asia.
    Indeed that is true.
  1. Nize's Avatar
    I mentioned this weeks ago as a retort towards people saying early December with January raid release. It would be the worst case scenario to deliver the xpac then put a stopping point when Blizz is banking on hype and momentum to keep it going forward. Both raid AND xpac needed to release by the end of the year.
  1. Siraeyou's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by McNeil View Post
    I wonder where this drop for Blizzard in MAU came from
    My guess is Starcraft 2/HotS
  1. Toybox's Avatar
    He's not wrong at all regarding raid release. I'm sure we'll lose the odd day or two over that period due to family stuff, but hey, at least we can jump in heroic & still have a laugh Rather that than be bored waiting for stuff to do in Shadowlands.
  1. Kathranis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by McNeil View Post
    I wonder where this drop for Blizzard in MAU came from
    No significant content releases this year. WoW has been on 8.3 since January. D3, SC2, and HotS are all minimally supported. WC3R was a wet fart. OW is in a lull while they work on OW2 (likely announcing the release date during Blizzconline). HS is getting its regular content drops but anecdotally it feels like players are less interested and there's more competition from MTGA and LoR for their time.
  1. Demeia's Avatar
    It could honestly be argued that avoiding family this time of the year is best for everyone. I'm seriously considering skipping X-mas dinner with my sister's family which I have done for more than twenty years.

    Er, but, yes, bad timing indeed.
  1. Eosia's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by McNeil View Post
    I wonder where this drop for Blizzard in MAU came from
    Easy. The typical end of the expansion dip we've seen for at least 5 expansions now.
  1. kranur's Avatar
    Lol Diablo Immortal
  1. Cosmic Janitor's Avatar
    I don't know, they could have just released it 2-3 weeks later in december, that would have ment people get to play around with the normal stuff for 3 weeks in a manner that does not require a schedule and raiding starts early january. The comment about the patiently waiting people is a rather transparent move to rile up the single crowd that doesn't care about family, most of them could have leveled more relaxed during the holidays, especially after they blew up many people's vacation schedule already.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by apustus View Post
    Unironically one of the worst release dates. Probably not enough delay to fix whatever was so damn broken and makes the raid a nightmare. 1 more week of delay for release and going back to 3 weeks before raid opens instead of 2 would have been fine if they really are so afraid of the angry patient waiters; but 3 more weeks of release delay and raid in January would have been even better.
    Nah, they fixed (mostly finished) the stuff that was needed to meet a bare minimum viable product state. So the delay definitely helped them alot. I'm not even sure if this was really about the raid at all. It might have been a part of it, but there were countless problems with stuff like leveling and general questing which were even more urgent. I mean they didn't even have Kyrian anima vendors 2 weeks ago when they wanted to launch, they just added those last week.
  1. Firebert's Avatar
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Launching but delaying the raid further would ruin overall pacing
    Then why do LFR players not get the entire raid until February?
  1. Nite92's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sentynel View Post
    Diablo Immortal lol.
    I don't get the hate. Yes they fucked up with how they hyped up the announcement. But I am quite sure that the D4 announcement got postponed and they were left with only that. Since we are getting D4, what is the issue with a diablo mobile game?

    Every larger gaming company needs to do that. Little team, huge profits.

    Edit: And if it doesn't suck we can play diablo on a phone. I will not play it instead of the PC version, but being able to play it on a bus? That sounds nice to me.
  1. apelsinjuice's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Firebert View Post
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Launching but delaying the raid further would ruin overall pacing
    Then why do LFR players not get the entire raid until February?
    so they dont unsub after 1 month when "beating" the content
  1. Firebert's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by apelsinjuice View Post
    so they dont unsub after 1 month when "beating" the content
    Easy solution; add Normal raids to LFD
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