Cutting through the crap of Blizzards circle jerk announcement.

[Checkt]

Phew — I was worried we were going to get through this call without an internet expert to tell us what's what.

Exactly. Why people are so fucking pyscho-obsessed with WoW's sub numbers, I'll never know.

That one is easy — How else are they going to prove they are totally the smartest most informed of what WoW is doing\needs. The fact that it's approaching 20 years as the largest MMO and still hasn't been toppled means NOTHING.

Blizzard is dumb. My sub is still active. I complain on a forum with a minority of the player base. This is not ironic.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating, it would be awesome if, even temporarily, every WoW player posted on forums so that people like this could see how out of touch they actually are....

[Hellrime]

Activision Blizzard Earnings Call
Today was the Activision Blizzard quarterly earnings call.


Activision Blizzard had 385 million Monthly Active Users in the quarter, up from 384 million last quarter.
-Notice they will not break it down into game segments? And the inclusion of "Activision Blizzard" instead of just "Blizzard" Guessing CoD carried this quarter....



Thoughts?

Seriously if an earnings call affects how much you or anyone enjoys a game then MMORPGs may be the wrong genre for you. I still play and see lots of players and even am in a full guild raid team, so I don't really give a shit how much they made.

[Eleccybubb]

Dunno why this is any concern to you. Are you a shareholder?

Nothing "circle jerk" about it. Its their official financial call. They are doing it for people who have millions of dollars invested in the company, not 17 year old eastern europeans who think they want Classic.

Simple. Any excuse to attack the company these days people will go for it.

Company is up? Must be some nefarious reason behind it right?

[sam86]

Don't really agree with u, but I do agree - a lot - on expand on expense of other franchise, namely Diablo
I think Diablo already hanged itself, and they have plans to do that to wow soon after they milk the last penny possible out of it
And 50 min a day while including an addiction like Candy Crush makes me question the future of blizzard games, because - like it or not - mobile games tend to have the biggest crowd, so those 50 min may end up with 1 min to wow, 5 min to overwatch, zero to diablo, 20 to hearthstone (it IS a mobile game mainly, ppl forget that sometimes), and rest to Candy

[Eleccybubb]

Don't really agree with u, but I do agree - a lot - on expand on expense of other franchise, namely Diablo
I think Diablo already hanged itself, and they have plans to do that to wow soon after they milk the last penny possible out of it

You realize there are games still using the sub model with less players than WoW and survive just fine yes?

Until this game is literally dead in the water it's not going anywhere.

[Orby]

My thoughts are that people give too much of a shit about this type of stuff.

Indeed I just play their games and have fun.... Obviously I'm doing it wrong

[Eleccybubb]

Indeed I just play their games and have fun.... Obviously I'm doing it wrong

I must be as well. I just log into Hearthstone have a few fun games and then maybe some Overwatch.

I must be doing something wrong right?

[Rogalicus]

Dalaran and Stormwind are both full on my server, I see dozens of people around the BI and Argus.

There isn't a single server-based zone in the game since Legion release, so what you actually see is the shard with people across all servers. I'd imagine that across 3 million subcribers (generous approximation) there would be several dozen in a current expansion zone or dedicated AH capital.

[ro9ue]

Are the WoW servers still live? Great.

That's all I needed to know.

[thunterman]

For the second quarter in a row, players spent over 50 minutes per day in Activision, Blizzard, and King games, in line with some of the most engaging online connected platforms in the world.
-Remove King Games (read: Candy Crush) and CoD and release those numbers......

To be fair, I'd imagine WoW and Overwatch both manage that for the majority of it's playerbase. I spend 1 hour minimum on wow per day. I don't play Overwatch everyday, but when I do play it, I always spend a couple of hours on it.

Blizzard delivered record segment revenues and operating income for a year with no major game release, as they continued to deliver continuous content across franchises including Overwatch, Hearthstone, and World of Warcraft
-I'd like to see the numbers on this. Especially since its likely Overwatch carrying the workload on revenues....

You underestimate the subscription revenues. Massively. Assuming 1M subs (safe to assume It's WAY more than that - even now) that's £9,990,000 per month. Don't forget that everyone playing for free using tokens is actually almost 3 subscription payments between 2 people. Every sub payment lost to a token is a extra £5 for Blizzard. Overwatch would definitely be the highest income for mictrotransactions, not even a competition there. But I doubt it is pulling in more cash than WoW overall. The quarter of it's release - sure, probably, but definitely not now.

I think Diablo already hanged itself, and they have plans to do that to wow soon after they milk the last penny possible out of it

erm... wut? I know people love to go around claiming wow is 'dying' but hell, MMO's survive on a subscription model between 100-200k users. It would take a catastrophic fuck up to make wow dip that low. They would have to just stop developing altogether to harm subs enough to warrant a shutdown, that would probably take a couple years too. In the past we have had 1 year long content droughts, and the game didn't even loose 50% of players. Most of those whom left came back as well lol.

As long as patches and expansions keep coming, I don't think WoW will ever "die" too many people are addicted to it, myself included. They aren't milking it until it dies, they are throwing out content faster than ever, the dev team is the biggest it has ever been. They are pushing it into overdrive to make the game more active than ever IMO. Just because they don't release numbers doesn't mean they are bad. We know that Legion sold 3.9 million copies day 1, more than ANY other expansion, obviously sales grew after day 1, but we don't know the figures for that. Lets assume the total after the first week or two was 5-6 million - Legion is factually the most actively developed expansion yet, with more content coming at a faster pace than ever, I would argue that player retention from start to finish is higher than ever. I doubt the numbers have dropped much at all personally. I really wouldn't be surprised if WoW's subs right now are above it's lowest published count of 5M. Infact, I'd put money that there are far more than 5M.

[ryanmahaffe]

There isn't a single server-based zone in the game since Legion release, so what you actually see is the shard with people across all servers. I'd imagine that across 3 million subcribers (generous approximation) there would be several dozen in a current expansion zone or dedicated AH capital.

Right right I forgot that cross realm can applies to cities.

But "generous" I am sorry but if you think WoW only has 3 million subs right now you are just making idiotic assumptions.

[Mister Cheese]

A lie by omission is still a lie. You guys need to remember if WoW goes down enough they will stop focusing on it. And they have stopped including it in their quarterly reports entirely.

[Rekz]

I think Wow is on its last leg and numbers have declined drastically. They are managing the decline by crystallizing their player base.

All good things must come to an end I suppose.

[Trend]

Because Activision Blizzard prefer to avoid telling the truth. That doesn't make them lying fucks, but it's close.
And most of the people in this thread is the cause of why WoW went downhill.

This is the kind of echo chamber stupidity I was referring to before. This kid has no idea what makes a quarterly earnings statement but he thinks he is smart because he has a contrarian position.

In the U.S., truth in earnings statements is required because it's the cornerstone of our most successful in the world capitalist system. This is why executives at publicly traded companies are held personally responsible for the reflection of truth in the official quarterly statements. They are fined massively and/or criminally prosecuted for intentionally misleading statements. What you are suggesting is frankly stupid. This isn't Enron. There is no reason for these guys to risk going to jail, getting fined and face shareholder lawsuits. So stupid.

And yeah, WoW is so downhill, it's basically done. Pretty much nobody plays anymore. LOL so stupid.

[Mosotti]

The only retards are those that believe Blizzard would lie to the investors

I think Wow is on its last leg and numbers have declined drastically.

There are people that think Earth is a disc. That means shit.

[brbshower]

So basically "I'm angry because blizzard posted their call, but I want WoW information, not Blizzard information, and Blizzard is bad for not focusing on one of their smaller segments"

This, OP is just looking for something to QQ about. Nothing to see here folks

- - - Updated - - -

A lie by omission is still a lie. You guys need to remember if WoW goes down enough they will stop focusing on it. And they have stopped including it in their quarterly reports entirely.

Actually that last part is completely untrue. Blizzard stopped reporting on ALL of their franchises individually years ago. You'll never get specifics on WoW, HS, HoTS, or Overwatch.

[Akka]

By the way, in terms of isolating Blizzard from Blizzard-Activision / Blizzard-Activision-King which they constantly want to be hiding in (I imagine it's a perennial battle where every quarter the underperforming folks want to hide in the common figures and their relatively better doing fellows want the figures to be separate):

"... while Activision and King both saw revenues and profits rise year-over-year, Blizzard saw a decrease, reporting about $105 million less in profits than it did during the same quarter a year prior."

Their beloved "year-over-year" which they are happy to report on when there is an increase. This time it's a decrease (a very big one).

- - - Updated - - -

And the kicker:

"Activision Blizzard reported a net income loss of $584 million dollars for this quarter, compared to a profit of $254 million dollars during the same period in 2016."

I'd have to re-check that last thing.

Ouch. That has to hurt.
I guess we now know why they suddenly found the technological breakthrough allowing WoW Classic

[Rekz]

The only retards are those that believe Blizzard would lie to the investors


There are people that think Earth is a disc. That means shit.

Blizzard has lied to us time and time again and if their willing to lie to their customers then I wouldn’t
be the least bit surprised if they lied to their investors.

You white knights are so gullible it’s amazing.

[Restors]

tf is with your icon.

u seem weird

oi! no trash talking the Holy organization of No Ma'am , created by our holy father Al Bundy! (God i love Ed O'Neils character there).

[Akka]

It seems that Legion performed somewhat better than WoD, but nowhere nearly enough better to stop the decline and so WoW continued to lose people and we have less people that we had at the beginning of Legion. Like 4 million. Which is not much more than 1 million per region.

Actually, from the player activity, it seems it could be as low as 2 or 2,5 millions (Legion seems to have reached 10 millions at release, which was about 90-100 activity, and now is down to 20, so about one fifth to one fourth). I've the distinct feeling that Legion crashed harder than WoD (not that it's strictly speaking worse, but player's patience or hope might be wearing thin after WoD, so they might burn out more easily).