New Activision/Blizzard's financial tactics?

[Daedius]

You think people are bored as hell, but keep playing so they don't have to betray Blizzard? I cannot say I agree with your conclusion.

Take a look at Legion. A lot of people aren't fond of the direction it's gone, myself included... and I have loved WoW since TBC. There are a lot of inexcusable methods used that I find it hard how anyone can still defend them... WoW is a P2P game, yet they are adopting F2P methods... and them basing the game's success on total logged in time of players proves this.

[Priestiality]

Let's list all the things that have killed WoW for the past 12 years, I'll start:
LFG/LFR
WildStar
Age of Conan
SW:TOR
Flying Mounts
Not Allowing Flying Mounts
Not Enough Raids
Too Many Raids
Dungeons Too Easy
Dungeons Too Hard

[tankbug]

Take a look at Legion. A lot of people aren't fond of the direction it's gone, myself included... and I have loved WoW since TBC. There are a lot of inexcusable methods used that I find it hard how anyone can still defend them... WoW is a P2P game, yet they are adopting F2P methods... and them basing the game's success on total logged in time of players proves this.

But if you don't enjoy the game, why play it? Does it have to be more complicated than that? I love Blizzard, but I don't feel I owe them anything more than the money I've paid for their games. Everyone has to provide me with a good product to keep me as a customer. Don't you think that's the attitude for most people?

[pateuvasiliu]

Sure they are. They are very popular too, and it's a huge industry.
At any rate, you can play really good, cheap games on a very moderate pc.

We have different definitions of what gaming is.

To me, playing Vanilla WoW in 720p in 2018 isn't gaming.

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ofc you ate right here, with first part. and you already show your own counter argument as false. as you say: if wow was crap (like its today) they never had reached the point, where they could start selling shit as gold. but the reason why this is so, is exactly the reason what kills them slowly over years. ppl are not to stupid to realize, that their money is more invested in good marketing than in quality and in a good game. and then they stop buying. simple as that. the only thing is, it takes some time. its the same, as not buying wow classic if marketing had been good but game had been shit. and thats what manabomb said.

or in short: the only thing blizz will be killed of, is their own greed. by driving the „invest lowest money/effort possible, while making most possible profit.“ route harder and harder.

People are stupid if it takes them time to realise that. They make games to sell them not they get awards. It's a business.

Minimum effort with maximum gains.

[DrStiglit]

Clearly this means WoW is dying.

[Daedius]

But if you don't enjoy the game, why play it? Does it have to be more complicated than that? I love Blizzard, but I don't feel I owe them anything more than the money I've paid for their games. Everyone has to provide me with a good product to keep me as a customer. Don't you think that's the attitude for most people?

There are aspects not everyone is going to like, and others they will... like how I play WoW for PvE and Raiding, Questing, etc. but absolute hate PvP...

One can criticise the game while not hating it... And right now, for example; for collectors, the game has been made a tedium when Blizzard made Reputation mounts an RNG fest off them Paragon caches, with the aforementioned earlier direction Blizzard has taken to artifically inflate logged in times of players to keep those players doing WQs.

Only a matter of time before Blizzard annoys another sect of players unnecessarily. Wouldn't put it past them now to say, for example, halving the total dropped loot in raids, gear cap on M+ per week, or reduce the honor earned in PvP, etc. ... they already annoyed transmog collectors with the forced Personal Loot.

Bottom line is, Blizzard is doing their hardest to artificially inflate the logged in time of players... using said times as the game's "success"; I don't like that direction it's taken. This is a P2P game, NOT a F2P game...

[tankbug]

We have different definitions of what gaming is.

To me, playing Vanilla WoW in 720p in 2018 isn't gaming.

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Ok, so you're talking about high-end gaming.
Well, even that is cheaper than it used to be. It's just that the cost has shifted from everything being expensive to basically the graphics card being expensive. Depending on how much you game, but if you sink 100+ hours into a game, the hourly cost is very low.

[Gorgodeus]

Ahh so you're one of those guys.

Friend, buddy, pal. Vanilla WoW was shit, it only ever got 3 million subs before TBC launch and even then WoW didn't pick up until WoW:China launched. That's where TBC got its 7 million sub rush if you actually pay attention to history.

Keep being delusional about the history of this game, though. I love being told something is great when it was objectively a steaming pile of horse dung a beetle wouldn't use to attract the same sex hardly worth the code it was written in.

Also the epic one liner not responding to any of my other points seemingly looking to bait me into a subjective battle over the quality of Vanilla:
NOICE B8 M8

Hint: Vanilla WoW had 8 million subs before BC was launched.

[Gimlix]

I'm quite the opposite. I find their games more fun than ever. HotS 2.0 brought in a needed freshness to it and the more recent changes were much needed IMO. WoW has never been better in terms of being fun and respecting my time. D3, while in a lull now while the next game is being developed, brought me more fun than the the first two entries ever did. HS is still fun, I love the dungeon run idea, hope the expand upon that big time. OW is pretty fun even if it takes forever to find matches for competitive.

But when you look at activity at most of these games. LIke diablo. U can see that you are mostly alone in this opinion though.

[Deleted]

But if you don't enjoy the game, why play it? Does it have to be more complicated than that?

That doesn't address the issue that they're going even further in messing around their customers.

As for value for money the lunar sales are on steam, gog.com and humble bundle regularly has them where you can get a handful of good games for the price of a months sub alone.

Arma 3 is the price of a sub so is new Doom. Portal 1&2 is around $2. Team Fortress 2 is free.

[Brubear]

Your analogy would make more sense if you picked a brand that only has 1 line of cars. WoW is PC only, so it is in that regard a weaker game. If you are considering the importance to a company between two lines of games, the one with more revenue, which is probably the one with more clients, which is probably the one spread over more plataforms, is more important. We aren't talking about which PC game is stronger. Do you prefer having Honda Civic profits or the entire lineup of Toyota?

But he compared a game that is PC only to a game that is on multiple platforms, which is a poor comparison. Then he used the combine sale of the one game on 3 different platforms to the sales of the other on its only platform as if that somehow showed one was performing better than the other. Of course CoD is going to have better numbers on Xbox and Playstation, it's not competing with WoW there because WoW was never meant to be a console game. I'm not going to look at a car like a Civic and say "it's doing terrible, look at its sales numbers compared to all Lexus sedans", because they're aimed at entirely different markets. How does its sales numbers compare to a non-luxury Toyota sedan?

Honda Civic profits aren't comparable to the profits of a car brands entire lineup because they're not comparable things. Just like the active-user count of a multi-platform game (which doesn't require a monthly subscription to that specific game and is an FPS) isn't comparable to the active-user count of a single-platform game (which does require a monthly subscription and is an RPG), especially when one of those games is more than a decade old and the other one is a brand new title. So to answer your final question, if 2002 Honda Civics were still selling well enough to be compared to the sales numbers of a 2018 car, then you bet your ass I'd take the Honda Civic sales.
You can't tell me that any gaming company right now wouldn't kill to have the same revenue and active-user count for a 14-year-old game as WoW has.

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What's your point? I was making a point that linking Activision-Blizzard's revenue isn't proof of WoW doing well because WoW isn't the only product they have.

And Blizzard not publishing sub numbers doesn't mean they're doing poorly. For example, here are their first-day sales for expansions.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...on-pack-sales/

Notice that Legion sold just as many as 2 of the last 3 expansions. Sub numbers are no longer as important as monthly active users and, now that Blizzard is a part of Activision, they're going to be reporting total active users to the shareholders because that's what shareholders care about. They don't care what games are doing what as long as the numbers look good. WoW is still a sizable portion of their revenue generation because of microtransactions, subs, and expansion sales. In fact I'd argue that it's still their greatest revenue generator because their other games don't have nearly the same means to generate as much revenue.

[pateuvasiliu]

And Blizzard not publishing sub numbers doesn't mean they're doing poorly. For example, here are their first-day sales for expansions.

@Brubear

First day selling means nothing. All Expansion launches were big, doesn't mean they have the players years after. Warlords of Draenor also had what, 10 mil people at launch and then went down.

If the game was doing good they'd make them public. You have nothing to hide unless it's bad.

Sub numbers are no longer as important as monthly active users

What's the difference?

[tankbug]

That doesn't address the issue that they're going even further in messing around their customers.

As for value for money the lunar sales are on steam, gog.com and humble bundle regularly has them where you can get a handful of good games for the price of a months sub alone.

Arma 3 is the price of a sub so is new Doom. Portal 1&2 is around $2. Team Fortress 2 is free.

Sure, you can buy a many fine games for the price of a mount in WoW. Really depends on what you're interested in. However....what's new here? Blizzard has never been generous, other than being good at keeping their games alive. But still, people who don't want to pay for sub anymore quit, right? My post was about someone saying that blind loyalty to the company kept revenue flowing for Blizzard, and not that their games could offer the customers a product they really enjoyed.

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@Brubear

First day selling means nothing. All Expansion launches were big, doesn't mean they have the players years after. Warlords of Draenor also had what, 10 mil people at launch and then went down.

If the game was doing good they'd make them public. You have nothing to hide unless it's bad.

WoD obviously had some great marketing and/or latent wow-gamers that weren't interested in playing in Panda-land sat that one out (even though it was a great xpac imo), and drew in a lot of players that quit after 6 months or so.

I disagree on the "sub count" thing. Yeah, sure, if they set a new record in subs, they might brag about it, but from a business view it's not as interesting if they get considerable income from micro-transactions. It's more about the whole thing, not just one of the factors that bring in the green.

[Gorgodeus]

There are aspects not everyone is going to like, and others they will... like how I play WoW for PvE and Raiding, Questing, etc. but absolute hate PvP...

One can criticise the game while not hating it... And right now, for example; for collectors, the game has been made a tedium when Blizzard made Reputation mounts an RNG fest off them Paragon caches, with the aforementioned earlier direction Blizzard has taken to artifically inflate logged in times of players to keep those players doing WQs.

Only a matter of time before Blizzard annoys another sect of players unnecessarily. Wouldn't put it past them now to say, for example, halving the total dropped loot in raids, gear cap on M+ per week, or reduce the honor earned in PvP, etc. ... they already annoyed transmog collectors with the forced Personal Loot.

Bottom line is, Blizzard is doing their hardest to artificially inflate the logged in time of players... using said times as the game's "success"; I don't like that direction it's taken. This is a P2P game, NOT a F2P game...

Time logged matters in a sub based game as well. The more time investment players have in a game, the more likely they are to continue playing and more likely to buy store items. It also means more hours playing Blizzard games = less money to the competition. Smart, common sense business.

[Vorkreist]

The op link seems dogshit. Pay 99$ here to see the data. Just fuck off. I remember skimming the last quarterly report and all there was some stagnating crap or small growth for ATVI as a whole.
OW is huge and growing constantly boosting with game sales along with the lootboxes canceraids.
HS brings mega fucktons as well. These two franchises are carrying blizzard right now.
Wow is dogshit. Even with Legion throwing the last mildly interesting concepts, Legion , Illidan and everything else. The subs are below sea level no matter how autistic fanboys might try to paint it better.
Starcraft 2 hit a bottom level and its on low cost cruise developing with the core old school esports fanbase carrying.
Diablo 3 is so dead its actually losing money for them right now hence they abandoned it altogether. The game is now in low maintenance cruise with 2 devs to make some meaningful changes once in 3 years.

The conclusion. ATVI is doing fine-ish . Blizzard itself in terms of quality is a sad joke as it was obvious for quite a few years.
I'd invest in ATVI , some still solid growth in the future with KING and other new crap to farm the massive fanboy base with dogshit new titles for years to come.


P.S. Do people bringing up these kind of fail threads understand how much Blizzard makes on lootboxes from OW and HS ?

[pateuvasiliu]

Sure, you can buy a many fine games for the price of a mount in WoW. Really depends on what you're interested in. However....what's new here? Blizzard has never been generous, other than being good at keeping their games alive. But still, people who don't want to pay for sub anymore quit, right? My post was about someone saying that blind loyalty to the company kept revenue flowing for Blizzard, and not that their games could offer the customers a product they really enjoyed.

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WoD obviously had some great marketing and/or latent wow-gamers that weren't interested in playing in Panda-land sat that one out (even though it was a great xpac imo), and drew in a lot of players that quit after 6 months or so.

I disagree on the "sub count" thing. Yeah, sure, if they set a new record in subs, they might brag about it, but from a business view it's not as interesting if they get considerable income from micro-transactions. It's more about the whole thing, not just one of the factors that bring in the green.

When your MMO has massively more subs than other MMOs have players ( who can play for free ) you can basically wave your dick around, because you're the king.

WoW automatically wins all debates against other MMOs when millions of people would rather play 60$ per expac + 15$ a month to play it rather than some free to play or pay to win bullcrap.

When you no longer announce subs it means something's going bad.

[Niwes]

When your MMO has massively more subs than other MMOs have players ( who can play for free ) you can basically wave your dick around, because you're the king.

WoW automatically wins all debates against other MMOs when millions of people would rather play 60$ per expac + 15$ a month to play it rather than some free to play or pay to win bullcrap.

When you no longer announce subs it means something's going bad.

its not that easy. you are right at the moment they STOPPED posting subs. because they lost and lost players and were feared to loose more players just because of the „its dying“ feeling. like every random group in tool, when ppl start leaving.

but to not show them again, even when subs are going up, is a wise marketing descission. because you just can win less, than you can loose. some ppl will say „oh cool, subs increasing“. but mostly this will be the ppl that already playing and ARE the reason for the increase. new players dont look at the subs or internal details of a game before they start playing. but if they falling again, and they will, like they always do, i.e. 2-3 months after release, they have the same problem above again.

in short: they dont show numbers, because it will produce more harm than benefit. not because its bad overall and goes worse and worse.

[pateuvasiliu]

its not that easy. you are right at the moment they STOPPED posting subs. because they lost and lost players and were feared to loose more players just because of the „its dying“ feeling. like every random group in tool, when ppl start leaving.

but to not show them again, even when subs are going up, is a wise marketing descission. because you just can win less, than you can loose. some ppl will say „oh cool, subs increasing“. but mostly this will be the ppl that already playing and ARE the reason for the increase. new players dont look at the subs or internal details of a game before they start playing. but if they falling again, and they will, like they always do, i.e. 2-3 months after release, they have the same problem above again.

in short: they dont show numbers, because it will produce more harm than benefit. not because its bad overall and goes worse and worse.

I'm going to have to disagree. It's no mystery that the average human is pretty fucking dumb and seeing/hearing news of WoW subs increasing would put them in the " Oh wow it's popular again " mentality and they might come back.

And new players DEFINITELY care about how played a game is.

Look at PUBG, it's a filthy piece of shit that runs almost as bad as it did 1 year ago yet it jumped from 500K to 3 mil to 30 mil in this 1 year because people heard that it's popular and bought it without actually looking at all the flaws it has.

[Niwes]

I'm going to have to disagree. It's no mystery that the average human is pretty fucking dumb and seeing/hearing news of WoW subs increasing would put them in the " Oh wow it's popular again " mentality and they might come back.

And new players DEFINITELY care about how played a game is.

Look at PUBG, it's a filthy piece of shit that runs almost as bad as it did 1 year ago yet it jumped from 500K to 3 mil to 30 mil in this 1 year because people heard that it's popular and bought it without actually looking at all the flaws it has.

try to think in a companies mind. try to think longterm. try to think how much it hurts when the bubble bursts. look: wow is a stable money machine since 13 years. wait 1-2 years and you see what happens to pubg when the bubble has burst and around 20k players are left in a shit game that everyone has long forgotten.

what you want ? 4-12 mio players paying 12 dollars a month (and expac every 2 years) over a decade ? or a big hit when 30 mio paying 50 dollars once ? calculate...

[pateuvasiliu]

try to think in a companies mind. try to think longterm. try to think how much it hurts when the bubble bursts. look: wow is a stable money machine since 13 years. wait 1-2 years and you see what happens to pubg when the bubble has burst and around 20k players are left in a shit game that everyone has long forgotten.

what you want ? 4-12 mio players paying 12 dollars a month (and expac every 2 years) over a decade ? or a big hit when 30 mio paying 50 dollars once ? calculate...

You can't really compare the content in WoW with PUBG which is basically the same map(s) over and over in the same game mode.

what you want ? 4-12 mio players paying 12 dollars a month (and expac every 2 years) over a decade ? or a big hit when 30 mio paying 50 dollars once ? calculate...

Why are you comparing their revenue when their budgets and costs of upkeep are nowhere near?