If TBC becomes a thing, Blizzard needs to make "change" to prevent faction imbalance

[Mosha]

Except Blizzard reported that WoW subs did double after Classic launch. Regarding those subs having been lost, I would like to see a source for this.

That's where you get into dangerous territory there my friend, once you start talking to someone about what the sub count is.... No matter what bias they have they will always seem to freak out and make shit up if you say something they don't want to hear.

[Thundering]

That's where you get into dangerous territory there my friend, once you start talking to someone about what the sub count is.... No matter what bias they have they will always seem to freak out and make shit up if you say something they don't want to hear.

General this is related to retail players don't want to hear about classic success. Even when blizzard has stated themself that Classic has been a most lucrative "adventure".

[Mosha]

General this is related to retail players don't want to hear about classic success. Even when blizzard has stated themself that Classic has been a most lucrative "adventure".

That's what it has been recently, for sure. I will admit I catch a person on the other side of the fence talking about how retail has less than a mil subs or something as if they would know that information either...

But for the most part, yes, it's retailers who probably talked about how dead and how much a waste of time classic would be wanting to imagine that it didn't substantially increase subs.

[kenn9530]

Except Blizzard reported that WoW subs did double after Classic launch. Regarding those subs having been lost, I would like to see a source for this.

They only talk about of monthly active users, so while the amount of users playing WoW may of doubled the subs did not, and the next quarterly update shows MAU dropped back down to 32 million from the 33 million of classic launch. The only mention of an increase in subs is when classic actually launched, the other mentions are for active player community.

[Mosha]

They only talk about of monthly active users, so while the amount of users playing WoW may of doubled the subs did not, and the next quarterly update shows MAU dropped back down to 32 million from the 33 million of classic launch. The only mention of an increase in subs is when classic actually launched, the other mentions are for active player community.

There was an interview of them literally saying classic 'more than doubled' the subscribers for wow my dude.

[Daedius]

Faction imbalance is dictated by players, or are you implying Blizzard should FORCE players to whatever faction needs filling...?

[Airlick]

They only talk about of monthly active users, so while the amount of users playing WoW may of doubled the subs did not, and the next quarterly update shows MAU dropped back down to 32 million from the 33 million of classic launch. The only mention of an increase in subs is when classic actually launched, the other mentions are for active player community.

Then there's the question of how many people from retail switched to Classic (or vice-versa, let's not be biased), how many subs lost were people who only came to Classic for a short while, and how many retail players quit. Plenty of variables that only Blizzard could and will not publish.

[Morssoe]

few and big servers with faction caps

[Mosha]

Faction imbalance is dictated by players, or are you implying Blizzard should FORCE players to whatever faction needs filling...?

You mean kind of how blizzard FORCES you to not be able to join a server that is full? Players can't dictate how big the servers are going to be, they only have so much power until q times and locked servers are turned on.

I'm not suggesting that they should 100% do this, but let's not act like this wouldn't be a very simple thing to do that is extremely similar to how servers work anyway.

[Jazzhands]

Except Blizzard reported that WoW subs did double after Classic launch. Regarding those subs having been lost, I would like to see a source for this.

Just look at the server list. Or the fact that, as soon as Covid started, there were server issues, because people flooded back to the game, anyone who wanted to try it by then had very likely already done so, but I can't say there probably weren't a few new faces during that time. Also ZG launched around that time, or BWL can't really remember, and lo and behold a bunch of people came back to clear it, then left again, at least according to my guilds Discord, and if it happens in one guild it likely happens all over.

People come and go from MMOs all the time, and tourists were a huge thing in Classic, we don't need Blizzard to know that population of an old game that's 100% solved will have fluctuations, it's simply how MMOs are. You can sit here and plug your ears and say Classic hasn't lost a single sub because Blizzard (the only source that would be valid here) hasn't said anything, but we all know that isn't true. Launch was Classic's high point, and that's long over.

[last1214]

Okay let me explain, ‘no changes’ doesn’t literally mean “make classic 1:1 perfect to vanilla”.

It means don’t add anything crazy that wasn’t in vanilla. The no changes crowd started saying this because people were asking for shit like transmog and lfr and dual spec etc etc.

By what the no changes crowds general consensus, classic was basically just that, no changes. Yeah we started on 1.12 and we had very minor stuf here and there. But we didn’t have stuff like lfr, transmog, class balancing to allow other classes to compete in raids.

100% this. The only people who see it as otherwise are the retail crowd who just want to see anything that isnt retail fail. Core philosophy's should stay unchanged. Even small bullshit "features" that nobody likes should stay. Exploitive or unforseen destructive behavior should be combatted. Perhaps a 9:1 faction imbalance falls into this category, but I think it will mostly be a pvp server problem. Thank god I dodged that bullet.

[kenn9530]

There was an interview of them literally saying classic 'more than doubled' the subscribers for wow my dude.

Q4 2019 World of Warcraft® exited 2019 with an active player community3 more than twice the size of its Q2-ending level.

Q3 2019 World of Warcraft® Classic drove the biggest quarterly increase to subscription plans2 in franchise history, in both the West and East.

Q1 2020 After doubling in the second half of 2019, World of Warcraft’s active player community1 increased further in the first quarter, driven by both new and returning players, as the team continued to deliver more content between expansions than ever before.

It doesnt mention anywhere about doubling subs just the amount of active users, WoW has a low retention rate on keeping players so easily 50% of players that tried classic no longer play it.

Classic is mainly attractive to the hardcore WoW player, its not an enjoyable game for a casual player and if you hate leveling then you will not even get to 60.

[Mosha]

Q4 2019 World of Warcraft® exited 2019 with an active player community3 more than twice the size of its Q2-ending level.

Q3 2019 World of Warcraft® Classic drove the biggest quarterly increase to subscription plans2 in franchise history, in both the West and East.

Q1 2020 After doubling in the second half of 2019, World of Warcraft’s active player community1 increased further in the first quarter, driven by both new and returning players, as the team continued to deliver more content between expansions than ever before.

It doesnt mention anywhere about doubling subs just the amount of active users, WoW has a low retention rate on keeping players so easily 50% of players that tried classic no longer play it.

Ok quick question, what exactly do you think a company means when they say monthly active users increased, on a game that requires you to have a subscription to play. Honest question

[kenn9530]

Ok quick question, what exactly do you think a company means when they say monthly active users increased, on a game that requires you to have a subscription to play. Honest question

Its pretty clear if subs increased a large margin they would say so in the financials, the MAU only increased 1 million in a month so only 1 million extra users came when classic released and the next quarter the MAU dropped back down 1 million, so a large amount of classic users are active subs.

[Mosha]

Its pretty clear if subs increased a large margin they would say so in the financials, the MAU only increased 1 million in a month so only 1 million extra users came when classic released and the next quarter the MAU dropped back down 1 million, so a large amount of classic users are active subs.

No no no no no no nnoooooo lol my dude.... you are looking at the MAU across ALL games. OW could have dropped by 5 mil and classic increase by 6 mil and have it only read as 1 mil increase in users for the whole company (just made those numbers up just showing you what it looks like).

MAU for WoW, IS subscriptions as that's the only way to play.

[kenn9530]

No no no no no no nnoooooo lol my dude.... you are looking at the MAU across ALL games. OW could have dropped by 5 mil and classic increase by 6 mil and have it only read as 1 mil increase in users for the whole company (just made those numbers up just showing you what it looks like).

MAU for WoW, IS subscriptions as that's the only way to play.

MAU is measured on each individual game so if you play 5 blizz games that counts as 5 users so its pretty safe to assume those 1 million extra MAU was mostly for classic, if WoW gains a large amount of subs they would state that in the financials as they have done in the past.

We monitor our average monthly active users (“MAUs”) as a key measure of the overall size of our user base. MAUs are the number of individuals who accessed a particular game in a given month. We calculate average MAUs in a period by adding the total number of MAUs in each of the months in a given period and dividing that total by the number of months in the period. An individual who accesses two of our games would be counted as two users. In addition, due to technical limitations, for Activision and King, an individual who accesses the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would be counted as two users. For Blizzard, an individual who accesses the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would generally be counted as a single user. In certain instances, we rely on third parties to publish our games. In these instances, MAU data is based on information provided to us by those third parties, or, if final data is not available, reasonable estimates of MAUs for these third-party published games.

Logging into both WoW and WoW classic would count as 2 users and many will be playing both.

[Mosha]

MAU is measured on each individual game so if you play 5 blizz games that counts as 5 users so its pretty safe to assume those 1 million extra MAU was mostly for classic, if WoW gains a large amount of subs they would state that in the financials as they have done in the past.

We monitor our average monthly active users (“MAUs”) as a key measure of the overall size of our user base. MAUs are the number of individuals who accessed a particular game in a given month. We calculate average MAUs in a period by adding the total number of MAUs in each of the months in a given period and dividing that total by the number of months in the period. An individual who accesses two of our games would be counted as two users. In addition, due to technical limitations, for Activision and King, an individual who accesses the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would be counted as two users. For Blizzard, an individual who accesses the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would generally be counted as a single user. In certain instances, we rely on third parties to publish our games. In these instances, MAU data is based on information provided to us by those third parties, or, if final data is not available, reasonable estimates of MAUs for these third-party published games.

No, no it is not. My dude... Blizzard has 9 games on their launcher that is under the blizzard name. Looking at a 1 mil increase from the 33 million active users right now and acting like all other games stayed stable and the one mil is just classic subs coming in is a dumb DUMB thing to guess. First of all, the last time we saw the sub counts it was somewhere sub 5 mil? Let's just say something crazy and act like retail is at 4 mil at the time of this update, that still means that 29 MILLION of their other active users are coming from other games. Please man...

We monitor our average monthly active users (“MAUs”) as a key measure of the overall size of our user base. MAUs are the number of individuals who accessed a particular game in a given month. We calculate average MAUs in a period by adding the total number of MAUs in each of the months in a given period and dividing that total by the number of months in the period. An individual who accesses two of our games would be counted as two users. In addition, due to technical limitations, for Activision and King, an individual who accesses the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would be counted as two users. For Blizzard, an individual who accesses the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would generally be counted as a single user. In certain instances, we rely on third parties to publish our games. In these instances, MAU data is based on information provided to us by those third parties, or, if final data is not available, reasonable estimates of MAUs for these third-party published games.

This is all the more reason to not look at blizzards MAU and come to the conclusion that the 1 mil increase was just classic users coming in and acting like other games didn't lose anyone and stayed stable. Do you understand that?

Let me paint an example for you, other blizzard games could have taken a massive hit and lost literally all of their players right? And if the blizzard monthly active users increased by 1 mil from 32 mil, making it 33 mil... that would mean that 33 mil players are now playing wow. Not 1 mil. I'm not saying it's this crazy of a change but dude....what you're suggesting is actually hilarious.

[kenn9530]

snip

33 million MAU is not amount of players, each game is a seperate count, if 1 million players played 3 seperate games over that quarter thats 3 million MAU from 1 million players. So its pretty easy to double active users for WoW considering there are two versions to play, most WoW players are not going to just abandon retail for classic.

I give you what blizzard say is the definition of MAU and you then say no its not.

[Mosha]

33 million MAU is not amount of players, each game is a seperate count, if 1 million players played 3 seperate games over that quarter thats 3 million MAU from 1 million players. So its pretty easy to double active users for WoW considering there are two versions to play, most WoW players are not going to just abandon retail for classic.

I give you what blizzard say is the definition of MAU and you then say no its not.

I completely understand that, I get how they count the total numbers, you aren't understanding what I'm telling you. In your own perfect world you are completely disregarding someone:

A. Quitting a blizzard game for another one

B. Quitting multiple blizzard games for other games that aren't blizzard

C. Playing a new, different blizzard game (not wow) they haven't played recently

D. Playing a multiple new, different blizzard games (not wow) they haven't played before

Etc etc etc.

What you are suggesting, is that across the board, the monthly active users across all other games stayed completely stable, and the only difference being the classic came out and is the sole reason for any change in number and that the 1 mil increase is just classic wow's new numbers.

How on fucking earth are you not understanding how dumb of a thought that is.

[kenn9530]

I completely understand that, I get how they count the total numbers, you aren't understanding what I'm telling you. In your own perfect world you are completely disregarding someone:

A. Quitting a blizzard game for another one

B. Quitting multiple blizzard games for other games that aren't blizzard

C. Playing a new, different blizzard game (not wow) they haven't played recently

D. Playing a multiple new, different blizzard games (not wow) they haven't played before

Etc etc etc.

What you are suggesting, is that across the board, the monthly active users across all other games stayed completely stable, and the only difference being the classic came out and is the sole reason for any change in number and that the 1 mil increase is just classic wow's new numbers.

How on fucking earth are you not understanding how dumb of a thought that is.

We can see over a whole year the MAU remains pretty much the same at 32 million, blizzard have not said the subs doubled so you cant just assume they did with no evidence to back it up, active users doubled due to there being 2 versions of the game.