World of Warcraft engagement is the highest in a decade at this point ahead of an exp

[Clozer]

So, this statement just came from the Activision Blizzard Q2 2020 Earnings Call. What do you guys think about this? Looking through this forum the last couple of months all you found were hate threads about BFA and the current corruption system.

What do you think is different now compared to Legion at this point in time? Why are players more engaged now than in the past? Was the expansion really as bad as people make it out to be?

[Relapses]

There's a little itty bitty worldwide pandemic going on. I feel like that might have something to do with it.

And if you're using this forum as the barometer for anything -- much less whether the game is in a decent state -- you're doing it very, very wrong.

[Zylos]

My guess is they are including classic numbers in there which combined with a pandemic that has a ton of people working from home or not working at all...

[kaelix1]

Even since the birth of wow forums where never a sign of how good or bad wow is doing, you would be surprised how many people don't even bother with forums in general, now, I'm surprised by this, I sincerely think 8.3 is one of the worst wow had to offer, corruption system is a mess I can't ignore no matter what

[Doffen]

Engagement means how much players that are subbed are playing. Not how many players there are. The corruption and essence vendor make people farm content, those who are subbed. Not to mention Covid and Classic is also contributing to this.

Because, unlike what 95% of this forum think, MAU means how many players that log in at least once during a month. While engagement and player activity means how active the subbed players are. Seeing MAU has been down for 2 years now overall across their franchises it means they lose players across their games, but nothing spesifically for WoW. Afaik the last time they reported MAU for WoW specifically was in the Classic launch quarter and before that in the first 2 quarters of Legion when it increased. And there was a report of subscription increase from quarter to quarter in Q2 2019.

Blizzard is wise in choosing their words, if you read their earning calls from they stopped showing subs until now you can get a picture on how they do it each time and overall. But it is good that engagement is meaningful and increase sequentially seeing we get Shadowlands soon™

[Sharnie786]

My guess is they are including classic numbers in there which combined with a pandemic that has a ton of people working from home or not working at all...

I think you're overestimating how many people solely play Classic. Most that do play Classic are those that are taking a break from retail.

[Pann]

It's a pretty vague statement and without knowing what they actually mean by "Franchise engagement" there is not much that can be gleaned from it. A quick glance through the financial reports shows a strong performance compared to last year although this is not altogether unexpected with current events and the hype for SL beginning to pick up.

[goldlock]

Looks like classic wow is filling a missing period of content for blizzard. I wonder if they will hold a patch in tbc for when sl is in its pre expansion state.

[Kralljin]

I think you're overestimating how many people solely play Classic. Most that do play Classic are those that are taking a break from retail.

Not like that makes much of a difference for the arguement, does it?

Like, listen to the call, count how many times they said "Classic" and then count "Patch 8.3".

[Dracullus]

Looks like classic wow is filling a missing period of content for blizzard. I wonder if they will hold a patch in tbc for when sl is in its pre expansion state.

Also XP boost, especially first month retail was really crowded. And I think every single expansion has potential for Classic servers to fill our time during drought.

[Azerate]

Game has a lot of great catch up systems now for 8.3. It has hundreds of stuff to collect. It has great special events (double exp, double rep, 5 weeks TW etc). It has lots of content creators active. It has lots of drama and it has lots of hype around SL.

I've noticed a lot of people coming back to check out BfA and 8.3 before SL and we've also head a surge of new recruits in our casual heroic guild too.

WoW is on fucking fire right now, and I love it. Sore losers will keep whining on forums, as they do, though

[Relapses]

Not like that makes much of a difference for the arguement, does it?

Like, listen to the call, count how many times they said "Classic" and then count "Patch 8.3".

What? That's just as irrelevant as anything else. Classic does seem particularly popular in China, however, so I'm sure there is some truth the statement that Classic is propping up retail. But not to an extent that's meaningful enough to base any game vs. game arguments around.

[goldlock]

Also XP boost, especially first month retail was really crowded. And I think every single expansion has potential for Classic servers to fill our time during drought.

I can't see why it wouldn't retail and classic should complement each other.

[Zylos]

What? That's just as irrelevant as anything else. Classic does seem particularly popular in China, however, so I'm sure there is some truth the statement that Classic is propping up retail. But not to an extent that's meaningful enough to base any game vs. game arguments around.

Nobody was making game vs game arguments. To me it's just disingenuous to suggest this expansion is somehow more popular than past ones by using an obscure snippet-in-time statistic that's likely inflated by people not actually playing the expansion right now.

It's just more bs numbers in a desperate attempt to sound less bad to investors.

Oh and I don't for a second believe that the number of people only playing classic is not "meaningful". Classic is pretty damn popular

[Adamas102]

What do you think is different now compared to Legion at this point in time? Why are players more engaged now than in the past?

One word: pandemic

The wording was very specific; "at this point ahead of an expansion". It does make sense that gamers are spending more time playing at this point in time given things like stay-at-home orders and such, but the best metric that could be compared against was "how much time players spent in game 3-5 months before an expansion"? I mean, sure it's positive but it's a pretty low bar to set.

[Flurryfang]

So when they say engagement, do they mean:

A: Number of hours in total used by users in the game?

or

B: Number of hours used pr. user in the game?

Im a bit confused by this.

[Kralljin]

But not to an extent that's meaningful enough to base any game vs. game arguments around.

And that's not the point?
However, attributing the effect described in the title to the quality of BfA instead of Classic is a massive stretch.

BfA could perform like any other expansion, with Classic providing a bonus and that statement would still be true.
Turning that into "Classic is superior to Retail" is reading way too much into it.

Classic is propping up the sub numbers, which is a statement that's not outlandish.

[Enter Name Here]

"at this point ahead of an expansion" is important. narrowing down the timeframe to make the numbers look good.

that's like saying "hottest day of the year" on the first day of january

[Thage]

Pandemic, Classic, and people knocking out their pre-expansion checklist. The pandemic being the big one, I think, considering how most of Q2 many countries were in lockdown.

[Relapses]

Classic is propping up the sub numbers, which is a statement that's not outlandish.

Trying to figure out the extent at which either game is impacting the other is ultimately pretty pointless. Using faulty logic like, "counting the number of times they use a word" to support an argument like this is equally pointless. We won't ever know so I really just don't see why we should even bother entertaining the idea.