Activision Blizzard Q4 2020 Investor Call

[tmamass]

what that classic WoW is carrying retail hard?

source for your claim? oh you dont have one, yeah I figured. classic is so gooood it will be replaced by tbc :-P

[tru]

See how that Dot the first dot from the left in the red section is higher than all of the other dots? That was in Cata. Thanks for proving me right.

Point is cata launch got a slight boost from the success of wrath then did nothing but fall. Slight boost in subs. FACT is no expansion has held as high or steady as wrath.

[glowpipe]

source for your claim? oh you dont have one, yeah I figured. classic is so gooood it will be replaced by tbc :-P

This is my counterclaim to his moronic delusions.
Wow classic, as of writing this.
Full pop servers: Eu = 0. Na = 0
High pop servers: Eu = 5. Na = 6
Normal pop servers: Eu = 31. Na = 28
Low pop servers: Eu = 7. Na = 7

Wow shadowlands
Full pop servers: Eu = 20. Na = 34
High pop servers: Eu = 45. Na = 68
Medium and low, Stopped counting after 100 for both EU and NA. Individualy

Source: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/game/status/eu

[Utrrabbit]

Its funny how easy it is to read your bias in this post, Wotlk will NEVER be topped in terms of raw players., i would stake my life, my security and my wealth on that.

"as someone who has been playing PC/Console games for 25+ years"

OKAY BOOMER, DONT HAVE A STROKE NOW, GO HAVE YOUR SELTZER WATER AND ASPRIN, BAHAHHA.

(which on retail sits at about 500 players, and on its classic sister guild has about 55 players)
What a suprise, retailers dont like classic, classic was never intended for them.

Did you just have a seizure. Calm down kiddo.

- - - Updated - - -

Looks like blizzard is doing well.
Guess it's time to lay off 800 more employees given blizzards standards.

Blizzard has no control over that. That is activision.

- - - Updated - - -

Am I reading correctly that the MAUs actually went down in Q4 despite Shadowlands launching? That doesn't seem right.

Nope. It went ul, has for years.

[Asrialol]

All that brilliant "success" with WoW, all the while they're shutting down places with mass lay offs... while paying that douchebag €20m a year...

The layoffs have reflected with poor QA of the bloody game, SL was a buggy mess with a lot of untested things upon release that took months to hot fix...

As much as I don't like Kotick for his attitude towards gaming, he's one hell of a CEO.

[deenman]

So Blizzard is once again the WoW-only company.
Hearthstone: 8 years of rinse&repeat
SC2: in decline for 8 years.
Hots: in decline for 6 years.
OW: in decline for 5 years.
Diablo: in decline for 7 years.

diablo is actualy doing pretty good,there are 15k online right now,at a rly bad hour,and the season is more than half done,when new seasons start the numbers are in the hundrets of thausands,and thats pretty damn good for what i feel is a bad game that adds zero actual content

[GrinnersGrin]

tldr
Classic is carrying the shit out of MAU's

[dacoolist]

What I find funny about the comments are how gdamn jaded some of these people are.. if you don’t like blizz or WoW, I mean why the hell are you even here lmfao?

You have the right to hate yourself by coming here and getting destroyed by white knights, but like deep down you gotta stop cucking yourselves and either leave or at least add something to the post with quality..

On Topic: I’d like to know why they didn’t talk up the new stuff that’s about to be launched such as Blizzconline, and at least kind of discussing more about where things are headed so that people could be more excited about investing into Actiblizz stonks..

[james2400]

29million is pretty bad for comparison.

Q3 2020 - 30 Million MAU’s.
Q2 2020 - 32 Million MAU’s.
Q1 2020 through Q1 2019 were stead at 32 Million MAU’s.
Q4 2018 had 35 Million.
Q3 2018 had 37 Million.
Q2 2018 had 37 Million.
Q1 2018 had 38 Million.

[Cosmic Janitor]

shadowlands had the best launch sales out of any expansion in WoWs history lol so, wrong lol and classic and shadowlands are the same sub and alot of players play both. Shadowlands is a good expansion so far with a few gripes just like in any moment in wow. its never gonna be perfect

Being able to preorder something for the better part of a year while a pandemic is still ravaging the world and places like the US have umeployment records not seen in decades surely has nothing to do with that .

[Lorgar Aurelian]

All that brilliant "success" with WoW, all the while they're shutting down places with mass lay offs... while paying that douchebag €20m a year...

The layoffs have reflected with poor QA of the bloody game, SL was a buggy mess with a lot of untested things upon release that took months to hot fix...

See that’s a great theory and all but when the list of lay offs came out there was a whole 1 QA job among them. This idea of layoffs effecting the quality instead of just removing redundant staff just doesn’t have any backing.

[Cosmic Janitor]

WoW coming to consoles? maybe stadia?

Betting on stadia is definitely the best choice right now.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

29million is pretty bad for comparison.

Q3 2020 - 30 Million MAU’s.
Q2 2020 - 32 Million MAU’s.
Q1 2020 through Q1 2019 were stead at 32 Million MAU’s.
Q4 2018 had 35 Million.
Q3 2018 had 37 Million.
Q2 2018 had 37 Million.
Q1 2018 had 38 Million.

Likely do to pretty much every thing other then wow not geting many meaningful updates, wow is the only thing listed with growth after all.

[javierdsv]

This is my counterclaim to his moronic delusions.
Wow classic, as of writing this.
Full pop servers: Eu = 0. Na = 0
High pop servers: Eu = 5. Na = 6
Normal pop servers: Eu = 31. Na = 28
Low pop servers: Eu = 7. Na = 7

Wow shadowlands
Full pop servers: Eu = 20. Na = 34
High pop servers: Eu = 45. Na = 68
Medium and low, Stopped counting after 100 for both EU and NA. Individualy

Source: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/game/status/eu

This is quite good information. Thank you for sharing.

[Confucius]

so many infuriating corporate buzzwords
At the end they try to keep wow money making machine going for another cycle. Also they plan to rehash more old content especially to mobile, so they can go balls deep on monetization.
They are planning to hire more code monkeys, I mean devs. In reality they will only get bottom tier who are still under the illusion that working for Blizz is something amazing.
D4 is years away. Remember how after 2019 Blizzcon revealed they also announced how they have multiple diablo related projects in the works and they were gonna reveal them in upcoming months. Still waiting for those. All they've done is release a version of a D4 skill tree which looks extremely basic at best.

[Muxtar]

Uh-oh, the haters ain't going to like this

You expected that Blizzard will come and say 'guy we fucked up, we're in shambles, we're sorry'? Of course they will cheer things up, like it's all ok. But learn to read a bit deeper.

[cface]

Its funny how easy it is to read your bias in this post, Wotlk will NEVER be topped in terms of raw players., i would stake my life, my security and my wealth on that.

"as someone who has been playing PC/Console games for 25+ years"

OKAY BOOMER, DONT HAVE A STROKE NOW, GO HAVE YOUR SELTZER WATER AND ASPRIN, BAHAHHA.

(which on retail sits at about 500 players, and on its classic sister guild has about 55 players)
What a suprise, retailers dont like classic, classic was never intended for them.

Something tells me you're in need of much stronger dope than aspirin, how does it feel to have the mental health of an 85yo? You've been wrong so many times, and just tilts left and right

[Rogalicus]

This is my counterclaim to his moronic delusions.
Wow classic, as of writing this.
Full pop servers: Eu = 0. Na = 0
High pop servers: Eu = 5. Na = 6
Normal pop servers: Eu = 31. Na = 28
Low pop servers: Eu = 7. Na = 7

Wow shadowlands
Full pop servers: Eu = 20. Na = 34
High pop servers: Eu = 45. Na = 68
Medium and low, Stopped counting after 100 for both EU and NA. Individualy

Source: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/game/status/eu

Did you filter out connected realms that show shared population?

Edit: Of course he didn't. So out of EU realms:
Echsenkessel, Taerar, Mal'ganis and Blackhand are connected into one full realm
Lordaeron, Tichondrius and Blackmoore are connected into one full realm
Dentarg and Tarren Mill are connected into one full realm
So real number of full realms is 14, not 20. I'm pretty sure it's the same bullshit for high pop, at least 6 of them is one realm:
Черный Шрам (Blackscar), Гром (Grom), Термоштепсель (Thermaplugg), Борейская тундра (Borean Tundra), Пиратская бухта (Booty Bay) and Ткач Смерти (Deathweaver)

[glowpipe]

Did you filter out connected realms that show shared population?

Edit: Of course he didn't. So out of EU realms:
Echsenkessel, Taerar, Mal'ganis and Blackhand are connected into one full realm
Lordaeron, Tichondrius and Blackmoore are connected into one full realm
Dentarg and Tarren Mill are connected into one full realm
So real number of full realms is 14, not 20. I'm pretty sure it's the same bullshit for high pop, at least 6 of them is one realm:
Черный Шрам (Blackscar), Гром (Grom), Термоштепсель (Thermaplugg), Борейская тундра (Borean Tundra), Пиратская бухта (Booty Bay) and Ткач Смерти (Deathweaver)

Each character is linked to one server. When you are whispering a char on any of these servers you need to add -servername behind. So a character created on Taerar, it will not be listed in the population for mal'ganis or any of the linked servers.

I see this arguement everytime. Its not the same, cross realms, shards etc etc. Your character belong to the server it was created on. Period

[Koward]

This is my counterclaim to his moronic delusions.
Wow classic, as of writing this.
Full pop servers: Eu = 0. Na = 0
High pop servers: Eu = 5. Na = 6
Normal pop servers: Eu = 31. Na = 28
Low pop servers: Eu = 7. Na = 7

Wow shadowlands
Full pop servers: Eu = 20. Na = 34
High pop servers: Eu = 45. Na = 68
Medium and low, Stopped counting after 100 for both EU and NA. Individualy

Source: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/game/status/eu

But does not Classic use a different method than Retail for the High/Medium/Low metric since a bit after its launch? IIRC Retail value is relative to other servers while Classic is relative to a fixed amount. They did that because there is no cross realm sharding.