Activision Blizzard Q3 2021 Investor Call, Jen Oneal Leaving Blizzard

[Menog]

Jesus fucking christ. I'm not even arguing with this. You're embarrassing yourself.



The person I responded to said "That translates to nobody is playing their games and nobody is buying their games. Good.". This is a factually incorrect statement and I intended to refute that. It's also pretty blatantly a "Blizzard bad" post.

I brought up loyalty to Blizzard for a different reason - specifically to articulate that there will be a definable, measurable point that I'm sure Blizzard are aware of where one unique user who plays two games (and is therefore two "MAUs") is actually more valuable than two unique users who play one game each. Think of it like Nike having ten unique customers who buy one pair of sneakers because they need gym shoes, vs having one unique customer who buys all fifteen colourways of the same Jordans because they like the brand. Who do you think more reliably generates income for the company? Who is more likely to purchase the next shoe you take to market?

You quoted me and I said no such thing. I just pointed out that 30M maus doesnt mean jack shit in terms of wow players. Anyway have fun shilling for your lords. Lul

[Lolites]

This is explicitly worded to make it look positive, and are comparing the current portfolio of 3 world of warcraft games to the previous 1 world of warcraft game that existed "outside of a modern expansion".

you do realise that "decade" they outperformed also include the year 2019 when there was retail AND classic, which had HUGE amounts of people (at least in the begining) so yeah, its still clear wow is doing good no matter how much it pisses you and other doomsayers off

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D2 and Hearthstone launched. Blizz has reported a massive increase and sale due to this. MAU does not move.
In order for MAU to stay the same, there have to be decrease in wow activity that mirrors the increase in D2 and HS increase.

or in other games... its not realy outside of reality to think a lot of people who play D2 have just "moved" from D3...
not to mention previous quarter ALSO had a release - tbcc...

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Honestly, trying to deny that the game is on a bad situation based on their statement is just being blind

depends what you mean by "Bad situation", is it in worse "state" than during wrath? sure, is it in worse "state" than during WOD? i seriously doubt that, is it dying? nope, not anywhere near it...

wow is not in its best state, thats for sure, but it seems like its not in its worst either (not surprising, WOD is pretty low bar to go under)

[Tibia4ever]

Lmao, I love the denial of some users here. When it comes to MAU, there is a decline regardless of your opinion. The question is how much is it for WoW, since there are many games included in that MAU.

[Lolites]

Lmao, I love the denial of some users here. When it comes to MAU, there is a decline regardless of your opinion. The question is how much is it for WoW, since there are many games included in that MAU.

actualy, given that long term decreasing trend stopped, which it didnt even for TBCC or shadowlands release, there was technicaly increase, otherwise it would be LOWER than previous Q not the same...
also, given the trend didnt stop for TBCC or SL release but it did now kinda suggests WoWs MAUs played little role in previous decline...

btw, if someones in the denial its people who were oh so certain MAUs will plummet this q and now its the same they are like "well, no its the same so it means THEY ARE LOWER" and "next quarter will SURELY be lower"
it reminds me of some people when vanila released "this raid is not hard, but NEXT SURELY WILL BE!!"

[mbit]

"Increased engagement" just means the active players play more than before. Thats a given when most casuals are gone so only hardcore nolivers are left. Its a positive spin on everyone not already completely invested in the game dropped out from the mess we created.

[Cosmic Janitor]

They'll just count each version of WoW as seperate MAU, so Season of Mastery is another source of MAU.

Not saying that's going to hold the tide, but that's where my money is on.

Oh they defnitely will. Heck I could see them adding incentives to log into other versions just to get the number up.

[nike851]

actualy, given that long term decreasing trend stopped, which it didnt even for TBCC or shadowlands release, there was technicaly increase, otherwise it would be LOWER than previous Q not the same...
also, given the trend didnt stop for TBCC or SL release but it did now kinda suggests WoWs MAUs played little role in previous decline...

btw, if someones in the denial its people who were oh so certain MAUs will plummet this q and now its the same they are like "well, no its the same so it means THEY ARE LOWER" and "next quarter will SURELY be lower"
it reminds me of some people when vanila released "this raid is not hard, but NEXT SURELY WILL BE!!"

Such a fine blizz defender. oh lord almighty how good you spend your time.

[Pendragon]

The fact that WoW is doing well is worrying considering the state of the game. The devs will learn nothing at all because they don't need to.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Basically, If we were generous and said that theres about 4'000 000 active players on different parts of wow and other blizz games then the numbers suddenly add up.

While your general argument has merit, you are far from "generous" here. A generous assumption would be something like 8-12 mio. active users, because most people will still be near mono gamers. While alot will have been coaxed into MAU generation schemes like the rat mount, overall the the average MAU count per user will be somewhere around 2 most likely, certainly not 6+. There will be quite a few that play many blizzard games, but also way more that just play one game and one game only.

D2R was also targeted at a rather "special" kind of crowd that has been running the same fucking game for the last 20 years without any updates. So that is most likely a rather substantial amount of people that were not currently counted in the system at all.

The wow "number" in the report is in general just complete and utter bogus, since it's not a report on the current state but a prognosis that Blizzard has made on entirely unknown assumptions. For all we know they bank entirely on SoM being a massive hit again to bolster this which I'm frankly not sold on at all. They could have rolled a couple of dice here and it would been of equal informational value.

[Lolites]

Such a fine blizz defender. oh lord almighty how good you spend your time.

oh yeah, adresing person rather than argument, shows lovely you have absolutely nothing to say...

but sorry i exhibit you to logic and reality, feel free put fingers in your ear and keep yelling "WOW IS DYING" as loud as you want, after all, ignorance is bliss

[Tibia4ever]

actualy, given that long term decreasing trend stopped, which it didnt even for TBCC or shadowlands release, there was technicaly increase, otherwise it would be LOWER than previous Q not the same...
also, given the trend didnt stop for TBCC or SL release but it did now kinda suggests WoWs MAUs played little role in previous decline...

btw, if someones in the denial its people who were oh so certain MAUs will plummet this q and now its the same they are like "well, no its the same so it means THEY ARE LOWER" and "next quarter will SURELY be lower"
it reminds me of some people when vanila released "this raid is not hard, but NEXT SURELY WILL BE!!"

It has stablised, due to Diablo 2R release, thats another MAU boost.

[rhorle]

It says it's "on track to Deliver" not that it actually has. Which is just PR spin.

Using PR spin with investor facing statements is the quickest way to Activision Blizzard to get in more trouble. It still means that they are not under performing.

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This quarter includes deluxe editions for TBC and a store mount.

Didn't TBC:C launch in June? Which means it would have been part of the 2nd quarter right? They are not just barely doing better given they would have made financially misleading statements to investors about being on track to out perform. That is the thing you and others don't get about these types of statements. Lying can give a whole world of trouble and doing so in their current state doubles that trouble.

[Venziir]

"World of Warcraft is on track to deliver its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade." If this is true, then that's... Pretty fucking sad. Considering both how awful SL is, and how there hasn't really been any proper content added (No, Korthia wasn't proper) since launch.... Yikes!

[rhorle]

That basically means in total you can be 11 different people.

Explain why it should be different. Why shouldn't a user of each product be counted each month? Why should you only count it once company wide? Even if you only play for 1 min you were still a monthly active user.

[Lolites]

"World of Warcraft is on track to deliver its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade." If this is true, then that's... Pretty fucking sad. Considering both how awful SL is, and how there hasn't really been any proper content added (No, Korthia wasn't proper) since launch.... Yikes!

or, ooor! SL being awful is YOUR OPINION, not opinion of majority, and Korthia is proper content to most people, YOU PERSONALY just happen to not like it...
i know people like to think when they dont like something NOBODY can like it but... thats just not how reality works...

i wont lie, im disapointed we didnt get another major patch for SL this year, but what we did get i actualy liked (i wouldnt call it their best work by far, but not worst by far either, its average id say) and, aparently, im not alone...

[StillMcfuu]

Using PR spin with investor facing statements is the quickest way to Activision Blizzard to get in more trouble. It still means that they are not under performing.

They provide numbers too, but they don't provide numbers per individual franchises. Saying they are On track to deliver the best non expansion year isn't that big of a deal, everyone is acting as if they are about to break records. It just means that this year is slightly better than 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. Considering those years only include 1 WoW product and MTX were in their infancy for Blizz, saying this is the best year out of those 4 when there was an expansion release that included rampant MTX. It's possibly they mean 2019 as well, Classic released with no MTX and just the sub, but I doubt Blizz is taking any victory laps over beating a year that made people actually come back to Azeroth and inflated MAUs.

The things they say in their investor brief is a PR spin. Most investors aren't savvy enough to understand what is being said, the brief is just to keep them from selling their shares. All of their Investor presentations are filled with this type of language. They aren't misrepresenting anything to investors, you just aren't understanding what is actually being said.

[rhorle]

It just means that this year is slightly better than 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017.

No one is calling it a victory lap. There is no reason to exaggerate here. It does mean that WoW is not under performing like another person claimed. The investor brief is still a legal communication that if they are found to be lying will result in hefty fines and trouble for the company. Most forum goers here are not savvy enough to understand what is being said as evidence by the constant twisting and misinterpreting of comments.

You can't lie just to keep investors from selling shares. Well you can but if you get caught that is practically game over.

[mbit]

No one is calling it a victory lap. There is no reason to exaggerate here. It does mean that WoW is not under performing like another person claimed. The investor brief is still a legal communication that if they are found to be lying will result in hefty fines and trouble for the company. Most forum goers here are not savvy enough to understand what is being said as evidence by the constant twisting and misinterpreting of comments.

You can't lie just to keep investors from selling shares. Well you can but if you get caught that is practically game over.

Its not lying when you represent data in biased form so the willfully ignorant believe the bias. Everyone does it and they do it here too.

[Dracullus]

Not gonna happen. FF14 is smart not to do it either. When you announce player counts on an MMO you risk people starting up doomer drama about it.

Even better, ESO and FF only reveal registered users, not to mention cheap tricks like "we run out of digital keys" (I was like ???? and forums OMG FF IS CRUSHING WOW).

[rhorle]

Its not lying when you represent data in biased form so the willfully ignorant believe the bias. Everyone does it and they do it here too.

Misrepresenting data is considered "lying" for all intents and purposes by the SEC. It is easier to believe in some grand conspiracy where you, and others, are the select few smart enough to see the truth. Or you know you could just take the comments at face value and find out that WoW is not under performing based on the criteria they stated.