Am I understanding this correctly?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Here is what is being referenced, incase u missed it. Its at the top. Q2 results

https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...age=1#comments

Yes I am aware, the point is even with TBC leading to double digit growth and hearthstone having increases blizzard was down 50m in the 2nd quarter last year, so there is no reason to think all of the losses reported this Quarter are solely from wow how that it’s contributing to the loss instead of off setting it.

[Somic]

Uuuh..WTF?

Keep in mind the wording on that is highly “lawyer-ized”

What this really means is that:

“Because we have classic now and it’s under the same subscription our numbers are doing just as well as during a normal expansion when we didn’t have classic”.

So even if (and I’m obviously making these numbers up), retail saw a 99% decrease in subs, if classic made up those numbers with just as many players then they are still doing “just as well”.

So honestly, if anything, if the numbers are only doing “just as well” with classic attached to the same sub, that to me means retail is taking quite the fuckin massive hit but the hit is masked by the fact that there are people subbed to classic.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes I am aware, the point is even with TBC leading to double digit growth and hearthstone having increases blizzard was down 50m in the 2nd quarter last year, so there is no reason to think all of the losses reported this Quarter are solely from wow how that it’s contributing to the loss instead of off setting it.

It’s for sure a massive part of it. Unless we are going to think OW or Diablo III are somehow creating a shit load of revenue that they lost.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Yeah when I said massive increase I really meant for Warcraft specifically, even though they don’t show the actual numbers you can imply that last year Warcraft was doing way better because of the tbc release.

Ah, then ya your completely right.

[StillMcfuu]

Blizzard’s second quarter segment revenue and operating income were lower year-over-year but higher versus the first quarter. World of Warcraft net bookings declined versus a year-ago quarter that included the launch of Burning Crusade Classic, offsetting year-over-year growth for Hearthstone and the contribution from the June launch of Diablo Immortal.

It is widely reported that DI has brought in more than $100 million. Hearthstone had growth. This was offset by a decline in WoW. So WoW lost more than $100 million last quarter? And this quarter was better than the last. How do the people running WoW keep their jobs?

DI launched in June and Qtr 2 ended in June, that 100m was reported last week or so, which means that probably at most 50m would be for June but likely less.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

It’s for sure a massive part of it. Unless we are going to think OW or Diablo III are somehow creating a shit load of revenue that they lost.

It’s without a doubt a major Part given that they don’t have TBC launching and the dark portal pass.

As to OW and the other games they seemingly had over 50M to lose in the same quarter of last year which I would say falls into a shut load of revenue to lose so who knows what else they had to lose.

[Lolites]

im sorry, did i miss some info?
bcs afaik we had numbers for activision blizzard, not blizard alone, or actualy WoW alone, can someone post those blizz only numbers with which OP counts?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Uuuh..WTF?

It means they had more subs then other modern expans 9 months in, so if modern is back to Wod that’s over 5M subs.

[vincink]

I'd love to return to the game but can't justify giving money to the new inverted Blizzard where ideology is king over creativity. I want good stories and experiences, not 72 genders at the character creation screen. So, I remain in the category contributing to WoW's declining subscription count.

[dacoolist]

The best part is that people sit back armchair warriahs acting like they quit wow because they suck - and instead of just playing some other game because nobody cared to begin with - they come on the forums as justification because of less money the company made from wow means anything at all: Stopit, you aren’t investing in activision blizz stonks and you’re not clever because you think the games decline is based on you not playing anymore.. nobody cares

[Eosia]

As someone that they pushed away from Retail by killing their spec off (RSV), I think the Dev's are crap, and just when I was ready to Sub again to play Classic, they can't keep their crap ideas out of it now either, IMO they (the Dev's) are a lost cause.

RSV = MM w/ Magic Damage. Get over it already. Quthe Mog... NEXT!

I never said that they didn't. But that doesn't really mean much because it doesn't change anything.
Knowing that the devs care about quality won't make Choregast any more enjoyable.

You said "they" without specifying... therefore you lumped them all in together. There's a former Blizzard developer who plays Fallout 76, or at least hangs out in that subreddit. They spilled the T about how things have changed over time with development there. Basically how it happens now is like this:

The WoW Team wants to develop Feature X. They estimate it would take a team of 25 developers 3 months to do to write it and do initial testing. Ion then goes to the powers over him and proposes it as the team decided. An accountant in on this meeting basically has the final say. In a circumstance like this, they might give him 10 developers and 8 weeks to do it. Which would explain a lot of this half-baked stuff we've seen lately.

The thing people are forgetting with Choregast is that it is another iteration of Island Expeditions just like how the Garrisons in WoD were an iteration of personal phasing that was introduced in Sunsong Ranch in MoP. And let's face it, there was a boat load of cognitive dissonance when it came to criticism of Torghast. First people complained it was too long, so Blizzard cuts a floor out of a full run sans Twisted Corridors. Then people complained that they were cutting out chances to get anima powers, etc.

Now could Blizzard have done better? Yes. Of course they could. But they were so focused on getting the tech to work and making the actual functioning of Torghast that they forgot things that would have made a ton of difference in getting us in there more and willingly. Things like cosmetic rewards, upgrade currency, etc. I don't mind the fact that legendary reagents were exclusively from Torghast, but that forces me to do it versus me going in there to get those reagents and walking out with a cool new armor transmog, mount, mini-pet, etc. They added some of that stuff later, yes, but it's randomly on vendors and you have to sacrifice getting powers in order to afford it. The guaranteed stuff was in Twisting Corridors which was like a double run. Not fun at all which is why it took me so long to do it.

[Somic]

It means they had more subs then other modern expans 9 months in, so if modern is back to Wod that’s over 5M subs.

That’s not how these calls work, they are going to make things sound like they are doing way way better than they are even if they do have real growth. If they had numbers even close to that you would hear them say something like “we hit record for mau we haven’t had in 6 years” or something.

They are comparing that number to the lowest sub count we have had for an expansion recently. And keep in mind we are comparing subs for one game compared to two, so this isn’t a good thing for retail sub numbers by any stretch of the imagination.

[kranur]

You said "they" without specifying... therefore you lumped them all in together.

Yes, them as in Blizzard. It doesn't make any difference to me if all the employees want to make a good game but their boss asks them to make a profitable one instead. Crap is crap, I don't get to play the intention of the developers, I get to play the actual released product.

[Dadwen]

RSV = MM w/ Magic Damage. Get over it already. Quthe Mog... NEXT!

I suppose if you just played the hunter class by smashing your face into the keyboard they all play the same....

[Relapses]

Kinda wish discussion of Blizzard's QRs was a restricted topic on this forum. Almost nobody uses the information from the QRs for anything other than weird ass guesses about the performance of WoW (despite none of the information being specific to it) or to support some impossibly shitty Bellular-tier "look at the numbers" take that nobody with higher than room temperature IQ would take seriously.

We aren't investors, this information is useless to us as consumers.

[MoanaLisa]

Just wait until the MSFT deal is done. Their quarterly reports are so broad that it's unlikely that you'll see any snippets of information about Blizzard at all.

Besides the importance of Blizzard in ATVI's report has been marginalized once they brought King on board. Candy Crush does more revenue by itself than ATVI titles and Blizzard combined. WoW is basically just a sliver in a pie chart and not nearly as important as fans (or non-fans) wish to make it.

The only thing that ATVI stockholders care about at this point is that the stock price not rise about the price MSFT offered for it. No one, I repeat, no one in the business of stock trading gives one shit about Blizzard's development decisions.

[Relapses]

Just wait until the MSFT deal is done. Their quarterly reports are so broad that it's unlikely that you'll see any snippets of information about Blizzard at all.

Is it bad that I think this would be a good thing?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

That’s not how these calls work, they are going to make things sound like they are doing way way better than they are even if they do have real growth. If they had numbers even close to that you would hear them say something like “we hit record for mau we haven’t had in 6 years” or something.

They are comparing that number to the lowest sub count we have had for an expansion recently. And keep in mind we are comparing subs for one game compared to two, so this isn’t a good thing for retail sub numbers by any stretch of the imagination.

They are comparing two games instead of one that’s true, but they aren’t comparing the lowest sub counts of other expans as they say “at this point after launch” so 3 Quarters in.

Q3 of last year was 3 Quarters into shadowlands launch (9months) if you compare that back to Wod they were still reporting subs 3 quarters in and that number was around 5.5M or some such, legion didn’t report numbers butt they said they were above Wod.

So ya SL would be behind other modern expans but wow as a whole would still be rather high on subs.

[Echo of Soul]

It means they had more subs then other modern expans 9 months in, so if modern is back to Wod that’s over 5M subs.

ROFL, you REALLY believe that don't you?? KEKW

[MoanaLisa]

Is it bad that I think this would be a good thing?

I think it would be a very good thing and ardently hope that this is how it works out. Financials are a distraction from what we're supposed to be talking about: the game. Besides what passes for financial "analysis" here is fairly ignorant.

Blizzard in total managed to do just about $1.8 billion in revenue for the last year. MSFT just reported $51.7 billion for the QUARTER. WoW is barely even a footnote in all of that.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

ROFL, you REALLY believe that don't you?? KEKW

If you can’t believe the investor reports you can’t believe any thing blizzard puts out and that’s what the investor reports say.

At best you could argue that “modern” goes back to legion instead of Wod but that wouldn’t actually change any thing as legion reported to do better then Wod even through it didn’t give exact numbers.