February 7: Blizzard Conference Call

[Deleted]

Easily a loss in NA/EU. However, they could have "gained" some in China so the overall number is hard to estimate.

[But I Hate You All]

-Record profits
-Subs back to pre mop numbers maybe 500k less
-The fanbois saying it don't matter we have x number of players still
-X dollar tax break from red cross pet

[Deleted]

Should be fairly stable - holiday season, they put out a patch, and a big marketing campaign*.

Then again, the last figure was right after the xpac launched, so you have the drop from people who tried it and didn't like it. Maybe a 400k drop then.

* I was watching the football on some internet feed of a random Polish sports channel a few weeks ago, and there were Pandaria adverts in like EVERY break.

[Leslie]

I don't really care about subscription numbers, but I feel Blizzard are content with the way things are. I feel this way because the last time things started to look bad, they gave their players so much stuff. Free Diablo for a 1-year pass, LFR, transmog, and pet battles and CRZ with the release of MOP. The only things they give now is quicker content and good communication. The latter things are not groundbreaking like the former stuff, but Blizzard does it to retain current subscribers.

That's why I think sub numbers will have no change. They're not giving anything groundbreaking, and they are trying to improve the game. I'm not familiar with Chinese culture, but if they like to be pandered, then total subs might even have increased.

If there is an increase in subs, then this will be good news. People like mvallas will see this as a sign that things have improved, and they might resub.

But I really wish Blizzard would make the Chinese subscription model universal. I don't think paying $15 a month is bad, but I just want to play for a bit and only pay for that small amount of time.

[Skorpionss]

200-500k sub drop. Possibly more due to MoP not being released during the Christmas season (meaning players would be anxious for other games around that time).

Not to mention I believe CRZ still is a hated problem, at least for levelers - not the people in Pandaria.

maybe by newbies that came in after lfg and expected to see no1 leveling ever... to me the world feels like vanilla/tbc again and it's fucking awesome.

[Wildmoon]

the problem is, they havent invented anything worth note since wrath.

bc was somewhat new and innovative

wrath had some inventive aspects

cata-garbage
mop-more garbage

take a look at the population on private servers, there's tons of bc and wrath private servers completely packed with people. the cata private servers are a ghostland, and the mop ones will be the same.

bc was the golden age, and wrath was the peak>fall>decline.

all the rest is B-team material, at best... yet millions still fall for it... quite perplexing; i blame guilt/denial...

WotLK was pretty garbage compare to MoP.

[BenBos]

maybe by newbies that came in after lfg and expected to see no1 leveling ever... to me the world feels like vanilla/tbc again and it's fucking awesome.

I agree about the benifits of a populated world in leveling zones.

But in this time of its life cycle WOW is about returning players or fans still playing. I think really "new" players is a small minority.

However: the few (non representative) tracking tools in the WEST show there is a 10% more players activity than this time last year (10.2 M) and a whopping 30% more than last summer (9.1 M). The huge "bump" for 3 weeks after launch is normal, since everyone plays for 10 hours a day to level and get attuned asap. Afterwards it is the normal play and that play is telling an UPWARDS trend on a year to year basis.

Also the huge dip in May/June (9.1 M subs) was clearly due to the 10.000.000+ sales of D3 in that period. SW TOR and GW2 had clearly far less influence. Normal as their sale numbers were much lower and D3 is a Blizzard product.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weekly...hp?serverid=-1

If China was stable we will see a status quo or a small gain; if China gained subs, we will see a massive gain.

I still think though that even if WOW would go up to 10.5M+, Morhaime will flatten this progress to "more than 10M subs" as to equalise the next quarters.

Lower subs compared to early 2012 is really out of the question when you see this trend (in the link above), unless China would really dislike the Asian theme...

[Deleted]

I think the subscription levels will stay pretty stable, maybe with a small 100k +/- difference globally.

Whilst I think the asian/Chinese player base will probably grow, I am far more interested to see what happens to the western subscriber base. My guess would be that the US player base will remain stable, but I think the EU player base could very well shrink by a fair margin. Hopefully any reduction to the EU player base will be balanced by an increase in Chinese players.

[BenBos]

I think the subscription levels will stay pretty stable, maybe with a small 100k +/- difference globally.

Whilst I think the asian/Chinese player base will probably grow, I am far more interested to see what happens to the western subscriber base. My guess would be that the US player base will remain stable, but I think the EU player base could very well shrink by a fair margin. Hopefully any reduction to the EU player base will be balanced by an increase in Chinese players.

Curious that you write this when just above your post I answered it with the following link for western play.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weekly...hp?serverid=-1 On a year to year basis, there is no doubt WOW is at least stable or gained some.

Anything (from 10M subs to anything above) would be a HUGE blow to any WOW haters btw, as 2012 was THE year of the super WOW killer games being published and pushed...and went free to play ...

[Jeleh]

Hell..and even if the gained 3 million subs, we will hear the old "Uh, but they lie and fake numbers".

They can't fake the numbers it's audited and a serious criminal offense to lie to investors. They do however "pad" the numbers with well placed marketing schemes to make the game seem healthier than it may actually be:

Annual pass
New RAF mounts timed just in time to boost quarterly profits and subscriber numbers.
Heavily discounted box sets aimed at the same inflation at an appropriate time.

Some people such as myself care about these practices and the numbers simply because of the effect it has on the game overall. I quit back in January because my realm is dead and played just two weeks of MOP before the terrible realm made me realize it was wasting my money.

My playstyle is linked to using all my alts professions to play AH and build cash and buy anything I wish, I love pushing for max dps and would burn flasks and potions even in dungeons just to feel awesome. I loved competing either with myself or others to try get the most out of my characters, it became even more important when my degree meant that I had to drop out of hardcore raiding.

Being on a dead realm killed that for me and many other aspects of the game. Trollbane-EU the auction house on some days would be 50-75% of my own listings, you cant even pug the moat basic raids (Not played since Jan so back then it was BH you couldn't do even once weekly let alone on my 8 active alts.) The auction house has 0 raw materials, no one to sell to, no one to buy from, with about two active guilds horde side, of which only one is capable of some heroic farm.

Now as I said my play style ties into all my alts and having an active community, when sub numbers are padded and band-aids like CRZ seen as the best way for player interaction, the issues which stopped me, and most likely the majority of my realm from playing are not fixed.

[Nerraw]

They can't fake the numbers it's audited and a serious criminal offense to lie to investors.

That has never stopped the hardcore whiners from blaming them for faking the numbers anyway.

[BenBos]

"

While we are at it..how does one "take a look" at private servers? I would love to see data on them, how many "tons" of them are and what number "completely packed" represents. Are we talking thousand people? 10 000? A Million? Are these servers anything like TBC or do they have operators who can keel over bosses for you and shower you in items.?

Private servers are really not interesting to play these days because the present day WOW can't be played fully without its CROSS server mechanics.

Not a single server in the world (frankly single realm play is limited to 4K players MAX) can open up 100+ dungeons, 50+ Raids, 80 bracket BG's and 100+ world zones.


To populate ALL content, ALL levels and get ALL zones/instances played in this time of WOW's life ... you really need 5 to 10 linked FULL servers as a whole ...

... Of course that's the reason why Blizzard created cross server play for BG's in 2006, for dungeons in 2009, for Raiding 2010 and even for open world zonal play in 2012.

No one in his right mind would even play on such things as AV simply won't open ... ever.

Also the idiots complaining about cross server game play are really VERY shortsighted.

Seamless CRZ is the best technique that ever happened for ANY MMORPG in the future developments in MMO play.

No longer will we have a fixed 'limit" of players due to some single server capacity. The fact Blizzard could even introduce such a marvellous technique of cross server play - NOT only in instances - but also in seamless open world play- like Pet Battles and ZONE leveling - is frankly a HUGE achievement technically on a Legacy system.

For once grow up by attacking this cross server seamless open word play: it is the start of a complete new era in MMORPG play: the era in which single realm artificial population limits are irrelevant within just a couple of years.

[Immitis]

i hope the numbers stay the same. i dont want them to go up i dont want them to go down.

when numbers stay the same the trolls pretty much shut up.

when it goes down "SEE SEE TEH GAIME IZ BAD ALL US IS LEAVIN IN AMERICA AND EU CUZ BC WAS BES"

when it goes up "PFFFFFFTTT WHO CARES EVEREHWON ALRADY KNOWZ THAT 98% OF ALL SUBS IS FRUM CHINER WHERE THEY PAY ONE HAMSTER AND CAN PLAY FOAR A WHOLE YEAR"

[Jeleh]

That has never stopped the hardcore whiners from blaming them for faking the numbers anyway.

You simply misinterpret their ability to communicate regarding the padding via marketing schemes is all.

[Deleted]

I personally rate it judging by when stuff like this happens:

- New MMO gets released, atleast 400k subs lost
- WoW has been out to long without updates, lost of 500k
- The patch we are currently in is too amazing, 300 subs gained

In the end when they reveal their numbers, I can see if I was right :P

Where did you get those numbers from, dice roll?

[BenBos]

You simply misinterpret their ability to communicate regarding the padding via marketing schemes is all.

As ALL information given to the stock holders MUST pass an audit of at least 3 INDEPENDANT auditors in order to comply to the regulations of Wall Street, I think anyone stating they can pad much doesn't know what he is talking about. As an interesting note, one of these independant auditors for Blizzard is ... The Deutsche Bank...

Certainly not in the bookkeeping part but even in the wording of the conference. False information given to stock holders is a serious federal crime.

Of course Morhaime is free to speak about "more then X" or "LESS than X", but X better be documented or he hangs after a complaint.

That's one of the reasons they document their definition of what is a subscriber. A LOT of other companies are not even stock rated (like the makers of Rift) and can say whatever they want. PUBLIC Stock rated companies can't do that. That's why EA (also stock rated) no longer mentions ANY number of subscriptions for SW TOR.

[Huehuecoyotl]

*snip*

oh look, its the BenBos standard response to any post, in any topic.

i have to tell you this, and it may upset you.....it doesnt matter how many times you say something, it doesnt make it true.

speaking personally, i dont care about CRZ. the only thing i noticed about it was that it made my game freeze up as i crossed zones (something that you, hilariously, blamed on me not having an SSD). it doesnt matter if the zones are suddenly full of people from other realms, if it is still completely empty of threat and gameplay. on rails zone questing and toothless mobs creates an experience that drove me away from the game. the only question is how many other people are being driven away as well.

[Immitis]

oh look, its the BenBos standard response to any post, in any topic.

i have to tell you this, and it may upset you.....it doesnt matter how many times you say something, it doesnt make it true.

speaking personally, i dont care about CRZ. the only thing i noticed about it was that it made my game freeze up as i crossed zones (something that you, hilariously, blamed on me not having an SSD). it doesnt matter if the zones are suddenly full of people from other realms, if it is still completely empty of threat and gameplay. on rails zone questing and toothless mobs creates an experience that drove me away from the game. the only question is how many other people are being driven away as well.

your game froze up O_o how bad is your computer? i sometimes play wow on a computer from 2003 and even that doesnt freeze up when crossing cross realm zones O-O

[Nerraw]

You simply misinterpret their ability to communicate regarding the padding via marketing schemes is all.

Be that as it may, the reported subscriber numbers are still the actual subscriber numbers at the end of the previous quarter.

[Huehuecoyotl]

your game froze up O_o how bad is your computer? i sometimes play wow on a computer from 2003 and even that doesnt freeze up when crossing cross realm zones O-O

my computer is fine. its modern. its got a decent spec processor and graphic card. it would still just stop for a few seconds when i crossed into a CRZ. from what i have read, i wasnt alone in experiencing that.