BfA Patch Speculation thread (8.3 and later).

[rda]

Not even WoD managed to see numbers sink that low, 4 million says hi, and then Legion hit with the 1:3 sales ratio holding firm. BfA sold record numbers to boot.

Record numbers for the first day of BFA come from the preorder.

What do you mean by the 1:3 sales ratio for Legion?

[Dracullus]

Record numbers for the first day of BFA come from the preorder.

What do you mean by the 1:3 sales ratio for Legion?

Pre-order/first day are the only numbers we know from every expac.

In Cata 3.3M pre-order - ~10M subs
In MoP 2.7M (I blame Kung Fu Panda) pre-order - ~10M subs
In WoD 3.3M pre-order - ~10M subs

In Legion 3.3M pre-order - no data about subs. We had two rumors though:

1) Interview for polish magazine - Blizzard step in and said it's not official data, but we don't know if it was because numbers was different than real or they didn't want start reporting subs again (because they expected drop, maybe even sharper than WoD, since game is 2 years older).

2) I'm too lazy to search for specific quote, but on PAX (where they revealed 7.1 content and mission table app) one dev said that sub numbers are on par with best years. But as I said, my memory is cloudy about this.

In BfA we have 3.4M pre-order and completely radio silence about sub number. It's not strange that people estimate it on 10 million. Many people return every two years and stay only for 3 weeks.

(That's why I have theory that either Acti-Blizz or bosses in Blizzard demanded from devs to make expansions every year, and WoD was big "fuck you" from them - since then no one is talking about 1 year expacs and we have healthy 4 season/3 major patches schedule.)

[Queen of Hamsters]

Pre-order/first day are the only numbers we know from every expac.

In Cata 3.3M pre-order - ~10M subs
In MoP 2.7M (I blame Kung Fu Panda) pre-order - ~10M subs
In WoD 3.3M pre-order - ~10M subs

In Legion 3.3M pre-order - no data about subs. We had two rumors though:

1) Interview for polish magazine - Blizzard step in and said it's not official data, but we don't know if it was because numbers was different than real or they didn't want start reporting subs again (because they expected drop, maybe even sharper than WoD, since game is 2 years older).

2) I'm too lazy to search for specific quote, but on PAX (where they revealed 7.1 content and mission table app) one dev said that sub numbers are on par with best years. But as I said, my memory is cloudy about this.

In BfA we have 3.4M pre-order and completely radio silence about sub number. It's not strange that people estimate it on 10 million. Many people return every two years and stay only for 3 weeks.

Not to mention that even a divisive expansion like MoP kept 5 million players, and that was during 14 months of drought.
Meanwhile BfA sold MORE than MoP, isn't even halfway over, and has had more content added in the time it's been out, and some would like to pretend that it has 1.7 million subs across all regions...?

Yeah, no. That's just too damned void of logic. 5-7 million across all regions combined, is far more consistent with history and makes far more sense.

[TheFirstOnes]

Am I the only one who'd love to see a mini series next expansion, where it shows the rise of the Pantheon, and the fall of Sargeras, and why the Void's such a massive threat, but in a Lords of War style?

That's be fucking amazing. Seeing Sargeras create the Legion, demolish the Titan Pantheon, and understand the Void Lords and their Lovecraftian nature would be beautiful and add far more depth to the Satanic badass.

[Nyel]

The game is insanely active for sure. I was expecting at least Incursions to lose participation, but even during the very final 30 minutes, the zones are teeming.

5-7 million subs makes sense, considering we know that MoP held 5 million despite a 14 month drought, thanks to the content released. Legion probs held even more than that between 7.3 and 8.0.

"tEh GaeM iS at 1.7 miLLiON SuBs LUl" yeah... No. This is World of Warcraft. Not even WoD managed to see numbers sink that low, 4 million says hi, and then Legion hit with the 1:3 sales ratio holding firm. BfA sold record numbers to boot.

5-7 million subs makes absolutely no sense based on Blizzard's financial results from this year. 1.7 might be low but anything above 3-4 million sounds like a major stretch based on how poorly they perform this year when it comes to revenue, profit, margin and MAUs.

Not to mention that even a divisive expansion like MoP kept 5 million players, and that was during 14 months of drought.
Meanwhile BfA sold MORE than MoP, isn't even halfway over, and has had more content added in the time it's been out, and some would like to pretend that it has 1.7 million subs across all regions...?

Yeah, no. That's just too damned void of logic. 5-7 million across all regions combined, is far more consistent with history and makes far more sense.

BfA sold more than MoP... what? MoP had official sub numbers, BfA doesn't. Sold more in 24h hours or whatever the record is, that means nothing. Pretty sure BfA is not outperforming MoP in any regard. And BfA has had more content added than MoP? Yeah yeah whatever.

[TheFirstOnes]

I'd like to assume that the game itself is at around 1.9-2.4 Million subs.

[Sondrelk]

Am I the only one who'd love to see a mini series next expansion, where it shows the rise of the Pantheon, and the fall of Sargeras, and why the Void's such a massive threat, but in a Lords of War style?

That's be fucking amazing. Seeing Sargeras create the Legion, demolish the Titan Pantheon, and understand the Void Lords and their Lovecraftian nature would be beautiful and add far more depth to the Satanic badass.

It would be pretty great. Ideally i would love one for Titans in general, say, how Sargeras was born. Then a second from the perspective of Highkeeper Ra, telling about the fall of the Black empire. Then a final one from the perspective of N'zoth. Telling of how he ended up being known as teh schemer of the Old gods.

[huth]

I checked both clips and the placement of WoW as rivaling Steam's top 1-2-3 by concurrent players does indeed mean peaks of something like 700k. I don't think they have that many concurrent players though. This is just way too good. In fact, I doubt WoW had 700k concurrent players even during WotLK.

"The empirical numbers don't agree with my personal biases, therefore they must be wrong".

That's not an argument, that's a load of cow pies.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

"The empirical numbers don't agree with my personal biases, therefore they must be wrong".

That's not an argument, that's a load of cow pies.

LOL thats insane on his part but w/e I'm used to it.



OT: Blizzard still needs to answer if Titans leave a planet behind after their birth or not at all. If it does...well that just adds a lot of expansion ideas(Imagine going to the world Sargeras was born in).

[rda]

"The empirical numbers don't agree with my personal biases, therefore they must be wrong".

That's not an argument, that's a load of cow pies.

I doubt WoW had 700k concurrent players even during WotLK because that's high even for 10 million for a sub-based game.

[FlubberPuddy]

that is not "shades of black, is just dark red, onyxian drake is black, the elder drakes are black, this one is not

my green drake is green, and mustard yellow give the feels of "bronze looking", the problem is they being red with the red dragonflight being a thing

I mean if you want to be arbitrary like that it's fine. Don't gotta apologize for your OCD, was pointing out a concept in case you might've not known.

- - - Updated - - -

No one is ever going to confuse a black drake for a red one.

Realistically this is all that matters.

[rda]

Pre-order/first day are the only numbers we know from every expac.

In Cata 3.3M pre-order - ~10M subs
In MoP 2.7M (I blame Kung Fu Panda) pre-order - ~10M subs
In WoD 3.3M pre-order - ~10M subs

In Legion 3.3M pre-order - no data about subs. We had two rumors though:

1) Interview for polish magazine - Blizzard step in and said it's not official data, but we don't know if it was because numbers was different than real or they didn't want start reporting subs again (because they expected drop, maybe even sharper than WoD, since game is 2 years older).

2) I'm too lazy to search for specific quote, but on PAX (where they revealed 7.1 content and mission table app) one dev said that sub numbers are on par with best years. But as I said, my memory is cloudy about this.

In BfA we have 3.4M pre-order and completely radio silence about sub number. It's not strange that people estimate it on 10 million. Many people return every two years and stay only for 3 weeks.

(That's why I have theory that either Acti-Blizz or bosses in Blizzard demanded from devs to make expansions every year, and WoD was big "fuck you" from them - since then no one is talking about 1 year expacs and we have healthy 4 season/3 major patches schedule.)

Preorders change the ratios first day sales translate into subsequent sub numbers. The longer and better the preorder, the lower the ratio.

I don't know why are we talking the piece of the info in the Polish magazine which Blizzard specifically denied. If it's OK to take on board numbers which Blizzard specifically deny, and even theorize that perhaps the numbers are true and Blizzard just deny them in order to not talk about the subs, then why not take the number for the WA leak that reported 1.7 million subs. Blizzard denied that, too. In fact, the WA leak has more reasons to be true than the bogus figure from the interview because the WA leak has way more to it than just the interviewer allegedly saying stuff (which was then denied).

The dev at PAX talking about the sub numbers being on par said that they were on par to a year ago and ended up comparing the start of Legion with the mid-way drought of WoD. Or maybe you meant something other phrase, but nothing I saw was good, it was always trash like the comparison I mentioned where current numbers are trying to look much better than they really are.

[Dracullus]

LOL thats insane on his part but w/e I'm used to it.

Yeah, it's always funny to see people with agenda trying bend reality to their opinions. I can speculate what numbers could be on launch, since we had partial data. But now? It's really impossible to know.

I could argue that subs must be lower than Legion, since we have more store mounts. But on the other hand they could release less store things in Legion to repair damaged reputation after WoD. We don't know what % is money from subs and what % from services - so any financial data are useless.

You can see lot of people on crowded server, you can see none on dead one. They can't merge them, they need this server space every two years (unlike Classic, which will never got spike as big as launch, so they must plan more carefully). Also they are people that like to play on "dead" servers, farming rare spawns and all that shit.

OT: Blizzard still needs to answer if Titans leave a planet behind after their birth or not at all. If it does...well that just adds a lot of expansion ideas(Imagine going to the world Sargeras was born in).

I don't think planet is destroyed, we would rather see it in cinematic.

Btw, it would be awesome to have Broken as Draenei AR (instead of redundant Lightforged) - quest could be Velen traveling to Argus via dying portal to grab remnants of Krokuun people.

[FlubberPuddy]

OT: Blizzard still needs to answer if Titans leave a planet behind after their birth or not at all. If it does...well that just adds a lot of expansion ideas(Imagine going to the world Sargeras was born in).

Aren't they literally the worlds themselves transformed into titan beings when awake? At least that's what I recall from Chronicles 1. Although their description by Chronicles and how they're depicted in-game doesn't match up at all.

"Described as living worlds, their bodies are covered in mountain peaks and rivers, their forms wrapped in cloaks of stardust and their eyes shining like brilliant stars.[5]"

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Titan

Sounds like they ARE the planet.

[huth]

I doubt WoW had 700k concurrent players even during WotLK because that's high even for 10 million for a sub-based game.

That'd be 7% of the total playerbase playing at once. Doesn't sound all that unrealistic.

[Dracullus]

Preorders change the ratios first day sales translate into subsequent sub numbers. The longer and better the preorder, the lower the ratio.

I don't know why are we talking the piece of the info in the Polish magazine which Blizzard specifically denied. If it's OK to take on board numbers which Blizzard specifically deny, and even theorize that perhaps the numbers are true and Blizzard just deny them in order to not talk about the subs, then why not take the number for the WA leak that reported 1.7 million subs. Blizzard denied that, too. In fact, the WA leak has more reasons to be true than the bogus figure from the interview because the WA leak has way more to it than just the interviewer allegedly saying stuff (which was then denied).

The dev at PAX talking about the sub numbers being on par said that they were on par to a year ago and ended up comparing the start of Legion with the mid-way drought of WoD. Or maybe you meant something other phrase, but nothing I saw was good, it was always trash like the comparison I mentioned where current numbers are trying to look much better than they really are.

Now you made me do stuff. Are you proud of yourself?



Thankfully it's pretty early, around 2'30''

"we had triple check our numbers, because it's the highest they've been in recent memory, several years for sure"

Now I'm expecting lot of words when you try to convince yourse.. I mean me that he was comparing numbers to mid WoD. Or just simply tell he's lying he's just evil Blizz corpo man. ;D

[formerShandalay]

Aren't they literally the worlds themselves transformed into titan beings when awake? At least that's what I recall from Chronicles 1. Although their description by Chronicles and how they're depicted in-game doesn't match up at all.

"Described as living worlds, their bodies are covered in mountain peaks and rivers, their forms wrapped in cloaks of stardust and their eyes shining like brilliant stars.[5]"

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Titan

Sounds like they ARE the planet.

The only one from the original Pantheon who still has his body is Sargeras. The others cannot be depicted in their actual 'worldlike' forms, because they were destroyed by Sargeras. What we saw is only their spirits or souls around which the worlds formed.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Aren't they literally the worlds themselves transformed into titan beings when awake? At least that's what I recall from Chronicles 1. Although their description by Chronicles and how they're depicted in-game doesn't match up at all.

"Described as living worlds, their bodies are covered in mountain peaks and rivers, their forms wrapped in cloaks of stardust and their eyes shining like brilliant stars.[5]"

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Titan

Sounds like they ARE the planet.

Yeah the description is very...cosmic almost like there is active things going on their bodies visually but as we saw with Sargeras not so much now granted Blizzard probably wasn't thinking of it or it would be too much detail to focus on or something like that. Like I said if planets are left behind, I'd be interested in visiting the left over world, heck it might be resonant to whats going on to said Titan(Sargeras's world would be more fiery Reddish instead of Fel due to his appearence).

The only one from the original Pantheon who still has his body is Sargeras. The others cannot be depicted in their actual 'worldlike' forms, because they were destroyed by Sargeras. What we saw is only their spirits or souls around which the worlds formed.

Only way I could see the "Looking worldly" is...their back has whatever lands were on the planet are on the back. If I try to think hard...I just don't get it.

[huth]

Aren't they literally the worlds themselves transformed into titan beings when awake? At least that's what I recall from Chronicles 1. Although their description by Chronicles and how they're depicted in-game doesn't match up at all.

If they were actually depicted as described, you'd be talking to a tiny fragment of a toe, because that's all that would fit on the screen.

[ExiHext]

OT: Blizzard still needs to answer if Titans leave a planet behind after their birth or not at all. If it does...well that just adds a lot of expansion ideas(Imagine going to the world Sargeras was born in).

Not sure about that, but I would assume, they leave the planet intact. Can't imagine the other titans being that sadistic to nourish (intelligent) life on a dormant one just to see everything extinguished when they "hatch". Unless they transport everyone and everything to another inahbitable homeworld.