Activision Blizzard Earnings Call, WoW Classic Character Limit, Soul Cleave Thoughts

[Osiris]

Activision Blizzard Earnings Call
The quarterly Activision Blizzard earnings call was today:

• Blizzard had 32M MAUs in the quarter, down from 35M last quarter.
• Activision Blizzard plans to increase investment in their biggest internal franchises.
• They will continue investing in platform expansion on PC and mobile and new geographies.
• Activision Blizzard continues to enhance their leadership position in esports.
• The Overwatch League viewership continues to grow, watch hours for the second season to date are over 30% higher than in the first season.
• Hearthstone has a new single player PvE experience launching this month, with more content than any other Hearthstone PvE experience.
• City-based Call of Duty league franchises are in demand.
• First five Call of Duty teams were sold to owners in Atlanta, Dallas, New York, Paris and Toronto.
• Activision Blizzard delivered approximately $800 million of in-game net bookings in the first quarter.

WoW Classic Character Limit

How many characters can we create in Classic?

In WoW Classic, you’ll have the following character limits per WoW account:

• A maximum of 10 characters per WoW Classic realm
• A maximum of 50 characters across all of the WoW Classic realms in your region
• Only one faction per realm on PvP realms
• No overlap or regard with the character limits in Battle for Azeroth

You’ll be able to have up to 50 Battle for Azeroth characters and up to 50 WoW Classic characters at the same time.

Soul Cleave Thoughts

We’re testing an increase to Soul Cleave damage in the Rise of Azshara PTR, and we haven’t yet fully written developers’ notes on it. I want to give a little context for it, since this is an issue that relates to many class changes.

A common reaction to buffing a certain spell or talent is “you’re buffing something we don’t use much.” That is, when if we buff a talent that’s not the “best” or buff an ability that’s currently a small part of the rotation, it’s not a large increase to total damage. Sometimes the goal of a buff is to increase the total DPS of a spec, and sometimes it’s to better internally balance something about the rotation or talents. In the former case, we usually buff a slate of prominent spells. In the latter, by definition, we’re buffing something that’s not being used heavily or is being eclipsed by other spells.

Currently, Spirit Bomb is very popular and causes a rotation where you want to consume nearly every Fragment with Spirit Bomb rather than in any other way. This pushes Soul Cleave pretty far down in value. This is an issue with Spirit Bomb as a talent, but our intent isn’t to upend this commonly-used playstyle right now. A buff to Soul Cleave makes the button compete a little better in between Spirit Bombs, even at the cost of consuming some Fragments that otherwise would have gone into Spirit Bomb. It’s also a side benefit that this is a straightforward buff for people playing talents other than Spirit Bomb.

[Trmp]

Let's go already

[swisscheese]

Wonder how much that free play time affected the MAU

[Unholyground]

They could fix the issue by making spirit bomb require nothing and just be a cooldown that generates a few soul fragments and adds the leech debuff. Pretty simple to fix to be honest.

[Justpassing]

Oh boy here we go.

[dope_danny]

I'm sure the knee jerk response would be "3 million people stopped playing their games, that must all be from WoW!" and given BfA's launch sales no doubt a chunk probably is but you know another big chunk of that is going to be Black Ops 4. That game really does look like the cawadoody bubble has burst.

[Nurasu]

Wonder how much that free play time affected the MAU

Yeah, all they did was see a drop coming and use the free time to manipulate their report to investors.

[McNeil]

This seems very barebones for an earnings call. Happy to read the Classic news though.

[Orby]

Lot's of loss in interest in Blizzard games, maybe it;s time for a new game so they can get some renewed growing interest

[Orby]

I mean the only thing they can dip into now is the BR fad.

pray to jebus that doesn't happen lol

[Orby]

It will. They will chase whatever the current fad is although again they would be quite late to the BR genre and they are gonna be doubling down hard on mobile especially when they've put their best devs (my condolences) on them.

It's be like heroes of the Storm but a BR game with Blizzard characters.... boy I cannot wait to play as Arthas

[SirCowdog]

I'm sure the knee jerk response would be "3 million people stopped playing their games, that must all be from WoW!" and given BfA's launch sales no doubt a chunk probably is but you know another big chunk of that is going to be Black Ops 4. That game really does look like the cawadoody bubble has burst.

Probably a fair amount of refugees from their IPs they announced they're abandoning, like Hearthstone, HotS, and Diablo. They'll make some of that back up for a bit after Diablo Immortal launches in china, but that won't last with the way mobile gamers hope from game to game.

[crusadernero]

Wonder what they are working on with games.

PLEASE not mobile and PLEASE not BR

[ryanmahaffe]

Lot's of loss in interest in Blizzard games, maybe it;s time for a new game so they can get some renewed growing interest

They are doing that in the cheap way
-mobile diablo game
-Wow: classic
-Warcraft 3: remastered

All of these will increase MAUs by a respectable margin.

[Skroe]

MAU is such a delightfully obscure and bullshit metric, lol.


Looking forward to the next Hearthstone freebie so I can do my thrice-a-year log-in to collect it, and boost their MAU for that by one.

[Nurasu]

I'm sure the knee jerk response would be "3 million people stopped playing their games, that must all be from WoW!" and given BfA's launch sales no doubt a chunk probably is but you know another big chunk of that is going to be Black Ops 4. That game really does look like the cawadoody bubble has burst.

Activision is a separate number. The 32 is just Blizzard titles, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot were from hearthstone.

[dope_danny]

Activision is a separate number. The 32 is just Blizzard titles, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot were from hearthstone.

sheeeeyit. well then yeah if overwatch is 'stable' then its hearthstone and WoW. All their other games are dead and dead games dont decline in user numbers in the millions.

[crusadernero]

They are doing that in the cheap way
-mobile diablo game
-Wow: classic
-Warcraft 3: remastered

All of these will increase MAUs by a respectable margin.

This is the only thing we are going to get in 2019. Dont have my hopes high for 2020 either. Probably some more mobile shite and ofc a wow xpac.

Beyond that, I doubt Blizzard will give us something huge.

[oathy]

Still believe at blizzcon they will announce wow on console.

[trapmaster]

Mobile diablo = no, fuck that.... holy shit it's a trap

Wow classic= I don't mind but we have to ask ourselves a question... "Will i still be playing it till i get bored?"

Warcraft 3 remaster: No doubt in my mind i would be playing this way much more than wow combined total play time. Something better than BFA