Earnings Call - WoW Classic: Biggest Quarterly Increase in Subs in History

[McNeil]

So much for all these ''classic will fail'' posts. It might not be the perfect game but it feels a lot more fun to play than anything in BFA. So far I love the community interactions and having gear feel to actually matter. BFA feels so much more instanced and unsocial in comparison. I hope this succes will lead to TBC and WotLK.

[Doffen]

There's no world where Blizzard would have got away with recharging for Classic unless they decoupled it from the subscription service. It's an amusing what-if but the reason it didn't happen is plainly obvious.

(Two or three months of subscription time outweigh the cost of an expansion. Charging for expansions is just the cherry on top for Blizzard. Why do you think BfA was on sale for more than half off mere months after release?)

No, I get the sentiment, but it was just that, WHAT IF MAN??

I think it was a good decision(if it was on the table at all) to just have it on the same sub. Seems to work :P

[Gref]

Yeah, nostalgia is powerful, but it dies sooner or later. Classic servers are emptier day by day.

Even if that is so, so what? It is a fact blizzard got huge amounts of money, from classic. Period. THis is a fact. People left is completely irrelevant. Even 1 month of subscription is a huge boost. And that money is ultimately going to retail development. There is nothing to develop in classic. All is there. Recycle. But you gotta pump money into retail. You guys instead of shitting on classic, be grateful for it. There are people liking it, and willing to pay for it that ultimately goes to retail. Some of these people are going to play retail as well, boosting retail population too.

the arrogance, ignorance of retail is beyond my comprehension. I play retail mainly. Got to 55 in classic. And I am damn grateful to all those people playing classic. to keep the budget.

Retail has been losing subs left and right. THis is again a fact. Until when Blizzard can keep up producing expansion if their subs are continuously decreasing.
Suck it up and be grateful there are people playing classic and hope it does not die. It is a clear success for blizzard and for retail players. Actually you should go and play classic if you want to help your retail community.

[Arakakao]

the arrogance, ignorance of retail is beyond my comprehension.

Wrong. I don't play WoW anymore in any form, not even private servers.

[ZebrasRule]

World of Warcraft Classic is to thank for that, Blizzard should really learn more from it just like they said and bring more of it into retail!

good way to keep me away forever. Not everybody likes Classic.

Yes, Classic brought back many players. How many are playing now? Just about everybody I know who came back for Classic has quit or are quitting once their sub's out.

Will be very interesting to see the next report. This is all pre-Hong Kong controversy.

e: I'm no fan of retail either, neither BFA nor shadowlands. Sadly shadowlands hasn't impressed me and it looks like my dwindling interest in wow has just about died completely. SAD. Oh well, off to FFXIV (a vastly superior game)

[glowpipe]

You do realize that prices can vary due to currency?
Someone who's living in a 3rd world country would seriously struggle to buy something that costs 45€.

It's not like Blizzard turns that money down, product already made, might as well sell for a price for which people can buy it.



Random guess: The company that made Control doesn't pay as good as Blizzard.
And wages are the biggest slice of the piece when it comes to developing software.

Simply saying Company A made Product X for Z, then correlating this to Company B made Product Y for roughly Z is utter nonsense.

Sorry, but even toying around with numbers is just pure BS because you are building guesswork upon guesswork.

and you claiming classic making more money than retail is not guesswork ? insane one at that ?

you don't even need to play with numbers. We know that classic is only making money on subs. Retail expansions have the expansion license, subs, ingame store, character services and tokens. Just not happening. Blizzard will always focus on retail as their main game because that is where the money is at.

[Gref]

@Arakakao then thank you for your wonderful input on the topic.

[Zentail]

From personal experience, players have not come back to retail. I know of entire guild that have switched Classic with no intention of coming back any time soon. What would have been interesting would be to have had numbers of people who subscribed ONLY for Classic

See, my personal experience is opposite, though. I'm sure some people left my server, but my server somehow made it from low to now High population. I'm seeing more people on my server than I've seen in years.

[Relapses]

See, my personal experience is opposite, though. I'm sure some people left my server, but my server somehow made it from low to now High population. I'm seeing more people on my server than I've seen in years.

That's why these topics are always so heated. For every anecdotal "all my friends are playing Classic" there's at least one or two whose personal experience is the exact opposite. A lot of the time people insulate themselves from opposition viewpoints so a player who came back just for Classic might have a hard time understanding that not all people who resubbed for Classic did so only to play Classic. Similarly, a retail player who never played Classic or tried it and didn't like it might have a hard time believing there are players who only want to play Classic and have no interest in retail whatsoever.

At the end of the day, either of these players are benefiical to Blizzard since they're both paying the same subscription. It's only when you get people who insist their preferred version of the game become more important than the other that issues arise. Due to the nature of forums, you're more likely to encounter the vocal minority at either end of the spectrum so that's where the vitriol comes from.

[Kralljin]

and you claiming classic making more money than retail is not guesswork ? insane one at that ?

More money is not equal to more profitable.

A project where you invested 1M and got 2M out it is more profitable than one where you put in 10M and got 12M out of it.

Why? Because the former basically doubled its investment, whereas the latter merely gave you a 20% return.
Feel free to re read my posts, i've never claimed it made more money but when taking the development cost into account, it's obvious which of the two project was more profitable.

It just shows that Classic has yielded a far greater return than its initial investment, for that, you absolutely don't need any numbers.
And Blizzard will most likely pay attention why a 15 year old code that's just been retooled for their new server structure made such a huge splash.

Blizzard will always focus on retail as their main game because that is where the money is at.

This highlights a major issue with your mindset.
There is no choice between classic and retail neither for the player, nor Blizzard.
The player pays one sub and gets both, Blizzard hired a seperate team for Classic.

[Beefhammer]

World of Warcraft Classic is to thank for that, Blizzard should really learn more from it just like they said and bring more of it into retail!

Which, from what I have read engagement with classic has dropped tremendously since launch. Seems it was a bunch of nostalgia and people just checking it out.

- - - Updated - - -

What was that... no one wants Classic I thought?

dummies.

No one claimed that. The claim was it would not see long term retention of it's initial impact. Everyone and their mother knew tons would check it out, from the old school WoW players that were on private servers to people who just started in BfA who never experienced Vanilla.

Again, my old work buddy tells me his server is a relative ghost town compared to release week and spends much longer times trying to find dungeon groups than a month ago for level 60 dungeons. All anecdotal of course. But we knew engagement would fall off a cliff leaving only the true Vanilla fans and not everyone else just checking it out.

[glowpipe]

This highlights a major issue with your mindset.
There is no choice between classic and retail neither for the player, nor Blizzard.
The player pays one sub and gets both, Blizzard hired a seperate team for Classic.

But its the same budget, Wow. If resources is taken away from retail and more of it put into developing classic content or tbc wrath etc, we gonna get a even shittier retail game going forward.

And with your example.. Yeah, they doubled their investment. They spent 1 million and made 2. So 1 million in profit. Second example they spent 10 milliong and made 12. thats 2 million in profits. When did 2 million in profit become worse than only 1 ? Bottom line they made 2 million instead of 1. they made twice as much, even tho it was only 20% of the investment

[asrealo]

ATVI was down 3.21% today on the earnings call....ouch

The Chinese Market is closing down money making games from online games.
China fears young people are addicted to video games. Now it's imposing a curfew.

[stomination]

Remember, it was obvious Classic would result in a massive influx on players--there was no question there. The answers we haven't got that I am interested in are:

- How is Classic doing now (servers are becoming lower pops)?
- How it Retail doing now (servers are becoming higher pops, but leveled out and haven't changed for a few weeks now)?
- Obviously tons of players tried Classic and ended up on Retail. Similarly, plenty of Retail players went to Classic. How many of those first-classic players are not playing anymore and how many players from Classic ended up staying on retail and those who went to classic, how many went back to retail?

They dont gain subs from ppl already playing retail. The gain was all classic.

[LordVargK]

Would this be called the fallacy of narcissus?

I suppose you could see it that way if you want. It's just my personal prediction based on the feeling, that I'm not the only one who acted that way (and with that way I mean getting a cheaper 3 month subscription at the start of classic to be able to get the rewards for the anniversary event).
Nobody can tell the future, so i base my guess on my personal feeling. Call it narcisstic fallacy if you want; but it's only a fallacy if it doesn't end up being true

[jellmoo]

Serious question here; why would they have a panel on it at all?

Classic is a legacy game. The only game that's part of the legacy team that they had any announcement on at all was Heroes of the Storm. A game which they are basically doing a long sunset on as they put out various characters that the team has probably been working on for months while it winds down.

They didn't have a Starcraft announcement, a Diablo 3 announcement or even a WC3 Reforged announcement.

The purpose of Blizzcon is to say what's new and coming up. There's literally nothing new for Classic so why would they take valuable time to mention it more than in passing?

To be honest though I don't get either the idea that Retail and Classic are in competition with each other somehow or the fetishistic view that Classic is somehow enormously bigger than Retail or saving Retail.

As long as a single fee gets you access to both versions of the game they aren't in any form of competition. Doubly so given that Blizz no longer even looks or reports on subscribers but instead uses the MAU metric to report on overall company health.

Except Classic is a product released less than 3 months ago. It's still not fully rolled out. And the announcement here shows it be the single biggest WoW subscription driver ever. Why on earth wouldn't they have a panel of some sort on it? Why not do a simple Classic Q&A where they can interact with the fans? Get and give feedback. Engage with a passionate audience, one that is having a positive effect on revenue?

It's not a matter of Classic and Retail being in competition with one another. Nor is it saying that Classic is somehow bigger than retail. It's simply saying that the Classic product has proven itself worthy of some attention. At a Blizzcon where Blizzard was going in with a lot of bad PR, highlighting one of their few wins of the year and giving something back to that community might have been a good idea.

[Kralljin]

But its the same budget, Wow.

It isn't.
Simply because you get both for the same sub, doesn't mean Blizzard just sat down and decided to release classic without crunching any numbers on its profit.

And Classic most certainly did yield a profit, so that point is void.

If resources is taken away from retail and more of it put into developing classic content or tbc wrath etc, we gonna get a even shittier retail game going forward.

This is such an utterly uninformed statement.

Blizzard said that Classic is developed by a seperate team => No resource loss for retail.
Blizzard also said that most of the legwork is already done, so releasing TBC / Wotlk would require even less work than Classic.

[Vynestra]

After hours its down another 2%

Oh look we're talking about stock like we know what it all means xd.

[grandgato]

Except Classic is a product released less than 3 months ago. It's still not fully rolled out. And the announcement here shows it be the single biggest WoW subscription driver ever. Why on earth wouldn't they have a panel of some sort on it?

Space is limited, and they have 4 upcoming titles to talk about. I imagine that is the extent of why it didn't have it's own panel this year.

[jellmoo]

Space is limited, and they have 4 upcoming titles to talk about. I imagine that is the extent of why it didn't have it's own panel this year.

Except the Blizzcon schedule has quite a few open holes where they could have placed such a session.