Q3 Earnings Call: 33M MAUs and WoW doing better than ever

[Big Thanks]

Biggest quarterly sub spike in the frachise history. So WoW is definitely (still) not dying.

More information if you want to update de OP

MAU's of all Blizzard

2016
Q1: 26M
Q2: 33M (Overwatch Launch)
Q3: 42M (Legion Launch)
Q4: 36M

2017
Q1: 41M
Q2: 46M (Peak of Overwatch & Hearthstone)
Q3: 42M
Q4: 40M

2018
Q1: 38M
Q2: 37M
Q3: 37M (BfA Launch)
Q4: 35M

2019
Q1: 32M
Q2: 32M
Q3: 33M

[TwoMana]

2. King's MAU numbers (247 million) swamp everything else so that a million here or there up or down is relatively meaningless for the ATVI stock investor.

Yep - and looking at their MAUs from that perspective is also interesting - that's a pretty grim trend. Blizzard MAU fluctuation probably doesn't get much air-time in boardroom "customer deep engagement" discussions (or at investor analytics discussions).

2016
Q1: 463M
Q2: 409M
Q3: 394M
Q4: 355M

2017
Q1: 342M
Q2: 314M
Q3: 293M
Q4: 290M

2018
Q1: 285M
Q2: 270M
Q3: 262M
Q4: 268M

2019
Q1: 272M
Q2: 258M
Q3: 247M

[Trend]

Idk why you would invest in ATVI when there are so many other stable companies out there that do important things like you know...advance science....

So you're saying that when Warren Buffett bought over $1B in Coca-Cola shares in 1988 he was wrong?

[Djaye]

logged into retail last night for the first time in a year or two. played about 10minutes. the game is so clustered and loud, it was like starting a hedge maze in the dead center.

went and logged into classic after to start leveling a warrior. i realized there is not a single aspect of retail that is appealing to me... besides bg's which we get in a few months.
blizz really screwed their prize pooch over the last 8 years or so. classic was the only answer to what was a dying MMO.
and yes, it was dying...

[Varitok]

Or you know, the average working class American who holds ATVI stock....

You honestly think working class people in the US have stocks nowadays? On top of that, enough to make anymore than a few hundred bucks by selling? What decade are we in? The 50's?

[notsouki]

What is dollar-cost averaging? I feel even dumber now because I thought they didn't gave dividends. I guess I had them mixed up with Tencent and never checked.

Keep buying whenever you can for a long long time, no matter the cost. And never selling.

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You honestly think working class people in the US have stocks nowadays? On top of that, enough to make anymore than a few hundred bucks by selling? What decade are we in? The 50's?

Smart working class people who realize we are in the greatest bull run ever. It's literally free money. If you're not buying stocks atm, I pity you :P

[darklogrus]

More information if you want to update de OP

MAU's of all Blizzard

2016
Q1: 26M
Q2: 33M (Overwatch Launch)
Q3: 42M (Legion Launch)
Q4: 36M

2017
Q1: 41M
Q2: 46M (Peak of Overwatch & Hearthstone)
Q3: 42M
Q4: 40M

2018
Q1: 38M
Q2: 37M
Q3: 37M (BfA Launch)
Q4: 35M

2019
Q1: 32M
Q2: 32M
Q3: 33M

MAU's is a skewed number when it refers to Blizzard. Its not actually unique people but just an overall of general log ins. So someone who logs on to 5 games from 1 unique user name is 5 different people to them and not 1. So 33m MAU looks a lot more appealing then 6.6m UMAU.

[Lane]

Definitely interested what changes there could be.

Remove WQs? Remove Paragon levels? Bring back costly respeccs? Remove flying? Put fewer mechanics on bosses? Increase exp needed to level? Remove LFG, LFR and maybe normal raid difficulty? Bring back 5 mans that only have one difficulty?

Ugh, I hope not. I resubbed for Classic, have never purchased BfA, but that doesn't mean I want retail to be like Classic. I mostly just wanted to play through the old world again since I hated the Cata changes.

[Morgaith]

Driven by Classic. Which is not at all a good sign for retail.

Sub gains due to classic means more people jumping back and forth from classic to retail. This is EXTEREMELY good for players AND blizzard since this shows that people actually want to support good gameplay instead of cash shop mounts and similar bs.

[unbound]

Biggest quarterly sub spike in the frachise history. So WoW is definitely (still) not dying.

lol

Wow.

It literally says that the really, really old version of WoW drove the increase in subs. That says a lot of bad things about Retail WoW...including strongly implying the Retail WoW is indeed dying.

Futhermore, the only real number provided (33 MAUs) is still down from past years and only marginally up from earlier this year.

1st Quarter 2017 - 41 MAUs
2nd Quarter 2017 - 46 MAUs
3rd Quarter 2017 - 42 MAUs
4th Quarter 2017 - 40 MAUs
1st Quarter 2018 - 38 MAUs
2nd Quarter 2018 - 37 MAUs
3rd Quarter 2018 - 37 MAUs
4th Quarter 2018 - 35 MAUs
1st Quarter 2019 - 32 MAUs
2nd Quarter 2019 - 32 MAUs
3rd Quarter 2019 - 33 MAUs

So, not really as strong of an indicator that WoW is doing great as you think.

[Beet]

I don't think this is relevant information unless you work at a hedge or at blizzard receiving options.

Oh it’s very relevant. It always had been. That’s why we’ve seen posts about sub numbers since forever except for when they started to tank and Blizz quit sharing them. Now we see that classic gave the biggest increase to WoW ever and that is so god damn hilarious to me. No matter what happens with classic now this is a HUGE success for Blizzard. Everyone could quit today and it will have been worth it for them. So that’s a good thing.

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Ugh, I hope not. I resubbed for Classic, have never purchased BfA, but that doesn't mean I want retail to be like Classic. I mostly just wanted to play through the old world again since I hated the Cata changes.

If you don’t play retail why would you hope not? It shouldn’t affect you at all.

I actually play both and I’d love to see Blizz go back to a mid WoW style for the game. WotLK was the peak time for the game. And for very good reason.

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Keep buying whenever you can for a long long time, no matter the cost. And never selling.

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Smart working class people who realize we are in the greatest bull run ever. It's literally free money. If you're not buying stocks atm, I pity you :P

Posts like yours make me want to get into it. I’ve never taken time to learn because it seems pretty hardcore. But I’ve got so much free time thanks to my current job so I might have to try to research the best way to dive in.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Driven by Classic. Which is not at all a good sign for retail.

Why wouldn’t it be a good sign? That’s a ton of money to put into the development of retail.

[Wyrt]

Why wouldn’t it be a good sign? That’s a ton of money to put into the development of retail.

As I said earlier, Retail costs a ton more than Classic and if it's Classic that's making the money then there's less incentive to put as much money into Retail.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

It does since retail costs a ton more to maintain with creating new content for it and all that. If all the profit is coming from classic then why bother making new content for retail?

While classic might be making a lot now it’s not a given that it will stay that way she keeping a steady flow of content going is a good way to always be turning a profit.

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As I said earlier, Retail costs a ton more than Classic and if it's Classic that's making the money then there's less incentive to put as much money into Retail.

Ah just missed it with my second reply.

[Hurtstone]

While classic might be making a lot now it’s not a given that it will stay that way she keeping a steady flow of content going is a good way to always be turning a profit.

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Ah just missed it with my second reply.

WoW is doing great ATM. Blizzard will have a big expansion or rehashed old expansion every year. The rehashed expansions are also driving subs with the phases. And don't forget the option for Blizzard to make new fresh realms in the future. Wow is a goldmine that will keep on giving for many years to come. I'm not playing much computer games as of late but i bought into ATVI heavily on the dip late 2018. ATVI up 25% since my buys and now 10% of my portfolio. I don't have much insight into king or CoD but people seems to pay those microtransactions from their asses so seems allright.

2019 classic
2020 shadowlands
2121 tbc
2122 retailsomething
2123 wotlk
2024 retailsomething

Patches, phases, reset realms, possible WoW2 in the future...

Wow is far from dead IMO, just a shitty game, and the average consumer loves shit.

[notsouki]

Posts like yours make me want to get into it. I’ve never taken time to learn because it seems pretty hardcore. But I’ve got so much free time thanks to my current job so I might have to try to research the best way to dive in.

It's not hardcore at all. Investing is actually very simple. Stock = ownership. Buy solid companies like Visa and Apple. Or buy index funds such as SPY. SPY is s collection of the top 500 companies and your money is almost evenly distributed. Keep buying whenever you can and don't ever sell. Check out Warren Buffet on Youtube and see how he does it. I also recommend any books by Peter Lynch.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

WoW is doing great ATM. Blizzard will have a big expansion or rehashed old expansion every year. The rehashed expansions are also driving subs with the phases. And don't forget the option for Blizzard to make new fresh realms in the future. Wow is a goldmine that will keep on giving for many years to come. I'm not playing much computer games as of late but i bought into ATVI heavily on the dip late 2018. ATVI up 25% since my buys and now 10% of my portfolio. I don't have much insight into king or CoD but people seems to pay those microtransactions from their asses so seems allright.

2019 classic
2020 shadowlands
2121 tbc
2122 retailsomething
2123 wotlk
2024 retailsomething

Patches, phases, reset realms, possible WoW2 in the future...

Wow is far from dead IMO, just a shitty game, and the average consumer loves shit.

Ya with the ability to put out classic stuff while also putting out new stuff they have A good thing going and no real reason to end one side of it.

[bullseyed]

I'm no expert but no new games in over three years (just expansions) is telling.

That when you own the title of most successful gaming company in world history you have no reason to create other games?

[Lolites]

logged into retail last night for the first time in a year or two. played about 10minutes. the game is so clustered and loud, it was like starting a hedge maze in the dead center.

went and logged into classic after to start leveling a warrior. i realized there is not a single aspect of retail that is appealing to me... besides bg's which we get in a few months.
blizz really screwed their prize pooch over the last 8 years or so. classic was the only answer to what was a dying MMO.
and yes, it was dying...

well, i guess if YOU dont like it it was dying, right, fuck anybody else
people claim wow is dying since fucking vanilla

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Don't wanna be mean against classic, but the MAU overall stayed the same.

Also 'biggest increase ever' doesn't mean anything. Is this in %?

So while the ususal increase is by -2% it now was by +1.5%?

This report doesn't say anything. If they would have written "The subs over all increased a lot" I would have said "Wow, classic was really worth the development time" but saying "The grow of wow was the biggest ever" is worth nothing.

well if we say other games did not bring any players (which i doubt) we can say classic brought 1m players that werent playing retail
funny how everyone was claiming that MILIONS of players who havent play wow in years returned for wow, but when we have first actual evidence suggesting otherwise they are quiet

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As I said earlier, Retail costs a ton more than Classic and if it's Classic that's making the money then there's less incentive to put as much money into Retail.

due to microtransactions and expansions retail make way more money than classic even if it had only like 1/5 of classic sub numbers...

[MoanaLisa]

That when you own the title of most successful gaming company in world history you have no reason to create other games?

In business that's a recipe for failure. It may take a longer or shorter period but more often than not businesses fail over just this.