Activision Blizzard Q3 2021 Investor Call, Jen Oneal Leaving Blizzard

[Khaza-R]

Sigh, having to respond to spammy posts.

World of Warcraft is on track to deliver its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade.

This despite the pretty words translates to "The last quarter of the first year of any expansion release since 2011 had more people logging on compared to any other first year last quarter of any previous expansion".

And according to the other guy, it means at least 50 mins daily, which i dont believe they still use that metric, or ever accurately use it.

That's not what that means. It just means the people who are logging in are doing so for longer than they previously did.

Which basically just means they added more grinds or "engagement hooks" as they like to call them.

[rhorle]

But, they're not. It's in the filing - WoW's revenue is down, regardless of engagement. The only performance investors care about is making money, and WoW's ability to poop money is weaker.

The comments are in the context of MAU and high engagement compared to last year. It has nothing to do with revenue.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

They aren't saying WoW has more subscribers they're saying that the subscribers they do have are spending more than they have in the past.

No that’s just flatly wrong they don’t mention money spent at all in that section just that the over all sub base is stronger then at the same point in most recent expans meaning they have more subs.

They do mention that revenue is up in a later section but with no mention of the sub base.

[Varitok]

It’s not a leap at all as they flatly can’t lie.

Subs are above most other modern expans so at a minimum they need to be counting back to Wod so they can get a majority meaning either legion had less subs then Wod at the same time being under 5.5m or legion had more and current subs are out passing Wod’s 5.5m.

If mop counts as a modern expan then it could be above Wod/legion at the same time putting current subs only below mop to still get to typical.

Meaning of the 3 possibility’s only 1 of them put current subs below legion at the same time period.

"They flatly can't lie". I board line spit out my drink, thanks for that.

[Chadow]

No that’s just flatly wrong they don’t mention money spent at all just that the over all sub base is stronger then at the same point in most recent expans meaning they have more subs.

"Engagement" is not subs I posted an image on page before showing what they mean by "engagement"
And YES they mention money.
Net bookings is money.

[potis]

That's not what that means. It just means the people who are logging in are doing so for longer than they previously did.

Which basically just means they added more grinds or "engagement hooks" as they like to call them.

Yes, and everyone here is claiming that, and then we will go to the same stupid argument that only whales are playing that buy 100$ per week of tokens and same time play 20 hours per day.

Using basic logic, in order to have higher engagement and counted hours, and as the other guy found, engagement apparently means 50mins daily for a MAU or what it was, you cant have lower subs and higher engagement, unless you are claiming the remaining subs are playing so much they are covering for it.

And my anecdotal evidence of what i see, is that people play retail less, but i also have 5-10 people that havent touched retail in years, play TBCC, so its not surprising if WoW gained MAU and money, cause in my stats, the last 2 months 1 retail player quit, and 8 familiars that havent touched retail started/are playing TBCC (at least 2 started it that i know as example).

[MoanaLisa]

Engagement is just a term that defines the use of products. Its exactly what you think it means: people staying logged in longer.

The default industry definition also includes how many times someone returns to a game title within a period of interest. I do not know if time spent logged in is counted for determining engagement at Blizzard since they don’t spell out how they define it. I imagine they track it closely and is an important metric internally. It may or may not be a metric included in how they define engagement.

[Varitok]

No that’s just flatly wrong they don’t mention money spent at all just that the over all sub base is stronger then at the same point in most recent expans meaning they have more subs.

They didn't say that. They said "Engagement". Which is just Time played all over again with a fancy new title. Basically, make your game take double the effort each day to keep up and so if you lose half your subs, it looks the exact same on the "engagement" records.

It's the exact reason why they don't specify what engagement even is, it's a nebulous term to show growth. You're the one who is jumping to a conclusion. They got thier paypigs and their grind addicts to satisfy the board.

I swear, people have so little understanding of how a company twists numbers and phrases to their benefit.

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The default industry definition also includes how many times someone returns to a game title. I do not know if time spent logged in is counted for determining engagement at Blizzard since they don’t spell out how they define it. I imagine they track it closely and is an important metric internally.

They aren't going for the first explanation. They already discuss time played and smarter people caught on so they use "engagement" instead, since investors are just braindead money printers who don't care as long as 'big number go up'.

[Khaza-R]

Using basic logic, in order to have higher engagement and counted hours, and as the other guy found, engagement apparently means 50mins daily for a MAU or what it was, you cant have lower subs and higher engagement, unless you are claiming the remaining subs are playing so much they are covering for it.

You absolutely can. You seem to be assuming they mean net hours played are up across all accounts for WoW. Which would be a pretty meaningless metric.

I read that as its just the average engagement per user is up. So someone who might of spent 1.2 hours a day playing WoW in 2020 is now playing 1.4 hours a day.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

"Engagement" is not subs I posted an image on page before showing what they mean by "engagement"
And YES they mention money.
Net bookings is money.

The quote I posted from the transcript says nothing about engagement it says the sub base is higher then most modern expans at the same point in there life time(9months in).

[Gadzooks]

The comments are in the context of MAU and high engagement compared to last year. It has nothing to do with revenue.

Just gonna put your hands over your ears and yell "Na na na I can't hear you!", huh?

Have fun with that.

[Chadow]

God people can’t read….

The quote I posted from the transcript says nothing about engagement it says the sub base is higher then most modern expans at the same point in there life time(9months in).

Oh sorry...
You mean this?

"With deep engagement across both Classic and Modern, WoW's overall subscriber base is stronger than we typically see at this point after a Modern expansion launch."

Are you sure this phrase can be used to reach conclusions? Is really vague :S

[Pann]

It’s not a leap at all as they flatly can’t lie.

Subs are above most other modern expans so at a minimum they need to be counting back to Wod so they can get a majority meaning either legion had less subs then Wod at the same time being under 5.5m or legion had more and current subs are out passing Wod’s 5.5m.

If mop counts as a modern expan then it could be above Wod/legion at the same time putting current subs only below mop to still get to typical.

Meaning of the 3 possibility’s only 1 of them put current subs below legion at the same time period.

It is a leap and a massive one at that. Nobody said anything about lying.

They have not announced sub numbers for a number of years, we therefore have absolutely no way of knowing what the sub numbers are or comparing them to previous expansions' sub numbers.

Nor do they say that they are above any previous counts, instead they say that the subscriber base is stronger than we typically see at this point which is a deliberately vague and ambiguous statement which could mean a number of things.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Oh sorry...
You mean this?

"With deep engagement across both Classic and Modern, WoW's overall subscriber base is stronger than we typically see at this point after a Modern expansion launch."

Are you sure this phrase can be used to reach conclusions? Is really vague :S

It’s vague but it also has to be true.

So current subs need to be ahead of either 2/3 of the expans if they go back to Wod or 3/4 if they go back to mop to be above typical which is in most cases.

[rhorle]

Just gonna put your hands over your ears and yell "Na na na I can't hear you!", huh? Have fun with that.

What? Telling you the context of the comments made isn't anything close to what you are saying in this post.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

They didn't say that. They said "Engagement". Which is just Time played all over again with a fancy new title. Basically, make your game take double the effort each day to keep up and so if you lose half your subs, it looks the exact same on the "engagement" records.

It's the exact reason why they don't specify what engagement even is, it's a nebulous term to show growth. You're the one who is jumping to a conclusion. They got thier paypigs and their grind addicts to satisfy the board.

I swear, people have so little understanding of how a company twists numbers and phrases to their benefit.

No they didn’t just say engagement they say the sub base.

With deep engagement across both Classic and Modern, WoW's overall subscriber base is stronger than we typically see at this point after a Modern expansion launch.

https://investor.activision.com/stat...e-8bdf66c8bb32

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It is a leap and a massive one at that. Nobody said anything about lying.

They have not announced sub numbers for a number of years, we therefore have absolutely no way of knowing what the sub numbers are or comparing them to previous expansions' sub numbers.

Nor do they say that they are above any previous counts, instead they say that the subscriber base is stronger than we typically see at this point which is a deliberately vague and ambiguous statement which could mean a number of things.

We don’t need to have an actual number to know if they are at or above a previous state.

They also don’t need to say there above previous counts when they say they are stronger then he same period in past expans. Subs count could be lower then last quarter and still be better then other expans at the same point in there life times.

[Lolites]

Oh sorry...
You mean this?

"With deep engagement across both Classic and Modern, WoW's overall subscriber base is stronger than we typically see at this point after a Modern expansion launch."

Are you sure this phrase can be used to reach conclusions? Is really vague :S

actualy, for corporate speak its INCREDIBLY straightforward, or do you have some "personal" meaning to word stronger? you think they talk about their subscribers getting more exercise? bcs "stronger subscriber base" can mean one thing - more subscribers...

[Doffen]

Sure typically, ie in most cases.

Meaning they have to counting atleast back to Wod to get a number they can have a majority part of.

So at puts the minimum sub count at above 5.5M if we want to say legion was higher then Wod at the same point or higher if they count mop as a modern expan.

Modern expansion could be any expansion that is still not a classic, as in vanilla and TBC. MoP would surely fit into it, so do you think WoW got more than 8.3 million subs now?

Besides all that, what it says in that transcript could just as much mean within each expansion, percentage wise. So the sub number is stronger now after a launch year than for example the year after BfA launch year, percentagewise.

How they write the whole thing is admitting irregularities to their statement. Typically means that it is not better than all the other modern expansions(and what do they really count as modern expansion?) but most. But how do they actually compare that?

It's nothing to base a conclusion on, that's what I am trying to say I guess. But I think me and you agree that WoW is doing pretty good still, in it's 17th year, which is truly impressive.

[OrangeJuice]

No that’s just flatly wrong they don’t mention money spent at all in that section just that the over all sub base is stronger then at the same point in most recent expans meaning they have more subs.

They do mention that revenue is up in a later section but with no mention of the sub base.

Good god shut up.

[natham]

"World of Warcraft is on track to deliver its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade."

Riiiiiiiiighhhhtttt......