Am I understanding this correctly?

[jaeenox]

Blizzard’s second quarter segment revenue and operating income were lower year-over-year but higher versus the first quarter. World of Warcraft net bookings declined versus a year-ago quarter that included the launch of Burning Crusade Classic, offsetting year-over-year growth for Hearthstone and the contribution from the June launch of Diablo Immortal.

It is widely reported that DI has brought in more than $100 million. Hearthstone had growth. This was offset by a decline in WoW. So WoW lost more than $100 million last quarter? And this quarter was better than the last. How do the people running WoW keep their jobs?

[Goat7]

Well technically they did not keep their jobs.

Most of them have quit.

Blizzard did bring in a whole new team by purchasing Proletariat to work on WoW. IMO it is a little too late, game is shit, Blizzard is shit. Only reason why DI and Hearthstone have success is due to Whales and Addicts swiping them cards, the microtransaction money they are making is insane and also very fucking sad for the gaming industry. This is the biggest reason why they have been sold to Microsoft, Blizzard became a company that only cared for profits and doing so caused them to decline in active players across the board so they are getting out while they still worth $$$

[CalamityHeart]

So WoW lost more than $100 million last quarter?

Not since last quarter, since Q2 last year. At least, that's what it looks like to me. Which is still not... good... But it doesn't sound quite as fucking catastrophic, I suppose.

[kranur]

Depends on where did you get the info that WoW specifically lost 100 million in the quarter. That is over 2 million subs and it's unlikely that WoW just lost nearly all it's players in the last 3 months. Sure WoW population is in decline, but the massive decline happened last year, not now.
I think this is mostly the effect of Blizzard being incapable to bring massive amounts of people during the pandemic like most other companies, and since the restrictions went away, the attrition rate is simply destroying them (likely across all games) because their players who are burned out and tired of shit can now go out and do other things.

Guess they should have cared more about quality than the quick buck.

[Loveliest]

Well technically they did not keep their jobs.

Most of them have quit.

Blizzard did bring in a whole new team by purchasing Proletariat to work on WoW. IMO it is a little too late, game is shit, Blizzard is shit. Only reason why DI and Hearthstone have success is due to Whales and Addicts swiping them cards, the microtransaction money they are making is insane and also very fucking sad for the gaming industry. This is the biggest reason why they have been sold to Microsoft, Blizzard became a company that only cared for profits and doing so caused them to decline in active players across the board so they are getting out while they still worth $$$

You know, I used to diss people who were just writing off and insulting the company. But the game has become very stresful for me, raids aren't as enjoyable even though I have the same raid team, we wait for nerfs, kill end boss once and done. So I guess it all starts to ring true.

[Tiwack]

Yea, EJs and whale-business is driving WoW now, it's why they're leaning into boosting and FOMO ingame now more than ever since it's all that's left ingame playing the endgame content.

Btw, congratulations to everyone that's thrilled Blizzard made the Raid Finder babies and 40-year old dads cry. I'm curious if you're equally thrilled that the boosting community and the online store is jumping for joy? Allowing people to get this limited time mount in LFR like it was originally advertised would have hurt that business.

But I guess when you shill that hard, that thought doesn't enter your mind. Or maybe you do support token sales and the boosting community.

It's also awesome that the brand new booster community sales channel is coming out at the same time as this cat but haha I'm sure that's a coincidence. Papa Blizzard does no wrong, amiright?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

There is no reason to think the whole loss is from Warcraft.

Q2 last year had double digit increases in Warcraft booking and blizzard ended at 433m which was 50m less then Q1 last year which was 483m and that also had an increase in hearthstone.

While wow is likely contributing to the loss because it’s in a content lull instead of off setting it like last year blizzard numbers have been going down even when wow was going up so there’s no reason to think now it’s all wow.

https://investor.activision.com/stat...9-e7c647d36c03

https://investor.activision.com/stat...2-180eac785930

[Echo of Soul]

Keep in mind that the WoW exodus over to FFXIV hadn't really reached its peak in Q2. It started early in Q1 but it wasn't until Q3 end of July early August that it really took off so in Q2 last year a lot of casuals were still subbed.

If Q3 also ends up worse than previous year then yeah its really bad because that means that they didn't manage to get those players back.

[Eosia]

Guess they should have cared more about quality than the quick buck.

The WoW Devs do care. It's the bean counters above them who subscribe to the American "How to Fuck a Business Up Big Time" school of management who only care about the quick buck.

While wow is likely contributing to the loss because it’s in a content lull instead of off setting it like last year blizzard numbers have been going down even when wow was going up so there’s no reason to think now it’s all wow.

Do DARE you bring such logic, reason, and common sense in here! Don't you know the loss is because they didn't sell enough level boosts?!?!?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Keep in mind that the WoW exodus over to FFXIV hadn't really reached its peak in Q2. It started early in Q1 but it wasn't until Q3 end of July early August that it really took off so in Q2 last year a lot of casuals were still subbed.

If Q3 also ends up worse than previous year then yeah its really bad because that means that they didn't manage to get those players back.

There was no exodus in Q3 of last year wow was doing better then other modern expans at same point in life.

Within the Warcraft franchise, World of Warcraft reach and engagement continues to benefit from the combination of the Modern game and Classic under a single subscription. The two games offer players more ways to engage and create more opportunities for our teams to deliver compelling experiences to fans of the franchise. 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

[Tertullian72]

You know, I used to diss people who were just writing off and insulting the company. But the game has become very stresful for me, raids aren't as enjoyable even though I have the same raid team, we wait for nerfs, kill end boss once and done. So I guess it all starts to ring true.

The mind boggles at playing a game you find stressful. Maybe do something else?

[Somic]

After reading through this, yes Warcraft didn’t do well this quarter for sure compared to last year but this can also be explained a little bit because last year around this time TBC released so that’s where we saw a massive increase in MAU.

BUT another thing to keep in mind is that Activision games themselves (call of duty being the biggest crutch here) had a bad quarter. It seems CoD lost a lot of engagement as well and when you see Activision having 127 million MAU compared to blizzards 26 it’s safe to say when Activision takes a hit, that hit is a lot bigger than blizzards will ever be.

If you look at net revenues on page 11 you will see it broken down by company and it looks like this

Activision 2021: 789 million
Activision 2022: 490 million

Blizzard 2021: 411 million
Blizzard 2022: 390 million

And it looks like kings revenue actually went up by about 50 million.

So long story short, yes blizzard sucked it up this year but cod sucked it up even harder. You’ll be seeing a lot more focus on CoD than WoW for sure.

Edit: oh I see you were just looking at blizzards specifically. Yeah it does seem like Warcraft probably was the biggest influence in the decline, Diablo itself could have also taken a pretty big hit because I’m sure there were a lot of people who just swapped over to DI so that 100 million could have had a lot of money that could have been spent in Diablo III? Idk how Diablo works too well and they didn’t touch on it so I have no idea.

[Biomega]

It's not surprising. End-of-expansion quarters are likely always a slump, and SL's problems haven't exactly helped. Of course there'd be a drop-off between a mid-expansion quarter and an end-of-expansion quarter; just like there's a spike during expansion-launch quarters. Year-on-year quarterly comparisons really only make sense if your product is also on a yearly cycle; if it's not, there'll be significant fluctuations.

[kranur]

The WoW Devs do care. It's the bean counters above them who subscribe to the American "How to Fuck a Business Up Big Time" school of management who only care about the quick buck.

I never said that they didn't. But that doesn't really mean much because it doesn't change anything.
Knowing that the devs care about quality won't make Choregast any more enjoyable.

[Dadwen]

The WoW Devs do care. It's the bean counters above them who subscribe to the American "How to Fuck a Business Up Big Time" school of management who only care about the quick buck.

As someone that they pushed away from Retail by killing their spec off (RSV), I think the Dev's are crap, and just when I was ready to Sub again to play Classic, they can't keep their crap ideas out of it now either, IMO they (the Dev's) are a lost cause.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

After reading through this, yes Warcraft didn’t do well this quarter for sure compared to last year but this can also be explained a little bit because last year around this time TBC released so that’s where we saw a massive increase in MAU.

there was actually a loss in blizzard wise MAU in the launch quarter of TBC going from 27 in Q1 to 26 in Q2.

This is the first Quarter with growth in over a year going from 22 in Q1 to 27 in Q2, of course because of Diablo immortal.

MUA at the bottom.
https://investor.activision.com/stat...0-1b3b7ccfa39a
https://investor.activision.com/stat...d-d709cdcd48a0

[Echo of Soul]

There was no exodus in Q3 of last year wow was doing better then other modern expans at same point in life.



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

Uuuh..WTF?

[Goat7]

There is no reason to think the whole loss is from Warcraft.

Q2 last year had double digit increases in Warcraft booking and blizzard ended at 433m which was 50m less then Q1 last year which was 483m and that also had an increase in hearthstone.

While wow is likely contributing to the loss because it’s in a content lull instead of off setting it like last year blizzard numbers have been going down even when wow was going up so there’s no reason to think now it’s all wow.

https://investor.activision.com/stat...9-e7c647d36c03

https://investor.activision.com/stat...2-180eac785930

Here is what is being referenced, incase u missed it. Its at the top. Q2 results

https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...age=1#comments

[Somic]

there was actually a loss in blizzard wise MAU in the launch quarter of TBC going from 27 in Q1 to 26 in Q2.

This is the first Quarter with growth in over a year going from 22 in Q1 to 27 in Q2, of course because of Diablo immortal.

MUA at the bottom.
https://investor.activision.com/stat...0-1b3b7ccfa39a
https://investor.activision.com/stat...d-d709cdcd48a0

Yeah when I said massive increase I really meant for Warcraft specifically, even though they don’t show the actual numbers you can imply that last year Warcraft was doing way better because of the tbc release.

[Trend]

So WoW lost more than $100 million last quarter? And this quarter was better than the last. How do the people running WoW keep their jobs?

Even if your assumptions on numbers are right, the word "lost" is completely misplaced. WoW is always going to be cyclical. You're not losing money just because your revenue and profits are lower during a down period than during an up period.