I’ve seen a lot more in Darnassus then some stinky place like Orgrimmar.
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There’s nothing sad about Most people rping elsewhere. I been consistent in saying I don’t have any sympathy for the NE fan base and I’m honestly done trying to be nice with certain people on these forums.
So you admit that you’re merely here to try and be a trouble maker. Thanks for admitting to that it makes reporting you for trolling a lot easier.
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And as I pointed out to numerous people already. You know nothing about me and never will.
As someone else here pointed out, you’re not as hard to read as you think you are.
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Mike’s really living on the edge wow.
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I’m just sitting here hoping clothes will start being ripped off.
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Dibs on Vuldezi’s loincloth.
As I pointed out to numerous people already. You don’t know me and you never will.
Sorry for being late to this.
Two factors to take into account with respect to the 9 month data.
- The COVID-19 Pandemic led to a surge in video game sales and usage, I would expect to see that figure reflected in the nine month data - and I shared the nine-month data when I first responded on the statements.
- Two of the three quarters in 2019 did not have World of Warcraft Classic, meaning that we’re comparing three quarters of Retail + Classic to 3 quarters of classic and 1 quarter of retail.
Is any of that catastrophic? Not necessarily - and it is hard to treat this data comparably because it’s not broken out by franchise - but it’s not the 52% increase that you were touting, much of that comes from the extremely strong Activision segment.
@ Micah
Just walk back the 99% statement. This isn’t hard, and the conversation is getting ridiculous.
To a point though I’m not sure how many brand new players WoWs attracting. I think the Golden age of the MMO genre has sailed. Most of my friends, many of which who played WoW, haven’t returned in part because of the time commitment.
And I just don’t think a 16 year old game has an immediate appeal to a lot of potential new players who are only a few years older than it.
I think it’ll keep plugging along for years to come as it does have millions of people who have feels for the IP. I think WoW’s genius is most players have a faction they imprint on like a baby goose and can’t really get anywhere else. But I don’t know how much expansion is in the cards.
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Eh, I’m not sure I agree with that - especially given that every new expansion is an opportunity to do a soft reset on the product lifecycle. The market also seems to be able to absorb new entrants.
The more obvious looking problem is Blizzard, and I say this as someone who has looked at their financials for years. If you start looking at them from 2008, like I did, you see Activision edge them out more and more. Blizzard for some time was the larger of the two business segments, now it’s the smallest and the weakest.
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We’ll have to see what Riot can do with their MMO that’s in development. They have a extremely rich and well fleshed out universe that’s been begging to be turned into an MMO for years with really excellent lore.
They’ve also got Ghostcrawler at the helm so we’ll see how it goes. I could see Riot breathing a lot of new life into the MMO genre.
I don’t see myself making the jump to another MMO (it took a friend twisting my arm for over a year before I even dipped my toe into WoW to begin with) but I wonder what kind of character selection they’d offer. I remember being SUPER disappointed when I saw FF14’s roster of…various humans, until they finally added Hrothgar/Ronso.
I still can’t believe they were toying with an idea for a lizardman race and then walked it back to “humans with horns and scaly patches glued on,” though.
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I quoted 9 month year over year net revenue numbers too for the Blizzard segment only which had a 18% increase. COVID may have helped a bit but that’s a solid number and doesn’t include 4th quarter boost from the release of Shadowlands.
We can argue about their financial statements and what they mean until we’re blue in the face, but my original point is they have not hurt their bottom line by the burning of Teldrassil and have no incentive to change the storyline.
I tried to get into several in the 7 years I didn’t play WoW. Star Wars Old Republic held my interest the longest. I’m also a big fan of that universe and it had some really interestingly designed classes and some of the best instanced PvP I’ve ever played.
But it lacked what WoW always does best. Creating a fascinating world. Entire sprawling planets felt smaller and less alive than even some of the smallest and dullest WoW zones.
I just doubt anyone’s going to be able to beat Blizz in that department.
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I’m not sure that I agree with your conclusion. There are various conflicting factors that compound it, including:
- Blizzard’s figures include more than just WoW - you also have to account for the relative success of every element of their portfolio, but lack the data.
- As mentioned previously, the 2019 data has one quarter of retail, whereas the 2020 data has three quarters of retail. This is an entire new product that needs to be accounted for.
- The pandemic, as discussed previously, pushed video game consumption higher than it normally would be.
- Expansions can’t be compared year over year because they release in two-year cycles. You’re comparing the expansion to itself.
- Revenues alone do not provide visibility on deferred revenue movement, or what the primary sources for that are. That’s important because box sales, microtransactions, and subscriptions realize revenue over the life of the product.
- Piggybacking off of 5, it’s impossible to parse sources of deferred revenue, both on a franchise level, and within the franchise to determine what’s getting amortized and what’s being added to the balance.
That’s why I take a look at Monthly Active Users, or MAUs, which tell me how many people on a monthly basis are actually playing Blizzard’s titles, and that figure has been on a consistent decline since 2018, and now is at the lowest as I’ve ever seen it - which isn’t comforting given that compared to prior periods - WoW is now two games in one.
Does that definitively prove that WoW is on the decline then? No, you can’t get that from the financial statements. You also can’t demonstrate that it’s doing better. The data just isn’t granular enough for you to make those conclusions.
Subscriber numbers really were the gold standard - but then Blizzard stopped reporting them. I wish the SEC would have paid more attention to that.
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She doesn’t.
Thats the irony.
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Forgive me for feeding.
There is enough information in their financials. It doesn’t have to be any more granular than it already is for me to tell the burning of Teldrassil didn’t harm their numbers and they have no incentive to go back and rewrite or rectify the storyline.
They won’t go under because they burned Teldrassil and a few Night Elf players got mad.