Keep reeling them in OP lol…10/10
This is a concern I share. But let’s assume that it can stand on its own with little to no changes outside what we already know. I think it could be a mistake to risk compromising Classic to make a few extra bucks, and doing it without alienating a chunk of your fanbase.
If they go back on their word, I will not buy anymore Blizzard titles going forth. This isn’t me being petty. They hooked me back and I love them again. I hope they don’t disappoint.
I hope that is the case, and my suspicions are wrong.
What gives me pause though is that IF Classic is a low cost, low risk effort that will be a net gain for the company…then why not mention it at the earnings meeting?
It could have been a great way to hedge the news of “expected losses after rollout of BfA”, by saying they were looking to offset declining subscription numbers by bundling WoW Classic and releasing in 2019.
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Was Brack at the meeting?
His boss and head of all Activision was lol.
Smh…
That would only be worth announcing if you expected classic to bring in more subs than BFA bleeds. Otherwise in 6 months you are back announcing more bad news. You really don’t want to overpromise to your investors if you arent sure because that has an effect on your market price.
To me it sounds like they have grim expectations for BFA maintaining subs man. They expect 2019 to be down, and they said its primarily expected to come from Blizzards side, and WoW is the breadwinner in that space.
I think internally the outlook on BFA is pretty damn bad if not even the subs classic brings in is expected to offset the sub losses from people tired of BFA. On top of that, I don’t think they expect much from classic either… That would make sense with how hard it was to get them to commit to classic.
I believe it’s because its not a flagship title. Touting the return of Classic to these high level investors is not what is going to make them feel warm and fuzzy. Yes, they want to hear things like COD, Candy Crush, China, Mobile gaming, Esports, and not, “Hey, guys, we’re bringing back a 14 year old game, and having to explain to them that BFA is not meeting expectations.”
I was really hoping an investor was going to bring it up, but I wasn’t holding my breath. This does not necessarily equal bad. Sometimes, and speaking from experience, there’s some things better left unsaid in high level meetings because you end up having to get down into the weeds.
This is the truth of things, IMO.
I wonder how subs would be had they not jumped the shark with the classic release timeframe. How many retail players decided to cancel subs until classic comes out, knowing they would ONLY want to play classic, so continuing to sub for BFA was pointless? Their decisions over the past few years display such a lack of foresight and tone deafness.
They could have immediately righted the train back onto the tracks if they would do something as simple as announce an open beta for all active subs. It would get sub numbers back up, it would give retail players a taste of what vanilla/classic would be (thereby reducing potential tourists upon release), would have generated hype that they have bled.
But hey, ditching the only CM that communicated what little they allowed him to was an awesome move as well.
/s
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We’re not far apart on this, you and I. It’s almost downright embarrassing having to explain that a 14 year old product is being perceived as superior.
People are really trying to figure out on how you can go from 10 million subs during WoTLK to less than half. 5.5 million as of 2015.
When your subs are slipping like this, you can bet the game will change, for the better or for the worse. Players can love BFA all they want, but the truth is it simply cannot overtake BC and Wrath in active subs metrics.
Which has me curious as to what WoW Classic might do to the market when its turn comes around.
Absolutely it can. When you look at BFA and Classic side by side, I don’t necessarily compare which is good or which is bad.
They’ve become two different brands with different player markets if you ask me.
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You mean there was a time(even back in the 1980’s) when it wasn’t a fad for 90+% of the game development studios out there?
Somebody releases a title that does well, so everybody and their dog then rush out to create another game that can “duplicate the success” of the other title that was a runaway success. Investors and the methodologies have had major issues for a looong time. Hollywood does the exact same thing, and has for decades.
Likewise both groups also ten to get locked into the mindset that “_____ tried that, it did very poorly, there’s no market for that!” Without bothering to examine why it flopped, or why it did well. They just decide that entire lot of “hot” or “terrible” to invest in.
While this is similar to my thread which was derailed, I think we will just have to “wait and see.” Some outlets are trying to get clarification.
Trying to think. True. I think once Street Fighter became huge, there were tons of fighting game replicas. But the “fads” had more longevity. You had Mega Man. But there was a following there. Even as recent as Starcraft.
But now, you have angry birds, candy crush, etc. I guess What I’m trying to say is that there are more “flavors” to try these days. And things change much quicker.
That’s fair…and I never expected them to make the Classic release a big selling point in their presentation. But when talking about World of Warcraft in general terms…particularly the performance of WoW subscriptions, they could have referenced the bundling of WoW Classic, and release in 2019, as a way they were immediately addressing the rate of subscription decline. As an investor, that would at least give me confidence they were doing something to address the issue. It also would have cost them nothing to make a quick mention of it.
My suspicion is that they didn’t mention it in the call because there is still some uncertainty around it…either around how it will perform, or what it looks like at release…just my 2 pennies.
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[quote=“Dbrickashaw-lethon, post:46, topic:100014, full:true”]
No no they dont. Sharding may occur with higher populations. Its the same thing as CRZ with low populations. They do the same thing to manage populations of users in area of play.[/quote]
Sharding is a vehicle that has been used to enable CRZ. However, CRZ and Sharding are not the same thing.
Sharding at a basic level is scalable server infrastructure. You can make a “shard” as small or as large as you want(so long as the hardware can handle it). Becuase it scales well, it works particularly well when it comes to handling small populations as you can “shrink” the shard to the point where instead of needing 10 physical “Servers” to handle 10 “realms” for example, you could now possible pack all 10 of those low-population “realms” onto 1 “server.” Then as the population grows on one, you can work load-balancing magic, and shift them over to a second “Server” to provide room for all of the other shards to grow.
CRZ comes into play as a population management tool, and a means to allow you to compress shards even further. While a Shard could have a strict 1:1 relationship with a realm, CRZ enables Sharding to have a 1:Many relationship instead.
Edit: Of course, Sharding also allows the realm itself to potentially have a Many:Many relationship going on, which is the thing that is driving a lot of Classic WoW fans nuts.
I have a sinking feeling when Classic launches, launch is going to be quite bad. cooperate is preparing that it will not be popular thus number of servers comes into question.
Also to me this is cementing they want to have as little to do with Classic after release.
Hopefully time proves me wrong.
I share your concern.
Here is why I think it will be okay. They’ve dumped money in it, and with demand being as high as it is, I think it will better serve them to run with it due to its low cost MX, low to non real development needs. The returns could be very good. Best case is you get BC or more down the road.
Low risk/potentially high payoff is what they have going for them. Not only can they net new subs, but they can potentially seal off some of the hemorrhaging from disgruntled BFA players, or even net new subs from players going from Classic then going to BFA.
Also, they have committed. That may not mean much to some but sure does to me.
Just ignore this thread and let it die.