Story Forum Community Lounge (Part 1)

Lore Story Forum
5324

My ability to complete part 2 of my post may not rise to what it needs to be to get it done before my subscription expires. However, as I was pulling data, I did look at Blizzard’s financials for 2020.

http^s://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/718877/000162828021002828/atvi-20201231.htm

Take a look at the segment data (Note 15)

In 2018, Blizzard released BFA. It pulled in 2,291 mm in Segment Net Revenues

In 2020, Blizzard released Shadowlands. It pulled in 1,905 mm, which is only slightly better than 2019 (the lull year), where that figure was 1,719 mm.

(I use Segment net revenues because it reports revenues after the effect of deferred revenue, and gets me closer to sales figures as opposed to the GAAP concept of revenue, which among other things, requires pre-paid services to be earned before they can be reported as revenue)

In 2020, Blizzard should have been able to take advantage of increased demand due to the global pandemic, as well as from having a full year of classic. Doesn’t appear to be the case. It also appears that in the fourth quarter of 2020, Blizzard lost another million monthly active users (MAUs) - primarily from Overwatch. What’s notable in their description of where the drop came from, they didn’t include a statement like “partially mitigated by the increased users from Shadowlands”, which they would need to if it were significant.

However, despite the drop in revenue, Blizzard’s net income in 2018 was 685 mm. In 2020 it was 693 mm, an increase of 8mm. The only way that’s possible is through significant expense cuts, which makes the objective, and the implications of the 2019 restructure clear to me.

5325

So … Blizzard is in a bad situation and things will get worse over time if they don’t do something?

5326

As a preview of coming attractions? Almost certainly.

One part of that analysis is already done, I’m working the more granular financial piece, and the last part I just have to collate.

5327

I’m wondering: Is it possible to give Shadow Elementals a Fear of the Dark?

Like say first put them in an Ember Ward-like place with Dark Caves serving as respite from the Light except not really since as soon as the Shadow Elemental hides within the Light Elementals hidden in the Cave turn on their Light and start terrorizing the Shadow Elemental forcing it to flee from the Dark Cave in a panic.

Would that make a Shadow/Darkness Elemental fear the Shadows as much as we ourselves do? They’d probably start setting up Lamps of Dark Light in the Caves to illuminate it so that they can be sure Light Elementals don’t show up.

Blind Beings of Shadow would probably avoid the Caves filled with Light Elementals no matter how Dark they may be!

It’s not Shadow Elemental Energies we fear it’s the actual Shadows that hide our enemies whether it be Light, Darkness or something else!

1 Like
5328

There is a lot of doomsaying going on, and I usually dismiss it, but for some reason, the recent hullabaloo is ringing true.

Over the passed few years, I have been able to keep pace with my sub using gold. Garrisons have continued to provide a lot of that Gold almost passively with the Swapblasters, Hexweave Bags, and Medallions of the Legion.

I haven’t paid for a sub with IRL dough in a looong while. But I wonder if I would today. I almost think not.

I am so over Choreghast and I barely did it. My Alts get their 190 legendary and never return. M+ is being expanded as a way to get gear, and I am not a fan of It. I still love raiding casually, and doing a bit of PvP on my Rogue. But the best little conduits for certain specs are only available from M+ - and that stings.

And then we have the story, which has been deteriorating. There are some bright spots and intriguing story lines, but the over all major stories have been very “meh”.

Dont break out the champagne just yet - I have quite a bit of time prepaid with Gold. But when I see people decrying the state of WoW lately, I can sort of sit back and say: “They have a point.”

I remember I used to talk about WoW and people would be interested. It was a game I recommended often. But I can’t do that lately. I find myself saying: “don’t bother”.

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5329

I mean, I’m not exactly breaking out champagne here. I warn that there may come a day where Activision decides that Warcraft isn’t providing the kind of ROI that they want, and seek to divert future development resources towards a project that will. I don’t want to see that day, however. The only reason I’m commenting is because I still care about what happens with this franchise. I want the game to improve, but I’m not seeing signs of said improvement.

5330

The financial analysis is coming up with some interesting results. I’m trying to track Blizzard’s overall MAU decline, which is hard to generalize to Warcraft because Overwatch and Hearthstone are falling stars. What I’m also finding is that Blizzard’s earnings releases say different things than their Financial Statements - meaning I have to find a way to munge the two sources of information. This popped out when looking at the fourth quarter earnings release.

“World of Warcraft MAUsD grew year-over-year for the sixth consecutive quarter, contributing to overall Blizzard MAUs of 29 million in the fourth quarter.”

“World of Warcraft saw strong engagement across both the Classic and modern game modes throughout 2020, and full year franchise net bookings grew 40% year-over-year, reaching the highest level in nearly a decade”

“World of Warcraft player and engagement trends since the Shadowlands release are stronger than levels typically seen at this point after an expansion launch.”

http^s://investor.activision.com/static-files/0a027e58-e3cd-445e-9e38-fd27f34775af

The date on this was February 4, 2021 - no idea how much of the recent news is covered in this though. The six-quarters argument makes sense to me given Q3 and Q4 had classic and the others didn’t.

Still digging, more to come.

5331

https://youtu.be/LEnU9q-Y3nM

5332

I don’t think I’ve ever recommend WoW to anyone, since if you’re going to recommend a game to someone, chances are they’d prefer a game to ‘play’ vs. an MMO to, let’s face it, grind out. Especially if they’ve not played an MMO before.

5333

I don’t know about all that. It was a fun and coherent game at one point. Easily recommendable to any. But not as of late.

That aside, I often watch this video. It is a nice mix of music and dance:

https://youtu.be/oNGnMQS8Xhg

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5334

Funnily enough, I had the chance to prostelytize for WoW yesterday, and opted not to take it. One of my DnD friends had a break up recently, and suddenly finds themselves with ample free time and funds, and asked to start playing WoW together.

After reflecting on Sylvanas’ imminent “not a redemption”, and the eternal blue balling of Tyrande’s pursuit of justice, I was like “Y’know what? Forget that. I’m coming back to FFXIV, with you.”

5335

I think I made this complaint before the Patch Notes were released. I definitely made it before I read them:

While reading the patch notes, I noticed it says:

Potency Conduits now also drop in Castle Nathria

Well, that’s one complaint addressed. I’ll take it.

1 Like
5336

Bob Seger live from Tennessee stay the hell out of Nutbush!!!

5337

WoW’s the only MMO with Australian servers, so I’m literally never going to play anything else until Ashes of Creation or New World (think that one’s going to have it, but not sure).

5338

https://youtu.be/h-ckmPDryus

1 Like
5339

A kobold’s ballista is just a crossbow.

5340

Has anyone noticed the similarity between the Ghouls of Lovecraft and the Beasts of Bloodborne? Both seem so Wolf-like…

5341

From what I read, one type of werewolf myth cross-pollinates with zombie stories, and is even considered a type of undead itself. One of them involved actually being the dead bodies of soldiers left to rot in a battlefield, where they would turn into wolves at night to prey on people before returning to the spot where they died and turning back into corpses during the day. You’d have to either bury or burn the body to put an end to them.

2 Likes
5342

Isn’t that the Vampire not the Werewolf?.. Vampires are supposed to be dead corpses(some of which were the corpses of dead Werewolves) that traditionally turned into Wolves to feast on the Blood of the Living.

As I was saying in my earlier post: Do you guys think that the Beasts of Bloodborne are based on Lovecraft’s Ghouls? The Story is already Lovecraftian with Amygdala having Cthulhu heads while in Yharnam among other Lovecraftian Horror in the game!

5343

I’ll let you know whenever Bloodborne is playable on PC.