The return of Soon™

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
21

Really? I’m on a board of directors, shareholders DO NOT make business decisions. That’s what they elect a CEO for.

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22

Pretty much.

Any true shareholder will tell you that all stocks took a substantial dip in December 2018

23

True. Though to the discussion point, it means that Shareholders are far less confident in a company if its missing deadlines etc. The Activision side of the fence already is doing crazy things with its CoD line, and the Blizzard side messing up would make things worrying.

As for effects, as far as I know shareholders have:

  1. Control over replacing management, through the board, or in union. - So shareholders can drive decisions indirectly if the current management are trying to allay fears or satisfy dividend predictions.

  2. Sell to a hostile takeover. - Which would replace the management or break up the company (the second is not likely for Acti-Blizzard but I know people pray for it)

  3. Low share price from shareholders selling would also damage Acti-Blizzard’s ability to find creditors for a new project, like… Classic+.

Shareholders don’t make specific business decisions, but they can drive management to make bad business decisions to pander to their immediate concerns or prop up the share price long enough to fend off takeovers, or get more credit.

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24

I’m skeptical.

Also I find it strange so many look to a company, by name, and expect them to hold the same values as their predecessors. A company doesn’t exist as an entity making decisions, it’s a group of people and many of those making those high quality decisions are not with the company anymore.

25

Exactly.

The largest shareholders of ATVI are public investment giants such as Vanguard. Like the fund managers over at Vanguard care about Classic WoW. It wasn’t even mentioned in the earnings report as a major release.

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26

Don’t forget the “working as intended”.

27

Yeah it was.

Over that time Warcraft has developed a global audience with multiple award-winning games in different genres including over 100 million accounts created for World of Warcraft and over 100 million registered players for Hearthstone. Later this year, we’ll celebrate the special milestone for Warcraft with some highly anticipated releases. World of Warcraft Classic will be available as part of the franchise subscription over the summer letting fans play the game just as it all began 15 years ago. In addition, a large content update to World of Warcraft called Rise of the Shadow (ph) is already on test servers and will include new zones, new dungeons and more. And Warcraft III: Reforged due this year is a complete reimagination of our real-time strategy classic rebuilt from the ground up for high-definition PC experience.

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2019/05/03/activision-blizzard-inc-atvi-q1-2019-earnings-call.aspx

28

That’s not what Luuni said. She said it wasn’t mentioned as a major release, and it wasn’t. They said they had no major releases planned this year, meaning they don’t consider Classic as a major release.

2 Likes
29

We will follow this up in the second half of the year with our most important release, our new Call of Duty title from Activision. In addition, Blizzard will release World of Warcraft Classic and Warcraft III: Reforged and we will deliver more in-game content for Candy Crush and our other key franchises across the rest of the portfolio.

You have to put it in perspective. CoD will have tens of millions of players, and Classic will have at most 2-3 for a few months.

30

“Turning to Blizzard, we expect materially lower financial performance this year,” Activision said. “2018 benefited from the release of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth , whereas we are not planning a major frontline release for 2019.”

Eloraell, I know you love to play the game of semantics, but I watched the conference call. I watched streams of peoples’ reaction, and the biggest thing that came out of it was that Blizzard wasn’t planning a major release in 2019. People were shocked, because that means Activision-Blizzard doesn’t consider Classic a major release. That was THE story that came out of the conference call. It’s what all the ‘gaming news sites’ were talking about the next day. Examples…

https://www.denofgeek.com/us/games/blizzard/279278/blizzard-no-major-releases-2019

Thank you. Carry on.

1 Like
31

So to return to the point, people like Vanguard, do care about releases like Classic.

I know you want to play the semantics game, but releasing Classic was put forward during the earnings call, and they do care about it.

You’re also posting a litany of “beat up story” outlets, which seems to be the
norm for most gaming magazines now. Yes, they aren’t releasing a new WoW Expansion, Overwatch 2, Diablo 4 etc. Classic was never dubbed as an exciting new franchise or property.

But that doesn’t mean that it won’t cause an influx in revenue, or that shareholders don’t care about it. Tempering expectations in that earnings call is key to making sure they keep their shareholders happy, and they aren’t expecting the same kind of massive revenue from Classic as they do from other titles.

It’s niche. But slipping Classic’s release date will have massive repercussions for Blizzard, especially with shareholders who are “aghast” at no “major releases” in 2019.

32

That’s a really long way of saying, “Sorry, I was wrong.” But we all know you’re incapable of doing that.

Anyway, back to the topic of the thread. I assume this is in regards to them delaying the next stress test? I mean…they delayed a stress test. They didn’t push back the release of Classic (something that personally I think should probably be done). So I wouldn’t go all crazy that they’re returned to the old days when they only released something when it was ready. If that was the case they wouldn’t have given a release date until they knew the game would be ready, and bugs fixed by then. And their last update said something to the effect of ‘We hope to have these things fixed by release.’ Not exactly encouraging.

33

LOL, no you’re not. If you were then you would know how it works in the real world.

34

I wish I shared your optimism, but to the extent that “I want it now” and “I want it all” are mutually exclusive, I’ve seen much more of the former than the latter.

35

If that’s not the reason why companies have boards of directors and CEOs, what is?

Full disclosure: I’m not a shareholder, board member, or CEO. But you don’t have to be to know that there is a difference between them.

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36

You mean a bunch of people who know absolutely NOTHING about running a business breathing down your throat to make them money?

Shareholders are just investors. Most (almost all) businesses that are publicly traded intentionally separate them from the operations side of the business. Even investment groups like Vanguard, do you HONESTLY think that a bunch of accountants with one of the biggest investment companies in the country are going to be stupid enough to tell Blizzard or Activision, two prominant game development companies how to release their games?

37

They released a post about what they are planning to do to fix hunters.

38

I thought they addressed the hunter issues recently did they not?

39

Not to mention, hunters were basically unplayable at launch in 2004 so… #AuthenticExperience :stuck_out_tongue:

40

B nice is someone could just off him wouldn’t it…:nauseated_face::face_with_symbols_over_mouth: