Subscribers are people who have active play time. That’s it.
We should ask a blue to answer this . . .
LOL I kid. CM’s don’t even come to the forums anymore.
Loosey goosey use of the word “subs” In PR situations, sure.
In situations involving the reporting of financial results of a publicly traded corporation where a corporate officer has to signoff on it (and could get sued by stockholders for reporting false or misleading information), I doubt it.
Engagement. Microtransactions. That’s what the $$$ seem to focus on nowadays. Box/dd price and subs are icing on the cake for PC and console.
they still make more money of of people buying pets from the store then subs.thats what they say at least subs doenst matter to blizzard.
sub count is a player base measuring stick not blizzards.they will make more money off of allied races,race changes,boosts and store mounts.
Do you believe Blizzard had 11.5 million subscribers AND millions more players with active game time, or a total of 11.5 million people with active game time whether purchased as a sub or a game time card, when in the 2008 annual report they said:
“Today, World of Warcraft is the world’s most successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with more than 11.5 million subscribers”
2008 Annual Report
Some people are willing to take risks more than others.
Blizz was in hypergrowth mode during that time. It still was in the early days of MMOs generating big money. What might have been considered or believed to be reasonable then might not be now. All speculation, of course.
What’s he’s saying is that in PR materials Blizzard is legally allowed to use whatever terms they want to provide whatever picture they want of their current player base.
However, the two game time options are distinctly different. When they offered the pirate ship for 6 month game time it could be obtained in any way possible (the subscription plans, which tokens can not be used for, and the non-subscription plans, which tokens can be used for) but they changed that the second promo and required players to have a 6 month subscription plan.
The difference, here, though is that in an earnings call they can’t define things so loosely because of disclosure laws and tighter regulations. In a legal document like this they’d need to separate certain transactions, like token purchased game time, and actual subscriptions.
One of the primary reasons for this document is to provide transparency to the revenue/financial state of the company to shareholders so new revenue, recurring revenue, not in-game gold, are important distinctions.
Actually, he said close to the opposite - that they legally would be bound to use a term consistently or they could be accused of deceiving their shareholders.
What I was saying is that Blizzard has consistently, in their annual reports over those years, used “subscribers” to refer to anyone who had paid for active game time in any way. It was the word that made sense with the concept of WOW being a subscription-based game. Shareholders didn’t care how players paid for the time, just that there were players paying - aka subscribers.
They are distinctly different at the purchase point. Subscriptions can only be bought with payment methods that are available for monthly charges. For a long time, non-subscriptions were only available from retail locations as a card with a code. (And that’s leaving out how differently Korean game time is handled.)
They weren’t notably different at the income reporting point. Either an account had paid game time during the period being measured, and it counted, or it was inactive and didn’t count.
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No, he did not say the opposite. Financial disclosures are not PR materials. He and I are saying the same thing. In public relations materials, such as, advertising Blizzard can define “subscribers” in pretty much any way they want.
They are not able to do that in their financial disclosures.
You and I have been reading different financial disclosures over the years if you are reading disclosures that are not separating their in-game transactions from their recurring subscriptions.
As soon as game time was purchasable via in-game currency as opposed to real money Blizzard was required to distinguish between them in their disclosures for what should be obvious reasons.
Please link the last financial report you read that blended the two without distinction so I can review your source.
Okay, do you call an Annual Report a PR material or a Financial Disclosure. Because what I quoted directly from AND linked is an Annual Report, what a company gives to its shareholders.
EDIT: In case you missed the link, it’s the words “2008 Annual Report” - but here it is without the hyperlinking bit:
https://investor.activision.com/static-files/6a3821f5-f503-4f4a-a9ea-c9d53c988ccb
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Yes they were.
I moved from Kil’Jaden to Andorhal before the release of TBC and it cost me $25.
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That’s the correct document, but it’s one from before tokens were implemented.
They are already being sued for false statements. There is a class action lawsuit against them. Technically its not lying. Its like saying BFA had the highest single day sales record for an expansion (they just happened to include 6 month online presale). Back in TBC through WOTLK, millions of people had to physically go to a retail outlet and purchase the game.
Either way the sub injection from a % base due to low subs is certainly being cherry picked.
I mean come on, the success is being compared against the lowest point of BFA.
The timing of these releases is smart because it will likely lessen the blow of players leaving classic servers and retail.
Staggering the releases between each other works to keep active content. Even though retail and classic are recycled content.
That game isn’t for you. They make a lot of money out of it. Farmville was a bonanza, too. It won’t be fathomable to the sort of people who play WoW. There are people different from us out in the world. People who dribble money with whatever they do for fun.
You’re writing a lot of the right words but are still are wrong on subs way back when compared to now. Why? Because China. Sparing you a long reply and suggest you read the definition of a subscriber in China pre-WotLK. Whether everyone in the peanut gallery agreed or not, Blizzard was always up front about it.
Hrm… Not sure if serious?
This shouldn’t surprise anyone.
My only experience with WoW was in vanilla, never played it past that or in retail, back 100% solely for classic, having a great time. No plans to ever touch retail.
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This but delusional players will always cherry pick their arguments base on facts they do not understand. The classic community are experts at it
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if you think thats good just wait for classic tbc to launch.
My opinion on this topic is simple: Blizzard plans for the long term. They are certainly looking at players response to Classic, but Classic is less than 11 weeks old. Blizzard is not going to base 4-year plans on 11 weeks of data. They will wait to see how Classic does in phase 2, 3, etc.
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Almost like the Witness Protection Program