Blizzard – Down Nearly 2 Million Subscribers, But Still Insanely Profitable November 9, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: Activision, Bobby Kotick, Call of Duty
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The big news for MMO watchers in Activision Blizzard’s quarterly report was the mention that World of Warcraft was down to 10.3 million subscribers, a loss of nearly 2 million from its 2010 peak.
Wait, where did I get that 2 million number?
Last year’s end of year report from Activision Blizzard stated that, as of Dec. 31, 2010, there were more than 12 million World of Warcraft subscribers.
As of October 7th, 2010 Blizzard claimed 12 million subscribers world wide.
Cataclysm came out between those two, which must have bumped up the subscriber base some, though we cannot tell exactly how big of a bump that was. Still, selling 4.7 million units in in the first month probably a reasonable indication that some players came back for the expansion, especially since China did not get Cataclysm until this past summer.
So I think we can safely assume that, at some point in December there was a subscription peak at least close to 12.3 million. And with the statement that WoW is down to 10.3 million, 2 million missing subscribers seems to be a reasonable estimate to throw around.
So that is my number.
What does it mean?
While I feel some of it is repudiation of the direction Cataclysm went, with its very solo-centric feel, my gut say that having just five levels of content, and pretty easy content, just wasn’t enough to keep the non-raiders hanging around.
The raid-or-die crew will blast through the content to get to work on raiding, but will hang out doing that for a long time. People like me are more invested in a slower climb through the new zones, and those five zones were pretty fast. That and I think the value people put on the new 1-60 content was pretty low.
Anyway, mistakes were made and at some point next year Pandas will either fix them or make them worse, we shall see.
But does being down 2 million subscribers, a 17% dip from peak (my estimate), mean doom for Blizzard?
Probably not.
The Activision Blizzard third quarter results bear that out pretty strongly.
Way down near the bottom, the results are broken out by “segment,” which means three different sections of the company:
- Activision Publishing (“Activision”) — publishes interactive software products and content.
- Blizzard — Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and its subsidiaries (“Blizzard”) publishes games and online subscription-based games in the MMORPG category.
- Activision Blizzard Distribution (“Distribution”) — distributes interactive entertainment software and hardware products.
Revenue for Activision was $253 million for the last quarter and $898 million for the year so far.
Revenue for Blizzard was $297 million for the last quarter and $968 million for the year so far.
So the Activision and Blizzard sides of the houses are not far out of syn when it comes to how much money they bring in before expenses. And the numbers for Distribution, just to round this out, were $77 million for the last quarter and $214 million so far in 2011.
Then there is income, which is the amount of money left after they paid all the bills but before they paid taxes.
Income for Activision was… well… they fell short $36 million dollars last quarter, and for the year it has made a grand total of $42 million.
Income for Blizzard was $120 million last quarter and it has made $425 million dollars in 2011 so far.
And Distribution is in for a million dollars of income this year.
So with revenues that are reasonably close, Blizzard has made TEN TIMES as much income this year as Activision.
Not only that, Blizzard makes more than 43 cents on every dollar it takes in. So of your $14.99 subscription fee, $6.58 cents go into a bucket that might as well be labelled “Profits and/or Bail Out Money for Bobby.”
Okay, yes, it is a bit more complicated than that. There are other costs and taxes that come in after that number. And the numbers are down from last year, which is partially because Blizzard didn’t ship anything new in 2010 and partially because of the subscription slide I am sure. But those are still really solid financials.
So when Bobby the Tick comes out and says “Profits tripled!” it does not mean, as has been reported in the media, that Call of Duty saved the day.
Call of Duty merely meant that Activision wasn’t nearly as big of a drain of Blizzard’s money making acumen as they might have otherwise been.
Blizzard has been saving the day since was joined up with Activision.
Appearance Slots – The Case For November 9, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Rift.13 comments
Since starting on Rift my various characters have accumulated a bit of the various in-game currencies.
I am still a bit confused as to why some currency-like items… planarite or coins… are tracked on the currency tab while others… and I speak specifically of magma opals, which I gather are special for the current world event… have to rattle around in my bag or bank.
Anyway, I accumulated some magma opals over the course of the world event and I actually stumbled over the vendor who sells things in trade for magma opals.
And, the vendor actually had something that I wanted, was useful, and that I could afford. That is pretty much a special event trifecta for me! Usually it is want/useful/affordable, pick two.
So I bought the item, which was a helmet of purple quality with a pretty big stat boost over my current chapeau, and put it right on. And then I saw what it looked like on my head.
Do I amuse you?
Apparently the helms were remainders from some fringe masonic order or a circus second hand store that had gone out of business.
Not that I am the most picky dresser in-game. I’ll wear most anything for a lark.
Getting wild at Brewfest
In fact, I think I could have handled the helm had it not been for the violet plume sticking up at the top of the helm. Or if the Eth were not such gray, squirrel-like humanoid race. What is up with the Eth? Is this some sort of poke at those interested in technology?
But Rift at least leaves me an out with their own version of equipment appearance slots.
No plume, still gray
At least now my warrior can face the world without the worry of people pointing and laughing.
LEGO Universe End Game November 8, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, lego, Misc MMOs.Tags: club penguin, LEGO Universe, Toontown Online
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It seems that the troubled story of LEGO Universe now has an end date.
A press release went out last week and email notifications started going out to users after that letting everyone know that LEGO Universe will be shutting down on January 31, 2012.
On March 5, 2007 a press release went out announcing that LEGO and NetDevil would be joining forces to create a LEGO themed MMO.
At that point, in the MMO world, NetDevil was primarily known for its troubled Auto Assault online game, published by NCsoft, which would be closed down in July of 2007.
LEGO Universe, after a couple of missed dates, eventually went live just over a year ago, on October 26, 2010. And it has had problems ever since.
Originally a traditional “buy the box, pay a subscription fee” model MMO focused on kids and claiming to offer parents ease of mind on safety issues, it failed to distinguish itself on all counts.
Its well established main competitors (e.g. Club Penguin, online since 2005 and Toon Town, online since 2003) offered free to obtain, free to play options along with parental controls on par with LU, while pay to play games like World of Warcraft offered superior parental options.
So the only real draw was LEGO base game play, and LEGO Universe failed to stand out in that department as well, as so accurately documented by Oz over at Kill Ten Rats. In our own house, my daughter tried the game and went quickly from enthusiasm to boredom. She stopped playing and has never asked to play the game since.
NetDevil bowed out of the LEGO Universe drama with a press release on February 24, 2011, which also pretty much ended their existence as part of Gazillion Entertainment, which purchased NetDevil back in July of 2008.
In June 2011, LEGO announced that LEGO Universe would go to a free to play model, the current panacea for all ailing MMOs these days.
All of which brings us to today’s email blast from LEGO.
Hello Adventurer, today we are very sad to announce that LEGO® Universe will be closing on January 31, 2012. This was a very difficult decision to make, but unfortunately LEGO Universe has not been able to attract the number of members needed to keep the game open.
We realize how sad this will make the many players who have enjoyed LEGO Universe and we are committed to providing open communication with both kids and parents as we transition through this difficult time. We understand this is a challenging change and apologize for not being able to give parents forewarning before the general announcement.
We are thankful to have had the opportunity to share this adventure with an amazing community of players. We hope you will continue to enjoy LEGO Universe for the last few months. As a thank you, if you are a paying subscriber on December 31, 2011, we will provide you the full game for the final month for free.
Again, we want to thank the fantastic community of players who made LEGO Universe such a vibrant, fun and creative experience.
Hello Adventurer, today we are very sad to announce that LEGO® Universe will be closing on January 31, 2012. This was a very difficult decision to make, but unfortunately LEGO Universe has not been able to attract the number of members needed to keep the game open.
We realize how sad this will make the many players who have enjoyed LEGO Universe and we are committed to providing open communication with both kids and parents as we transition through this difficult time. We understand this is a challenging change and apologize for not being able to give parents forewarning before the general announcement.
We are thankful to have had the opportunity to share this adventure with an amazing community of players. We hope you will continue to enjoy LEGO Universe for the last few months. As a thank you, if you are a paying subscriber on December 31, 2011, we will provide you the full game for the final month for free.
Again, we want to thank the fantastic community of players who made LEGO Universe such a vibrant, fun and creative experience.
Sincerely,
The LEGO Universe Team
The Details:
- The game will be turned off on January 31, 2012 at midnight (EST).
- All current subscribers (1, 6 or 12 month plans) who still have active subscriptions on December 31 will receive a refund for any remaining game time remaining after December 31 as well as free play from January 1, 2012 until January 31.
- For example, if you purchased a 6-month subscription on September 1, 2011 (which would expire on February 29, 2012), you would be refunded $16.66 for the 2 months following December 31.
- We will begin processing all refunds on February 1, 2012. All refunds will be made to the credit card used for the original subscription.
- If your subscription expires before December 31 you will need to purchase an additional 1 month subscription by December 31 in order to get the free game play in January (again, any unused game time as of December 31 will be refunded.)
- LEGO Universe game cards can only be used until December 1st 2011. Unused game cards after December 1st can be converted to LEGO Shop @Home gift cards for the same value.
- Please note: Details on how to convert unused game cards will be posted on December 1.
- You can continue to enjoy the free to play zone until January 31, 2012 but your last chance to convert to a paying subscription is December 31, 2011.
There is an additional FAQ with more details available.
And so a sad end to a game with such promise. There is no curse like failing to live up to ones potential. And I am sure this was a hard decision at LEGO. Once you have all that effort sunk into a project, once everything is in place, once the machine is running, it is tough to just turn the switch off and send everybody home.
But LEGO has been through tough times of its own. The first decade of this century saw them stumble and really have to rethink how they did business after many years of simply succeeding because they were LEGO. That lead to a series of tough decisions that brought them back from the brink and set them to focus more on profitability than market share.
And that focus is clearly being felt now. LEGO Universe isn’t hitting its goals and is going to be cut.
I am sure this is sad news for those who play the game. I certainly find it sad, if in a more abstract sense, since we haven’t played it for months at our house.
In the end though, they appear to have failed to capture the essence of what makes LEGO building sets popular.
What should have been the direction for LEGO Universe? Less “block-based WoW” and more “LEGO Second Life?”
(The latter with more parental controls and less some smaller quantity of flying penises, of course.)
The Scars of Velious Complete on Fippy Darkpaw… I Think… November 7, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest.Tags: Fippy Darkpaw, Progression Server, Veil of Alaris, Vulak
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The Scars of Velious expansion may at last be complete on Fippy Darkpaw.
The last armor quest on the mighty list of 42 armor quests, the Armor of Icicles, finally got wrapped up on November 3rd by… well… it doesn’t say.
But then none of the armor bit show who completed them, which somewhat defeats the purpose of making a little floaty text thingy to honor the person who first got the item on the server. Go SOE.
Anyway, thanks go out to that final unknown hero among many unknown heroes for ticking that last check box so that everything looks nice in the expansion progress window.
There is still one mystery item on The Scars of Velious achievements, but I am not sure what it represents.
One empty circle... not sure what it means
And I am not sure if it matters.
Those who purport to know assure me that the only gate to setting off the 60 day countdown to the unlock vote for the next expansion, the Shadows of Luclin, was the awakening of The Sleeper, an event which occurred on September 14th on Fippy Darkpaw (and a little less than two weeks later on Vulak).
That would put the start of the vote for the unlock of Luclin at the 13th of November at the earliest, with a potential opening of the expansion before the end of the month.
If the votes are affirmative, and there is no reason to think that they will not be, Luclin will open up on Fippy Darkpaw and Vulak just in time to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the original launch of the expansion, which came out on December 4, 2001.
Meanwhile, the 18th EverQuest expansion, Veil of Alaris, will be coming out on November 15th.
While the content of this expansion won’t be available on the progression servers for a long time (if ever… the last progression servers were merged into Live servers by the time they got close to being current), the fact that all EverQuest players use the same client means that progression server players can look forward to new hotbars, among other features, being pushed out with the expansion.
TL;DR version: Luclin and new hotbars coming soon.
The Azeroth Travel Poster Contest is Now Closed to Entries November 7, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: contest, Travel Posters
4 comments
I should have posted this yesterday, but I’ve had a cold and that has delayed a number of things.
The final total is 16 entries from 13 individuals. I will now spend the next week figuring out who has actually won.
Not an easy task.
But I will have it figured out by Sunday, November 13th, at which point somebody will get a code for a sparkle pony.
In the mean time, here is an entry from James.
Visit the Beautiful Hinterlands
He chose a stylized look which works pretty well.
Guardian Cub Price Check – First Weekend Price Drop November 6, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: Companion Pets, Guardian Cub, RMT, WoW Insider
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Time for a first weekend look at Guardian Cub prices.
As was probably to be expected, there were a lot more Guardian Cubs on the market Sunday morning than there were when I did my first check. The 24 hour delay and the impact of people who only play on the weekend guaranteed that.
And what did more cubs do to the price? Here is what things looked like at 17:00 UTC.
Eldre’Thalas (PvE Alliance) – 10 Cubs Listed
Bid/Buyout
- 6,925/7,999
- 7,000/8,000
- 7,000/8,500
- 7,350/8,500
- 7,800/7,875
- 7,900/7,900
- 8,500/8,500
- 8,500/8,500
- 8,000/10,000
- 12,250/15,000
Eldre’Thalas (PvE Horde) – 8 Cubs Listed
Bid/Buyout
- 5,250/6,850
- 7,000/7,000
- 7,000/7,000
- 7,500/8,900
- 7,500/9,250
- 7,672/9,262
- 8,700/8,700
- 9,000/9,100
Hyjal (PvE Alliance) – 11 Cubs Listed
Bid/Buyout
- 7,400/7,999
- 7.975/7,975
- 8,000/9,000
- 8,546/8,996
- 8,960/8,997
- 9,000/10,236
- 9,450/10,236
- 9,500/10,000
- 9,974/10,499
- 9,974/10,499
- 9,974/10,499
Lightninghoof (PvP Horde) – 15 Cubs Listed
Bid/Buyout
- 8,296/9,217
- 8,379/9,310
- 8,464/9,405
- 8,500/9,500
- 8,644/9,099
- 8,644/9,099
- 8,731/9,702
- 8,820/9,800
- 9,000/9,150
- 9,099/9,099
- 9,349/9,899
- 9,450/9,999
- 13,100/13,200
- 13,100/13,200
Thrall (PvE Alliance) – 8 Cubs Listed
Bid/Buyout
- 7,122/9,472
- 7,124/9,475
- 8,000/9,500
- 8,939/10,000
- 9,168/9,651
- 9,471/9,471
- 15,080/15,080
- 17,500/20,000
More cubs pushed the price down significantly. At my first check, you had to shell out about 20,000 gold if you wanted a cub. Now the price is well below 10,000 gold in most markets. And in very small markets, like the Horde side of Eldre’Thalas, the low end of the price spectrum is coming close to what I believe will be the effective floor price for sellers, 5,000 gold.
Over at WoW Insider they have started to look at the price of Guardian Cubs. They have pointed to Auction House Spy, which has set up a special page dedicated to tracking Guardian Cub pricing. Hey, there was a cub for 3,000 gold on the Thaurissan server. So I might be wrong on my estimated floor price, though at 3,000 gold that makes legitimate Cub gold twice as expensive as illicit gold seller gold.
They also mention The Undermine Journal, another price tracking site, for people who want data on Guardian Cub prices. I think the front page of that site is worth a look just because it visually demonstrates the number of different economies that exist in the WoW universe. And those are just the North American servers.
Since those tools are available, I won’t be tracking Guardian Cub prices on any sort of regular basis, though I am sure I will come back every so often to see just were prices have gone.
Baby Steps in Telara – A Guild is Formed November 3, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Instance Group, Rift.Tags: Batsmen of the Calamari, Freemarch, Guild Creation, Kelari Refuge
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We couldn’t quite get the group together Halloween weekend.
Earl, who lives in New York, informed us via the magic of iPhone that he was otherwise without power or internet connectivity. So we had to leave him to the hum of his generator along with the almost non-stop sound of breaking tree branches while we figured out what to do in Rift without him.
And the rest of us got on a bit late. There were pets and patches and updates to deal with. Jolly joined the rest of us in getting the collector’s edition of the game. Like Earl, he got the spider mount that now comes with the CE, as opposed to the turtle that was the previous reward mount.
Getting on late and being a player short, we needed something to do.
Being a fan of obtainable goals, I suggested we try to form a guild. Potshot and I had already gone through the usual preamble of silly guild names and had come up with one to foist on our unsuspecting future guild mates.
The question was whether just the four of us could form a guild.
It turns out that two people with enough alts can manage guild formation just fine.
Potshot logged into Zahihawass, one of his higher level alts (his naming theme for Rift seems to be “unpronounceable meets unspellable”), picked up a charter in Meridian, and invited us all to sign. This did not even require physical proximity, though we were one signature short.
However, I was able to log out and back in with an alt of my own, sign the remaining line, and there we were.
Guild Charter Complete
The Batsmen of the Calamari is both a Monty Python reference as well as a Rift reference.
Then we set about getting people set up at appropriate ranks within the guild. Rift seems to come with more guild ranks than I would imagine anybody might need by default.
We have many ranks from which to choose!
I am sure there are guild out there that need ranks beyond a default “recruit, member, officer, leader,” but how many guilds need 10 ranks?
And there was also a tab about guild perks.
Tell me of these perks!
I will have to go read up on those.
As we were doing this, I also got a whisper from Harbinger Zero pkudude99 who is also on the Alsbeth server. He sent Earl and I some armor he crafted, which was better than the quest reward items I had accumulated up to that point. So a big thanks goes out for that.
With the guild formed, we decided to run down the starter quest chain a bit. Earl had actually gotten a bit ahead, and he can be an MMO machine when he puts his mind to it, so we figured he would have no problem catching up if we got a quest hub or two ahead of him.
So we cleared out the quests from the first hub, which included yet another sample “here is how rifts work” event, calamari tentacles and all.
Finishing up the training rift
We pushed on from there and eventually ended up at the Kelari Refuge, where we decided to call it a night.
Kelari Refuge on the Water
But we now have a guild and a silly guild name floating above all or our heads.
Batsmen of the what?
Next week we hope to be stuck into Freemarch proper.
Guardian Cub Price Check – Day One November 3, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: Companion Pets, Guardian Cub, RMT
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The first Guardian Cubs are now showing up in auction houses around Azeroth.
Here are the prices I saw this evening on the servers to which I have easy access.
Eldre’Thalas (PvE Alliance) – 3 Cubs Listed
Bid/Buyout
- 20,000/25,000
- 20,000/25,000
- 21,249/24,999
Eldre’Thalas (PvE Horde) – 1 Cub Listed
Bid/Buyout
- 18,000/28,000
Hyjal (PvE Alliance) – 4 Cubs Listed
Bid/Buyout
- 14,249/14,999
- 14,250/15,000
- 18,999/19,999
- 140,000/140,000
Lightninghoof (PvP Horde) – No Cubs Listed
Thrall (PvE Alliance) – No Cubs Listed
20-25,000 seems to the middle ground for the few auctions I have seen, with the low bid price being 14,249 gold, while the high end stands at 140,000 gold.
Of course, I have no idea if there were lower priced ones listed that sold already. That is just my snapshot as of 00:30 UTC.
A quick price check at a likely gold selling site showed me $10, the price of a guardian cub, was currently buying 7,000 units of illicit WoW gold. That might lead one the believe that, perhaps, an asking price of 140,000 gold for a $10 Guardian Cub might not be a sustainable price. Misplaced logic might lead you to conclude that legal gold ought to command a premium over illicit gold, so the price might be more reasonable at, say, 5,000 gold per cub. We shall see.
What sort of prices are you seeing on other servers?
Guardian Cub Now Available – Let The RMT Apocalypse Begin! November 2, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: Companion Pets, Guardian Cub, RMT
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The guardian cub is now available at the Blizzard Store.
Golden Companion Pet
Will it become a PLEX-like destroyer of illicit gold sales?
Will it be a quick, flash in the pan, making gold for some before losing its value?
Will this become the Pet Battles pet to have?
It looks like we will have to wait a bit to see. From the pet description:
During the purchase process, you’ll select a single World of Warcraft character on a single World of Warcraft license to receive the Guardian Cub. Please note that the World of Warcraft license must be in the North America game region.
Once you complete your payment, the pet should arrive in your selected character’s in-game mailbox in approximately fifteen minutes (in normal conditions; please allow up to three hours for delivery). The pet will initially be bound to your character, but it will automatically become unbound and transferable to other characters (by mail or trade) after 24 hours. Redeeming the pet (by right-clicking it) will consume the item.
So on the Alliance side of the Eldres-Thalas server there are NONE for sale yet.
Come on Blizzard, I want to see the walls come tumbling down!
Tune in tomorrow I guess, as I try to get a price check on guardian cubs.
I Thought This Achievement Was Going to be More Difficult… November 1, 2011
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: Cataclysm, Hallow's End, Mists of Pandaria, Pandaclysm
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As I mentioned in the October in Review post, and which you probably missed since it was at the end of a wall of text, my daughter and I are back to playing WoW a bit, thanks in large part to the promise of Pandas. And with Hallows End going on, I decided to try and get that mask achievement finished at last.
And then I got an unexpected achievement.
I barely got myself into Uldum before I got it too. I went through the little intro event.
Zany, madcap adventures
And shortly ended up at Ramkahen, where I was promptly flamed by a passing epic dragon.
Laying in the Fire
I am guessing they must have upped the Deathwing travel rate, since back when Cataclysm launched, I had my hunter out in Uldum for ages and never once saw him. But Vikund, he was out there for a couple hours and Ramkahen got lit up three times. And those flames last for a while.
And did they nerf flight routes while I was away as well? Vikund seemed to have all the flight points in Cataclysm, even in zones he had never visited before. Odd.
Anyway, I managed to visit all of the pumpkins in the new Cataclysm zones for that achievement, which only left me with the mask achievement… again.
Last year Hallow’s End finished up with me shy two masks. Cataclysm added four more masks, so I had six to get. I proceeded to hit every last pumpkin in Azeroth I could find and ended up with this.
Two damn masks left to go. Again. Ah well, next year in Stormwind, as they say.
At least I got the Creepy Crate pet for a few of my characters. And the critters it eats count towards the Critter Kill Squad guild achievement, which is good, as we seem to need another 30K critters to finish it off. Still, we have been progressing, and the last time I was paying attention to it, we needed 40K critters. Every little bit helps.
And I am sure the Creepy Crate will make for an interesting companion pet when pet battles get introduced as part of Pandaclysm.
