[onlyrealcuzzo]

$300M compared to WoW printing $7B per year in profit in its heyday is almost a rounding error.

To put things into perspective - in its heyday - WoW was half as profitable as Tesla is now...

It's hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice.

They made WoW. It was insanely profitable. Their valuation soared. They sold. They declined.

It's hard to say if its reversion to the mean or the Activision acquisition - but it's hard to argue Blizzard hasn't declined by every metric.

[octodog]

$7b seems wrong. That would require about 40 million subscribers each paying $15 a month. Peak subscribers was 12 million and many would be paying for slightly cheaper long term subs.

[Aerroon]

I don't know what the true numbers are, but didn't they also sell the game and expansions for like $40-60 on top of the subscription?

[virgildotcodes]

Plus they sell in game services, cosmetics, and game time tokens.

[Kamq]

They didn't do that much much at the peak of WoW. There were some pets you got by buying the collector's edition of the game but that was it. No paid mounts, no server transfers, no level boosts.

The paid stuff was a monetization tactic after the decline.

[ac29]

The peak of player numbers or the peak or revenue? It strikes me as entirely possible that the former peaked before the latter.

[Kamq]

Peak subscribers. I should have been more specific.

[wnevets]

Are you really saying a mobile game earning 300M in roughly 4 months is bad?

[Retric]

That’s earnings not profit.

Considering the cost to create and amount of reputation damage it caused, YES. Diablo immortal was a massive failure.

[snapcaster]

I miss old blizzard too, but it was a massive success. It makes tons of money

[Retric]

How much did they spend in development and advertising before that 4 month period and how quickly are those earnings dropping?

That’s the calculation you need to look at, not earnings as if expenses prior to release was 0$.

[PeterCorless]

It also gave us SusanExpress and gold farming. Heaven help us.

[bobmaxup]

Not sure if you are referencing WoW, Diablo Immortal, or Blizzard in general, but gold farming has been around a while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming#History

[PeterCorless]

Definitely. Talking about WoW in particular. It's less lucrative now, but they were everywhere a decade+ back. Burning Crusade to Lich King era. Spelling out the names of their websites with orchestrated corpse die-offs in big cities like Stormwind and Ogrimmar.

[wnevets]

What percentage of that 300M do you believe went to cost?

According to the article they generated roughly the same amount of revenue in 4 months as the previous record breaking game did in an entire year. I wish I had that kind of reputation damage.

[Laforet]

Mobile games live and die by aggressive marketing. With conversion ratio in the single digit, it's not uncommon for half of their operating costs to be advertising. And then you add the actual housekeeping and R&D on top of that...

[wnevets]

> Mobile games live and die by aggressive marketing.

That is a good point, the amount of raid shadow legends adverts on the internet have become a meme at this point. I haven't seen any ads for Immortals here in the US and the financial report doesn't break down marketing spend by property.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

I'm saying a 1-time $300M revenue compared to $14B in revenue per year for ~8 straight years is not really that significant.

[wnevets]

I am saying comparing a mobile only game to a MMORPG back when gamers were willing to pay to play MMOs is misleading. Which MMOs are making 14B in yearly revenue in today's entertainment market?

According to the article I linked Immortal generated roughly the same amount of revenue in 4 months as Raid Shadow Legends (the previous record holder) did in their best year. That is a domination of that gaming niche.

[skupig]

Yeah, cashing in on your reputation is bad. Short-term thinking like this is killing every Blizzard franchise.

[sbagel]

> WoW printing $7B per year in profit

Do you have a source on this $7B a year profit figure? I've tried to find it and can't find anything even close to $7B revenue let alone profit going back to 1994.

[seattle_spring]

As far as I can tell, they're way off the mark. This thread [1] estimates WoW at around $1b in revenue.

Also fyi, WoW was originally released in 2004, not 1994.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-revenue-does-World-of-Warcraf...