Notes taken from the Activision Blizzard Analyst Day [Source]:
* Introductory music for Kotick was hilarious. "PLEASE WELCOME.. *intense energizing action music*.. BOB-BY KOOOO-TICK!!!!"
* Kotick used the term "game changer" which was a pun that wasn't supposed to be a pun. I am disappoint.
* Apparently, Battle.net only has "15 Million (+) Monthly Active Users". Doesn't anyone else find that very low? This includes all Diablo players, StarCraft 1 + 2 players, WoW Starter Accounts, and World of Warcraft (including WoW China) active players. The ones that have B.Net accounts anyways (which is required for SC2, WoW and Starter Accounts).. but 15 million? That's it? Based on their vanity figures, I had thought it would be closer to 25-30 million at least. Since Starcraft 2 has 4-5 million active B.Net accounts right now, that only leaves 10-11 million players for the rest of their franchises. Guess that confirms Daeity's previous estimates regarding REAL PLAYERS versus "Subscriptions". :)
In September of 2002, B.Net had 11 million active users. And in September of 2004, they had 12 million active users. [Source]
So, B.Net Monthly Active Users has only increased about 3 million in the past 7 years. Wow.
* Activision boldly claimed that COD has more players (30 million unique players) than any Facebook game, and higher engagement than all top Facebook games. Once again, these are vanity figures and don't reflect actual active players and could have just been registered users.
But they're wrong. As of Feb. 1, 2011 CityVille had ~98.5 million MAU and Farmville had ~53 million MAU. Those are ACTIVE USERS, not just registered users.
What statistics did they even compare to?
* Activision claimed that their preorders for COD: MW3 are significantly higher than previous games and all other competitors. This is old news though. Based on their statements, MW3 preorders should be at least 7 million.
* The Skylanders transmedia MMO is targeting the "37 million online and gaming households with children aged 6-12". They received this statistics from the "2011 Gamer Census Data" but I couldn't locate this anywhere online. Maybe an internally researched census?
Skylanders is basically Pokemon candy cigarettes intended to get children hooked before being introduced to "adult cigarettes".. that is, Call of Duty. Gotta get them when they're young.
* There are about 100 developers working on the new Halo MMO right now. They're also building their own gaming service portal for the game (a "Battle.net" for Halo).
* Mike Morhaime was up next. Mentioned that they have 4,500 employees across 10 global offices. 800 of those employees are developers. The rest, as you know, are Customer Service.
* Mike detailed some other Blizzard vanity figures:
Blizzcon 2010 had over 25,000 attendees and over 500,000 viewers paid for the virtual ticket. Their Facebook page has over 1 million users following it.
* They're working on "Blizzard DOTA" and still working on the Marketplace for B.Net.
* Made some very interesting remarks about "nonlinear subscriber growth" and "erosion of player base." Nonlinear growth meaning negative growth but stated in a positive light. He mentioned that subscriber numbers are impacted by seasonality and new content, but that they're working on increasing retention initiatives and new regions to expand their service. It just sort of came out of the blue too, he didn't talk about subscription changes. These comments worried a lot of the attendees.. it's like he's preparing them for low subscriber counts at their next quarterly meeting.
* Continuing with the low subscriber number, he mentioned that NetEase is working on penetrating their Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in China. But there's risk involved, and their computer systems and IGR (Internet Game Rooms) are built for less performance heavy games like WoW. :)
* They've seen a 60% increase in new account creation due to the new World of Warcraft Starter Edition. Can't wait to see if they modify their "Subscriber" definition.
* The Diablo 3 Beta will be going into beta later this month. It will be starting during the last week or so, with beta invites going out at least 1-2 weeks in advance. So, Mid-Sept beta invites..
* Rob Pardo said that "Loot = BIG PART OF DIABLO". WOW has an "Achiever Economy" where players need to work for their items or have the best skill, whereas Diablo has a "Merchant Item Economy". The gameplay focus on items concerns me; I hope it doesn't sacrifice other important aspects of the game.
* Blizzard is expecting users to be able to sell items for $5, $10, and $50 on the Cash Auction House. The Gold Auction House will be for normal sales and most common items. The Cash Auction House will be for the best items and hardest to get.
* They seem to be aware that there's a clear segregation between the Gold AH and Cash AH in that the Gold AH will be used for low level items and the Cash AH will be used for high level items. For those who are complaining about the Cash AH, supporters will say "The real money auction house is optional." Well.. yes, optional for cheap items. All of the best items will be sold for cash and they'll also cycle through the system. Rob Pardo said that the "really powerful items will be bought and sold all the time."
* Rob Pardo is hoping people will use the Battle.net Account Balance (RMAH) to support their World of Warcraft subscription, buy B.Net games, and virtual items.
* The 3rd party payment provider partner has still not been announced yet because they don't technically have one yet. What concerns me is that they haven't finalized any deals yet, but that they're "getting close to a deal right now." The beta is starting soon, but they still haven't finalized the Cash Auction and Player Banking systems. Without a partner, what kind of shape is the technology and infrastructure? This can seriously push back the retail release date of the game and should have been finalized a long time ago. It sounds very last minute.
* Rob Pardo reiterated that the Cash Auction House is in place because players wanted it. "Why? PLAYERS WANT IT!" He also said, "Players really want this, and if we don't do it, someone else will."
* Thomas Tippl mentioned that the following investments will be out within the next 2-3 years: Diablo 3, D3 Expansion Pack, StarCraft X2 and X3, World of Warcraft X4 and X5. Titan MMO will incorporate mobile and social elements and will not be out in 2-3 years (i.e. 2014).
* Thomas Tippl said that the Map Marketplace will launch at the same time as the first SC2 Expansion Pack.
* Other than the World of Warcraft expansion packs, Blizzard also has new "Value Added Services" in the pipeline to enhance player experience.
* The Bungie MMO will be multiplatform. Since it trailed Skylanders information, it seemed to be that Thomas was indicating the Bungie MMO would be multiplatform like Skylanders. So, all consoles, plus PC, plus a "Web World" (or a web based method to access your account and possibly play elements of the game.)
* During the QA Period, the "nonlinear growth" question came up again. Mike Morhaime stated that the 12M to 11.1M drop was across the board but that "We don't break down regionally." They have done so in the past though.
* Regarding "continuing content", there will be a major update coming later this year. Meaning the X4 announcement at Blizzcon.
And, that's all folks. Some interesting stuff though.. especially that B.Net figure.
Funny how simple website changes and past trends can determine when big shake ups will be happening within organizations.. or more specially, Take Two / Rockstar.
Past trends can give you a really good idea of approximately when announcements will be made or what the announcements will be. But, any other small events (like sudden forum maintenance or website domain changes) can help fine tune your predictions.
By the way, it looks like all of their websites have now been redirected back to their original domains instead of centralized at Rockstar HQ. It was all done pretty quickly, so it appears that they might be testing a future change and possibly making more "internal changes" to additional studios.
It was just announced that Team Bondi is closing their doors, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Expect many more announcements or internal restructuring over the next couple months.
Anyone out there watching their stock prices?
That Activision Blizzard Analyst Day call is today too.. should be a good news day. :)
** Update
Another group of layoffs has hit within Take Two. This time at 2K Games Mafia 2 studio.
Apparently, Blizzard might be changing their Character Naming process and are considering a switch to the StarCraft 2 naming system.
We’re very likely following the StarCraft II character name system in Diablo III, but it’s something we’re still discussing.If so, then this won't be a viable gold making strategy anymore, and you'll see thousands of characters ingame named Legolas.
We think the ability to name your character anything you want (barring restricted words, of course) even if someone else picked it is just a more positive experience for the user. You want your barbarian named Baba? Cool, have fun playing the game. The World of Warcraft experience of sitting there trying names for 30+ minutes until you find one that isn’t taken can be very frustrating, and ultimately you end up with a name you didn’t really want. Granted that’s for a well-aged game with a lot of characters created over the years, but it’s also a game that’s broken down into hundreds of separate servers. In Diablo III everyone in a region is in the same boat, so unique-naming difficulties could get pretty out of hand even in the first few months.
As I said it’s something we’re discussing and could have some different angles on those ideas, but that’s essentially where we see the benefits of a non-unique naming system. [Source]
I can understand their reasoning.. there are pros and cons to doing it either way. They could make a lot of money from the old fashioned WoW style naming approach and players would be very happy to have unique names. On the other hand, it alienates newer players as the names dry up. With the StarCraft 2 naming method, it appeals to more newer players but takes away the pride of having a one-of-a-kind name.
It's something they're still discussing though, so they're still weighing the pros and cons themselves.
* Hot on the trail of the recent Minor Rockstar Update and the "Max Payne 3 is getting close?" posts, Rockstar has just announced that Max Payne 3 is getting closer to completion and that we're going to be getting a lot of news within the next few months.
* Also, hot on the trail of that Diablo Clone post (in which Diablo was once compared to a clone of Gauntlet, but now users just call new games clones of old Blizzard games), just 2 weeks later a wonderfully confirming forum post was made by an average MMO-Champion user.
* Activision Blizzards Analyst Day is coming up this Thursday, so expect some new announcements this week. During past Analyst Days, there have been new game announcements (COD6) or confirmations as well as zany Activision quotes about the current state of console, gaming, and their vision of their future.
* You've probably already heard about the massive Copyright theft by "Chad Love", if that's his real name, of ART4LOVE.COM. When I first heard about it over a week back, I immediately thought about that "Everyone Is A Pirate" post. There were potentially thousands of people who purchased pirated art from this very professional looking website, and they were even provided a Certificate of Authenticity with the art. This is just one small operation out of thousands of other fraudulent (but professional looking) websites out there selling pirated goods to unsuspecting consumers.
* I have a bad feeling about the game length of Diablo 3. It looks like leveling in the game is too quick (e.g. Lvl 30 by Act 2), and each of the Acts will be much shorter than Diablo 2. It's almost as if the difficulty levels were created to extend the length of the game rather than for re playability purposes like in D2. I really hope we won't be seeing too many "this game is too short" reviews. I may have to look into this a bit more to see if Blizzard has made any recent comments about the game length.
* Did some researching and found out that each Act is about 2 hours long. So, that's 8 hours for a full playthrough of the game and then you can go back and do it again and again on different difficulty levels. According to Blizzard, you will be able to complete the difficulty levels faster as you progress too, so Nightmare and Hell will take less than 8 hours. That sounds rather disappointing and I hope it's not accurate. Each play through should be at least 25-30 hours in length (not 8), and then shorter periods for each followup difficulty excluding Inferno. It really worries me that the game is going to be too short now and will rely on Auction House metagames and simply replaying the exact same game again but with NPC palette swaps..
On a related note, the reason why they only need players to test such a small section of Diablo 3 in the beta is because D3 is much easier to manage, test, and QA than WOW. D3 has a very small fraction of thousands of WOW quests and gameplay mechanics. A small QA team can easily spellcheck and test everything in the game over a short period of time. The only testing that's really needed from us is for load, server, and technical reasons.
