Blizzard Games To Return To The People's Republic This Summer

In a story I missed last week, Microsoft has made up to NetEase for the sins committed by the Bobby Kotick-led Activision-Blizzard-King and Blizzard games are returning to the People's Republic of China. Reading the coverage of the event, the effects of the agreements will definitely expand past the borders of the world's number two economy.

That's right, two agreements. The first returns many favorite games to China. According to the South China Morning Post:

Confirming an earlier South China Morning Post report, the two companies renewed a publishing agreement that will cover games under the previous arrangement, including World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and other titles in the Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, and StarCraft universes, according to a joint statement on Wednesday. These titles are expected to start returning to mainland China this summer.

“After continuing discussions over the past year, both Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase are thrilled to align on a path forward to once again support players in mainland China and are proud to reaffirm their commitment to delivering exceptional gaming experiences,” according to the statement.

Last January, the two companies suspended services for all Blizzard titles in the mainland, except for Diablo Immortal, a mobile title co-developed by NetEase and Blizzard, as their 14-year partnership came to an end. Both sides blamed each other for treating Chinese players badly after failing to agree to new terms to extend the deal.

A Reuters report came closest to fingering former ABK CEO Bobby Kotick for the breakdown in relations.

A number of Blizzard's games were taken offline in China in January 2023 after the developer terminated the partnership with NetEase citing disagreement over intellectual property control. The pair subsequently sued each other.

Tension eased after Microsoft's October acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which was followed by management changes. Chinese media then reported that Microsoft and NetEase were seeking ways to re-launch Blizzard games in China.

But are Chinese players willing to forgive the pulling of their favorite games away from them for over a year? Not according to The New York Times.

The announcement of the new agreement was shared widely on Weibo, China’s version of X, and the reaction was mostly negative. Some people still seemed upset that the games had not been available for more than a year, while others accused Blizzard of disrespecting Chinese gamers. One person said that were not so “cheap” as to come running back immediately once the games had returned.

But Microsoft and NetEase also signed an agreement about the XBox platform. According to Investopedia:

Separately, NetEase and Microsoft entered into an agreement that would look into bringing new NetEase titles to Microsoft’s Xbox consoles and other platforms.

"NetEase games titles being explored to be brought under Xbox consoles and other platforms is incrementally positive" for the China-based developer and operator of online games, Jefferies added.

One might think the news was good for the stock price of NetEase, which trades on Nasdaq. But after opening at $101.66 on Wednesday, NetEase stock opened the week trading at $93.03 today, a decline of 8.5% in the stock price over 3 business days.

Blizzard Releases The Roadmaps For 2024

Does anyone get the impression that Microsoft has already imprinted some of its culture onto Blizzard Entertainment? The part about pumping out the content. World of Warcraft Executive Producer Holly Longdale released a roadmap yesterday for both Retail WoW and WoW Classic in 2024.

Without dates, I can only surmise Longdale plans to release six significant patches, including The War Within expansion, during 2024. The timing of the expansion originally drew my interest, with the pre-expansion patch due to drop in early summer and the expansion itself in late summer. Before the acquisition by Microsoft, I would entertain the theory Blizzard was counter-programming against the release of FFXIV: Dawnwalker which is also due to release in the summer of 2024. But given the new release cadence, I'll chalk it up to Agile development.

Longdale had this to say about Retail WoW:

In modern World of Warcraft, you’re going to see three more content updates for Dragonflight arriving before World of Warcraft: The War Within releases next year. In these updates, we’ll be wrapping up the story for this expansion and laying the foundation for our next one. Dragonflight Season 4 will revisit Dragonflight’s dungeons and raids, along with outdoor content, featuring updated rewards, and a few new twists. Then, in the Spring/Summer, we’ll ask for your feedback when the War Within expansion alpha and beta tests drop.  We will continue to communicate details, dates, and more goodness as we get closer to content updates, just like this year! Well, most of it anyway (we’ll have some surprises in store too!).  Coming up next in January, we have the Seeds of Renewal content update on tap and we’re currently keeping an eye on your feedback on the live public test realms (PTR) for this update.

I'm not exactly sure about the whole Cataclysm Classic coming in 2024. Didn't the Cataclysm expansion mark the beginning of the decline of WoW? Quite frankly, with all the flavors of Classic servers, I get confused with everything going on, including what is coming in 2024. Once again, I'll turn to Longdale for an explanation.

In WoW Classic, we have updates coming for Classic Hardcore with “Self Found” support in February as a new way to challenge players and add a little more hardcore into your Hardcore. Lok’tar ogar! We’ll also have more phases to release in Season of Discovery next year as the adventure continues. And, of course, Cataclysm Classic is right around the corner in the first half of next year!

From a release schedule standpoint, the Classic team is pumping out the content next year. I have the feeling some flavors of Classic may experience a content drought, but nothing like I've seen written about in the past.

I stopped playing World of Warcraft back in Vanilla, but I really cannot remember a time when WoW wasn't subject to long content droughts. Whether the cause is Phil Spencer or relatively new Executive Producer Holly Longdale, I see a steady release of content for years to come. The burning question, though, is how well the content is received by the players. After all, a steady stream of bad content will shove players to greener pastures.

NetEase Is Not Suing Blizzard After All

I'm almost afraid tomorrow I will have to clarify today's post. Yesterday's post concerned NetEase's lawsuit against Blizzard Entertainment. Today I have to write about how NetEase isn't suing Blizzard after all.

Blizzard replied to inquiries from Jiemian News about the lawsuit with the following statement.

“Blizzard has not received relevant complaints, but we believe that we have not violated any licensing agreement. NetEase’s suspected dissatisfied contract terms involve standard industry practices, and in the past few years It is mutually beneficial for both parties. Although these persistent behaviors make us feel disappointed and confused, It should be pointed out that the nearly 20 years of operation in China has been very positive and pleasant, and we will continue to be committed to serving local players and protecting their rights and interests.“

But then Wowhead did some research and questioned the entire idea NetEase sued Blizzard. The site specializing in World of Warcraft found that the docket had changed and NetEase was no longer listed as a party to the suit.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I'm almost afraid I'll need to post a third article explaining the whole chain of reporting events. But for now, Blizzard is being sued in China. Just not by NetEase.

NetEase Is Suing Blizzard Entertainment for CN¥300 Million

A really quick note about an ongoing situation that escalated to the Chinese legal system. NetEase is suing Blizzard Entertainment for a reported CN¥300 million, or USD$43 million. The original news site, Sina Finance, reported that NetEase paid refunds to 1.12 million players due to Blizzard pulling the games from NetEase's control in the People's Republic.

The lawsuit is seeking redress of additional damages, such as refunds for deposits the game company made to secure the rights to several games the American game studio never released and compensation for unsold merchandise. 

At this time, I'm interested in the effect the lawsuit will have on the upcoming sale of Activision-Blizzard-King to Microsoft. I'm pretty sure that with the billions Microsoft is willing to pay for ABK, and additional $43 million settlement is money the American tech giant can find somewhere in the couch pillows.

When Do Successful MMORPGs Begin Their Decline

On Monday, MassivelyOP's Eliot Lefebvre wrote an article attempting to forecast how Final Fantasy XIV will end. A rather thought-provoking premise considering the game is either at or near its all-time popularity. I won't try to answer Eliot's question today. Instead, I'll broaden out the premise to ask when we should expect very successful MMORPGs like FFXIV to decline and then try to apply the theory to everyone's favorite game under development to hate, Star Citizen.

My memory isn't the greatest, but the game before FFXIV with an incredible starting run was EVE Online. From its launch in May 2003, the niche Icelandic space game experienced almost steady growth (except for 2011's Summer of Rage) until the summer of 2013. The game peaked with an estimated subscriber base of over 500 thousand accounts worldwide, with a peak PCU of 65,303 on 5 May 2013.

For more mainstream games, World of Warcraft is more instructive. The Blizzard Entertainment product reached its peak during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, with the decline occurring shortly after the launch of Cataclysm. As dominating as WoW has proved over the past 15-20 years, the game reached its peak of 12 million subscriptions worldwide sometime in 2010.

But what about story and lore rich games like FFXIV? Does that lead to an extended initial growth period. I'm not sure. The only game I can think of outside FFXIV is World of Warcraft, which continued the story told in Warcraft 3. Admittedly I am not familiar with Warcraft 3, but from all the gaming videos I've watched, the Wrath of the Lich King was the natural end to the story of Arthas that began in the single-player game. The "official" end of Arthas as told in Shadowlands I hear should only count as bad fan fiction.

A ten year story arc isn't just confined to video games. In the movie industry, the Infinity Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe ran from 2008's Iron Man to 2019's Spiderman: Far From Home. An 11-year run from what I'm told is one of the greatest movie arcs in history is just a little longer than FFXIV's first story arc told from August 2013 to last year. 

My conclusion is that a very successful game will grow between 6 to 10 years. A game with a very good story might last longer, although FFXIV's initial story has ended. We will find out if Yoshi-P and Creative Business Unit III can catch lightening in a bottle twice and come up with a satisfying sequel that will keep and grow the player base.

I like to test my theories. Currently, the perfect game isn't really a game. Instead, I will use Star Citizen as the subject of my test. 

The story of Star Citizen really began with the launch of its Kickstarter back in October 2012. The story presented by Chris Roberts was that of a plucky independent who decided to fight the establishment and create the game he's dreamed about his entire life. Though all the ups and downs of the process, the players (known as "backers" in the lore) have cheered and groaned over the last decade. Star Citizen's "backers" have become as invested in their way as FFXIV's "Warriors of Light" became invested in Eorzea.

As for gameplay, I would start the clock with the release of Alpha 3.0. December 2017 is the time when Cloud Imperium Games turned the alpha into a live service product. Except CIG cannot call Star Citizen a game until the software delivers a minimum viable product. The company is still years away from reaching that stage of development.

So my answer is that the best games will begin to decline between 6 and 10 years after launch, The very best will reach the 10 year mark. And as a test, I can use the funding page on the Roberts Space Industries website to test my hypothesis in real time by looking at the funds coming in to pay for Star Citizen. The test is not perfect, but is the best I have at the current time.

WoW Patch 10.0.5 To Drop The Same Day As FFXIV Patch 6.31

Last Friday I wondered if Blizzard and Square Enix would alternate months for releasing content. Yesterday we got the answer. Dragonflight patch 10.0.5 will release on 24 January. Not only will the patch drop in the same month as Final Fantasy XIV's patch 6.3, but the WoW patch drops the same day as FFXIV's patch 6.31. For those who don't play Final Fantasy XIV, patch 6.31 introduces the new Ultimate raid, The Omega Protocol.

On a somewhat bright note, one of patch 10.0.5's new features, The Trading Post, won't go live until 1 February, so that pushes some of the content back. But with the new Storm's Fury world event, I can imagine some players might be torn between games.

I stopped playing World of Warcraft a month or two after the opening of the Ahn'Qiraj gates back in 2006, so the dueling patches we apparently will see between the two games throughout 2023 doesn't really affect me. But during the great WoW refugee migration in 2021 I met a lot of refugees. Sometimes some would stay in Eorzea while their friends would return to Azeroth to check out the latest. I talked to a couple of sad players in that situation.

I was hoping that the release cycles would allow for players to bounce between games, constantly consuming freshly released content. And what individuals could do, groups of friends could do as well. Of course, that might not please the beancounters who depend on statistics like monthly and daily active users. But for players who don't stick with just one game? The situation probably would have worked out quite nicely.

Will World Of Warcraft And Final Fantasy XIV Take Turns Releasing Patches?

One of the truisms I've believed is expansions and meaty patches help retain, if not grow, the player bases of MMORPGs. I watched CCP usually launch 2 expansions per year during EVE Online's climb to 500,000 subscriptions in the game's first 10 years of existence. Perhaps the end of major expansions with Kronos in June 2014 didn't cause EVE's player decline, but I maintain the reduction of the release of large injections of content played a noticeable role.

Another game with even worse issues releasing content on a timely basis was World of Warcraft. The existence of content droughts became acute during the Shadowlands expansion when Blizzard launched the game on 23 November 2020 and did not release patch 9.1 until 29 June 2021. A 220 day dearth of content did not go over so well with a lot of WoW players. I experienced the wave of "WoW refugees" migrating to Final Fantasy XIV during that time. Many reasons were cited, but do the WoW players even give FFXIV a glance if all was well in Azeroth?

FFXIV Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida believes in providing content on a predictable basis. Back in February 2022 the man fans fondly call Yoshi-P provided a roadmap for the release of the 5 main post-expansion patches following Endwalker. He also announced a slowing of the release cycle to every 4 weeks, with a .5 patch released approximately half-way through the cycle. Players can expect patch 6.3 released on Tuesday, with patch 6.4 to release in May and patch 6.5 in September. Patch 6.55 should release sometime in November.

New WoW Executive Producer Holly Longdale decided to introduce a roadmap herself and did so two weeks ago.

WoW's Roadmap for Dragonflight

I think her words brought some joy to players.

A WoW expansion is not a single moment in time but a journey —we know that the merit of an expansion hinges on the sustained quality of its entire arc. Years after its release, Legion is remembered fondly as much for the 11-week content update cadence that served as the framework for its first year as it is for artifact weapons or Khadgar's brilliant dad jokes.

In planning out the road ahead following the release of Dragonflight, we've been mindful of the duty we owe our players to nurture this living world and, frankly, the need to do better than we have at times in the recent past. Our goal for Dragonflight is that there should always be something right around the corner, with a new update hitting our test realms shortly after the last one is live and in your hands.

In total, we are planning to deliver six content patches, fairly evenly spaced, over the course of 2023. This will include two major updates, the traditional pillars of our expansions—with new zones, raids, and seasonal rewards—but in between those, we want to keep expanding and evolving our world with new world events, updates to systems, and evergreen holidays, new dungeon experiences, new narrative chapters and cinematics that can serve as epilogues or as prologues to the next major step in the adventure, and, most importantly of all, more opportunities for us to respond to feedback and change or add elements based on what we're hearing is most needed by our players.

During the WoW refugee crisis of 2021, I heard many talking heads on YouTube and Twitter speculate about a competition developing between WoW and FFXIV for which was the top game. Some foresaw a future where players could bounce between the two games. Run though the content of the latest patch? No problem, the other game just released something, so run over there for a month.

Is 2023 the year we see WoW's and FFXIV's schedules align? Here is the tentative schedule for the two games this year.

• January - FFXIV patch 6.3
• February - WoW patch 10.0.5
• March - FFXIV patch 6.35
• April - WoW patch 10.0.7
• May - FFXIV patch 6.4
• June - WoW patch 10.1
• July - FFXIV patch 6.45
• August - WoW patch 10.1.5
• September - FFXIV patch 6.5
• October - WoW patch 10.1.7
• November - FFXIV patch 6.55
• December - WoW patch 10.2

Schedules could change and patches could launch in the same month. But will we see the two companies take turns launching content throughout 2023? I really hope so.

Blizzard Entertainment And NetEase Parting Ways ... Almost

On Wednesday evening Blizzard Entertainment announced the suspension of services for most of its catalog of games in the People's Republic of China.

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that it will be suspending most Blizzard game services in mainland China due to the expiration of the current licensing agreements with NetEase, Inc. on January 23, 2023. This includes World of Warcraft®, Hearthstone®, Warcraft® III: Reforged, Overwatch®, the StarCraft® series, Diablo III®, and Heroes of the Storm®. Diablo Immortal® co-development and publishing is covered under a separate agreement between the two companies.

Blizzard Entertainment has had licensing agreements with NetEase since 2008, covering the publication of these Blizzard titles in China. The two parties have not reached a deal to renew the agreements that is consistent with Blizzard’s operating principles and commitments to players and employees, and the agreements are set to expire in January 2023.

We will suspend new sales in the coming days and Chinese players will be receiving details of how this will work soon. Upcoming releases for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, Hearthstone: March of the Lich King, and season 2 of Overwatch 2 will proceed later this year.

“We’re immensely grateful for the passion our Chinese community has shown throughout the nearly 20 years we’ve been bringing our games to China through NetEase and other partners,” said Mike Ybarra, president, Blizzard Entertainment. “Their enthusiasm and creativity inspire us, and we are looking for alternatives to bring our games back to players in the future.”

Notably, the latest collaboration between Blizzard and NetEase, Diablo Immortal, falls under a separate agreement and service will continue uninterrupted.

Blizzard has faced switching publishers in China at the end of a contract before. In 2009, Blizzard switched from The9, the original publisher in the PRC, to NetEase following The9's failure to receive approval from the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

SHANGHAI, Apr 16, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and NetEase.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTES) today announced that Blizzard Entertainment(R)'s World of Warcraft(R) will be licensed to an affiliated company of NetEase.com, Inc. in mainland China for a term of 3 years following the expiration of the current license agreement.

Both companies announced a partnership on Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft(R) III,StarCraft(R) II, and Battle.net(R) gaming platform last summer. Today's announcement further enhances the partnership between Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase and promotes a consistent level of quality and service in mainland China for all Blizzard Entertainment games involved in the partnership.

"We appreciate the enthusiasm that Chinese gamers have shown us over the years, and we've always worked hard, in collaboration with our partners, to ensure that these players receive the same high-quality service and gameplay experiences that we deliver in other regions," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "This new agreement with NetEase will support that goal for years to come, and we look forward to collaborating with them on a smooth transition for World of Warcraft moving forward."

"We are excited to be working with Blizzard Entertainment now on World of Warcraft in addition to Warcraft III, StarCraft II, and Battle.net," stated William Ding, CEO of NetEase. "By combining Blizzard Entertainment's expertise in developing world-class games with NetEase's strength in online-game operation in China, I am confident that we will be able to deliver the best gaming experiences in the world to our players."

Of course, the new deal also increased Blizzard Entertainment's bottom line.

According to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, the new contract with NetEase substantially increases Activision Blizzard's royalty rate on revenues from WoW in China. He estimates that with The9, Activision Blizzard collected a 22 percent royalty rate that translates into $50-$55 million annually based on recent subscriber figures. "Although the terms of the new arrangement were not disclosed, we estimate that the royalty rate will increase to at least 55%, and that the new arrangement will generate revenues of over $140 million annually,"

However, only allowing for two months to transfer publishing rights from The9 and NetEase was not enough to prevent a break in service. NetEase became embroiled in a bureaucratic battle between the GAPP and PRC's Ministry of Culture which prevented operation of the game. Despite acquiring the rights to publish WoW in April 2009, NetEase did not receive approval to operate The Burning Crusade, much less Wrath of the Lich King, in the PRC until February 2010. The Wrath of the Lich King finally launched in China on 31 August 2010.

The lengthy approval process for western video games to resume operation in the People's Republic after switching publishers still occurs. In July 2018, CCP Games, operator of EVE Online, switched publishers from Tiancity to NetEase, with NetEase to take over operations on 1 October 2018. But NetEase did not receive approval to operate EVE in the PRC until March 2020. The game relaunched in April 2020.

Given the previous examples of Blizzard's change of publishers for World of Warcraft in 2009 and CCP Games switch in publishers for EVE Online in 2018, we should expect some news of a new Chinese publisher for most of Blizzard's game catalog sometime in the next two weeks. But as for the ability of Chinese players to access their current accounts? Optimistically, that is months away.

A Telling Week For EVE Online

Today is a special day, as we get to witness the first full day a new generation experiences Wrath of the Lich King. 

The launch of Wrath of the Lich King Classic

For some companies, the competition isn't scary. The example that comes to mind is Final Fantasy XIV. The game's producer and director, Naoki Yoshida, actually urges players to take a break when they begin feeling burned out on the game. With patch 6.3 due out in December, now might be a good time for players to dip over and play what many, if not most, consider WoW's best expansion. If they don't like the game, well, patch 6.25 comes out in three weeks or so.

FFXIV Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida

On the other hand are games like EVE Online. Two of the metrics CCP Games uses to determine the health of the game is daily active users (DAU) and monthly active users (MAU). If players decide to take a break, the bosses begin to panic. And, in some sense, so do the players.

Courtesy of Jester's Trek

Not only is the activity on the Tranquility global shard the lowest it's been in the last four years, but is lower than any year over the past 16. Lately the decline as stopped and the average number of players logged in over the past few weeks has increased. With the release of new ships imminent and the first expansion in years due in November, the situation is beginning to look up for EVE players.

In 2019, EVE experienced a backlash by players fed up with the changes occurring in the game. The studio's leadership continued to tout the unpopular moves and when the original WoW Classic servers opened up in late August, activity suffered. A lot. The picture of how much damage became clearer when Pearl Abyss published revised revenue figures for EVE at an investors' earnings call in May 2020. The Pearl Abyss leadership also made the following statement at the time.

EVE Online is also maintaining stable performance. EVE Online -- which was known as the most difficult MMO game -- had the most important challenge, which was to motivate the interest of early users. Using Black Desert know-how and experience from EVE Online, many improvements were made. And accordingly, we saw a meaningful increase of new users. EVE Online, which is in its 17th year of launching, shows through many indexes that a well-made MMO game has a very long lifespan value.

The situation is not quite the same today, however. Back in 2019, the studio's top developers either didn't realize, or didn't care about, the player discontent. In contrast, CCP has dropped ideas like including unpopular monetization mechanics like non-fungible tokens and loosened up the economy. Will players look at the improvements and an expansion on the horizon and not turn to the latest shiny? Or is New Eden about to experience another massive player decline? The rest of the week will give us a hint about the future.

Blizzard Bans Boosting Communities In World Of Warcraft

So what is RMT?  At the most basic level, real money trading is the exchange of virtual goods, including in-game currency, and services for real world currency.

-- The Nosy Gamer, 2013

When I first heard of boosting services and communities in World of Warcraft, I first thought of real money trading. After all, how much different is running a character through a dungeon to get loot from the leveling services offered to get a character from level 1 to the maximum level of a game? Wait, you thought the evil game companies thought up character boosts were thought up by a bunch of greedy suits? Ha! The practice has been a staple of grey/black market sites for years.

An article in PC Gaming described the practice.

These boosting communities have a surprisingly elaborate process. They hire players to advertise their services on various servers. A buyer contacts them and pays them gold that is then paid to a "bank", or representatives of the boosting community. From there, boosters, who are paid with in-game gold from that bank, take on the job of getting players what they're after. All of this happens across multiple servers and is reported back to a centralized Discord server. This way, players who, for whatever reason, can't perform a tough raid or get a fancy mount, can either buy WoW Tokens for gold or pay the gold they already have for a group to help them. The advertisers, boosters, and other admins get to take that gold and continue their subscription or turn it into Blizzard bucks, if they want.

The only question was how much and how long Blizzard would tolerate the practice. The PC Gamer article makes the practice sound like everyone follows the rules. Hardly. Given the long history of WoW players violating Blizzard's rules, why would anyone think ToS violating activity was not occurring. Instead of buying WoW tokens for the gold to give the raiders offering the services, they could instead choose to either buy gold off the secondary markets or pay the groups directly using PayPal. Also, with that much gold floating around, some of the gold would inevitably find its way onto the secondary markets for sale.

On Monday, a blue post appeared on the WoW forums declaring changes to what Blizzard would allow in the future.

As the conditions change by which various entities operate in World of Warcraft, we are compelled to update our policies to further our goal of making the gameplay experience as fair and welcoming as possible. Since we last updated our policies, we have found that an increasing disturbance of the gameplay experience has been caused by organizations excessively advertising various non-traditional services in-game.

As of today, we will now prohibit organizations who offer boosting, matchmaking, escrow, or other non-traditional services, including those offered for gold. World of Warcraft accounts found to be in violation of this policy are subject to account actions. These actions can include warnings, account suspensions and, if necessary, permanent closure of the disruptive World of Warcraft account(s). Organizations operating across multiple realms and excessively advertising non-traditional in-game sales are contrary to the terms and conditions of the Blizzard End-User License Agreement (EULA).

This policy update does not restrict individuals or guilds from using the provided in-game tools (“trade channel” chat) to buy or sell in-game items or activities for in-game currency. However, “boosting communities”, especially those who operate across multiple realms, are no longer permitted.

We urge all such organizations to cease doing business in World of Warcraft immediately, in order to maintain uninterrupted access to the game.

I haven't played WoW since Vanilla, but I have written about real money trading activity for over 10 years. Unless the developers on WoW change the game mechanics that produced the demand for boosting services, a change in the rules won't stop the practice. At best, the boosting services will go underground, although on a smaller scale. For the short term though, perhaps the ban on boosting communities is the best Blizzard can do. Hopefully Blizzard will come up with a long term solution in the next expansion.

Microsoft To Buy Activision-Blizzard For $68.7 Billion

Microsoft is set to add another giant MMORPG to its portfolio of games with this morning's news the software giant is buying Activision-Blizzard. The maker of the XBox published a press release this morning. I'll post the beginning of the release below.

REDMOND, Wash. and Santa Monica, Calif. – Jan. 18, 2022 – With three billion people actively playing games today, and fueled by a new generation steeped in the joys of interactive entertainment, gaming is now the largest and fastest-growing form of entertainment. Today, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI), a leader in game development and interactive entertainment content publisher. This acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse.

Microsoft will acquire Activision Blizzard for $95.00 per share, in an all-cash transaction valued at $68.7 billion, inclusive of Activision Blizzard’s net cash. When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. The planned acquisition includes iconic franchises from the Activision, Blizzard and King studios like “Warcraft,” “Diablo,” “Overwatch,” “Call of Duty” and “Candy Crush,” in addition to global eSports activities through Major League Gaming. The company has studios around the word with nearly 10,000 employees.

Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming.

“Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “We’re investing deeply in world-class content, community and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to all.”

“Players everywhere love Activision Blizzard games, and we believe the creative teams have their best work in front of them,” said Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming. “Together we will build a future where people can play the games they want, virtually anywhere they want.”

“For more than 30 years our incredibly talented teams have created some of the most successful games,” said Bobby Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard. “The combination of Activision Blizzard’s world-class talent and extraordinary franchises with Microsoft’s technology, distribution, access to talent, ambitious vision and shared commitment to gaming and inclusion will help ensure our continued success in an increasingly competitive industry.”

Mobile is the largest segment in gaming, with nearly 95% of all players globally enjoying games on mobile. Through great teams and great technology, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard will empower players to enjoy the most-immersive franchises, like “Halo” and “Warcraft,” virtually anywhere they want. And with games like “Candy Crush,” Activision Blizzard´s mobile business represents a significant presence and opportunity for Microsoft in this fast-growing segment.

The acquisition also bolsters Microsoft’s Game Pass portfolio with plans to launch Activision Blizzard games into Game Pass, which has reached a new milestone of over 25 million subscribers. With Activision Blizzard’s nearly 400 million monthly active players in 190 countries and three billion-dollar franchises, this acquisition will make Game Pass one of the most compelling and diverse lineups of gaming content in the industry. Upon close, Microsoft will have 30 internal game development studios, along with additional publishing and esports production capabilities.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and completion of regulatory review and Activision Blizzard’s shareholder approval. The deal is expected to close in fiscal year 2023 and will be accretive to non-GAAP earnings per share upon close. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Activision Blizzard.

If the sale is approved by the several governments involved, Microsoft would own not only World of Warcraft, but also Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76. Microsoft's purchase of ZeniMax Media, the previous owner of the latter two games, was finalized in March 2021. I should add the ZeniMax deal took 6 months to finalize (it was announced in September 2020).

In 2014, Microsoft purchased Mojang, the studio that created Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. In that case, the deal was announced in September and finalized in November. Then again, Mojang was a much smaller company based in Sweden, not the United States. I expect the finalization of the sale to extend to the 6 month range, if not longer.

While a lot of people will obsess over the fate of Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, I'm not concerned. He's set for life whatever happens. The latest information I could find shows he owns about 4.3 million Activision-Blizzard shares and is worth $8 billion. Besides, the CEO of the company purchased usually sticks around for a set amount of time. 

I also want to point out two sentences that may concern some people.

This acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse...

“Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft.

I don't think I took the sentences out of context when I combined the two. Does this mean NFTs in WoW confirmed? With companies like Ubisoft, Square Enix, and Pearl Abyss jumping into the NFT/metaverse pool, is it a surprise that Microsoft would want to follow suit?

The World Of Warcraft Community Council

As someone who has covered EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management for years, the news that Activision-Blizzard was forming a "World of Warcraft Community Council" immediately caught my attention. I thought to myself, "There is no way this could work like the CSM." A quick review shows a couple of big differences.

First, the members of Activision-Blizzard's council is picked by the company. With the Council of Stellar Management, CCP organizes an election and players pick the members. One can argue which method is best. The WoW team announced a more specific goal than CCP.

One of the key goals with this program is to encourage discussion with players from a wide variety of different playstyles. To help ensure this, part of the application process will involve sharing your areas of interest and expertise. Whether it’s cutting-edge raiding, playing alts, completing achievements, accessibility, or collecting transmog, we want to know your perspective and ensure you’re heard. Therefore, after one year in the program, we plan to unflag Council members and open the application again. All WoW players will be free to apply at that point.

The other is the lack of a non-disclosure agreement. Unlike CCP, Activision-Blizzard does not plan on discussing any unannounced future plans with their player council. I need to point out something I believe might get forgotten in the future.

Please note: this program is focused on sharing current and past game experiences; it will not provide access to unannounced game information.

Before continuing, I should point out what the WoW team plans on happening.

Once players are selected, they’ll be given the ability to post in a new discussion forum that is publicly visible to everyone.

• In this new forum, we’ll ask members to share their experiences and perspectives on anything in the game, and some topics may be started by Blizzard developers and community managers.
• Responses and updates from Blizzard will be posted there so they can easily be discussed by the entire community.

A private discussion will also be setup for Council members to encourage direct interaction between members.

Separate conversations between smaller groups of members and Blizzard developers will be encouraged to ensure players with differing perspectives are being heard.

This sounds a lot like the Council of Stellar Management. I think the last point means there actually be private conversations between council members and developers. The CSM also does the same. However, all the CSM conversations are covered by an NDA so any accidental slips are covered and the player base wouldn't expect the information to come out. What happens if a developer slips up and reveals information the WoWCC shouldn't hear? Something to ponder.

J. Allen Brack Out At Blizzard Entertainment

Yesterday, embattled president of Blizzard Entertainment J.Allen Brack stepped down hours ahead of Activision Blizzard's earnings call for Q2 2021. Brack, who had overseen the number of monthly active users decline from 35 million in the fourth quarter of 2018 down to 26 million MAU in the last quarter, was under fire for a recent lawsuit brought by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing on 20 July. Following the public announcement of the lawsuit, Activision Blizzard stock fell 12.4% from 21 July to 3 August.

The company announced Brack would be replaced by two people, Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra. Oneal was the head of Vicarious Visions from April 2016 until the studio was moved into Blizzard Entertainment in January of this year. Vicarious Visions most recently had worked on the remaster of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and the soon to be released Diablo II: Resurrected.

Before moving to work on Blizzard Entertainment's Platform and Technology organizations in 2019, Ybarra had worked for Microsoft for 19 years, the last 10 of that associated with the Xbox. He also is a mythic raider in World of Warcraft, which may come in handy in getting fan acceptance.

All 8 m+ 20s done - easy access to each m+ portal. :) @Warcraft pic.twitter.com/u0ABntjMQ1

— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) July 3, 2021

One has to wonder how long Brack could have remained president of Blizzard Entertainment even if the California DFEH had not filed its sexual discrimination and harassment suit. Despite the launch of The Burning Crusade Classic on 1 June, the number of monthly active users fell from 27 million down to 26 million. Net revenue for the quarter year-over-year fell 6% despite double-digit year-over-year growth in World of Warcraft revenue.

Blizzard Entertainment is not just World of Warcraft and other games provided disappointments. Hearthstone revenue was lower than predicted due to the latest expansion not launching until yesterday. Also, apparently Overwatch League revenue came in lower than expected in Q2 as well.

Despite all the words spent addressing the situation around the DFEH lawsuit, Brack's departure is more likely related to delivering products on time. The business plan requires delivering games on time. Both Oneal and Yberra have a long history of doing so. Blizzard Entertainment under J. Allen Brack? Not so much.

The State Of California Sues Activision Blizzard - The Initial Filing

Unless defendants are enjoined, pursuant to Government Code section 12965(c), from failing or refusing to comply with the mandates of the FEHA, female employees' right to seek or hold employment free of unlawful discrimination, harassment, and retaliation will continue to be violated.

DFEH vs Activision Blizzard, et al., initial gov't filing

On 20 July 2021, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) of the state of California filed suit in California state court against Activision Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Activision Publishing, and Does One through Ten. Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Publishing are subsidiaries of Activision Blizzard. 

In a press release issued on 21 July, DFEH stated:

Activision Blizzard, Inc., headquartered in Santa Monica, California and known for games such as “Call of Duty,” “Battle.net,” and “World of Warcraft” allegedly fostered a sexist culture and paid women less than men despite women doing substantially similar work, assigned women to lower level jobs and promoted them at slower rates than men, and fired or forced women to quit at higher frequencies than men. DFEH also alleges that African American women and other women of color were particularly impacted by Activision Blizzard’s discriminatory practices.

In addition, DFEH alleges that women were subjected to constant sexual harassment, including groping, comments, and advances. The lawsuit also alleges that the company’s executives and human resources personnel knew of the harassment and failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the unlawful conduct, and instead retaliated against women who complained. 

Activision Blizzard responded with a statement that inflamed passions in some quarters:

The DFEH includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past. We have been extremely cooperative with the DFEH throughout their investigation, including providing them with extensive data and ample documentation, but they refused to inform us what issues they perceived. They were required by law to adequately investigate and to have good faith discussions with us to better understand and to resolve any claims or concerns before going to litigation, but they failed to do so. Instead, they rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we will demonstrate in court. We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family. While we find this behavior to be disgraceful and unprofessional, it is unfortunately an example of how they have conducted themselves throughout the course of their investigation. It is this type of irresponsible behavior from unaccountable State bureaucrats that are driving many of the State’s best businesses out of California.

The picture the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard workplace of today. Over the past several years and continuing since the initial investigation started, we’ve made significant changes to address company culture and reflect more diversity within our leadership teams. We’ve updated our Code of Conduct to emphasize a strict non-retaliation focus, amplified internal programs and channels for employees to report violations, including the “ASK List” with a confidential integrity hotline, and introduced an Employee Relations team dedicated to investigating employee concerns. We have strengthened our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and combined our Employee Networks at a global level, to provide additional support. Employees must also undergo regular anti-harassment training and have done so for many years.

Normally, the story would pretty much end after a couple of days until the next court date. But a surprising event occurred. People read past the title of the initial Bloomberg Law article and clicked on the link to the actual complaint. Some of the allegations in the 29 page complaint were disturbing. High ranking people in Activision Blizzard were named. Then came the stories from former employees. The moderators on the WoW sub-Reddit compiled the stories of 28 former employees who faced harassment. With all the information emerging from sources such as the corporate media to YouTube hot takes, I decided to read the 29 page complaint.

The Trains Keep Moving

Honestly, sometimes I feel excited about EVE Online, and sometimes I don't. For example, yesterday I saw CCP Paradox post the new stats for the Pacifier and Enforcer on the Test Server Feedback section of the official forums.

Today’s update included some further changes, most notably includes a first set of changes to the Pacifier and Enforcer and updating the Covert Cyno deployables industry requirements and skill to anchor.

Pacifier

• PG increased to 60
• 1 Extra High Slot
• Max Velocity increased to 340
• Increased both max turret/launcher hardpoints to 4

Enforcer:

• PG increased to 1150
• 1 Extra High Slot
• Max velocity increased to 190
• Added Drone capability: Capacity 25m3 and Bandwidth at 25Mbit/s

Increased both max turret/launcher hardpoints to 5

Changes are still in progress and may be updated.

Yes, I own 2 Pacifiers, 2 Enforcers, 2 Pacifier blueprint copies, and an Enforcer BPC. Just the announcement of the changes inspired me to start playing Project Discovery again to try to pick up a couple of more BPCs. But I think I'm in the minority on that. Still, Op Success for CCP!

On the other hand, every time I see numbers I start getting concerned. The latest instance was my last visit to The Ancient Gaming Noob. He had a really good analysis of the May Monthly Economic Report up currently. But his weekly update of the war kind of got me down when I got down to the weekly PCU counts.

I'm going to jump the gun by a week making the following comparison. On 5 July 2020, the first full day of the war, the number of peak concurrent users was 38,838. The PCU peaked at 40,359 on 18 October. At that point, the numbers started to decline until the PCU reached 33,758 on 16 May. From the beginning of the war to week 45, the PCU had fallen by 5080.

In the following 6 weeks, the PCU dropped from 33,758 down to 25,661 this past Sunday. I know PCU is not the best metric for measuring activity, but the number of average concurrent users has dropped by around 5000 accounts during the same time. 

Shadowbringers is 60% off again as part of the Summer Steam Sale

With the war winding down, I can't help but think players are wandering off to do other things. Perhaps the timing is coincidental, but the rapid decline began the week Blizzard launched the pre-patch for The Burning Crusade Classic. The following week saw Square Enix, perhaps in an effort to pick off disgruntled WoW players, offering 60% off Shadowbringers from 25 May to 9 June. Then ZeniMax launched its Blackwood expansion for Elder Scrolls Online on 1 June, the same day Blizzard opened up the TBC Classic servers. And who knows what the effect of today's Patch 9.1 for Retail WoW will be.

The healthiest thing I can do is totally ignore the EVE subreddit. That's doable. But I keep poking my head out to look at the activity numbers. I can't help myself. Looking at the activity is like looking at a looming train wreck. I just hope the trains can stop in time.

Is Final Fantasy XIV Really More Popular Than World Of Warcraft?

I watch a lot of videos about video games and I get the feeling a lot of players are disgruntled about the state of Retail World of Warcraft. From what I gather, Patch 9.1 won't go live until July, or even August. That's a content drought of 8 months. Additionally, I hear a lot of discontent around Torghast. I don't really understand why, but I get the feeling "conduits" is a dirty word. I first became aware of the discontent after an interview WoW's lead game designer Ion Hazzikostas did with Preach Gaming. Watching the usually reserved Bellular go off on the game woke me up.

With a lot of WoW content creators trying out Final Fantasy XIV I thought we were just seeing a short-term fad that would end with the next patch. Then I watched a video that claimed that FFXIV is now more popular than WoW. I had to track down the claim.

MMO Populations Most Played MMOs - as seen on 9 Jun 21

The site is MMO Populations. I had to search the site, but I found a comment on how they arrived at their lists.

By combining online social activity, sentiment tracking, public statistics, rankings and more MMO Populations estimates the total subscribers, players and active daily players for the top MMOs.

But for what it's worth, FFXIV comes in with 2.48 million active players in May compared to Retail WoW's 2.19 million active players. But WoW Classic also had 1.7 million active players. The WoW Classic number will morph into TBC Classic next month as players were able to start playing the classic version of WoW's first expansion on 1 June. 

Of interest to me when checking the numbers was the number of active players in EVE Online. The 324 thousand listed seems a bit high to me. Then again, the bigger games like WoW and Final Fantasy XIV probably have more data to work with.

If FFXIV truly is the top MMORPG, I don't expect the status to last. Not only is WoW's patch 9.1 due out soon, but Endwalker doesn't come out until November. The population inevitably will decrease until then. But if some players get a kick out of the thought that WoW is no longer the top dog, I won't kick too much sand on their dreams.

Blizzard Bans All Input Broadcasting In World Of Warcraft

I'm a little late with the news, but Activision-Blizzard announced on 5 May 2021 a ban to all input broadcasting in World of Warcraft.

On November 3, 2020, we posted an update to our policy for input broadcasting software, and soon thereafter, we began taking action against accounts found to be using third party software to automatically mirror keystrokes to multiple game clients. We find that, like full automation of play, multiple-account mirroring disturbs the gameplay experience for the vast majority of players who control a single account at a time.

We will now additionally prohibit the use of all software and hardware mechanisms to mirror commands to multiple World of Warcraft accounts at the same time, or to automate or streamline multi-boxing in any way. Players found to be in violation of this policy are subject to account actions. These actions can include warnings, account suspensions and, if necessary, permanent closure of the player’s World of Warcraft account(s), as activities which effectively replicate automated gameplay are contrary to the terms and conditions of the Blizzard End-User License Agreement (EULA).

We urge all players to cease using any means of mirroring gameplay across multiple WoW accounts immediately, in order to maintain uninterrupted access to World of Warcraft.

Whether players use hardware or software to send keystrokes to multiple accounts doesn't matter anymore. The move should make enforcement much easier. Instead of having to use technical means to determine whether a player is violating the rules, all a GM now has to do is see whether the actions of multiple characters are synchronized.

Joe "Lax" Thaler, the creator of the ISBoxer multi-boxing software, wrote on the Dual-Boxing.com forums on 6 May:

Realistically, they were already banning for the things they are describing in this updated policy.

I warned about this in November. As I said back then, there is zero difference to other players between you using software or hardware broadcasting. There's no way for a player to make that determination. And I would guess that Blizzard (and particularly random GMs) probably cannot make that determination reliably either. Even if they could, the next question is, do you really think it is worth their time and energy to determine that?

Since November, we've seen random people come to our multiboxing chat rooms (about once a week or so) and claim that they got banned "for using X software" (which many other people use on a daily basis with no issue). Then they show their ban email, and it says "Your fellow players reported you for cheating". When pushed on what they're doing, it's almost exclusively "I was 2x4 herbing, and 'only for 4 hours a day!'" and one recently even says he was hardware broadcasting.

Other players do not like to see "multiboxers" doing "2x4 herbing". They will report you, have no clue if you're using software or hardware, and frankly they never cared in the first place.

I think the latest effort is serious. Thaler is developing a new software program called Joe Multiboxer that does not perform input broadcasting. He thinks his software is safe for now.

They didn't say, so how are we to know what they are banning for exactly? Again, my interpretation is that they were already banning for the behaviors they wanted to ban for. They say multiboxing is allowed. There's no specific reason to believe that they banned Joe Multiboxer yet, but it is unclear what they mean by "streamline in any way", it could literally mean anything.

I will continue to use and develop Joe Multiboxer under the current policy. However, I would advise not using Round-Robin, as that would seem to fall under "streamlining".

The use of multi-boxing software incorporating input broadcasting is a pretty old issue. Most games just outlaw the practice. EVE Online, while not banning the use of the ISBoxer software, banned the problematic features on 1 January 2015. Because of the history of Inner Space,  ISBoxer, and multi-boxing in general, covering a story in WoW is just a follow-up of a formerly hot story in EVE. One, hopefully, that is coming to a conclusion.

Is EVE Online About To See A Player Drop?

We are now rolling into the season when game companies start dropping significant game updates onto the market. I just can't help but think that CCP should think about coming up with a big expansion-type drop instead of the steady supply of changes the Icelandic studio prefers. Sure, the developers implemented the Dynamic Bounty System and revamped the Encounter Surveillance System a couple of weeks ago. Also, CCP put out a new Pulse video with a lot of little stuff coming out Tuesday.

But Tuesday is also the release date for World of Warcraft's next expansion, Shadowlands. Last year, when WoW Classic launched, EVE was in the middle of Blackout. Now, following a couple of changes in EVE design to limit player income, WoW is launching an expansion. If history is any judge, a major WoW release closely following a PvE nerf to null sec does not bode well for activity on Tranquility.

Input Broadcasting To Be Banned In World Of Warcraft

I heard about some news in World of Warcraft I had to comment on. Activision-Blizzard is banning input broadcasting software.

As World of Warcraft has evolved, our policies have also evolved to support the health of the game and the needs of the players. We’ve examined the use of third-party input broadcasting software, which allows a single keystroke or action to be automatically mirrored to multiple game clients, and we've seen an increasingly negative impact to the game as this software is used to support botting and automated gameplay. The use of input broadcasting software that mirrors keystrokes to multiple WoW game clients will soon be considered an actionable offense. We believe this policy is in the best interests of the game and the community.

We will soon begin issuing warnings to all players who are detected using input broadcasting software to mirror commands to multiple accounts at the same time (often used for multi-boxing). With these warnings, we intend to notify players that they should not use this software while playing World of Warcraft. Soon thereafter, the warnings will escalate to account actions, which can include suspension and, if necessary, permanent closure of the player's World of Warcraft account(s). We strongly advise you to cease using this type of software immediately to maintain uninterrupted access to World of Warcraft.

Thank you for your understanding.

I think the key is the mention of "third-party input broadcasting software". Five to seven years ago, EVE underwent its own controversy surrounding input broadcasting. A programming engine called Inner Space that powered the powerful EVE bot called Questor also powered a popular multi-boxing program called ISBoxer. In fact, ISBoxer was a demonstration program to show the capabilities of Inner Space. Eventually, CCP wound up banning input broadcasting, but not the ISBoxer program itself.

ISBoxer is once again in the center of an input broadcasting controversy. According to a post on the Dual Boxer forums, the maker of ISBoxer and Inner Space stated that Blizzard was looking specifically for his software.

World of Warcraft Subscription Revenue Triples

The 800 pound gorilla in the MMORPG space is still World of Warcraft. I expect that come the reporting season for the third quarter of 2019, the launch of the WoW Classic servers will come up time and again as the reason for declining revenues. And for good reason.

According to Superdata, subscription revenue for WoW rose 223% in August compared to July. That figure probably means a couple of million people returned to play WoW, including from other games. We've heard anecdotal evidence of people leaving EVE to play WoW Classic. I'm not sure all games are affected, however. I started playing Final Fantasy XIV, and even after the launch of WoW Classic, I still encounter a login queue every time I go to play. The financial reporting season coming up in November should prove quite interesting.