To later this year.
Tag: Blizzard
Freebie: Overwatch Courtesy Of Overwatch League
World of Warcraft: Say Goodbye To Paid Gender Swaps In Shadowlands
You’ll be free to be who you want to be.
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WoW Classic Imposes Instance Limit to Curb Bots
Too many cheaters cheating like a bunch of cheating cheaters.
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Blizzard Bans 74,000 WoW Accounts For Botting
Activision Blizzard Q4 Finances: Lesser Billions
Activision Blizzard has released their fourth quarter financial reports and if you were hoping the company would burn to the ground following last year’s Hearthstone debacle, well you’re going to be sorely disappointed.
The positive side of this year’s Q4 report is that Activision didn’t pair an announcement of record revenues with hundreds of layoffs. We still expect the company to siphon a few hundred million in taxpayer dollars for simply existing in 2019. Unfortunately Activision hasn’t been able to keep up its record results from last year as the company has seen multiple straight quarters of revenue loss. Sad for the investors, but since Activision isn’t infinitely expanding not quite a surprise.
Despite this, Q4 results exceeded expectations according to Bobby Kotick.
“Our fourth quarter results exceeded our prior outlook for both revenue and earnings per share,” said Bobby Kotick, Chief Executive Officer of Activision Blizzard. “Our recent Call of Duty® success illustrates the scale of our growth potential, as we expanded the community to more players in more countries on more platforms than ever before. With our strong content pipeline across our franchises and momentum in mobile, esports, and advertising, we look forward to continuing to delight our players, fans and stakeholders in 2020 and beyond.”
Net revenue dropped from $2.3 billion for Q4 2018 to $1.98 billion in 2019, while overall net bookings similarly fell. Activision boasted a monthly average user rate of 409 million with a large portion coming from King (249 million) and of course the ongoing success of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch.
Investors are happy because Activision increased dividend payouts by 11% and you have to focus on the important things.
Source: Activision
Not Massive: Blizzard Offers Instant Warcraft 3 Refunds
Insert your speculation on their motivation here.
Warcraft 3 Reforged is the latest fiasco in Activision Blizzard’s ongoing saga titled “How To Show Contempt For And Lose Customers,” and it looks like someone at Blizzard wised up over the weekend and decided to go halfway to doing the right thing. According to users over at Reddit, Blizzard has activated instant refunds for Warcraft III: Reforged, with requests going through almost instantly (within a minute, which is basically instant in customer service terms).
Blizzard seems so enthusiastic about refunding Warcraft 3 that one user received a refund for their Warcraft 3 purchase when they actually contacted customer support to refund a World of Warcraft token they had purchased. Similar to Fallout 76 receiving a satirical website, someone has gone ahead and created a Warcraft 3 website roasting the game as well as Blizzard’s perceived anti-consumer sentiments.
Have you tried to refund your Warcraft 3 purchase? Let us know in the comments below.
It’s Official: Gamers Hate Warcraft 3 More Than Digital Homicide
Digital Homicide will go down in history as one of the most embarrassing blights on the gaming industry. Since one of the two Romines has decided to put himself back into the public eye by publishing propaganda about the company’s short-lived history, now is as good of a time as any to bring up the company’s titles in reference to…Warcraft 3?
Yes, Warcraft 3. Following Blizzard’s PR nightmare last year regarding Hearthstone and Blitzchung, the company finds itself once again being nearly universally roasted over the release of Warcraft 3: Reforged. You name it, customers are probably angry over it. Misleading advertising, reduced animations, broken servers, merging the remake with the original client, Blizzard’s EULA stating they own any mod you make, the list goes on and on and on.
But you know the proverbial shinola has hit the fan when your AAA game is rated lower than Digital Homicide’s worst-rated title. More than 10,000 people have voted on Warcraft 3 on Metacritic and have given the game a 0.6 rating. By contrast DigiHom’s lowest rated game is The Slaughtering Grounds which stands at a 0.9.
Yes, Warcraft 3 is viewed less favorably than a developer that tried to launch frivolous lawsuits against 100 Steam uses and a Youtube critic for being mean.
Blizzard Cancels Overwatch League Matches, Points To Coronavirus
Overwatch matches scheduled to take place in China have been cancelled.
In case you haven’t been watching the news, the Coronavirus has become a pretty big deal and more so because of the danger it poses than the beer memes it has inspired. Blizzard announced via Twitter today that all matches scheduled for the next two months within China have been cancelled for the protection of players and staff.
The announcement:
— Overwatch League (@overwatchleague) January 30, 2020
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Streaming Buddies: Activision Blizzard Partners With Google Cloud
Google and Activision Blizzard today announced that the two companies will be joining forces to power new player experiences. Activision Blizzard will use Google Cloud services to power their game hosting infrastructures while Youtube will play exclusive host to live broadcasts of eSports and other events (excluding China). In other words, Youtube will be hosting Overwatch League, Call of Duty League, Hearthstone, and others.
Call of Duty’s inaugural league kicks off today (January 24) at 2p.m. PST where twelve teams will face off in Minnesota with Overwatch League following on February 8.
“We’ve worked closely with Activision Blizzard for the past few years across mobile titles to boost its analytics capabilities and overall player experience,” said Sunil Rayan, Head of Gaming, Google Cloud. “We are excited to now expand our relationship and help power one of the largest and most renowned game developers in the world.”
Activision boasts that the cloud will allow gamers to play their favorite titles with low latency and packet loss.
“This is an exciting year for Activision Blizzard Esports as we head into the inaugural season of Call of Duty League and our first ever season of homestands for Overwatch League all around the world,” said Pete Vlastelica, CEO of Activision Blizzard Esports. “It’s our mission to deliver high-quality competitive entertainment that our fans can follow globally, live or on-demand, and to celebrate our players as the superstars that they are. This partnership will help us deliver on that promise at new levels, by combining our passionate communities of fans and players with YouTube’s powerful content platform and exciting history of supporting next-generation entertainment.”
Source: Press Release
MMO Fallout 