Activision Blizzard, the Lawsuit, and the Q2 2021 Financials

You don’t want to do that either. You think you do, but you don’t.

-J. Allen Brack, BlizzCon 2013

I am pretty sure that J. Allen Brack would be pretty happy just being known as the guy who arrogantly pissed all over, and probably helped delay, the huge money maker that WoW Classic turned out to be.

I am pretty sure both he and the company wish that statement was worst thing to come out of BlizzCon 2013.

But yesterday saw him step down as President Blizzard… a polite way to say he was the first big sacrifice in the wake of the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing hostile workplace lawsuit.  He was joined by the SVP of HR, Jesse Meschuk

Not that he didn’t deserve it.  Sure, a lot of the most egregious behavior happened on Morhaime’s watch, but Brack was still in the thick of things, still a leader in the company during that time as well.

Brack was replaced by new Blizzard “co-leaders” Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra, both of whom have roots outside of Blizzard.

For those of you who like the “Bobby Kotick is cementing his dominion over Blizzard” narrative, it has been noted that Morhaime was CEO of Blizzard, Brack was President of Blizzard when he replaced Morhaime, and Oneal and YBarra are co-leaders now, whatever that means.

And the Brack announcement went out in advance of the Activision Blizzard Q2 2021 financial results announcement, no doubt following the theory that you get bad news out of the way before and hope that you have good news during and after.  So was it a good thing that Kotaku pointed out that the company is losing T-Mobile as a sponsor of their Call of Duty and Overwatch esports league before the call as well?  And then there was the expected shareholder lawsuit.

Which brings us to the report.  You can find the detailed financials, the presentation, and the recording of the call over at the investor relations page.

The presentation opened right up with five actions the company is taking in light of the lawsuit and the protests both from outside and within the company.  They are:

1. We have asked Jennifer Oneal and Mike Ybarra to assume responsibility for development and operational accountability for Blizzard.
2. We will continue to investigate each and every claim and complaint that we receive. When we learn of shortcomings, we will take decisive action. To strengthen our capabilities in this area we will be adding additional staff and resources.
3. We will terminate any manager or leader found to have impeded the integrity of our processes for evaluating claims and imposing appropriate consequences.
4. We will be adding resources to ensure and enhance our consideration of diverse candidate slates for all open positions.
5. We have heard the input from employee and player communities that some of our in-game content is inappropriate. We will be actively reviewing that content and removing it, as appropriate.

Again, this is a change from the stubborn defiance that was the hallmark of the initial response from the company, but is unlikely to be enough in itself to soothe anybody.  The employee organizers are still not buying the company’s new tack.

When it came to the numbers, all three pieces of the company saw a decline in revenue from Q1 2021, though that is not unexpected given the roll back in pandemic restrictions we saw midway through the quarter.  People went outside and did things, a trend that will no doubt continue into Q3 if the price of airline tickets and rental cars are any indication.

Activision Blizzard Q2 2021 Financial Results Presentation – Slide 11

Blizzard alone was down $50 million in revenue when compared to Q1, which was a direct hit to margins.

When it came to singing Blizzard’s praises, the song remained the same, a tale of Azeroth making the money while other franchises languish.

Activision Blizzard Q2 2021 Financial Results Presentation – Slide 7

WoW bookings doubled year over year, with much of the credit going to the launch of Burning Crusade Classic.  A lot of people bought that pack with the lizard mount.

Hearthstone kept on rolling as well, cranking out yet more expansions.

And while Diablo II Resurrected holds promise for the company, Diablo IV is still on the distant horizon and Diablo Immortal has been pushed back again, this time to the first half of 2022.  We could see a four year gap between when it was announced at BlizzCon 2018 with a playable demo and when it finally ships.

Meanwhile over at Massively OP, where they have been keeping score, the running tally of monthly active users for Blizzard continued its downward trend, with the company shedding another million users.  We don’t know where they came from or where they went, but they aren’t hanging out in Blizzard games anymore.

After being down in revenue and players in Q2, we have yet to reckon with Q3 and the iceberg that is the California lawsuit.  The only thing Blizz has in the near future is Diablo II Resurrected and some likely misguided hope about “stronger engagement” with the Shadowlands expansion.  But people were already leaving retail WoW for FFXIV before the shit hit the fan.

I appreciate that Activision Blizzard seems to have finally decided that they need to clean house, though the cut off for responsibility is clearly enforced before you get to the C-level suite, but the company clearly needs to step things up a couple notches or the Q3 results will be a bloodbath.

The Coming Metaliminal Storms May Decloak You in Null Sec

CCP announced today that Metaliminal Storms will soon be coming to null sec, imparting “weather effects” where ever they go.

Metaliminal Storms

Per the announcement:

Chaotic storms of Abyssal energy – called Metaliminal Storms – will begin appearing randomly in nullsec space this August when the Metaliminal Storms update goes live, as an unexpected side effect of the Triglavian invasion! These roaming storms will move slowly between star systems via the gate network.

The forum thread with the current details indicates that these storms will move at a rate of one system every 24-48 hours, giving at least some level of warning if a storm is close by.

There are currently four different storm types planned, with two levels of intensity (strong and weak), each of which brings with them a variety of effects on space, some beneficial some detrimental.  The storms will be akin to hurricanes, with a central system as the “eye” of the storm with strong effects being felt there and adjacent systems, while weak effects will be felts in systems two or three jumps away.

The way the describe storm movement, they appear to be effectively taking gates, so they follow what I might call DOTLAN map logic, where the distance between systems connected by a jump gate is effectively a constant, and a very small one at that, as opposed to what the in-game map shows, where the distance between systems can vary greatly, especially when it comes to gates between regions.  This may lead to some odd situations.

For example, since I have been marking up maps of Fountain lately due to the war, if the “eye” of a storm is in KVN-36 or C-N4OD, the storm effects will ripple out to the northern and southern ends of the region without touching anything in the middle thanks to the long gate jump between the two systems.

And outdated map used to show the distance between some key gates

Likewise, if the “eye” is in D4KU-5 in Fountain, the effects will ripple into Aridia despite the two regions being too far apart for a capital to jump between them.

Storm magic I guess.

The plan right now is to have eight such storms, two of each type, wandering null sec.  The “eye” of the storm will always be in null sec, but the effects can reach into low and high sec systems if the storm travels in that direction.

Of particular note to almost everybody reading the effects is that electrical storms will disable the ability to use a cloak in systems affected.

Gamma

• Weak Metaliminal Gamma Ray Storm
  • -10% Explosive Resists
  • +10% Shield HP
  • -50% Remote Shield/Armor Rep Amount
  • +40% Warp Disruption/Scrambler Range
  • -10% Signature Radius
  • No change to site spawning
• Strong Metaliminal Gamma Ray Storm
  • -25% Explosive Resists
  • +25% Shield HP
  • -90% Remote Shield/Armor Rep Amount
  • +100% Warp Disruption/Scrambler Range
  • -25% Signature Radius
  • Spawning extra Rogue Drone combat sites

Plasma

• Weak Metaliminal Plasma Firestorm
  • -10% Thermal Resists
  • +10% Armor HP
  • +20% Weapon Damage
  • -20% Turret/Drone Tracking Speed
  • +20% Missile/Fighter Explosion Radius
  • No change to site spawning
• Strong Metaliminal Plasma Firestorm
  • -25% Thermal Resists
  • +25% Armor HP
  • +50% Weapon Damage
  • -50% Turret/Drone Tracking Speed
  • +50% Missile/Fighter Explosion Radius
  • Spawning Triglavian combat sites

Exotic

• Weak Metaliminal Exotic Matter Storm
  • -10% Kinetic Resists
  • +20% Scan Resolution
  • -10% Mining Laser Cycle Time
  • +40% Warp Speed
  • -10% Local Armor/Shield repairer cycle time
  • No change to site spawning
• Strong Metaliminal Exotic Matter Storm
  • -25% Kinetic Resists
  • +50% Scan Resolution
  • -25% Mining Laser Cycle Time
  • +100% Warp Speed
  • -25% Local Armor/Shield repairer cycle time
  • Spawning extra ore anomalies

Electrical

• Weak Metaliminal Electrical Storm
  • -10% EM Resists
  • -10% Capacitor Recharge Time
  • +10 Virus Coherence
  • +20% Probe Strength
  • No Cloaking
  • No change to site spawning
• Strong Metaliminal Electrical Storm
  • -25% EM Resists
  • -25% Capacitor Recharge Time
  • +25 Virus Coherence
  • +50% Probe Strength
  • No Cloaking
  • Spawning extra relic sites

As with all things from CCP, this is likely subject to change before it hits Tranquility.  It has not yet been put onto the test server, Singularity, but the company plans to test it out there before it goes live.

CCP is soliciting feedback in the forum thread linked.

Many people are wetting themselves at the idea of cloaking being disabled.  And the boost to probe strength will really make it tough to hide.  I always felt cloaky camping was one of the prices of playing in null sec, so expect this will end up being a mixed blessing.

Storms also hit remote reps, local reps, and various resistance types, no doubt giving some a secondary jolt of pleasure after the cloaking effect hit wears off.

I am only surprised that there isn’t a storm effect that removes interdiction nullification and puts logi on kill mails if CCP really wanted to play to capsuleer requests.  Maybe they are holding those for round two.

Abaddons in Low Sec Again

The Liberty Squad “good fights” deployment in Placid carries on.  There are no objectives to take, no territory to defend, and not much infrastructure to assail in low sec, unless you want to get involved in faction warfare, and we haven’t started doing that yet.

We are up there just to pick fights with the local power, Snuffed Out, and their allies.  And they seem willing to oblige now and then.

One way they seem to be interested in fighting us is economically by seeding our staging station with contracts for mal-fit doctrine ships that are just a bit cheaper than the fits being imported by the squad.  And, it doesn’t matter how often people say or broadcast about not buying contracts from random third parties, people will just buy the cheapest contract that sounds about right.  I know, I’ve made that mistake myself.

To combat this, Liberty Squad dropped a Fortizar in Frarie, the smallest structure that allows the owner to setup a market.

Named “Little House on the Frarie”

In theory this should stop the bad contract nonsense, since the locals lack docking rights.  In reality, enough people are still in the station that people keep buying the bad contracts.

The Fortizar also gives us another potential point of conflict, a target for the locals.  And they did take us up on that, reinforcing the Fortizar last week.  The armor timer was set to come out last night and squad leadership had pre-pinged about the potential for a fight.  It was time to get the Abaddons out again.

However, the timer came and went and Snuff did not show up.  This is the sort of thing that gets Cainun worked up, so he decided if they were not going to come to us, we were going to go to them, that having worked out so well previously.  So we all piled onto a titan, ready to be launched in the general direction of Snuff.

A Ragnarkok in a POS

We were bridged into their home area where we started looking for something to shoot.  I was in a Guardian this time around, with my alt on the second monitor in an Abaddon.

I still haven’t washed that Guardian

We ended up in Rakapas to shoot a Fortizar of theirs.  At that point things got very busy for me.  Attacking a gunned and defended Fortizar means a lot of bombs flying your way and lots of calls for reps.

Snuff undocked Machariels, at which point we became much less about shooting the Fortizar and much more about getting in position to fight their fleet.  This led to a series of warps back and forth around the Fortizar where Snuff seems disinclined to break tether.

After a while of this Cainun decided a fight was not going to happen.  By his estimation, Snuff Was not going to have a go at us unless everything was tilted in their favor, so he had us align out and head home.

The scout left behind reported that the Machariels warped off to a POS to get on a titan of their own once we left.  It looked like they were going to drop on us on our way home.  And when we spotted the cyno Cainun decided to give that a shot to see what they would bring.

The Machariel fleet dropped on us in Nennamaila and we were in close enough range to engage.  And while they did not bring HAW dreads along with them, they did jump fax support in to keep their Machs alive.  After a few attempts we were only able to break the tank on one Machariel while they were chewing up Abaddons one after another.

Once again, things were quite busy in the logi wing as we tried to keep people alive.

As the battle titled against us, the likelihood of us getting another Mach kill fell away, and Cainun decided to warp us out.  My alt, in an Abaddon, was tackled by one of the Machs however, so while my Guardian warped off to the station to dock up, the Abaddon sat there in the middle of hostiles waiting to die.  This was a double whammy because my alt had gotten the kill mail for the one Mach we killed, so that Abaddon was going to have a very short lived kill mark.

And then I was no longer pointed.  I don’t know if the person who had me tackled found a better target or if I just wandered out of range before it was my turn, but I wasn’t going to stick around and ask.  Already aligned and at speed, I warped right out and docked up with the rest of the survivors who made it out.

That Mahcariel we killed was expensive, but not expensive enough to offset out own losses.  We lost the ISK war by about a 6 to 1 margin according to the battle report.

Header from the Battle Report

And that total doesn’t include what we lost on the Fortizar in Rakapas, which would add another 3 billion ISK on top of that.  At least Abaddons insure well.

We waited in the station until they got bored and left.  They had already gotten their kills, so they didn’t hang around for very long.  After that we went back to Frarie to dock up in the Fortizar.

We shall see if they reinforce it again.  Doing that has worked out pretty well for them so far.  They haven’t killed any of our structures, but when they don’t show up for the timer Cainun feels the need to go find trouble, and he tends to get it.

Stay Awhile and Listen Book II Kickstarter Campaign Gives 110%

I was a bit worried about the state of the Kickstarter campaign for Stay Awhile and Listen Book II earlier this week.

Stay Awhile…

The campaign got off to a start that seemed sufficient for success.  As I say about every single Kickstarter campaign, my general rules is “20% in the first 24 hours or go home.”  I am sure there have been campaigns that have bucked that rule, but they are rare.

Anyway, Stay Awhile made that mark, if only just, but kept going to just past 50% before entering the great middle period of malaise, that time between the start and the finish where the numbers just don’t change very much.

This is why I think campaigns beyond 30 days are a bit of a waste.  Shoving another 15 days into the campaign, like Codename Reality did, doesn’t really change anything.  That is just a larger gap of time that makes it more likely that your potential last minute supporters will forget about you.  We learned this all 20 years ago when eBay was going to make us all rich; a longer run isn’t necessarily better.  There isn’t really a compelling reason to go past 30 days to my mind.

So Stay Awhile loafed along for more than a week without much action, and as the end of the campaign began to loom, I started to get a bit nervous.  The author did a bit of a “spread the word” campaign towards the end of that time, which got the campaign a nice boost, but things were lingering a couple grand shy of the goal right up until the end.

But I ought to have had faith.  The last 24 hours tends to see a surge in activity as those who were on the fence or who didn’t want to commit until things look good finally made up their mind.  There was enough people jumping on board at the end to push the campaign past its $12,000 goal, with it ending at 110% funded.

The charts over at Kicktraq give a nice view of the campaign.  You can see the peaks at the start and the finish as well as the late boost that came from the author’s push.

Now I just have to wait until June 2019 for the book.  That sounds like the distant future, though only because my brain still isn’t comfortable with the idea that it is currently 2018.  And while I wait I will have time to read the first book.

Imperium Move Op Video

Somebody cut together a nice video with a sound track of the capital ship portion of our move op northward.

I don’t recognize any of those moments from my part of the move op, but our fleet was mostly clearing the way of covering capitals when they were taking gates.

For Whom Will the Valar Sing Their Aria?

After the move op north in EVE Online I opened the Lord of the Rings Online launcher, started it patching, and went to bed.  I suspected it was going to take a while.  It was certainly still chugging along when I took a peek when I got up to use the bathroom later.  One does not simply log into Mordor.

Mordor, we have an eye on you!

But by the time the morning came the launcher was ready to let me log in.  That sent me to the character selection screen where I could behold the wonder of the character model update.

At least you can tell the difference

My thought there was mostly hoping that they didn’t spend a lot of time or money on that update.  You can see the improvement when you’re zoomed in close, but somehow I doubt you will notice it on other characters you pass in the world unless you’re one of those people who have to get up in everybody’s face.  Ah well.

From there I got myself into the game, dug out the code that Standing Stone sent me, opened up the LOTRO Store, and plugged it in.  I was rewarded with a success message.

My redemption validated… or something

I am not sure what “Premium Access DNT” is, but at least I recognized “Mordor Standard Edition Mordor Standard Edition” to be correct, if repetitive.  I could not bring myself to shell out for the more expensive packages.

The game also game me a pop-up of the sort when you are given or finish deeds.

Mordor Account Item Claimed Yes

You couldn’t actually click on it or anything, just dismiss it.  But I guess they felt that was necessary.  There was also the standard email from their payment service, Xsolla, which always makes me wonder, “Who is Xsolla?” when I see that name in my email.  I suppose getting a return address that says “Standing Stone” or “LOTRO” would cost extra.

So I was set.  Sort of.  I still needed my character boost, which did not show up with the transaction.  That had me a bit worried, since the top story in the launcher was about people having problems claiming their boost.  Joy.

However, logging out of the game and back in resolved that.  That wasn’t in the instructions that came with the purchase of the expansion, but I seemed to recall it being mentioned elsewhere.  And “turn it off, then back on again” is the universal first step for tech trouble shooting.

Once back in the game I found what I was looking for in my inventory.

The Package of the Valar

Now the big question: Which character to boost?

Yes, I managed to get a blog post out of every “which character should I boost?” situation.  But this one has a bit more edge to it.  While I think I will likely go with my champion, if I make the wrong choice I am a bit stuck.  Standing Stone has not yet added the Aria of the Valar to the LOTRO Store.

Moreover, when they do get around to adding it, I suspect it will be quite pricey.  In the last week they changed up the other boosts they offer, returning the level 50 boost for 3,995 TP.

They removed the level 50+ to 95 boost, which was 2,995 TP, leaving the all levels to 95 boost in the store for 5,995 TP.

Given that pricing, I expect that the Aria of the Valar boost to level 105 will be more, likely ringing in at 6,995 TP when it shows up.  Translating that to real world money is a bit of a chore, as SSG, and Turbine before them, engage in the usual scheme of base points, bonus points, and more points per dollar for the more dollars spent.  But calling it $70 wouldn’t be totally off base to my mind.

Current LOTRO Point pricing

So I want to choose wisely because currently there is no second choice, and when that option does appear it is likely to be expensive.

Of course, I appear to have time to think as the LOTRO launcher stopped being able to contact the game last night, so I couldn’t log in and use the Aria of the Valar even if I wanted to currently.

 

Stormhold Server Faces a Third Strike Vote

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am a fan of the whole nostalgia retro server thing when it comes to MMOs.  I have found them to be a fun, if imperfect, way to take a visit back to what things were like.  Not the actual launch experience, but an incredible simulation.

Norrathmania!

It is also very much an accelerated experience, as the people who show up are generally looking to relive the early days, and know where they want to go and what they want to do.  On the various generations of EverQuest progression servers people knew what zones to visit, what mobs to camp, which spawns to farm, and what groups were needed for any given boss.

It is something like compressed nostalgia.  All the stuff you took months to do now accomplished in a few weeks.

But it isn’t just the nostalgia that is compressed.  A very swift path opens to all the usual MMO problems as well.  Again, as we have seen on multiple iterations, people have problems with groups and spawns and multi-boxing and contested open world bosses and raids and even being able to log into an overloaded server.

However, the most contentious issue of all is content pacing.  There is always a conflict between those who burn through the content quickly and want the next expansion unlocked at the soonest possible moment, and those who move at a more leisurely pace or who showed up late (along with that persistent, classic server sub-group that wants no expansions unlocked ever), who want to hold off on the new stuff.

And so it has come to pass on the remaining EverQuest II time locked expansion server, Stormhold (the other server, the PvP focused Deathtoll, was shut down earlier this year due to lack of interest) that the content pacing wars have begun to burn bright.

That is Daybreak’s graphic for the idea

Unlocks have not been automatic on Stormhold up to this point.  The pace of votes, which come every 30 days, is such that they must seem too quick to some segment of the population, and so first unlock votes seem to fail regularly.  But the second vote has generally gone in favor of releasing fresh content.  The current vote revolves around the Rise of Kunark expansion.

What was it with SOE and dark elves?

However, the Rise of Kunark expansion, which raises the level cap to 80, has already failed its on two unlock votes, and the third one is in progress, being set to end this Friday.

Trolling with a simple yes/no question

The thing is, as Feldon at EQ2 Wire dug up, there is a “gotcha” clause if the unlock vote fails for the third time running.  The voting quote from the forums:

Players will have the option to vote to unlock content on Stormhold (PvE) and Deathtoll (PvP) servers every 30-days. The voting period will last a week, and if the server votes not to unlock the next expansion, the vote will start again after 30-days.

If the server chooses not to unlock content three times in a row, the votes for the next expansion will change to 90-days in-between votes. This will reset back to 30-days in-between votes after an expansion is successfully unlocked on your server.

Players must be within 20 levels of current content cap to be eligible to vote.

If the unlock vote fails this Friday, the voting will move to an every 90 day cycle, and won’t go back to every 30 days until an unlock vote succeeds. (Also, my “no” vote in the screen shot apparently doesn’t count because I am only level 30 and you need to be level 50 for your vote to count according to that quote.)

This naturally has the quick content consumption faction seeing red.  In the post over at EQ2 Wire, Feldon has points out three threads up on the forums where players are issuing dire predictions should the vote fail, one of which includes a pro-unlock video.

Of course, there is no telling what Daybreak will actually do should the unlock vote fail.  The company seems to have a history of bowing to the will of the loudest voices in the forums.  Just about a year back they overrode the rules set down for the EverQuest Ragefire progression server and let players vote in an early unlock… a situation that also happened to revolve around the continent of Kunark.

Can’t get enough Kunark!

I will give even odds, should the unlock vote fail, that Daybreak will disavow the 90 day vote cycle clause and keep with the every 30 day pace.  Anyway, we shall see what happens come Friday.  Maybe the vote will pass and everybody will just move on.