It's an old game facing fresh competition. Do people think it will really be around in 20 years, even 10 years? The end-of-life bust-out is coming, that is if it hasn't started already.
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Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
I dunno, Blizzard themselves probably internally forcasted a decline from hearthstone revenue - it's getting older every day, and nearly all games bleed players over time.
Agree, with adventures you spend 2800 gold (+/-) or 20 bucks(whatever the price was) and you get all the cards, now you can spend spend twice that and not even have half of that. Indeed a greedy move.
Hope they get back to adventures next year atleast.
It's an old game facing fresh competition. Do people think it will really be around in 20 years, even 10 years? The end-of-life bust-out is coming, that is if it hasn't started already.
Nah, this game is going to be around for a long time still. I have heard that these new games arent doing well. Plus with all these giveaways said new games are doing one wonders how they actually make any money
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There is a thing called an uninstall button. Nobody cares that you are quitting Heathstone
People complained that the meta didnt change enough within the same year. Lets remove adventures to make space for more cards per set!
And thus, people complained that there were too many cards to collect.
One thing I've learned all this years skulking around blizz forums and fansites is that there will always be people complaining about fucking everything.
We have every right, we're their customers.. They're not our parents that we need to honor and respect or something, lol
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"As housecarl I am sworn to your service. I will protect you and all you own, with my life." - Lydia of Whiterun
It's an old game facing fresh competition. Do people think it will really be around in 20 years, even 10 years? The end-of-life bust-out is coming, that is if it hasn't started already.
Well, Magic the Gathering is an old game, HS is medium-matured to low-matured still. But yeah, it will be very interesting to see if it is out there in 20-10 years.
For me, the problems are too much pay to win, especially if you are like me and like to have a couple of strong decks at my disposal, not just one and too much randomness. Such a high randomness makes investing in skill/experience less important. It is still important, but not as much as in Chess etc. I guess it's an advantage for casual players.
Seems to be pretty brief and has no obvious sourcing for its data. But let's assume that it's true, and Blizzard went from ~395MM to 217MM between 2016 and 2017. A lot of people here are posting about Blizzard being greedy and/or making bad game design decisions. To me that all sounds like boring internet rage. It may be true that people were more inclined to buy adventures with real money, and packs with gold, but Blizzard would surely have known that and not removed adventures if they wanted that revenue stream to remain consistent. Seems like the opposite of greed - they risked a revenue stream to introduce more content.
Regarding the game design questions, I think it's more a question of competition, When Hearthstone hit the CCG scene, its competition was much weaker than it is. Hearthstone proved that there's a huge market for well-polished games like this, and now games like Shadowverse exist, and are highly competitive with Hearthstone. The 2016 revenue for Shadowverse was estimated at ~100MM, and it was introduced June of 2016. If you like the design of those other games, you're more likely to play them. If you like that they give you more free stuff (which they do to catch up to Hearthstone), you're more likely to play them. Hearthstone expanded the market, and people are rushing in to take shares of that market away from Blizzard, which could have easily contributed to a loss of revenue.
Not that it matters much, but Mean Streets was the LAST expansion of its calendar year. The rotating sets are Old Gods and Mean Streets (we had an adventure in there that season, Karazhan, which fell in the middle of those I believe).
I see a recurring theme though after Kobolds now and Mean Streets last year: we often can't have that new Standard rotation soon enough because of all the broken synergies and cards infiltrating Standard after two years.
The game always has new life after the rotation in April; Old Gods and Un'Goro were two of the best metas we've ever experienced.
Anyway, I'm off topic, but all Blizz really needs to do is be more proactive about nerfing cards. They need to admit mistakes and consider UN-nerfing cards that were hit too hard. Patches was disgusting in it's current form, but in it's nerfed form it's pure garbage. Battlecry: Charge. Summon this minion from your deck when you play a pirate. Boom, card tweeked and not utterly destroyed and no longer too powerful.
Sometimes I think these guys aren't using their brainpower enough or they need to at least be taking suggestions from the community of players that probably knows the game inside out just as well as they do. We aren't all card designers, but there are plenty of members in the Hearthstone community that have brilliant ideas that never see the light of day.
I feel like the powerlevel of cards and decks have a huge impact on the revenue. I'm not talking about the "Let's make stronger and stronger cards so people will have to buy them to stay competitive" sort of stuff, but the effect of present decks on players. I saw many comments about people quitting the game because of Patches, PW, Quest Rogue and Razakus. All these decks made players feel like their opponent was playing Solitaire and they just happen to be on the receiving end. And there is another downside to that. Imagine if Razakus Priest was nerfed as hard as Corridor Creeper 2 weeks after it became a thing. How would those players feel who spent a big load of money (let that be real currency or just most of their collection) crafting it? I'm pretty sure that's another reason to quit. Blizzard doesn't seem to be too good at knowing their own game, and that might be the reason for their downfall.
FWIW - the estimates cited by the OP are from a report published by market analysts SuperData Research. Publicly traded companies can't distort their numbers, but they can and do withhold data for lots of internal reasons - the SDR report doesn't list WoW, for example, despite having tracked the game for all but two months in 2017, during which time the game was consistently among the top five in terms of revenue generation. I'm not sure where the OP sourced the $400 million stat for HS in 2016 - but it won't be useful to compare two different estimates, derived separately, using different data sets and methodologies of two different market analyst firms.
Blizzard releases quarterly reports - predictably - every three months. November was the most recent. The game suffered revenue stagnation prior to Un'Goro - MSoG wasn't exactly "a hit." But Un'Goro broke all the HS records for revenue and MAUs, and Frozen Throne continued the success, with year-on improvements in both revenue and MAUs - of course, Blizzard doesn't actually publish the specific numbers for any of their games, but they can't lie in their reports. Given that both Un'Goro and KFT posted healthy improvements on the previous year's revenue, however, it seems unlikely that total revenues for the game would have fallen during 2017, let alone tanked by half as the OP suggests. If Blizzard lost half its revenue from HS in a single year, the entire set of HS senior managers, led by BB, would have been sacked long ago. A more plausible explanation is that the two estimates for HS revenues were derived using different methodologies, by different companies, who had access to different data sets provided by Blizzard, and they aren't strictly comparable.
Remember that companies use the most beneficial metrics in their reports. If their revenues are rising, they will report it. They will report increase in MAU after giveaways that required to log in. They will report increase in number of registered accounts when everything else is in decline, since accounts can't be deleted.
They only releases when they have increase in players or earning, when they do not they keep it quiet. Remember in Warlords of Draenor when they had 3 million players and said they will never speak about player base again, but when Legion hit they immediately said that they have 10 million players. So if number are bad they will not speak of it.
FWIW - the estimates cited by the OP are from a report published by market analysts SuperData Research. Publicly traded companies can't distort their numbers, but they can and do withhold data for lots of internal reasons - the SDR report doesn't list WoW, for example, despite having tracked the game for all but two months in 2017, during which time the game was consistently among the top five in terms of revenue generation. I'm not sure where the OP sourced the $400 million stat for HS in 2016 - but it won't be useful to compare two different estimates, derived separately, using different data sets and methodologies of two different market analyst firms.
Blizzard releases quarterly reports - predictably - every three months. November was the most recent. The game suffered revenue stagnation prior to Un'Goro - MSoG wasn't exactly "a hit." But Un'Goro broke all the HS records for revenue and MAUs, and Frozen Throne continued the success, with year-on improvements in both revenue and MAUs - of course, Blizzard doesn't actually publish the specific numbers for any of their games, but they can't lie in their reports. Given that both Un'Goro and KFT posted healthy improvements on the previous year's revenue, however, it seems unlikely that total revenues for the game would have fallen during 2017, let alone tanked by half as the OP suggests. If Blizzard lost half its revenue from HS in a single year, the entire set of HS senior managers, led by BB, would have been sacked long ago. A more plausible explanation is that the two estimates for HS revenues were derived using different methodologies, by different companies, who had access to different data sets provided by Blizzard, and they aren't strictly comparable.
Can using different methodologies really make that much of a difference? :O
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"As housecarl I am sworn to your service. I will protect you and all you own, with my life." - Lydia of Whiterun
If the different methodology is to exclude mobile revenue, sure.
Regardless, Hearthstone is a tremendous moneymaker for Blizzard at any of these revenue levels. The team is small, the game is technically simple, and the art costs are relatively quite low compared to any other Blizzard game.
However, I do know a lot of people who used to play on PC who have migrated to playing entirely on mobile because their mobile implementation is so good and the short game length works well with how people play mobile games.
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It's an old game facing fresh competition. Do people think it will really be around in 20 years, even 10 years? The end-of-life bust-out is coming, that is if it hasn't started already.
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
I dunno, Blizzard themselves probably internally forcasted a decline from hearthstone revenue - it's getting older every day, and nearly all games bleed players over time.
Nah, this game is going to be around for a long time still. I have heard that these new games arent doing well. Plus with all these giveaways said new games are doing one wonders how they actually make any money
There is a thing called an uninstall button. Nobody cares that you are quitting Heathstone
League of Legends has something to say about that.
Last time I checked League of Legends is not a card game. So they are not like for like
There is a thing called an uninstall button. Nobody cares that you are quitting Heathstone
"As housecarl I am sworn to your service. I will protect you and all you own, with my life." - Lydia of Whiterun
Here's the source article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/esports/article-5334411/LoL-free-play-game-2017-2-1b-revenue.html
Seems to be pretty brief and has no obvious sourcing for its data. But let's assume that it's true, and Blizzard went from ~395MM to 217MM between 2016 and 2017. A lot of people here are posting about Blizzard being greedy and/or making bad game design decisions. To me that all sounds like boring internet rage. It may be true that people were more inclined to buy adventures with real money, and packs with gold, but Blizzard would surely have known that and not removed adventures if they wanted that revenue stream to remain consistent. Seems like the opposite of greed - they risked a revenue stream to introduce more content.
Regarding the game design questions, I think it's more a question of competition, When Hearthstone hit the CCG scene, its competition was much weaker than it is. Hearthstone proved that there's a huge market for well-polished games like this, and now games like Shadowverse exist, and are highly competitive with Hearthstone. The 2016 revenue for Shadowverse was estimated at ~100MM, and it was introduced June of 2016. If you like the design of those other games, you're more likely to play them. If you like that they give you more free stuff (which they do to catch up to Hearthstone), you're more likely to play them. Hearthstone expanded the market, and people are rushing in to take shares of that market away from Blizzard, which could have easily contributed to a loss of revenue.
Not that it matters much, but Mean Streets was the LAST expansion of its calendar year. The rotating sets are Old Gods and Mean Streets (we had an adventure in there that season, Karazhan, which fell in the middle of those I believe).
I see a recurring theme though after Kobolds now and Mean Streets last year: we often can't have that new Standard rotation soon enough because of all the broken synergies and cards infiltrating Standard after two years.
The game always has new life after the rotation in April; Old Gods and Un'Goro were two of the best metas we've ever experienced.
Anyway, I'm off topic, but all Blizz really needs to do is be more proactive about nerfing cards. They need to admit mistakes and consider UN-nerfing cards that were hit too hard. Patches was disgusting in it's current form, but in it's nerfed form it's pure garbage. Battlecry: Charge. Summon this minion from your deck when you play a pirate. Boom, card tweeked and not utterly destroyed and no longer too powerful.
Sometimes I think these guys aren't using their brainpower enough or they need to at least be taking suggestions from the community of players that probably knows the game inside out just as well as they do. We aren't all card designers, but there are plenty of members in the Hearthstone community that have brilliant ideas that never see the light of day.
If they do not do anything, they will end up as urban rivals...
It should be clear by now that they didn't nerf Patches the Pirate because busted cards like these attract customers and encourage them to buy packs.
Just a sidenote
I feel like the powerlevel of cards and decks have a huge impact on the revenue. I'm not talking about the "Let's make stronger and stronger cards so people will have to buy them to stay competitive" sort of stuff, but the effect of present decks on players. I saw many comments about people quitting the game because of Patches, PW, Quest Rogue and Razakus. All these decks made players feel like their opponent was playing Solitaire and they just happen to be on the receiving end. And there is another downside to that. Imagine if Razakus Priest was nerfed as hard as Corridor Creeper 2 weeks after it became a thing. How would those players feel who spent a big load of money (let that be real currency or just most of their collection) crafting it? I'm pretty sure that's another reason to quit. Blizzard doesn't seem to be too good at knowing their own game, and that might be the reason for their downfall.
FWIW - the estimates cited by the OP are from a report published by market analysts SuperData Research. Publicly traded companies can't distort their numbers, but they can and do withhold data for lots of internal reasons - the SDR report doesn't list WoW, for example, despite having tracked the game for all but two months in 2017, during which time the game was consistently among the top five in terms of revenue generation. I'm not sure where the OP sourced the $400 million stat for HS in 2016 - but it won't be useful to compare two different estimates, derived separately, using different data sets and methodologies of two different market analyst firms.
Blizzard releases quarterly reports - predictably - every three months. November was the most recent. The game suffered revenue stagnation prior to Un'Goro - MSoG wasn't exactly "a hit." But Un'Goro broke all the HS records for revenue and MAUs, and Frozen Throne continued the success, with year-on improvements in both revenue and MAUs - of course, Blizzard doesn't actually publish the specific numbers for any of their games, but they can't lie in their reports. Given that both Un'Goro and KFT posted healthy improvements on the previous year's revenue, however, it seems unlikely that total revenues for the game would have fallen during 2017, let alone tanked by half as the OP suggests. If Blizzard lost half its revenue from HS in a single year, the entire set of HS senior managers, led by BB, would have been sacked long ago. A more plausible explanation is that the two estimates for HS revenues were derived using different methodologies, by different companies, who had access to different data sets provided by Blizzard, and they aren't strictly comparable.
Remember that companies use the most beneficial metrics in their reports. If their revenues are rising, they will report it. They will report increase in MAU after giveaways that required to log in. They will report increase in number of registered accounts when everything else is in decline, since accounts can't be deleted.
Fake news.
The 200 million $ earnings are apparently only revenue from PC players which is amazing considering that mobile makes probably a lot more money.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/7u6n26/hearthstone_earned_nearly_half_as_much_in_2017/
They only releases when they have increase in players or earning, when they do not they keep it quiet. Remember in Warlords of Draenor when they had 3 million players and said they will never speak about player base again, but when Legion hit they immediately said that they have 10 million players. So if number are bad they will not speak of it.
Nope, it is with mobile player base, because game on that list is mobile game only, Lord of something, so no this is not fake news.
"As housecarl I am sworn to your service. I will protect you and all you own, with my life." - Lydia of Whiterun
If the different methodology is to exclude mobile revenue, sure.
Regardless, Hearthstone is a tremendous moneymaker for Blizzard at any of these revenue levels. The team is small, the game is technically simple, and the art costs are relatively quite low compared to any other Blizzard game.
However, I do know a lot of people who used to play on PC who have migrated to playing entirely on mobile because their mobile implementation is so good and the short game length works well with how people play mobile games.