Ready, Set, Rumble: Blizzard’s Soft Launch Playbook for Warcraft Rumble unveiled!

In May 2022, Blizzard first unveiled Warcraft Arclight Rumble, the next mobile game coming to the Warcraft franchise. Over a year later, the game has had beta tests and has received updates and changes, including a new name — Warcraft Rumble. Warcraft Rumble started to roll out the first launch build in the Philippines. Good job, someone is paying attention to how to soft launch a game! Let’s take a look at the whole soft-launch strategy now.

Pay attention, but be aware. This is not your usual mobile game soft launch. This is Blizzard, similar to the Supercell soft-launch approach. Very different.

Warcraft Rumble Overview

When the game was first announced, Blizzard promised a single-player campaign with over 70 missions, as well as PvP matches. The game has been refined and polished, but one of the biggest things to change was the PvP system. It was really just, if you’re in the queue and someone else is in the queue, you fight against each other and the winner gets some XP. That was pretty much it. Once the bare bones were set up and the mode was declared appropriately fun and balanced, the team built a fully featured PvP mode, including matchmaking, a ladder system, rewards, and a seasonal structure.

Warcraft Rumble is designed around leaders; some of these are characters from Warcraft lore, like Sylvanas Windrunner or Grommash Hellscream, and others are “upgraded” versions of iconic units like the footman.  Apparently, they didn’t want everything to be about playing your leader, but wanted to make sure that mechanically they didn’t overshadow all the other parts of your army. The leader’s abilities don’t make the leader itself stronger — it influences your army in general.

Warcraft Rumble is a mobile action strategy game where collectible Warcraft Minis come to life to clash in epic melee battles. Whether you choose to play in the massive single player campaign or compete head-to-head in epic PvP battles, prepare to experience the true meaning of joyful chaos! As google play description says:

WARCRAFT AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
-Take control of an army of Minis to defeat bosses and characters from the Warcraft universe
-Play with iconic heroes like Jaina Proudmoore, Grommash Hellscream, and many more
-Defeat enemies from across the Warcraft universe in familiar and new settings
-Discover new maps and bosses as you fight your way across Azeroth

COLLECT OVER 60 WARCRAFT MINIS AND CHARACTERS
-Collect dozens of units and characters from across Azeroth
-Build armies within 5 playable families: Alliance, Horde, Beast, Undead, and Blackrock
-Unlock new skills and upgrade your minis as you level up

FAST PACED MOMENT-TO-MOMENT STRATEGIC ACTION
-Every Mini and hero you play matters when it comes to winning
-Cast spells like Blizzard and Chain Lightning to defeat your enemies and turn the tide of battle
-Exploit enemy weaknesses: deploy ranged units against flyers, or use magic against infantry
-Use your Minis’ unique powers to build a team for any opponent you come up against

USER ACQUISITION & NUMBERS

Look at those downloads vs. revenue numbers!

Getting 10k+ day revenue is quite nice in a monetisation stage.

Your typical game won’t make $1.4mil during soft launch = (800k x sadness multiplier).

Soft launch strategy

In a soft launch since May 2022, going from the Philippines to Tier 1 countries. Looks like the Retention and monetization stage started in August 2023. What should you focus on in different stages?

Based on the lower installs during the soft launch, I would assume the CPIs increased quite heavily, mainly in Nordics. Getting 2k players per day in the strategy category is not a cheap exercise. I know, I know. Warcraft IP is doing its magic. Well, yes and no. Even with a Warcraft IP, if you run UA in a few countries without a creative iteration, you will hit quite high CPIs. Quite high = $15-20+, especially in Nordics. The main spend goes to CA + AU, but the CPIs won’t be that different in there. Maybe within the $10-15 CPI range.

I would add more countries to the mix. To capture the male audience with quality and low CPIs – definitely at least Poland and the Netherlands. Looks like the servers are in America, so LATAM wouldn’t work here. Also, what about ASIA? Don’t you want to get some KPIs from that region? In terms of monetisation, I wou

ld definitely add Germany (and potentially the United Kingdom). These countries are way bigger than CA + AU combined and provide a better understanding of the CPI and ROAS curve.

Looks like they are following the Google play Soft launch playbook. Not seeing any reviews and ratings by now, which means they went through Open Beta track to Pre-registration where thy are sitting at the moment waiting for global launch!

Soft launch Updates  & Socials

Approaching game updates from a different (AAA) perspective. What was added in the latest update? Well, check it out in this video:

To be honest, social media strategy around Warcraft Rumle is most probably way more structured and prepared than the whole UA part of the equation. Let’s just look at ALL the FANPAGES they have: 

Also, discord cant be missing in this mix:

Warcraft Rumble soft launch strategy is all about community building rather than anything else. UA is completely sidelined, let’s take a look.

UA Channel mix

They have been running Applovin & Google for a long time. Added Unity very recently and tested a few networks. The funny thing is the really small spending on Facebook.

TOP IAP SKUs

CREATIVE STRATEGY

Looking into the Mobile action ads gallery for creative research. These are the types of creatives they run:

• 3D CGI
• few hooks (3D hooks + headlines)
• trailer-ish

First of all, I have to say the quality of the creatives is absolutely amazing. It’s from a different universe. On. the other hand, there are just not enough different creative concepts running at the moment. I understand we might be just at the end of the soft launch, but this would be the best time to test the different concepts pre-global launch. Why? To double down on the multiple creative winners! I don’t see that here..

Warcraft Rumble creatives

Most of the videos are 30 seconds long, and very few shorter ones (even the short ones are just cuts from the long 53 sec. video).

I don’t get this. No playables at all. Hello?! Welcome to UA in 2023.

Creative ideas

As you can see in the videos above, there is a big emphasis on headlines. Try to use different styles of headlines! (yeah exactly, hypercasual style)

I miss more gameplay-oriented videos. There is this 53-second-long video with the pre-registration CTA, but where was this in the soft launch?

Strategy elements! Jesus Christ, it’s a strategy game. Why not show the different strategy scenarios when you have to use different strategies to outsmart enemies?

Quick brief idea – STRATEGY DECISION:

The champion is the main character on each side’s team. Since we have to make a strategic decision, this will be the main topic of this creative. We have to decide – going back and attacking from defense? Or jump with our champion on an enemy field with a heroic win (or lose)

Scenario:

• We are zoomed in on our champion.
• The camera zooms out so we see the whole map
• The scene goes dark, only our hero is visible.
• The headline will show up as “CRUCIAL STRATEGIC DECISION”
• Option 1: Attack from defense
• Option 2: Attack with all power
• We click on Option 2
• We see gameplay and our hero jumps on the enemy’s field and dies after a battle 🙁
• The screen goes dark again with the headline “WRONG X”
• Endscreen with the headline: “Can you do better?” Button: Try no/End screen if win “The best defense is a good offense” Button: Play now/

Progression concepts:

Quick brief idea Day 1 vs. Day 30
This creative is showing progress in a game.

• The screen is divided into 2 parts.
• On the left side, we see literally first-day gameplay:
• heroes & troops are on a basic level
• there is a headline DAY 1 in a creative
• On the right side is exactly the opposite with the headline DAY 30

There is so much more to try!

To get some creative insights, check out this episode:

Takeaways & last comments

• Creative depth. Global launch is around the corner. You need way more creative concepts to win the global launch. Start yesterday!

• Playables, playables, playables. Unity & Applovin will thank you. Or me.

• Country mix! Add more countries to get better KPIs before the global launch.

• Community building is really important, but should be one of the soft launch pillars alongside User Acquisition & Creatives.

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As always, special thanks go to Mobile action for providing the creative insights! You are awesome!