WoW Stable at 10.2 Million Subscribers
Activision Blizzard's press release states that World of Warcraft is still at 10.2 million subscribers as of 3/31/12. This is the same amount of subscribers from Q4 2011. A few other interesting points:

  • Battle.Net has 10 million users.
  • 1.2 million people bought the Annual Pass.
  • 2 million people played the Diablo 3 open beta.
  • Pre-orders for Diablo 3 have set a new record for Blizzard. This number includes units pre-ordered as part of the Annual Pass promotion, as well as retail and digital pre-orders.
  • Blizzard renewed their license with NetEase for the distribution of World of Warcraft in mainland China, and it will continue for an additional three years following the expiration of the current license agreement.

This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW Stable at 10.2 Million Subscribers started by chaud View original post
Comments 818 Comments
  1. Deficineiron's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Klog View Post
    Yea we get it, if you like this news you're a fanboy, if you hate it you're a hater.

    Here's the facts. WoW was released in 2004 and still has 10x the subscriber base of any MMO to date. Try to dispute that.
    Westward Journey Online says Hi, little brother WoW.
  1. hazedwhite's Avatar
    wtf is westward journey online?
  1. chazus's Avatar
    Westward Journey is a chinese free mmo. It's kinda hard to compare popular free mmo's to popular paid mmo's. It's like saying facebook totally beats wow in subscribers.
  1. Deficineiron's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chazus View Post
    Westward Journey is a chinese free mmo. It's kinda hard to compare popular free mmo's to popular paid mmo's. It's like saying facebook totally beats wow in subscribers.
    not free, it is the primary source of revenue for netease (or fantasy westward journey, I get them confused).

    It uses the same payment system over half of wow subscribers use, is that good enough? Or is wow 'free' in china too?

    Seriously, go dig in netease's sec-filed financials and show me where they are running their mmo for free.

    If people want to talk about wow being the biggest 'western' mmo with maybe 4~MILLION subscribers, that is fine, it is more than twice as large as any competitor, but most folks like to include the china subs and make the number substantially bigger (the famous 10.2m number) and only compare it to western mmo's.
  1. tripleh's Avatar
    Hmm , anyone know when the next report is ? Curious to see the numbers. =D
  1. iceberg265's Avatar
    Its hilarious to me that all the Blizzard fans think this is some type of victory...

    Victory? Victory, you say? Master Obi-Wan, not victory...

    This is a BAD thing for you as a player. It means that Blizzard will think they are doing things RIGHT, and they will continue to treat you, their customers, as they have been. If subs had continued to drop, maybe they would have realized how bad of a company they are becoming and made an effort to fix things.
  1. Deficineiron's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by iceberg265 View Post
    Its hilarious to me that all the Blizzard fans think this is some type of victory...

    Victory? Victory, you say? Master Obi-Wan, not victory...

    This is a BAD thing for you as a player. It means that Blizzard will think they are doing things RIGHT, and they will continue to treat you, their customers, as they have been. If subs had continued to drop, maybe they would have realized how bad of a company they are becoming and made an effort to fix things.
    The spectre of further pandalandazation of wow has suddenly been overshadowed by the real possibility of vivendi divestment of their stake in ATVI. If this comes to pass in any form (and there are a number of possibilities), all bets are off with what wow will look like in 2 years, but I do think that the vast majority of posters here (on both sides of most issues) aren't going to like it.
  1. Frozen Death Knight's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by iceberg265 View Post
    Its hilarious to me that all the Blizzard fans think this is some type of victory...

    Victory? Victory, you say? Master Obi-Wan, not victory...

    This is a BAD thing for you as a player. It means that Blizzard will think they are doing things RIGHT, and they will continue to treat you, their customers, as they have been. If subs had continued to drop, maybe they would have realized how bad of a company they are becoming and made an effort to fix things.
    Who is this "all" that you are speaking of? Bad generalization is bad.
  1. Galbrei's Avatar
    Say no to necrophilia, let this thread slink back into limbo please, it earned it's eternal rest after so much flaming.
  1. tripleh's Avatar
    Just was curious when the next report was due , It seems like it's close but forgot when it was. Just inquiring to that. O.o
  1. mmoc80ea7ba33a's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by iceberg265 View Post
    Its hilarious to me that all the Blizzard fans think this is some type of victory...

    Victory? Victory, you say? Master Obi-Wan, not victory...

    This is a BAD thing for you as a player. It means that Blizzard will think they are doing things RIGHT, and they will continue to treat you, their customers, as they have been. If subs had continued to drop, maybe they would have realized how bad of a company they are becoming and made an effort to fix things.
    Well since the battle of the gamers have been going on since vanilla with the all so ancient "wow will die!". So yes, it is a sort of victory since they got prof now that wow is in fact not dying
  1. mmocedbf46d113's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by tripleh View Post
    Just was curious when the next report was due , It seems like it's close but forgot when it was. Just inquiring to that. O.o
    Since the last one was in May, I'd bet on August.
  1. mmoce85cdeb601's Avatar
    untill some1 comes up with a mmo like bf2 was a fps,BALANCED"" then ppl will qqqqqqq, pve has messed pvp up and pvp has messed pve up, fanbois will praise blizz and slag all other of for how awesome pandas will be, and u can look over my other posts about cata, same shit 5 lvls. same shared lock on 10/25 raids means fk all to do for months as it has been all cata witch is nothing less than laziness from blizz
  1. Tomana's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by mainman View Post
    untill some1 comes up with a mmo like bf2 was a fps,BALANCED"" then ppl will qqqqqqq, pve has messed pvp up and pvp has messed pve up, fanbois will praise blizz and slag all other of for how awesome pandas will be, and u can look over my other posts about cata, same shit 5 lvls. same shared lock on 10/25 raids means fk all to do for months as it has been all cata witch is nothing less than laziness from blizz
    "You don't have to bottle up your anger like that. There may be people fifty miles from here who didn't hear you" (c)
  1. Synstir's Avatar
    Well, at the time of that announcement it drop in subs stopped and stabilized at 10.2 miljon.
    We have now closed Q2 2012. I expect this month the new numbers.... and I'm afraid that this time around they can't claim that it is still stable.

    Does anyone know when Blizzard will publish those numbers?
  1. quicknthedead's Avatar
    Hey all just wanted to chime in on this,

    Nor hate or fanboyism will be posted from my response but just wanted to say although i love WoW i have left the game and the only reason why I'm still a paid subscriber is because of the Annual pass which ends up in the end of October or November cant remember. So to sit here and say that this game is dead or not doesn't really matter cause it never will be so the haters gotta stop hating. I am curious to see how many subscribers they may lose from Q4 2012 because of all the Annual pass holders in that time frame that may be waiting for it to end. Assuming Blizzard is Smart MoP will be out in October to counter that number of subs that may leave this game. The reason why i left the game has nothing to do with with Pandas or crap like that like others are saying, rather a staleness that was left within my guild when LFR came out and the inability to form 10 man raids and such. I just felt like the social activity of learning mechanics with a core group left and handing out gear like i was going out trick-or-treating bothered me. That's just my take on the game......and please don't hate on me just my opinion
  1. Thulvaso's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by iceberg265 View Post
    Its hilarious to me that all the Blizzard fans think this is some type of victory...

    Victory? Victory, you say? Master Obi-Wan, not victory...

    This is a BAD thing for you as a player. It means that Blizzard will think they are doing things RIGHT, and they will continue to treat you, their customers, as they have been. If subs had continued to drop, maybe they would have realized how bad of a company they are becoming and made an effort to fix things.
    It seems all you do is hate on wow.
  1. Shinzai's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by systematic View Post
    Hey all just wanted to chime in on this,

    Nor hate or fanboyism will be posted from my response but just wanted to say although i love WoW i have left the game and the only reason why I'm still a paid subscriber is because of the Annual pass which ends up in the end of October or November cant remember. So to sit here and say that this game is dead or not doesn't really matter cause it never will be so the haters gotta stop hating. I am curious to see how many subscribers they may lose from Q4 2012 because of all the Annual pass holders in that time frame that may be waiting for it to end. Assuming Blizzard is Smart MoP will be out in October to counter that number of subs that may leave this game. The reason why i left the game has nothing to do with with Pandas or crap like that like others are saying, rather a staleness that was left within my guild when LFR came out and the inability to form 10 man raids and such. I just felt like the social activity of learning mechanics with a core group left and handing out gear like i was going out trick-or-treating bothered me. That's just my take on the game......and please don't hate on me just my opinion
    I doubt they'll lose many, if any subs from the annual pass running out. Most of the people that paid for it did so because they were going to be playing WoW all year any way and the added extras were just nice bonuses.

    It's also highly unlikely that the number of subs will drop until Q1 2013, because... Christmas and Blizzard's marketing. And when it's getting close to Q1 2013, we can expect the next major content patch to be dropping, to stymie any loss of subs.

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