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WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers
Activision Blizzard's press release states that World of Warcraft is down to 9.6 million subscribers as of December 31, 2012. This is lower than the amount of subscribers from the "over 10 million" announced for Q3 2012. A few other interesting points:

  • Mists of Pandaria was the #3 best-selling PC game at retail.
  • Diablo III was the #1 best-selling PC game at retail, breaking PC-game sales records with more than 12 million copies sold worldwide through December 31, 2012.
This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers started by chaud View original post
Comments 954 Comments
  1. Immitis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kojinshugi View Post
    How is farming soul shards more fun? You're still killing 50 things. There's just exclamation points to click. There's also achievements added if you're a completionist.

    Also, did you never do the Rolling daily? I could do that for hours.
    sure the rolling daily is fun... unless you're trying to do the achievement on an old computer and you're moving so fast even if you complete it in time you dont load the finish line up until after you pass it and have to try and time a spin around to hit the line
  1. Mortavius's Avatar
    I love how when these discussions come up, the worst sorts of people raise their heads.

    Those who love to label and call out folks with names like "You fanboys never quit." Like enjoying something and supporting it is a BAD thing all of a sudden.

    And the whole argument is stupid. I can sum it up so easily.

    Fact #1: WoW lost a bunch of subscribers.
    Fact #2: WoW still has more subscribers than any other MMO out there, and many combined.

    But people feel the need to tack on arguments to each side, and make their's the "correct" viewpoint. "WoW *only* lost X many subs." "WoW lost that many subs, and they're losing money."

    Can't you all see that you folks are arguing the same damn thing?!?

    No matter what you all say, no matter what horrible names and labels you apply to each other and everything else, nothing will change as a result of your actions on this forum today.

    So why not show some kindness to each other, and discuss something reasonably?
  1. Chaochamp's Avatar
    Thus concludes my prediction as true.

    Laughing at all of the fanbois that were ready willing and able to defend WoW's sub numbers pre today. (some even claiming a gain! hah!)
  1. Granyala's Avatar
    I could AOE grind when I wanted to, and healing was actually fun!
    No. Healing was the incarnation of Boring in Wrath.

    Me never wants to go back to that.
  1. OneSent's Avatar
    And still 3.6 million more subscribers compared to how many there were when I first bought the game and when the the game was at it's best: Vanilla/The Burning Crusade.

    WoW could lose 4 million subs and probably be better for it.
  1. kojinshugi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Necrosaro123 View Post
    25USD for a subscription.
    Since when is the subscription 25 bucks?

    WoW demands too much from players who can hardly play the game every night, the item hunt is not really interesting and became boring after a month, i can't find any other reason to have players on a game they really don't enjoy to play.
    Have you ever considered that not everyone likes the same things? Plenty of people do like the item hunt. I personally have zero interest in survival horror, but I don't go on Resident Evil forums complaining that the game sucks and should involve more raiding.
  1. Chaochamp's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by OneSent View Post
    And still 3.6 million more subscribers compared to how many there were when I first bought the game and when the the game was at it's best: Vanilla/The Burning Crusade.

    WoW could lose 4 million subs and probably be better for it.
    Nope. Game was at its factual best during WotLK. Opinions don't matter, the numbers do.
  1. Duster505's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Frozenshiva View Post
    See.. this is what i don't get.... You contradict me..fair enough... with an argument you contradict yourself in?

    I don't even..

    Aside from contradicting yourself, you're also advocating something not exactly related to what i said, aside from an assumed sense of understanding what i said.

    You first attribute the drop in subscribers to demographic shifts. Then you continue with the argument that only a select few progress through normal mode, further strengthening your argument with the fact that players require progression to stick around, which goes against your initial state that players quite because they progress? I mean..what?

    That's not even counting the fact that you're referring to a minority as a "majority". We know for a fact the number of subscribers dropped by ~5%. Last i checked 5% is still far away off from 100%, or even 50% for that matter.

    I'm pretty sure i know what you wanted to say, but i'm also pretty sure what you actually said is not what you wanted to say.

    You're also analyzing the entire thing in a bubble, which is simply stupid.
    Its called meaningful content. LFR and daily quests are not meaningful content. It creates even worse players than what we have already. And it leads to what? 5% nerf per wipe in LFR?

    Would be much better to push players into active social gaming with guild on active servers (meaning server merges) and if it means that Normal content needs to be downtuned for that to work... Yes - better than pretty much everything that MOP stands for right now.
  1. Celista's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kojinshugi View Post
    Thank fucking god Blizzard does not design the game according to the preferences of people who prefer hours of mindless, repetitive grinding to performing the same basic actions in short, structured quests that vary from day to day.
    Mob grinding = mindless repetitive actions in order to achieve a desired goal (rep, items, xp)
    Level capped dailies = mindless repetitive actions in order to achieve a desired goal (rep, currency, items)

    At least with mob grinding you can get it all done in a few days as opposed to dailies which are gated...and required if you want to spend your valor points. >.<

    Terrible terrible game design, I'm tired of reading posts from people trying to defend it. It's just god awful.
  1. Tharkkun's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aquamonkey View Post
    It's in the Quarterly Reports. All of them. And I rounded up.

    Thanks. My financial website is slacking big time.

    Unfortunately those numbers include all of their products. There's no distinction between the Blizzard revenue or any of their products. In the past they separated Internet/Online but that still included Call of Duty and a few others.
  1. kojinshugi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Immitis View Post
    sure the rolling daily is fun... unless you're trying to do the achievement on an old computer and you're moving so fast even if you complete it in time you dont load the finish line up until after you pass it and have to try and time a spin around to hit the line
    Time to upgrade? I didn't have any fun doing 25 man Elegon with all of 3 frames per second, so I bought a new GPU, overclocked my old Core 2 Duo, and bought an extra 2gb of used RAM.
  1. Aquamonkey's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Chry View Post
    Nope. Game was at its factual best during WotLK. Opinions don't matter, the numbers do.
    Popular != better.
  1. Raiju's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Immitis View Post
    i cant find the almost 13 million announcement so until i find it ill just say over 12 million. but still the highest amount of subs were at cata launch.
    Has nothing to do with cataclysm though, does it? It's an expansion (when subs will always peak, if you want to start using common sense in this thread and not continue arguments like DLC = expansions) riding off the previous expansions popularity. Cataclysm dropped like a BRICK, then steadied out. MoP is looking to continue the steady fall.

    I'm guessing we'll see another 2 million loss just before the next expansion, the expansion will sell over 2M copies first week and will also bump up subs by about over a million, and the slow decay continues. It's hardly dying but its just about when the investors decide to jump ship because there comes a point where you can't keep making increasing amounts of profit with fewer and fewer subscribers.
  1. RicardoZ's Avatar
    You can pretty much double (or maybe even triple) the amount of subs the competition has and Blizzard still wins by a long shot. People forget that when new expansions come around, people get phased out for hardware reasons, they get bored, they don't want to learn the new systems within the game, etc. For some people the logical ending point of the game was killing Deathwing. They slayed the great black dragon and that's that. 500k loss under those circumstances is nothing to be concerned about.

    Now if Elder Scrolls Online releases in competition with the next WoW expansion and WoW subs drop to below 7 million, then Blizzard might be slightly worried, and even then probably not much.

    Game's not going anywhere guys, relax. These things happen and it always evens out again somehow.
  1. Aquamonkey's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tharkkun View Post
    Thanks. My financial website is slacking big time.

    Unfortunately those numbers include all of their products. There's no distinction between the Blizzard revenue or any of their products. In the past they separated Internet/Online but that still included Call of Duty and a few others.
    They still do, but that isn't divided by region.
  1. Woa's Avatar
    Yessssssss, please kill this game so I can stop playing.
  1. Chaochamp's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aquamonkey View Post
    Popular != better.
    Again, opinions don't matter, numbers do. If the game wasn't enjoyable the sub numbers would show that, as they do now.

    But go ahead and keep living in denial if you'd like.
  1. Exodeus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kojinshugi View Post
    How is farming soul shards more fun? You're still killing 50 things. There's just exclamation points to click. There's also achievements added if you're a completionist.

    Also, did you never do the Rolling daily? I could do that for hours.
    edit for some reason quoted the wring post.

    My farming soulshards / a bunch of self buffs was my preference to the valour upgrading gear and coins giving loot i'd prefer to buff myself with pots instead of valour, the soul shards thing was mostly me thinking that the removal of the draining of souls took away a level of the warlock just me i guess.
  1. Tharkkun's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Duster505 View Post
    Its called meaningful content. LFR and daily quests are not meaningful content. It creates even worse players than what we have already. And it leads to what? 5% nerf per wipe in LFR?

    Would be much better to push players into active social gaming with guild on active servers (meaning server merges) and if it means that Normal content needs to be downtuned for that to work... Yes - better than pretty much everything that MOP stands for right now.
    Before LFR and dailies there was nothing. You're bored? Go run around and kill stuff or herb. No dungeon finder so sit around in your major city and beg for a tank/healer! Or Raid and throw your face at a wall for 8 hours. Dailies were one of the alternatives for something to do.
  1. kojinshugi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Celista View Post
    Mob grinding = mindless repetitive actions in order to achieve a desired goal (rep, items, xp)
    Level capped dailies = mindless repetitive actions in order to achieve a desired goal (rep, currency, items)

    At least with mob grinding you can get it all done in a few days as opposed to dailies which are gated...and required if you want to spend your valor points. >.<

    Terrible terrible game design, I'm tired of reading posts from people trying to defend it. It's just god awful.
    You think it's terrible game design to not have the most optimal way of playing be "sit down and grind for two 12-hour sessions"?

    Seriously, get a job and a family and try doing that.

    Having to do 30 minutes of dailies every couple of days to remain competitive in an MMO endgame is not excessive. You may as well whine that raids lockouts force you to attend every week for months, instead of being allowed to spend a 72-hour caffeine fueled binge session getting full epics.

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