WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers

Originally Posted by Drekmar

Good, one wotlk kid less. People nowadays expect to get everything for free without putting in any effort.

He would have never made in in Vanilla or TBC. WoW is not grindy. If he and other think this is a grindfest they have no clue what grinding means.

Originally Posted by whirlwinds

+ the extra ppl that are still subbed but have quit (unfortunatly i still have to pay for another month damm anuall pass)

you do know all you have to do to get out of the pass is either call blizzard and ask them or just take the credit card off your account right?

Originally Posted by Assumi

God you fanboys never quit.

And, hates are always gonna hate.

so what, a few million left, i'm still enjoying playing the game, and love what Mists of Pandaria is offering. In fact., i'd prefer it if more people left because it would give Blizzard to build even better expansions.

Originally Posted by JhanZ

You don't have any common sense. That's why I call you a fanboy. Because you're too blinded to see what's so obvious with a little thought put into it.

Cata lost subs because of a lack of content. That's logical and expected to happen in any game. Guess what just happened? Sub loss WITH content. What do you think that means? That means they are in deep shit, because even if they pump out content on a regular basis, people are giving less of a fuck more and more.

This is so obvious to see but apparently you can't wrap your head around it.

You assume so much in the sub losses. How many of them were from each region? How many of them were on their initial 30 day free month? How many of those actually had MoP? How many had Cata? How many of them were banned accounts? You have no way of knowing why any of those subs were gone, and assuming doesn't make you look like you have any more common sense.

Like someone said: "WoW is still a good game, but lost its soul."

During TBC for example, if your gear sucked you had to be a good player to get in a good group to finally get your hands in shiny purples.
Now with Blizzard policy when everyone must access the new content it's like I do my aoe raids on LFR's and I'm not willing to do a proper raid.

Originally Posted by laplacedemon

This makes me wonder about the demographics of players. How many of them have jobs/families which prevent them playing for long times and how many of them are doing dailies...

Generally speaking, "What about the people without that much time?!" isn't really a good argument for game design though.

It depends.

The people who were 17yo kids in BC are now 24yo and starting a family. That's a major difference.

People who say the game was better in BC are missing the point. Blizzard can try to attract new 17yolds, or try to keep the 24yolds. But either way the game needs to evolve to cope with the developing player base.

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.

/facepalm

I'm still in shock. D3 is not a horrible game by any means but ... ugh, so much potential wasted.

I enjoy MoP and think it's one of the best addons they ever made. You guys are all just very very nostalgic and forget how bugged (vanilla), hardcore-only (BC), repetive (WotlK) and boring (Cata) the old addons where compared to MoP. MoP has hardcore Hardmodes, supereasy LFR, medium normal modes and tons of stuff to do if you want (farm, pet battles, dailys, 5 mans, scenarios and so on).

The average age of MMOPRG players 2004 was 22 years. Now add 8 years. What changes from 22-30? Right - your family. You have kids, your career peaks, you are VERY busy -> much less time for Computer games.

So many who started with vanilla had to stop playing or reduce their playtime. Turned from "hardcore" to "casual". And after 8 years, 13 T-sets, 200+ mounts and pets the game is not that exciting anymore. That's not Blizzards fault. It's just what happens to any old game. They peak and what is left is a hardcore fanbase and a few casuals.

Did anyone really expect that WoW will have 10+ million subscriptions for 10+ years in a row? Come on, get real. WoW will still be played in 5 years, maybe with only 3-4 million subs. But that's still more than enough to make good money with that game and support it with content patches.

So, calm down everyone.

WoW haters: This will not kill WoW, but it's a sign that the golden age of that game are over.

WoW lovers: This is a significant drop and Blizzard does not like it, but it was expected and will continue.

I scoff at anyone who is saying WoW is dieing! I do believe that 98% of MMO's don't even have more than a couple million players. 9.6 Million that is an insane number and anyone who we lost probably a few 100k people which is expected, so honestly I don't get this idea where WoW is dieing since when can games keep the same player base constant? People quit and come back and new people get in and it goes on and on and on.....

EDIT: @Kryos Just to let you know "over 10 million" could mean 10.1 or less; also the golden age of WoW IS FAR from over I mean in Cata our lowest was 8.5 million meaning we still gained and over MMO's are so behind us that even if we went to 2 million subs we're still very successful.

Originally Posted by [Apok]

I can't bring myself to play much any more, i hate daily quests, yet i would happily farm like was needed for loatheb in vanilla.

The lack of choice with regards to direction of progressin your character via a certain means is boring and annoying.

But you actually have more choice. If you want to raid you have normal/heroic raids. If you cant do or don't like organized raids, you have LFR. If you do not like LFR you can run dungeons/Scenarios. If you don't lik instanced stuff you have rep grinds. And honestly, all you are asked to do is two weeks of dailies to get revered on one toon( significantly less time after you buy commendations) to get raid quality gear for not raiding. Prior to that you had running dungeons to get raid gear and raiding. People are just upset you cannot get your valor gear through spamming dungeons anymore. Also PvP. I see way more options to progress my characters than I ever have before.

This isn't an either/or situation. Both of these statements are true

WoW has a very healthy player base and will be the most profitable, dominant MMO on the market for many years.

Truth.

WoW's peak and it's glory years are behind it, it is in a slow but steady decline and will continue as such.

Also truth.

Originally Posted by anti-wow

Like someone said: "WoW is still a good game,and its gotten back its soul."

During TBC for example, if you wanted a good story you had to sit back and watch them ruin fan favorites from warcraft 3 and watch them retcon the lore while fumbling over storylines which to this day almost all of them are unexplained and had to fight against villains that either shouldve been heroes or were 'just cos for teh lulz' for example what the hell were the naga doing with swamp water? now we get good storylines and characters like chen stormstout arent ruined and faction leaders are being developed instead of sitting in their little rooms

fixed that for ya

Originally Posted by Kryos

I enjoy MoP and think it's one of the best addons they ever made. You guys are all just very very nostalgic and forget how bugged (vanilla), hardcore-only (BC), repetive (WotlK) and boring (Cata) the old addons where compared to MoP. MoP has hardcore Hardmodes, supereasy LFR, medium normal modes and tons of stuff to do if you want (farm, pet battles, dailys, 5 mans, scenarios and so on).

The average age of MMOPRG players 2004 was 22 years. Now add 8 years. What changes from 22-30? Right - your family. You have kids, your career peaks, you are VERY busy -> much less time for Computer games.

So many who started with vanilla had to stop playing or reduce their playtime. Turned from "hardcore" to "casual". And after 8 years, 13 T-sets, 200+ mounts and pets the game is not that exciting anymore. That's not Blizzards fault. It's just what happens to any old game. They peak and what is left is a hardcore fanbase and a few casuals.

Did anyone really expect that WoW will have 10+ million subscriptions for 10+ years in a row? Come on, get real. WoW will still be played in 5 years, maybe with only 3-4 million subs. But that's still more than enough to make good money with that game and support it with content patches.

So, calm down everyone.

WoW haters: This will not kill WoW, but it's a sign that the golden age of that game are over.

WoW lovers: This is a significant drop and Blizzard does not like it, but it was expected and will continue.

Again, the "rose-tinted goggles" syndrome is completely invalid due to the numbers. Blizzard should easily be able to sustain consistent subscription gains, despite the age of the game, based on the quality of the game. It's just no longer at the quality of WotLK, I'm afraid.

Since I just got home from class...I don't really feel like being hyper critical and point out all the reasons I love MOP. (There is to many)

BUT MOP IS AWESOME. Best expack yet. I adore everything about it.

except the CC in PVP >> that is maybe a bit over the top. haha but really. Best expansion yet. GG Bliz I was starting to wonder.

Originally Posted by Nightelfsb

Please, dont be hating. I don't think you'll find any people on this board, who haven't done long grinds before. BUT having daylies as the ONLY option, that is where it went wrong.

PS; Exalted Argent Dawn inn classic wow, early 40 exalted title inn wotlk way before most people. What have you done inn wow? Again dont be hating.

Dailies are not the only option. As stated above there are many ways. Dailies are only needed to get your rep up to revered(two weeks or lees of work), after that dailies are no longer needed unless you want bonus rolls which are not needed.

And back up to 10+ with 5.2. It has been going up and down a million players for years. Nothing new.
For the doomsayers, even if it was to keep declining it would take about 5 years to even half it's playerbase.

Can't say I'm really surprised. I haven't been playing WoW for quite some time now (actively ofc). And I'm somebody who doesn't get bored quickly. The dailies and lack of interesting things in WoW is what made it boring for me. There's NOTHING to do besides dailies, BGs, dungeons, arenas and raids. dailies and dungeons get bored EXTREMELY quickly.
BGs are FILLED with bots. Arena... well I enjoy arena, but I'm not AS experienced with them yet. And well raids... They're just not my thing currently. I DO enjoy them, so nothing against that.

I want to run around freely and discover EXCITING stuff. Perhaps add some secret places like back in the previous expansion packs or something, IDK.

Originally Posted by Sarnaxxx

I don't argue that this is a downturn in the size of the player base but did all 500k leave from US & Europe? They didn't lose 1/4 of their market in either of those regions. Those 500k came from the 10,000,000 players around the globe. They lost 1/20th of their player base, not 1/4. Is it declining? I don't think so personally but everyone is welcome to their own opinion.

He also is assuming only 2M in US/EU. Last official word was at 12M a bit over half were Asian accounts. During Cata, a lot of the losses were attributed to Asian losses especially the 1.1M loss when D3 came out. I would think the over all non Asian count is closer to 4-5M prior to the losses. Until the reveal where they come from it is pretty silly to make these assumptions.

Originally Posted by dfjdejulio

I don't think that would do it. From my perspective, the community has been a lost cause since... I want to say patch 3.2? Cross-realm battlegrounds started it, and the dungeon finder tool finished it.

What do I mean? Once dungeon finder was added to the game, you didn't have to talk to anyone in order to group up for dungeon content. I'd log in to run a dungeon or two, to find that all the people I'd normally do that with have already done all they needed via the dungeon finder. So my choice was "run with strangers" or "give up". My raiding group ended up being the only folks I saw regularly... and then the raid finder put an end to that, for basically the same reason.

In Pandaria, I ran heroics long enough to qualify for raid finder, and raid finder long enough to stick a legendary gem in my sha-touched weapon. Now, I basically do nothing but level alts, work the Halfhill farm, and hunt in pre-Cata content for transmog gear. And that's all solo, because I am sick to death of strangers, but there's no tolerable community to connect with. Not sure I'll hold out for patch 5.2, haven't decided yet.

I just don't see there being any way at all for the communities to get strong again. I could be wrong though; we'll have to wait and see.

That's not to say the game will die. I think there'll be more and more solo and dungeon/raid-finder style stuff for a bit. But it won't be what it was.

(As for whether I'm a "wrath baby" or whatever: been playing since the game's original beta, and was an alpha tester for TBC. My favorite patch was the one that added Naxxramas and the tier 0.5 or "dungeon 2" content. That was some work, but was extremely satisfying for me. Loved it. Enjoyed TBC up through Karazhan, enjoyed WotLK up through Ulduar, hated Cata, "meh" about Pandaria.)

I still think Game can work ok with less community oriented content like LFD. But the community driven content just needs to be so much better. One way of doing that is to reward ppl for playing with their guild. Having content that is complex and with 10 ability bosses does not quite hit the nail on the head for those communities. Thats more for heroic raiders.

BLIzzard needs to go the happy medium - where playing in a structure long term group is rewarding enough for characters to progress. They have not in MOP and these numbers show that. The numbers show in fact exact same thing as they did in first raid tier in CATA. That many players just didn't bother with the raid content cause it was overtuned for most normal players that were looking for acceptable progression. The result in Cata was that Blizzard delayed 5.1 and it had no new raids. Those that were stuck on that tier... were still stuck.

MOP fixed nothing when it came to this. If anything - more players have probably just given up on normal raiding and went LFR instead. LFR is not meaningful content tho. It does not require anything other than you to push few buttons. Beeing in a guild and raiding on regular basis is more meaningful.

BLizzard has probably not even realised yet why MOP has been so much failure in normal raids. NOt having the right roles - right specs or the right classes does alot of dmg. Then we see systems like ilvl systems that make it very hard for players to switch roles if some are needed. Only the dmg that ilvl system as done for multicspecs is beyond repair right now this expansion. It should have been the other way around to strengthen normal raids.