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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. Aquamonkey's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Celista View Post
    Dailies don't tell storylines well at all.
    If good directors can make walking through New Zealand or people typing on computers engaging, I'm sure someone can do something about me spending hours digging through dirt or fishing for items to make people like me.
  1. Immitis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Celista View Post
    Dailies don't tell storylines well at all.
    golden lotus, shieldwall, and 5.2 all say otherwise
  1. Durlockozk's Avatar
    The peak of subscriptions was at the end of Wrath of the Lich King at just over 12M. This was coming off hard modes becoming heroic modes, and raid difficulty settings becoming dynamic. Subscribers have slowly declined since the start of Cataclysm, and despite being perceived by most as a relatively good expansion as far as content (especially in comparison to Cataclysm) Mist of Pandaria hasn't had the appeal to maintain part of that dropoff, or get some subscribers to come back to the game. The only constant factors still left over from Cataclysm that would seem to still annoy some of the long term players is the continuation of the divisive nature of 10 and 25 man raiding.

    I am not a fly by night player myself. I don't exactly take breaks from the game for extended periods of time, and my subscription has been active since approx 6 months after release of the original game. Even I am having a hard time continuing to swallow this crap, and I understand how challenging it is to continue to make the game continue to appeal to groups of players that become more and more diverse.
  1. jbombard's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nimitzles View Post
    This is true.

    You can read my post history, always said with making 10s = 25s raiding subs would drop because 25 man raiding guilds were the foundations of realm communities where 10man guilds add nothing and more tight knit groups. Yes 10 man raiding was good for certain players that wanted it but was bad for the game.
    Amusing. One could of course argue that 40 man raiding guilds were the foundations of realm communities, and that 25 man raiding while good for certain players was bad for the game. And actually it would be a better argument as the community was at it's best in vanilla, where 40s where the norm.

    Or we could both wake up and realize the raid size has little to do with anything. The increased ability to find information on the internet, and the variety in game tools, and the sheer size of the player base are what have made relationships more disposable. The reason why the community is in decline is because you no longer need a community to accomplish anything in the game.
  1. mosely's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Immitis View Post
    golden lotus, shieldwall, and 5.2 all say otherwise
    No, they don't.
  1. jbombard's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by mosely View Post
    No, they don't.
    Well not so much the others but I actually liked the shieldwall quest line. I also liked that you level the rep fairly quickly only doing a few quests each day.
  1. Immitis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by mosely View Post
    No, they don't.
    yes they do. some of the best quest writing this games ever seen.
  1. McTurbo's Avatar
    wow's problem is we keep getting the same thing.
    2 years to make
    10-30 days of leveling content
    1-2 months of end game content.
    no new content except every 6 months on content patches.

    so..2 years to design and make the "zone's" an "events" of each expansion.. we level through it in 10 days or so.. 30 for the slow folk... by month 2 your raiding crew is at it.. and 2 months later you have a large portion of your "better than average" guilds done with normals working on heroics. (repeating content). we then wait 6+ months for new content. (what did 5.1 add.. more dailies.. after a large percentage of players were pissed about so many dailies.. but. we get more.).

    what do we have to look forward to? more of the same. expansion after expansion blizzard puts the largest effort into leveling content and not the content we spend the majority of our time in which is endgame content, pvp, pve, raiding, crafting.. if we had the effort placed here instead of on leveling content we would be happier players.. lets be honest.. did you enjoy leveling 85-90? i did at first.. but then by 88 it became a grind.. the amount of quest needed to level felt just a bit boring (and i like leveling normally)

    2 - 3 hours of leveling content per level is all that is required to tell your story.. better designed events to tell your story instead of more go kill x collect y quests.. come on.. we killed Illidan, Arthas, and Deathwing.. do you really think players enjoy killing another recolored troll for un-named npc we will never see again? unless blizzard breaks its own mold players will continue to leave out of sheer boredom.
  1. Yondame's Avatar
    Love the interesting note about D3, you think that had anything to do with WoW? D3 was the biggest flop of a release blizzard has ever had and included numerous complaints to the B.B.B. as well as numerous lawsuits. A entire country was server blacklisted for nearly a month because a dupe which crashed the economy, and U.S side was able to dup for nearly 2 months.

    WoW going down to 9.6 million subs, d3 had about as much to do with that.. as me bench pressing a panda has to do with WoW's success and/or fail.

    Their lack of empathy for most of the player base, and their trying to cater to small children crying nerf, or buff... thats whats cost them sub's. I remember a time when WoW well surpassed 12 million and was estimated close to 14 million. Anyone else remember those days? I remember days when people were eager to log on, not "jesus I gotta log on because I have to do this, this and this or fall behind in rep and won't be able to do this, this or this. When did games become jobs? Thought games were just games.

    Sincerely, 7 year veteran of WoW who turns off his sub after a month or two of WoW until next patch since WOLK.
  1. Ghaleon's Avatar
    I find it funny those who say they quit cause of the dailies, that they are in no way forced to do don't like them don't do them simple as that.
  1. Aquamonkey's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Immitis View Post
    yes they do. some of the best quest writing this games ever seen.
    The actual daily quests don't. They're just filler quests to kill x number of people or get y number of body parts. The quests unlocked at reputation benchmarks do, but those aren't daily quests.
  1. Remilia's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Csnyder View Post
    so......9,600,000 is still pretty good if you compare to other games.
    how many subscribers does your game have?
    You don't compare how a game is doing by comparing it to another game.
    You always compare to itself. The history of the game shows it's progress.
  1. Yondame's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by jbombard View Post
    Amusing. One could of course argue that 40 man raiding guilds were the foundations of realm communities, and that 25 man raiding while good for certain players was bad for the game. And actually it would be a better argument as the community was at it's best in vanilla, where 40s where the norm.

    Or we could both wake up and realize the raid size has little to do with anything. The increased ability to find information on the internet, and the variety in game tools, and the sheer size of the player base are what have made relationships more disposable. The reason why the community is in decline is because you no longer need a community to accomplish anything in the game.
    I agree and then disagree. Ironically WoW was at its highest when 40 man raids existed. Were they tuned correctly? No, but.. it made more of a socially acceptable game, IE MMORPG. WoW has literally became so unlike what a MMORPG stands for.. you can now do most things except raid, by yourself. I don't wish to play a game where I do 98% solo and even 1-2% social. If I want single player I have a long list of games I can play, or even get more out of lately then WoW gives socially.
  1. Immitis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aquamonkey View Post
    The actual daily quests don't. They're just filler quests to kill x number of people or get y number of body parts. The quests unlocked at reputation benchmarks do, but those aren't daily quests.
    there all part of the same hub. if it werent for the daily quests and you just showed up once after x amount of time it wouldnt have the same feel to it.

    daily quests allow time to move forward in events without hopping.

    i count the "non" daily quests as part of the entire experience that the dailies center around
  1. Yondame's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Garradorr View Post
    I find it funny those who say they quit cause of the dailies, that they are in no way forced to do don't like them don't do them simple as that.
    I find it funny when the blind try and lead the blind or even the sheep for that matter. While I have alts as a testament to "yes you don't HAVE to do dailies". I know those characters who did dailies 1. got perks for it that don't affect the account just the single character as a whole 2. better geared and progressed then the non-dailies.

    Edit - Irony also has it come 5.2 even one of the new hubs, you can only access if you've fully unlocked your farm and that requires dailies.. alas.. irony.. coincidence.. or the reason why blizzard is making even more rep gaining abilities in the 5.2 patch because they themselves had to bow down to a post awhile back proving you had to do dailies in the long run with blizzard's current course of MOP
  1. Celista's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Immitis View Post
    yes they do. some of the best quest writing this games ever seen.
    Lmao...no. Seriously laughed out loud at this.

    Some dailies are better than others, but a vehicle for compelling storywriting they are not. Progressive dailies are a slight improvement, but the same story could be told over a long non-repeatable questline. There is nothing about the "daily" and "repeatable" element of dailies that makes dailies a better vehicle for storytelling over regular quests.
  1. Wolfshadowz's Avatar
    well pack it up folks it is time for F2P and or to find the next mmo cause this ship is sinking fast!
    Also .....
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjQZNAfxaTw

  1. bigjohnburger's Avatar
    HAHAHA I freaking called it. Everyone else attacked me for it and what do you know, is it a curse to be always right? My next fortelling: Ghost Crawler fired. Such a crap expansion, how can they think by pumping out this cheap crap content they will hold onto their players?
  1. Immitis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Yondame View Post
    I find it funny when the blind try and lead the blind or even the sheep for that matter. While I have alts as a testament to "yes you don't HAVE to do dailies". I know those characters who did dailies 1. got perks for it that don't affect the account just the single character as a whole 2. better geared and progressed then the non-dailies.
    i ask why do you expect all of your alts to be that geared up? why is it so important that you progress that far with more than one or two characters? you in no way need valor gear in order to do raids, lfr, or dungeons. it only takes about 7 daily quests a day to get the 90 you need a week for the bonus roll that only gives a slight chance at more loot.
  1. mmoc1571eb5575's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aquamonkey View Post
    The actual daily quests don't. They're just filler quests to kill x number of people or get y number of body parts. The quests unlocked at reputation benchmarks do, but those aren't daily quests.
    There are sections of books that don't directly impact the stories plot, but they're still part of telling the story - because otherwise the "book" would be a series of bullet points.

    The "filler" daily quests are still an important part of the story, and anyone who argues the 5.1 daily / quest line didn't tell a good story is just being silly - probably the best piece of questing they've added to the game since classic, I actually like Lor'themar now, I know nothing of his character before it - now I'd wouldn't object even if he became warchief.

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