WoW Down to 8.3 Million Subscribers
Activision Blizzard's press release states that World of Warcraft is down to 8.3 million subscribers. This is a loss of 1.3 million, down from 9.6 million last quarter. Most of the loss came from the East once again.

  • Blizzard expects to have less subscribers at the end of the year than they do today.
  • Most of the decline in subscribers came from China.
  • There has been less engagement by casual players.
  • Blizzard is going to work on improving the experience for returning players.
  • Blizzard All Stars and Titan will not be released in 2013 according to the slide below.
  • Heart of the Swarm was the #1 PC game of the quarter, selling 1.1 million copies in two days.
  • There has been increased competition with F2P games in Asia.
  • Players consume content faster and subscribe and unsubscribe as new content is added.

This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW Down to 8.3 Million Subscribers started by chaud View original post
Comments 904 Comments
  1. Bloodfire's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by epec View Post

    Sorry, but's all over for World of Warcraft. In 6 month's time one of the greatest MMORPGs to ever existed will be no more. Who killed it? The whining complaining casual fanbase that took a legendary game built on Warcraft 3 and proceeded to completely rape it over for the sake of their own egos. You just had to have your free epics, didn't you? You just had to make the game easier to 'see all the content,' didn't you? You had to go to forums to complain every single time you died to smallest inconvenience, didn't you? You and your kind disgusts me. The end is coming and you can't stop it.

    R.I.P. World of Warcraft. I'm sorry I couldn't save you from the casual vermin eating your rotten corpse.
    Just tell me how many times you've posted about Death to WoW. Simply.
    And how many times people kept whabbering about it in past 8 years.
  1. mmocda5509483c's Avatar
    Well i rolled over 20x lvl 85s and the game is just not making it fun for me anymore. Still 8.5 is good number!
  1. mmoc695f354894's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    And that's weird, how come it suddenly became unappealing to roll a new 90? When did we start loathing character progression like reputation? Thanks LK/Cata/Obama!
    New reputation factions? Sure. That is fun. Being told "So you no longer like X, well, you need to start over with your work towards "The Beloved" if you want to play Y. And don't even think about getting credit for your Shen'dralar or Zandalari reputation! That is locked to X. Enjoy!" isn't fun.

    We can talk about character progression all we want. Character progression (to me) is the gear adorning my Gnome's shoulders and wrapped around her waist. It is learning the correct rotations and responses. I am furthering my character with this. Gaining reputations? That is something that the player has done; the player has slogged through Wintersaber Trainers over three months, killed more than 40,000 pirates and solved much of Booty Bay's crime problems (before reintroducing them in a mass slaughter of guards) and it would be lovely if, like the raid meta-achievements, or pets, or mounts, it was realized as such.
  1. Cybran's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    Yeah, screw the majority. The game should've stopped development in BC. Only people able to reach Sunwell should be allowed to enjoy the game.
    Fuck you.
    The game was successful when it didn't cater to casuals.
  1. Sarevokcz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Binki View Post
    I disagree with that. No flying mounts and no rep tabards are improvement, not step backwards.

    With flying mounts sense of danger is gone, resulting in most boring content ever and people would quit faster than they are quitting now.
    I tell you what is boring. being dismounted every 100 yards by random mobs you dont wanna fight. Accidentaly missteping and falling down 5 yards, but having to take another 40 seconds to run around huge cliff just to get back. Constantly bumping into random textures. Thats the stuff that is boring and is byproduct of no flyers. Sense of danger? hah, name me 5 servers, where H/A ratio is actually somewhat balanced? Most realms have this "sense of danger" only for the minority, in our case Alliance for example. I am horde and I was attacked on the Isle ONCE and that was because I went afk during doing pvp dailys in Aliance base
    While reputation via dailies is a horrible solution, tabards is even worse solution because it makes reputations meaningless. There should be way to get reputation other than dailies, but not with tabards. Selecting rep for 1 dungeon run per day works great. It wouldn't be an issue at all if valor gear wasn't tied to reputations, which I think it the biggest mistake with new rep grinds.
    Tabards themselves werent the problem, I suggested in beta they limit the amount of rep you can get via tabard per day. Oh look, they did exactly that, giving us limited rep per day via dungeons. Except back in the day, it was being called Championing the faction by wearing tabard, now its called Championing the faction via UI click.

    But really, reps are so pathetically slow I would rather farm Zandalaris, get hefty profit from bags, get mounts and have enough marks to bring several alts to exalted in a couple of seconds for the imporant factions (lotus and klaxxi, free 489s) rather than slowly grind dailys or do dungeon every day next couple of weeks
  1. MasterHamster's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cybran View Post
    The game was successful when it didn't cater to casuals.
    And the only reason casuals enjoyed this was because it was new, Warcraft and pretty much uncontested on the market.

    The looks on people's faces if they just flat out reverted to the "successful" recipe of BC would be hilarious.

    Doesn't matter though, the game is too old to stay at 10+ million. It's simple logic.
    Too bad that logic goes unnoticed by "haters" because we haven't been having another 6 years of "CASUALS SHOULD ONLY GET RARE ITEMS"

    And if that was the case, the game would actually be dead by now.
  1. Rapti's Avatar
    With TOT being released in Q1 - didnt expect such a huge drop in subs. Well the game is aging and people are losing interest in it on their own as well.
    Can be many different reasons. Lets say 800k was in East and 500k was in West, still majority is East :P.

    I think in general people are spreading over different MMOs and games in general. Besides its finally warm and summer on its way - can only expect numbers to continue to drop.

    @MasterHamster: They kinda tried it at start of Cata and what happened? Very fast super nerfs all over the place.
  1. Bjarne's Avatar
    I hope them losing subscribers is going to make them work harder on improvements to the game
  1. mmocf77227e8ed's Avatar
    What I hate most about these discussions is that everyone thinks their personal problem with the game is the reason the subscribers are down.

    I can tell you it very likely is not.
  1. MasterHamster's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Megara View Post
    What I hate most about these discussions is that everyone thinks their personal problem with the game is the reason the subscribers are down.

    I can tell you it very likely is not.
    Quoting myself from another thread:

    Doesn't take a genius to predict sub changes for a game that's 8 years old.

    Too bad an inevitable stage in any popular products popularity is used as a way of strengthening negative opinion that can be as diverse as the playerbase.
    You see it in every damn thread as subs have gone down. "It was due to x! -No it was due to y! -Guys, it was obviously z. -You're all wrong, it's because of Hello Kitty."

    Is Apple as a company failing because the iPhone isn't the behemoth it once was? When Samsung at some point will stop increasing in the global market, are the Galaxy smartphones dying?

    So sick and tired of this mentality that WoW subs has to go up by half a million every quarter, or else it's obviously doing something wrong. The biggest factor in WoWs declining subs is its age. That's it. Cliché. Hard to prove. Yet that's simply it. How many new players have you met recently? How large can the potential "new player" base be after this long? Up until Cataclysm, the game was still new enough (not to mention unchallenged by other MMOs) to attract way more new players than players quitting. Eventually those will equalize, then players quitting the game will be higher than the new players coming in.

    And I'm certain there are people reading this post thinking things like "PvP is an unbalanced mess, that's why!" or "I don't like ToT/the latest raid, obviously no one else does." or even "I STILL HAVE TO DO DAILIES/MONOTONOUS TASKS NOW AND THEN?!"
  1. Cybran's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    And the only reason casuals enjoyed this was because it was new, Warcraft and pretty much uncontested on the market.

    The looks on people's faces if they just flat out reverted to the "successful" recipe of BC would be hilarious.

    Doesn't matter though, the game is too old to stay at 10+ million. It's simple logic.
    Too bad that logic goes unnoticed by "haters" because we haven't been having another 6 years of "CASUALS SHOULD ONLY GET RARE ITEMS"

    And if that was the case, the game would actually be dead by now.
    They have been focusing on casuals ever since they launched the super easy Wrath dungeons and the super easy Naxx. The game has been in decline since.

    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    Quoting myself from another thread:
    Call of Duty breaks records with every new release, because they know their demographic.
  1. Hubbl3's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    Quoting myself from another thread:
    You are wrong, the MMO market has infinite growing potential. Therefore every loss in subs is because WoW is failing hard, not because it is old.
  1. Rapti's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cybran View Post
    They have been focusing on casuals ever since they launched the super easy Wrath dungeons and the super easy Naxx. The game has been in decline since.



    Call of Duty breaks records with every new release, because they know their demographic.
    Yes, COD players = CASUALS and terrible players who love fact that EVERYONE CAN GET A KILL.
  1. MasterHamster's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cybran View Post
    They have been focusing on casuals ever since they launched the super easy Wrath dungeons and the super easy Naxx. The game has been in decline since.
    Uh no, the decline in subs started at the very end of LK
    But perhaps that wasn't your point either.

    Call of Duty breaks records with every new release, because they know their demographic.
    Yeah, same exact game over and over.
    When the sales stop breaking records, what will be the reason then I wonder?

    You are wrong, the MMO market has infinite growing potential. Therefore every loss in subs is because WoW is failing hard, not because it is old.
    Not sure if the at the end meant you were sarcastic, but I hope so. EDIT: yes you were, thankfully

    So for the rest:
    How many subs have the game had in total by now? 35-45 million?
    There's simply no one to replace players anymore. Who hasn't tried out WoW yet at this point, if they had any interest?

    Sigh, it's like trying to run a school but there's no children being born. Eventually everyone will graduate.
  1. Afrospinach's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Farora View Post
    Anyway I said it in the other thread too. The reason for the steady decline is:

    The death of realm communities. Those communities kept people playing, not dailies or LFR.
    They should probably do a satisfaction survey on LFR or something. It is very rewarding for a faceroll, of course there is going to be a deluge of people doing it even if it is not that great. I think overall LFR is pretty toxic. To myself at least, raiding is fundamentally a process that ultimately leads to a clear, not one by which you accidentally a raid. This process essentially does not exist in LFR so you don't need to rely on people and work with them etc.

    I does not really surprise me that WoW has gone the way it has though, rather that pursue any specific excellence the game is sprawling to reach everyone - and a new generation of players. I do wonder what WoW will be like if it gets to everquests level of having a small but steady player base, my guess is though the devs will jump the shark and then some before allowing that to happen, they have already shown they will do a 180 on the core of the game.
  1. Redblade's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    Tell me how farming/attuning for weeks to kill 1-mechanic bosses in Classic/BC made the game more appealing to more people then?
    Because there was an overall goal to work towards, not one that could be reached in a week or two. Another example is LFD, while convenient it removed the content that was "find a group" might not have been the best or most interesting content but in a roundabout way it was content. What Blizzard has done is add convenience after convenience and as such diminished the longevity of the content they had.

    So it's not all about everything being appealing or as Blizzard them selfs would say "fun", not all content can be, the goal needs to be though and currently I don't see it being that appealing, surely not enough to be worth the journey.
  1. rogas's Avatar
    1. introduction of LFR - made practically everybody a casual ...
    2. Blizz greedy refusal to do something about low populated servers ... i can imagine pp rather quit that paying a fortune on server transfers...

    3. Once you've geared up a main, levelled up some alts, maxed you professions, explored the world, did arena's, did bg's, joined a decent raiding guild, raided serveral raid instances, .... what else is there left to do??? At some point you have done it all, and it's time to move on...
  1. Cybran's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    Yeah, same exact game over and over.
    When the sales stop breaking records, what will be the reason then I wonder?
    Your point was "Old games that don't change will stagnate and start to decay". This hasn't happened with Call of Duty which hasn't changed significantly over the last 7 years. This means your point is wrong.
  1. Redblade's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by rogas View Post
    3. Once you've geared up a main, levelled up some alts, maxed you professions, explored the world, did arena's, did bg's, joined a decent raiding guild, raided serveral raid instances, .... what else is there left to do??? At some point you have done it all, and it's time to move on...
    Back in the day you could raid and then raid some more and so on, the problem now days is that Blizzard uses the "difficulties" as content, herding players through it at set intervals. Makes it kinda pointless to raid and gear up to be able to tackle the next raid when all you really have to do is unsubscribe for a couple of months and then come back and clear it all in a few days after it's been nerfed to shit. The sense of pride and accomplishment that came from raiding and downing bosses got watered down with nerfs, LFR, devaluing of 25man and so on.
  1. lolipopp's Avatar
    finally DEAD :O !

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