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. glycerethe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sky High Shark View Post
    way to take it to one end or the other. there needs to be a middle ground. gear should not fall from the sky nor should it take months to get ONE piece of gear. but since you seem to know what the answer is, tell it.
    You started posting on the forums non-stop since 6pm til 10pm, that's 4 hours of rage, holy sh1t.
  1. lyxx's Avatar
    Blizzard expects to have less subscribers at the end of the year than they do today.

    Lets make some prediction - i expect 6-7 mln
  1. Osmeric's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ADman319 View Post
    No i am looking at the actual revenue report
    Subscription, licensing and other revenues 2013=334mil 2012=298mil
    And those are GAAP numbers (and I believe include some non-WoW stuff).

    The more appropriate numbers are under "Online Subscriptions" on page 5 of the press release. Notice the 47M in net deferred revenue causing a large difference between the GAAP and non-GAAP numbers.
  1. Luxeley's Avatar
    Huge drop! The bottom line is, Blizzard needs to provide "greater" quality if they want to maintain their pay for play business model. They got away with not fixing Outland and Northrend, not adding new dungeons and raids with patches (doesn't need to be part of a progressive, just part of a greater choice), not doing new character models, not fixing PVP (increasing baseline resilience will make it 5xs worse!) and not fixing server imbalance and dead servers. They know what to do about everything, they simply choose not to because it costs T & M (time and money). Hopefully, Blizzard realizes they must provide more for their subs and increase the overall value of what they put out because apparantly people are choosing the free to play model over Blizzard. This is a wake up call, let's see how blizzard responds: do we see a major overhual of the game or do we get a new cool mount to buy and another 1,000,000 retarded dailies to do?
  1. Darth Primus's Avatar
    Make it free 2 play like other mmog already ?!?!?!?
  1. Testaxc's Avatar
    If you compare to peak players not too far in the past we're now at 1 in 3 people no longer playing WoW from that era.
  1. Snakebyte's Avatar
    A direct result of them screwing us multiboxers. I knew they would lose a ton of subs. Lost 7 from me.
  1. mmoc59b5827c7e's Avatar
    RE: Hearthstone Gameplay

    They should probably play WoW more often and get in touch with their community instead of defending the failure they call "design philosophy".
  1. mikencarly's Avatar
    -- As of March 31, 2013, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG, with 8.3 million subscribers.(2)

    For the quarter ended March 31, 2013, Activision Blizzard's GAAP net revenues were $1.32 billion, as compared with $1.17 billion for the first quarter of 2012 they are no were near dying lol.
  1. mmocd44b83cae8's Avatar
    Hearthstone is starting and i am ready! Looking forward for it to be released
    Liking the TCG already, this would make it all a bit easier and leave more space in my drawes (which are getting full of cards :P)
  1. mmoc59b5827c7e's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by mikencarly View Post
    -- As of March 31, 2013, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG, with 8.3 million subscribers.(2)

    For the quarter ended March 31, 2013, Activision Blizzard's GAAP net revenues were $1.32 billion, as compared with $1.17 billion for the first quarter of 2012 they are no were near dying lol.
    Irrelavant, since Activision Blizzard contains more games than just World of Warcraft. They didnt lose 1,3 million subscriptions because they are so awesome.
  1. Metacrias's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ADman319 View Post
    1. Asia is where most of these subscriptions have been lost. They burn threw content at double the rate due to 2 weekly resets. And the MMO market in Asia is HUGE , they have 5-10 mmos that are exactly like World of Warcraft but F2P or a lot cheaper and easier to get a hold of.

    2. If you look at there quarterly earnings for WoW they actually went up since Q1 of 2012 so there may be a uptick in US subscriptions and a down tick in Asian.
    I rarely comment on articles here but I felt compelled to do so to this article, but the very first comment I saw (the one quoted!) said pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Basically, China is the source of most lost subscriptions and for a variety of reasons, primarily those mentioned by ADman but also things like the rapid development process, changing legal systems regarding internet usage, new policies on trade resulting partly from the very, very recent transition in power from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping (if you don't know the name, learn it - he's the second most powerful person on Earth and will be for the next 10 years...), etc. all have worked to make the Chinese market for most things, including WoW, highly volatile. Plus, the way they pay for the game also matters - they can lock up a subscription and start it back up much more easily than we can in the West.
  1. Floross's Avatar
    That last hearthstone game the devs shoulda lost.
  1. Onzay's Avatar
    Why do they say "Most of the decline in subscribers came from China." They make it seem like their Chinese fans don't even matter.
  1. Siddown's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onzay View Post
    Why do they say "Most of the decline in subscribers came from China." They make it seem like their Chinese fans don't even matter.
    That, or it is simply stating a fact.
  1. Vulcanasm's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cybran View Post
    The game was successful when it didn't cater to casuals.
    It's funny how insistently you double down on demonstrably wrong explanations. This game peaked in subscriptions during WOTLK -- the most "casual"-friendly expansion, when 25% of guilds killed normal-mode Lich King. It saw the most rapid expansion during Burning Crusade -- when the game was retooled every patch to be successively friendlier to "casual" gamers.

    Like I said, "casual" is a term bandied about by basement-dwelling neckbeards, and it always means the same thing: "anyone who plays less than *me*".

    Any time you mention "casual" like it's a dirty word, you lose all credibility.
  1. morfraen's Avatar
    WoW is getting old. Subs will keep spiking with each new xpac and falling after no matter how much blizzard tried to redesign things. 8.3m is still larger than anything else out there.
  1. Taurrus's Avatar
    What do you guys think it would work to increase that subscribing amount, lowering the monthly fee to $10?
  1. thorkin69's Avatar
    then may I ask Just how stupid are you for playing with crap??? you said it , not me. does your Mom know you are playing with" crap "? or is it that you don't play anymore but have no other life than to come on a WoW based subject forum and throw " Crap " opinions that those of us that do still like the game?
  1. mmocf0a8756358's Avatar
    Blizzard is going to work on improving the experience for returning players.

    how about improving the experience for EXISTING players its why you lost subs in the first place

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