WoW Down to 8.3 Million Subscribers

As a player who has been playing since 4 months after release and hasn't liked where the game has been going I'd like to just make some points and see if any one agrees.

1) Blizz has been fairly clear that they felt the game needed to be a bit more casual, so those with less time or dedication can get to see content. I think this was a massive mistake not because casuals are bad or being hardcore makes you cool, but because casual players are less likely to stay when things slow down or they don't like a patch. Hardcore and medium core players were dedicated to the game and stuck around for years. I would think there are very few casual players who have been around for 6+ years.

2) Personaly I felt that makeing content easier made it less fun. I remember serouis end game content being very hard and something not every one got to see but you strived for it. It made it seem more mysterious and legendary. LFR did a hurt alot here, I strongly felt that I need to do LFR's to help progress guilds I was in and contribute to the team but it cheapend the experince for me very much. I remember the first time I killed Grull and I saw him fall and it was epic and I had that experince during every expansion until LFR.

3) Dead servers, for me this is the biggest deal. I recently reactived my account for a month to see some of 5.2 and look around a bit and in the middle of the day on a weekend there was less then 15 people on alliance in any major city. I felt alone and disconnected the feeling that the game was alive was gone. Iron Forge use to feel like it was a real city people selling lots of goods, doing things haveing fun. Citys and servers in general feel like train stations now people only talk to other people they all ready know every one is fairly quite and just going about there business. It was like WOW was full of npc's with better gear.

I know there are typo's and I appologize I can not get to a computer for awhile and I'm typeing on my phone. People will most likely troll me and be rude but I really liked WOW allot and this is a place for other people who enjoy the game and wanted to express my feelings.

Originally Posted by illfindu0742

1) Blizz has been fairly clear that they felt the game needed to be a bit more casual, so those with less time or dedication can get to see content. I think this was a massive mistake not because casuals are bad or being hardcore makes you cool, but because casual players are less likely to stay when things slow down or they don't like a patch. Hardcore and medium core players were dedicated to the game and stuck around for years. I would think there are very few casual players who have been around for 6+ years.

I am dubious this is really true, and also dubious that every casual has always been so.

But suppose casuals are more likely to quit. That means that the ex-player population has an even higher proportion of casuals than the current player population. So when Blizzard talks about improving the experience for returned players, they're talking about improving it for casuals.

Originally Posted by ringpriest

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That would involve letting people know that a good chunk of their subscriptions are from the much less profitable Asian market.

I do exactly that.

Originally Posted by Bogrim

The valor point cap is designed around hardcore players to wall how fast they can progress in the game so they don't burn through content too quickly, but the majority of Blizzard's players are casual. WoW has gotten this terrible snitch with daily quests and weekly resets that makes progress feel like a job---instead of just logging into a world and making progress as you desire (think Skyrim).

Cap is not for hardcore raiders. Ask any guild that is on Heroics and they would have ignored valor all together, cause their gear would most likely be superior to anything you can buy with valor.

Caps and dailies are for casuals, and the reason is to pace the casual players. Otherwise you'd burn through the content and cancel your subscription until the next content patch. Hardcore raiders already burn through the content quickly and cancel their subscriptions until the next content patch.

Think about it like this: Without a cap, you would just login whenever you felt like it, play however much you wanted and then log out again.

Nobody cares about valor caps. I rarely cap each week as it is, and don't need to buy anything with valor either. Farming valor is boring, and nobody likes to keep running 5 man dungeons or scenarios for valor. I'm also severely over geared for it as a Ret Paladin. I just become the tank, healer, and dps and blow through everything.

The only reason they're going to introduce gear upgrades again is to get people to keep doing those dungeons and scenarios. Otherwise new players are going to find nobody to play with.

What's the solution here? It's hard to say---

The solution is easy, cause my problems are different. The Alliance side of my realm was once high pop, and it's now low pop. Though the horde side is medium pop, so the realm is considered overall medium. There are essentially only 3 guilds on my realms that are "fairly" progressed in Throne of Thunder. Two out of three are 10 man guilds. RBGs don't exist. You can forget about finding people to do challenge modes.

But there are realms that are worse then that. Some only have 1 guild that raids. The easy solution is to merge realms, but Blizzard won't do it. Mainly because they charge people to change their names, and merging realms means there's going to be a lot of conflicts of people who have paid for names that they need to change.

Better solution is to just give players free realm transfers, with a 1 month cool down per character. Let the players choose where to go, and don't charge them money for it. Cause players are content too, and the lack of players on realms means you're not providing enough content for them.

Should be the first thing to do for WoW.

Farming 90 coins to get 3 coins, and then for your alts...became such a grind, like a second job...now they cut it down to 50, but should have been from the start... that would have given us more time to do other stuff in the game..

Originally Posted by Dukenukemx

Caps and dailies are for casuals, and the reason is to pace the casual players. Otherwise you'd burn through the content and cancel your subscription until the next content patch.

Sorry, but you are contradicting yourself. The definition of a casual player is a player that plays at limited time spans, where a hardcore player is a player that dedicates all his time to the game. It's not logical to say that casuals burn through content faster without a cap, because you'd be suggesting that in removing the cap you would encourage casual players to play more (the contradiction).

Originally Posted by Dukenukemx

Hardcore raiders already burn through the content quickly and cancel their subscriptions until the next content patch.

First of all, let's establish the difference in our posts. I said "players," you said "raiders." If you read further down the front page, there's a recent post highlighting how much more content hard raiders go through in today's competition. They don't cancel their subscription until the next patch, they gear up alts so they can gear up their mains faster and gain more of an advantage in racing for the world/server first kills.

Furthermore, you based this statement on nothing factual. Players that are hardcore are naturally dedicated to the game because that is the definition of a hardcore player. It's the casual players who don't share the same dedication to the game, which are much more likely to stop playing in sessions.

When you look at the big picture, not just the few guilds you hear about quitting every once in a while, you realize those guilds can't even possible account for the huge number of subscription loses. I'm willing to wager a guess and say 95% subscription losses are casual, 5% are hardcore---not just because hardcore players have stronger community ties, but because the ratio between casual and hardcore players have always been so obscenely different.

Originally Posted by Dukenukemx

Nobody cares about valor caps. I rarely cap each week as it is, and don't need to buy anything with valor either. Farming valor is boring, and nobody likes to keep running 5 man dungeons or scenarios for valor. I'm also severely over geared for it as a Ret Paladin. I just become the tank, healer, and dps and blow through everything.

The point wasn't about your personal feelings for the Valor Cap (and in this regard---speak for yourself, you don't represent any other people with your opinion, sorry) but that Blizzard's "gated" design philosophy is becoming very outdated and the cap is the most classic example of how Blizzard sets their players up to renew their subscription not by how the player him/herself would like to progress, but for how long they can slow down the player's progress to keep them paying.

As for the rest of your post, it didn't really relate to anything I said.

When Blizz teamed up with Activision they got very greedy.

The game experience for people in the minority on unbalanced servers is terrible, but they dont give a crap. Instead they demand ridiculous transfer fees and ridiculous I mean for people who have had several charcters or face the grind all over again.

I lol'd when I saw casual players were less interested. That is not to say im hardcore, far from it, but LFR as convenient as it is has completely undermined the guild system so everyone wants and gets easy street. You dont get that strong core in raiding guilds and sense of adventure in seeing bosses for the first time.

Also very bored of the nerfs.

The reason we play at the moment is because we are social and its something to do in a group of friends. When they talk about delight and amazing customers, then I know the big wigs are more interested in selling new pets and trading cards than looking after the userbase who have stuck with them all these years.

I think the reason why Blizz is losing subs is because of the fact that raids nowdays are maybe to hard. Okay cool, make heroic raids hard, add special heroic only bosses, I'm totally fine with that. But when LFR was added blizz did making normal raids harder so that you no longer can pug them. I remember during Wotlk launch, I was quite young, I ran naxx casually with randoms and later on with my very casual guild. It was great. But nowdays you always need to use Team speak / Mumble etc and for some reason many of the bosses are really hard for no reason at all. Horridon for example, my guild was stuck on that boss for very long time and now we're stuck on the third. They made every boss fight so complex with always a tank swap / "stand in the fire" / interrupts / etc. Even though I play on a very big server it can still be hard finding a pug because everyone wants you to have X item lvl or an achivemnt.

There was dailys in bc and wotlk aswell but the difference was that you was not forced to do them in the same way. I'm exalted with every mop faction and do you know why? Because I had to farm for those damn valor points. I think the whole valor cap system kinda ruined it for me, because they force me to get valor capped every week.

I actually think mop's story is great and the legendary Q is good (except the 6000 valor Q), a huge improvement from cataclysm. Wrathion is one of the better characters blizzard has made in recent years and the mogu are badass.

This is my personal thoughts on wow nowdays... By the way, for some reason there are only around 30 mogu npc in the whole Throne of Thunder raid, kinda lame if you ask me...

Originally Posted by Farora

I had the time to play and I felt as though I wanted to, however faced with so much stuff which feels mandatory (despite Blizzard's protests) I simply felt overwhelmed and my desire to play WoW rapidly waned. To some this sort of feeling may be inexplicable, but having too much stuff to do, not enough time to do it, and making so much of it feel needed (Oh, you must do dailies to get valor and lesser charms) really kills my mood to play.

This right here sums up my thoughts and how I feel too. It's a mood killer.

Originally Posted by Bogrim

Sorry, but you are contradicting yourself. The definition of a casual player is a player that plays at limited time spans, where a hardcore player is a player that dedicates all his time to the game. It's not logical to say that casuals burn through content faster without a cap, because you'd be suggesting that in removing the cap you would encourage casual players to play more (the contradiction).

Sorry, you're contradicting yourself. If you played for a limited time then the problem is reaching the valor cap, not wanting a larger cap. What you want is a larger cap, which means you wanna be able to sit down for a long period of time and farm up gear asap. I'm sure you'd take a super long break afterwards.

First of all, let's establish the difference in our posts. I said "players," you said "raiders." If you read further down the front page, there's a recent post highlighting how much more content hard raiders go through in today's competition. They don't cancel their subscription until the next patch, they gear up alts so they can gear up their mains faster and gain more of an advantage in racing for the world/server first kills.

Some do yes, and some don't. Gearing up alts isn't for world first, unless you need backup healers, tanks, or dps. If you do, then you aren't a hardcore raiding guild. You do it cause you have nothing else now that you've beaten the current content.

Furthermore, you based this statement on nothing factual. Players that are hardcore are naturally dedicated to the game because that is the definition of a hardcore player. It's the casual players who don't share the same dedication to the game, which are much more likely to stop playing in sessions.

Both groups can stop playing the game. People in between tend to stick around the longest.

When you look at the big picture, not just the few guilds you hear about quitting every once in a while, you realize those guilds can't even possible account for the huge number of subscription loses. I'm willing to wager a guess and say 95% subscription losses are casual, 5% are hardcore---not just because hardcore players have stronger community ties, but because the ratio between casual and hardcore players have always been so obscenely different.

Casuals will always quit the most, cause they would never be dedicated to a game like this. Hence why the Wii was very success at first, but suddenly dropped like a rock. Casuals are not the kind of people who stick around for long, and are unlikely to come back. The hardcores will almost always leave between content, and there's nothing Blizzard can do except make Heroic mode raids harder.

The middle of the road people are now making up the majority of WoW players, and they're the ones who are quitting.

The point wasn't about your personal feelings for the Valor Cap (and in this regard---speak for yourself, you don't represent any other people with your opinion, sorry) but that Blizzard's "gated" design philosophy is becoming very outdated and the cap is the most classic example of how Blizzard sets their players up to renew their subscription not by how the player him/herself would like to progress, but for how long they can slow down the player's progress to keep them paying.

You say valor is an issue, and I say you're wrong and I'm right. Nobody cares about valor once it becomes useless, and it happens quickly. Right now, weekly LFR raids will get you gear. Valor itself will only supplement it. People are concerned with...

#1 Finding people to play with on your realm.
#2 Class spec balance.
#3 Game feeling irrelevantly challenging.

And you're worried about valor cap?

I'm sure it's been said tons of times already, but anyway -
I've been raiding since Classic AQ40 days. Recently, there's 3 things that've led me more towards quitting than any other

1) Dead servers + Paid character transfer. If there's anything that'll stop you from doing raids its being on a server with only 10 people online in major cities at a time. You'll never recruit and you'll never be able to PUG that last spot. And if you can't do this you're not making progress. If you're not making progress due to this, why pay a sub?
This isn't just invidual players that'll leave over this - it's more like people in their hundreds deserting a sinking ship. Bliz needs to fix this as first priority - I know several who've left WoW over this and won't be coming back as their mains are on a dead server.

2) Difficulty increase / badly balanced bosses. I can't be the only one to have noticed that even early bosses are now harder than heroic mode stuff used to be. 3 Drakes at Sarth was easier than Tortos normal for crying out loud. TBC raiding was the sweet spot, as was Uld normal, and ICC. The ONLY properly tuned bosses in current content are the first boss and the world boss! Now, i'm all for bosses gradually getting harder, but there's no fun Kara / ZA / Naxx style raid that you can have fun with guildies and gear up in anymore. This was one of the major failings of Cata too.

3) LFR / daily / VP grind. This is the other end of the difficulty scale. Boring and tedious, LFR simply takes too long, and feels mandatory (for the first few weeks anyway). Same with the daily quest grinds. Same with Valor. All of these give too high rewards in comparison with normal mode raids (especially normal ToES compared with TOT LFR!). Valor in particular should NOT give normal-mode quality loot.

Doesn't surprise me,so much unbalance,no fun..they will loose more,game wil end or free2play

lol people are funny china players dont even play with me at all what a joke if trolls think that matters.

Originally Posted by Psykotiq

Is anyone really surprised about this? A company can only treat customers poorly for so long before they decide not to be customers anymore. Yes they still have a huge sub base but it will continue to shrink and shrink until the game just goes away, at least the game as we know it. They are continuing to build a game for the developers and not for the gamers. People like Ghost Crawler are regularly dismissive of players and player concerns. The attitude seems to be one of "you don't know what you want, WE know what you want." Which is simply the wrong approach in this case. If they ever decide to get serious about fixing the subscription situation then maybe they should contact some of us and get real input from real people. Just my 2 cents.

Save your two cents and absorb information instead of making it up.

Blizzard developers are the most active and responsive of any game. Go look at other forums. Every day GC and other developers inundate twitter and the like with responses. I mean, Jesus, look at this website itself and how much response the community gets. And how are they making a game for developers? What are you even saying.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 01:10 AM ----------

Originally Posted by palladiamors

No actually, the existing players are still playing so they haven't lost those subs. They need to focus on what they did WRONG and work on fixing it, both to bring back former players and make existing ones happy. If Pandaria is any indication after Cata they won't do that though, they'll change things in an even more radical direction then wonder why they are bleeding like a stuck pig.

People bandying about "They still have 8.3 million players!" really need to stop acting like losing 1.3 million subs isn't a big deal. That is a MASSIVE number of people to stop playing a game in a four month time span, and outstrips all of Pandarias gains in a single quarter. That is terrible, and if that rate of loss continues for ANY length of time then the game'd be dead in under two years. It won't, mind you, you have a core of WoW players who'll play until the lights go out, but the losses from Cataclysm coupled with the losses and lack of overall gains from Pandaria are staggering. Yes, 8.3 still puts them comfortably on top of the pile, but that pile is currently sinking into a pool of lava.

It's really not though. Also, have you even played MOP? There is more content and more centering around exploration and bringing area community back then ever before. Umm, world bosses, dailies giving bonuses after exalted, rare spawns with toys, stone boss summoning, brawlers guild, pet battles, challenge modes (because getting a small group together is needed for gold), no flying mounts in new zones... The list goes on. And this is just some NEW stuff bringing realms together and encouraging environmental activity and grouping.

And 1.8 subs from the east is not that large of a gauge considering it is from a player base known to fluctuate, responsible for a majority of illegal sales, bot farmers,Multi boxers and NORMAL for this stage of the XP. When Blizzcon comes (which sold out in minutes) and new stuff is broadcasted people will come back and HISTORY will repeat itself. Not to mention the 2 top games for PC which are competing with WoW are OWNED by Blizzard also (SC2 new xp out and Diablo). Not to mention they stated they are developing new ideas to being players back and blue posts suggest it will be more rewarding for current players too unlike SoR. And remember how much SoR brought back? And that was during a time where no content was being released for 6 MONTHS.

Haters really need to just accept that the game will simply never die.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 01:26 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Lasica

I quit playing earlier this year but will weigh in with the reasons why I quit.

1) Daily quest grind. Totally unnecessary and seemed specifically designed to make players waste as much time as possible doing daily quests to unlock necessary enchants and gear etc. As someone with a limited amount of time to play (2 hours a day normally), I found almost all my time was spend doing daily quests and I didn't have time to do pet battles, level alts, etc. Rep grinds for mounts and vanity items I can understand, but slow gated rep grinds for enchants and so forth are wrong.

2) LFR. I used a raid a lot back in BC - Cata and I think LFR and killed off a lot of the interest I had for the raiding part of the game, and this wasn't helped by my guild being unable to get enough people together to run normal mode raids. I'm not not really interested in doing a dumbed down raid for sacks of gold every week. It was better when there was actual gear dropping and you could see it and roll on it, even if you didn't win it you actually had some excitement from killing a boss.

3) Putting fight club invitations on the black market AH so only those with enough gold could do that content. If they can't make content everyone can enjoy then it's wasted content.

4) General apathy about the setting and story. Pandas just didn't cut it for me.

1.) if you are playing the game casually, why do you care about min/max enchants? Those enchants we're made for players pushing normal and heroic mode content and need to squeeze maximum potential. Not for players in dungeon gear for LFR. The rest are all vanity.

2.) so you want gear just for showing up? Your guild couldn't get normal modes together so you quit because of LFR (which is a new implementation) didnt trick you into thinking more stuff dropped? You're lucky there IS a way for casuals to see raid content. And the bad RNG is being fixed next patch....

3.) Why do you feel there should be nothing rare in the game? If there is no reward system and things more difficult to get an others, then what is the purpose of an MMO? Also, if you couldn't afford it, why don't you go socialize and try to get an invite from someone with a higher brawler rank... You know, socialize in the game... It is a SOCIAL genre.

4.) you obviously have never picked up a book or actually learned the story. I have read several books and some are even NYT best sellers. The lore and story is amazing. Stop regurgitating something you heard a troll say in trade chat.

It looks to me like you quit because you wanted to hardly play and have everything the game offered. Be spoon fed content instead of earning it and quickly got discouraged with a short tolerance for progression and learning.

I don't think and MMO is for you.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 01:32 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Virtua

I actually think WoW is pretty fun right now. I mean, I don't play it, but I subbed for a month to see all of Throne of Thunder then unsubbed as soon as I was done with it.

The problem is the theme of the expansion. It just doesn't appeal to the MMO/Fantasy nerd demographic. I used to work retail and every time I tried to suggestive sell a MoP pre-order, I was dismissed with a statement along the lines of, "not interested in Pandaren/pandas/kungfu pandas." It really does make that much of a difference, IMO. If WoW wants to attract customers, the next expansion needs to appeal to the general RPG fanbase. Demons, monsters, terrifying villains, etc.. Better yet, make it appeal to Warcraft fans and utilize characters fans are familiar with.

This I actually agree with. When I first heard of MOP, I was meh about Pandas. But after picking it up, I think they are cool, engaging and I can't wait until the old races are at the quality Pandas were delivered. But it think its time to get off the joking type content and move back to burning legion and badass villains like Illidan and LK. Once I the room, the game is great, but on the surface it looks iffy.

Although ToT and the Jarasic Park theme is awesome and Garrosh is a pretty power hungry villain. I ink they recognized they need to get back to dark story lines.

Originally Posted by Calaba

Snipo

Nailed it for me, completely the reason I am not renewing my sub, although for me wrath was the sweet spot in raid terms, TBC was great for the balance of the raids but the progression meant I never got to do the likes of sunwell as I started raiding late in.

I used to think LFR was not a bad addition, but after my last week I just couldn't face it again.

Originally Posted by mimee

Of course they are losing subs..

1 hour long queues for LFR.
1 hour wasted killing bosses and all you get is bag of gold. *rinse - repeat next week same results*
Everything having a horrible drop rate... SPecially mounts.

And to fix the subs.. Maybe create Vanilla/BC servers? That would bring people back.

So funny you mention bringing back vanilla servers will help the game considering vanilla and BC didn't even have the foundation to create the things you state causing people to quit.

People forget that it took the times you mentioned to run back to the boss in BT......

Originally Posted by Calaba

2) Difficulty increase / badly balanced bosses. I can't be the only one to have noticed that even early bosses are now harder than heroic mode stuff used to be. 3 Drakes at Sarth was easier than Tortos normal for crying out loud. TBC raiding was the sweet spot, as was Uld normal, and ICC. The ONLY properly tuned bosses in current content are the first boss and the world boss! Now, i'm all for bosses gradually getting harder, but there's no fun Kara / ZA / Naxx style raid that you can have fun with guildies and gear up in anymore. This was one of the major failings of Cata too.

And yet everyone seems to be complaining about the game getting "too easy".

Me and my friends left when MoP got released.. And we are not Chinese at all... So no Blizzard, you can fool yourself as long as you want, but it's not Chinese players who only leave this game..

Man, one of the shortest MMO articles I've seen and one of the highest reply numbers I can immediately remember.

Originally Posted by Tureni

Queue the "RARARAAAR WOW IS GNA END SOON" crowd

Queue the "EVERYTHING IS FINE, MORE 'ACCESSIBILITY' WILL FIX IT. AND IF IT DOESN'T THEN IT'S BECAUSE WOW IS OLD." crowd.