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. Baracuda's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by gcsmith View Post
    Vanilla servers wont bring people back, all it will do is make people realize how bad vanilla was compared to where we are now.

    Also bag of gold is better than nothing. What do you want? to get gear all in 1 day and never need to raid again?
    Indeed, Jagex brought back old school servers and though a lot are playing on them you realise quickly how poor it was back then
    Inb4: RUNESCAPE IS POOR NOW!
  1. isadorr's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    Isadorr, we debunked this nonsense previously in the forums. If anything, making the game an E-Sport means it has to be simpler than WoW, just so people can understand what they're seeing.
    You didnt debunk anything, you are the king of whiners on here. I linked everything you can easily find on google, the community isnt going to take Titan seriously if it is toned down for the bads in wow. Unlike you and your legion, people dont need everything toned for them to understand it.
  1. absurdgamertag's Avatar
    Replay value was high as hell when WoW was a friendly game to level alts. I assume some subs lost are because of that. Honestly, you know something is wrong when you have to tweet daily why your game is fun and why your playerbase is wrong when they say dailies suck. We're the ones who play and the ones who decide to pay, I hope this reminds Blizzard that FUN for the developers is not the same as FUN for the players.
  1. Sargerus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gimlix View Post
    SWTOR had over 2M in first 2 months after that it went down 1 Mill subs lol
    currently they have less then 500k subs but 1.7 million F2p players. Really want to know about GW2 numbers though
  1. ShimmerSwirl's Avatar
    Maybe this will wake them up and make them realize DailyCraft was the wrong way to go.

    Worst part is they had this loss in a quarter where they released a major patch. Hard to find much reason why 5.3 is gonna reverse the trend if 5.2 was this terrible for subs. I wouldn't be shocked if the next 2 quarters combined bring another 3-4 million in losses.
  1. lolcatabeta's Avatar
    Ever since Blizzard introduced LFG tool in WOTLK the realm slowly died out. When they introduced LFR it really strook all realms hard. The game is dying because WoW isnt what it once was. Back in TBC, Vanilla and major parts of WOTLK you needed to meet people, get to know them, and recruit them via chat. Now, you simply hit the "LFG" button and everything is done for you.

    Dont get me wrong, one fact about both those tools are that everyone get to see the content, I love that idea. But it is in no way worth to kill the community like Blizzard has done.

    In TBC I was a casual kid. I raided Karazhan, gruuls, maggy and I even made it into TK/SSC and Hyjal right before WOTLK. And you know what? I was thrilled. I was really satisfied. I didnt care if I got to see the insane new raid "Sunwell" at the time. My thought were like "Shit, the guys that are doing that must be so fucking pro. Wish I could do that one day". It made me feel like I was reaching forward to something. That feeling has diminished.

    It is sad to see a game this good die out for such an idiotic reason that they tried to make it simpler.
  1. crakerjack's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kalanock View Post
    Stroke your ego more, but you couldn't be more wrong. While yes I am sure SOME of the subs were lost for that reason.. more so a lot of them are from the EAST which means probably farmers moving onto other games, or realizing hey i don't need 20 accounts to make gold anymore since there's such an influx and availability of it now.. so reducing down their backend cost to make money.
    So you're admitting to gold farming correct? You seem to know how it all works and how they do it right? Oh you don't? Oh you've never farmed gold yourself? Oh you've never watched someone from the east farm gold? Oh you don't know what you're talking about but like to act like you are? Stop acting as if you know how it all works... stop justifying the sub loss... they went down because WoW is an old outdated game that people are slowly finding out that it isn't fun to play, that's simple. When they say east, how do you know they're not talking east america? Did they say east asia? Or asia in general? I didn't think so.
  1. Danifilth's Avatar
    Diablo 3 #2?
  1. Lunareste's Avatar
    Who cares if there's 8 million people left?

    TBC had about that amount, and the community was much better than it has been for the last 4 or so years. More players = more douchebags.
  1. Anjerith's Avatar
    I admit that, I too, sometimes feel like quitting when the amount of BS in the game equals the amount of BS on MMOC forums on a nearly 1:1 ratio.
  1. Raediance's Avatar
    Im enjoying MoP WAY more than cata. I can always find something to do. Thats still a lot of people.
  1. Arrowstormen's Avatar
    It will probably only go down from now on, PERHAPS increasing a tiny bit or being stagnant around expansion releases. WoW is old, it's a new shiny decade.
  1. crakerjack's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by isadorr View Post
    Titan is being marketed as a E-sport and if you do any google searching you will see the comments on Titan being like BC, no nerfs, high difficulty, and a game that can be taken seriously unlike nerfed for bads wow, wow will be left behind for the casuals/bad.
    Even though you don't provide any info or sources... I'm inclined to believe you, only because I know something. I know that the original dev team of WoW that created both vanilla/TBC and partial wotlk... were moved to Titan so they could make it. Since TBC was known for its hardcore ideology... I can only assume the dev team will stick with their methods and make Titan a real challenging MMO.
  1. cpat's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ando1510 View Post
    yeah and combained with the multiboxing change aswell
    Yeah ... I am pretty sure these things don't account for basically 15% of the user base in a single quarter.
    The game is on life support.
  1. isadorr's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by lolcatabeta View Post
    Ever since Blizzard introduced LFG tool in WOTLK the realm slowly died out. When they introduced LFR it really strook all realms hard. The game is dying because WoW isnt what it once was. Back in TBC, Vanilla and major parts of WOTLK you needed to meet people, get to know them, and recruit them via chat. Now, you simply hit the "LFG" button and everything is done for you.

    Dont get me wrong, one fact about both those tools are that everyone get to see the content, I love that idea. But it is in no way worth to kill the community like Blizzard has done.

    In TBC I was a casual kid. I raided Karazhan, gruuls, maggy and I even made it into TK/SSC and Hyjal right before WOTLK. And you know what? I was thrilled. I was really satisfied. I didnt care if I got to see the insane new raid "Sunwell" at the time. My thought were like "Shit, the guys that are doing that must be so fucking pro. Wish I could do that one day". It made me feel like I was reaching forward to something. That feeling has diminished.

    It is sad to see a game this good die out for such an idiotic reason that they tried to make it simpler.
    Whats even worse is the bads saying it is still too hard so blizzard nerfs it more. They dont want a challenge or to get better they just want the false reality of downing bosses without having to see just how bad they really are.
  1. theWocky's Avatar
    Yay! Scroll of Resurrection, Free copy of MOP, free level 85! Here it comes!

    I can sub for a month and feed my nostalgia with those terms. Game is worth 15 bucks to me for a month to re-acquaint myself with my druid. Heck, maybe even a free month will be in the deal!

    It is a greater loss than I expected, but I don't see the game attracting many new players at this point. I know it's got awesome gameplay, but I struggle really hard to look past those graphics now.

    There is just too many other F2P, really pretty mmo's out there with matching gameplay. Also, with Haswell coming out with a GPU that can run newer gen MMO's a bit easier, people aren't going to stick around and accept those Nintendo graphics.

    I still love my time spent in WoW and some of my fondest mmo memories were there, and it is an awesome game, but the only way is down for most subscription-based games now.

    I'm looking forward to seeing Pandaria - for a month.
  1. gcsmith's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by sith View Post
    Uhh... lol. Not sure what to say to that..
    or like intelligent people, we don't assume a trend will continue without reason. 1.3 Million leaving this quarter doesn't mean 1.3 next quarter. You also need to understand that a game this old, holding 8.3 Is amazing. Even if you lose 1.3 in a quarter who may be unsubbing after they did the lfr tier or something. Also it's from the east, where they have loads of f2p mmo's to choose from...
  1. mmoc4bacfb3c29's Avatar
    Even if content is getting better, many people I know quit like me for one of four reasons:

    1)Logging in only once a week to get cap in arena/RBG, what a waste of £9 a month I could spend on LoL and get a champion I will likely play more than 2 or 3 hours a month.
    2)I rolled the wrong class, this is stupid I keep dying to shit that globals me or simply has gear I can't compete it, going into arena got me met with people with ridiculous MMR.
    3)Raiding is so grindy, LFR is long considering it's casual. Several hours of wiping to useless shit and waiting around is no fun.
    4)The daily rep grinds.

    After considering both PVP and PVE is just a huge repetitive grind I gave up on WoW.
  1. bohapjut's Avatar
    that's quite a loss! No matter how you cut it 1.3 mil is a big number
  1. Count Zero's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by crakerjack View Post
    jeez, don't take your anger out on me... I'm sorry your game isn't as good as you like to believe it is... just because you're mad doesn't mean you have to show hostility towards me.
    Nice way to avoid the question. Guess you don't have an answer.

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