WoW Down to 7.7 Million Subscribers, Activision Blizzard Purchases Vivendi's Shares

I am waiting on the thread that blames the cosmetic helms for this lol.

Originally Posted by Harmzuay

I don't give the number of people playing the game much weight. If I enjoy the game, I'm going to play it regardless of 50 subs or 5 million. Couldn't care less.

This is exactly how I feel.

Originally Posted by Bakudai

Rogues can't shoot fireballs from their eyes, no wonder the subs dropped. GG blizzard

Wrong. I still have this in my Rogue's bank.

Originally Posted by Arewn

While I don't feel it's unfair to blame greedy publishers, the developers retain a part of the responsibility none the less. Blizzard Entertainment is a large and powerful company.
That being said, I meant this as a general statement, not just about Blizzard and Activision.

Edit: Also, to those who for some reason think otherwise, 600k subs lost is quiet a bit.

Blizzard publishes their own games as well. They just always let another company be over them (though I'd imagine there's reasons for that as well that likely deal with money).

My biggest question is.
Did 600,000 people leave the mmo genre? I don't mind if wow loses subs. But if those people don't join other MMO's its bad news for the genre as a whole

Naturally some of those people will move to other mmo's. Just my 2cents.

Longevity .. that is all

The Sky is Falling!

the sub losses are a combination of financial instability in the economy and over pricing by blizzard . with the amount of sub losses maybe they should rethink their over all sub fees vs the economy

I would be more interested in knowing where the sub losses where. In previous reports it was large losses in the Asian market, but without such brutal impact on the NA and EU regions.

Blizzard haters will claim the game is dying. Blizzard apologists will claim the subs will go up after 5.4, just like they said for 5.2.

The cycle continues.

Originally Posted by mrgummage

I would be more interested in knowing where the sub losses where. In previous reports it was large losses in the Asian market, but without such brutal impact on the NA and EU regions.

The majority of my friends list hasn't been online for more than a month now so I'm assuming its that middle of expansion break people are having, but like most other times this happens only about half end up coming back

*scratches chin at Vivendi/blizz deal*

hmmm will need more time to think on this and research before talking about it

While technically correct, the post is omitting a lot. Activision Blizzard is buying back 429m shares for 5.83 billion. The aforementioned investment group is buying 172m shares for 2.34 billion.

Originally Posted by luciano

Now that this dramabomb is over, they can get back to making good games without some corporate tool over their shoulders.

Originally Posted by Shampro

Good for Activision Blizzard for getting rid of that leech. It's a sinking ship sadly.

Um, they didn't say Kotick was leaving too, you know.

Great. Now I have to listen to the naysayers and chicken littles who think WoW is dying for another few months.

At least BLizz got free of Vivendi

This is the lowest WoW has ever been, but you know what...it is still 6million more subs then blizzard first predicted for Vanilla, I'm pretty sure a lot of people stopped playing the game, but will come back next expansion, not all of them of course but a lot, probably back up to 9mil, the game has been out for 8 years now, after 10 years of playing, this game will probably still have 5mil subs...It doesn't even matter if people think WoW is dying, it isn't, it has simply been around a very very long time and people are moving on, that is all.

Everyone that whines about it should learn some basic marketing. Go search about Product Life Cycle. Every product goes trough those fases. Things like coca-cola are exceptions.

This is about the same number of subs the game had during the first few months of The Burning Crusade.

I guess 10-man raiding, LFR, heirlooms and a ridiculously easy catch-up system isn't enough to keep people playing. Perhaps we should go back to the TBC/Wrath model, when the game was growing exponentially.

Oh, the investors will not be happy about this. They will start to panic and if Blizzard has even the slightest inclination to go to a free-to-play model, subscription losses like this and the ones from last quarter will only make it seem more profitable to those greedy shareholders than sticking with the sub model. Especially when you've got companies like EA boasting about their artificially inflated number of players who flooded back to SWTOR after it went F2P.

I love World of Warcraft and do not wish to see it go F2P. But, once that happens, the passion (what little left there is) will be completely gone and the death of the tried and true original MMO model will be sealed for good.

I was not expecting this big but goes to show that the belief that the majority wants mindless face roll content and raids shoved down their throats was a winning solution. Blizzard has an issue with hitting the middle ground and has to swing so widely.

RIP Blizzard Entertainment