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

Originally Posted by Nelle

The Sky is Falling!

I came here with exactly this statement in mind ^^

Originally Posted by OneSent

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.

TBC/Wrath model used to work those days, but now there is not enough incentive for players to put that much time and effort into game

Knowing how often trick at ALL sure that number does not exceed five million

Originally Posted by OneSent

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.

All the MMO's that went F2P only had about 100k or less people still playing, WoW will not be following that model for quite sometime...maybe never.

I've played WoW rather regularly for somewhere near seven years, but I'll be honest that my interest in the game is starting to dwindle. The quality of Mists continued to decline as time passed and I've recently gained interest in Wildstar, so that is distracting me. It also doesn't help that the people I've played with for years either don't have the time to play or just aren't on around the same time I am.

All-in-all I'm not too surprised about this loss of subscriptions, saddened? Yes. Surprised? Not really. WoW will survive, hopefully the new expansion will bring back some punch. The REALLY depressing part is I have fallen in love with the Monk class, but don't enjoy it enough to play the game for more than a few hours at a time.

GG Blizzard and now you have it - focus on casual players, they come and the leve, while hardcore players would stay(and they didnt because of what game become)

Don't see why people are concerned if people don't like the game and quit. Hell I can't wait for all the so-called 'raiders' that hate the much improved casual approach the game's taking to just leave. They complain enough about LFR and Legendary chains and other silly things but never quit.

Oh boy, here we go

Originally Posted by raas

GG Blizzard and now you have it - focus on casual players, they come and the leve, while hardcore players would stay(and they didnt because of what game become)

Ok, dunno where you get you data...but hardcore players are the minority and always have been. If blizz could choose to lose ALL the hardcore players but retain ALL the casual players, they would be in a much better position.

Originally Posted by LowGear

I've played WoW rather regularly for somewhere near seven years, but I'll be honest that my interest in the game is starting to dwindle. The quality of Mists continued to decline as time passed and I've recently gained interest in Wildstar, so that is distracting me. It also doesn't help that the people I've played with for years either don't have the time to play or just aren't on around the same time I am.

All-in-all I'm not too surprised about this loss of subscriptions, saddened? Yes. Surprised? Not really. WoW will survive, hopefully the new expansion will bring back some punch. The REALLY depressing part is I have fallen in love with the Monk class, but don't enjoy it enough to play the game for more than a few hours at a time.

I am the same way, i dont touch any other of my characters but the monk, and i sit in SW by t he fountain across the AH waiting in 30 minutes ques for Alt Valley, only to lose get 50 honor , and do it again, i cant bring myself to run dungeons anymore or do anymore dailies , and 5.4 is bringing us the "timeless isle" another daily zone so we can daily while they open raid wings, i only purchase time cards now too, i cant bring myself to sub up

the game is very stale now , and the carrot on the stick is shrinking while the pole on which its extended is getting longer, only to be told "there's more to do" , in fact there is not, they just stagger the time it takes to earn things,

anyway, ill get a time card here and there, but , i am rather done playing this game , same grind, same 'meh' reward

WoW will likely be around in 10 more years, in one form or another- the game is not going to die anytime soon. With that said, 600k subs is nothing to say "who cares" about, and you can be certain that there will be a few closed door meetings concerning it.

Originally Posted by Xjev

TBC/Wrath model used to work those days, but now there is not enough incentive for players to put that much time and effort into game

The difference between the amount of time it took to actually get good gear is about the same amount of time as it currently takes. You just now do it in a more boring way by repeating the same shit over and over. Instead of doing a long quest chain that provides lore to the raid you are doing so you can even step inside of it, you are just doing the same quests enough times a week for tokens so you can run LFR and possibly a normal/heroic mode too if you are really trying to upgrade your gear and money for enchants and gems.

A friend wanted me to play WoW again. I was going to go for it, I have not been subscribed for over 6 months. (My heart lost it much longer than that... but annual pass...opps...) Turns out, I don't qualify for Scroll of Res. No benefits. No lvl 80 character on a realm with my friend. Okay... leveling... is really hard to get through, but maybe I'd give it a shot. Then comes the down payment. I'd need to buy Mists, start a new sub... maybe a 3 month chunk. That's a lot up front, for something that may not pan out into a long term renewed interest.

I just want to see if there's a spark... but there's this barrier.

Speaking of barriers. Until I can freely join guilds cross server, how am I going to use my main character(s) to find a suitable 25man raiding guild? That's why I quit in the first place. They have not fixed or even addressed that. I cannot freely cross servers to find a solid group of new friends. My faction / server fell apart, there's no 25man selection. Blizzard has placed a barrier between me and my goals for this game.

Been so long without a fix for that...

Stinky, but kind of expected for the sub loss (I'm unfortunately one of them - but will be one of the returning ones at a later date)

REALLY good news about their buy-back though. Even though Kotick is still at the helm - I feel he's a far better option than Vivendi (though dang - must be nice to have that kind of pocket change eh ?)

Originally Posted by raas

GG Blizzard and now you have it - focus on casual players, they come and the leve, while hardcore players would stay(and they didnt because of what game become)

And your proof of this is where?
To begin with, your statement assumes that Hardcore players and Casual players are static.. They aren't.
There are people who were hardcore five years ago and are casual now, and people who were casual a few months ago and are hardcore now.

I'll tell you one thing though, casual players vastly outnumber hardcore players, and wow's current success is due to BC being more casual friendly than Vanilla, and Wrath being vastly more casual friendly than BC. If Blizzard had "focused on hardcore players" It's likely subs would have never even grown to 7.7 million in the first place.

Originally Posted by jb247

WoW will likely be around in 10 more years, in one form or another- the game is not going to die anytime soon. With that said, 600k subs is nothing to say "who cares" about, and you can be certain that there will be a few closed door meetings concerning it.

No it won't, Blizz is only making two more expansion's, one for 90-95 and the last for 95-100.

Originally Posted by Renegade

No it won't, Blizz is only making two more expansion's, one for 90-95 and the last for 95-100.

WoW might end at level 95. Or 105. Or 140. The level cap is irrelevant.

Originally Posted by buddah13

5.4 is bringing us the "timeless isle" another daily zone so we can daily while they open raid wings, i only purchase time cards now too, i cant bring myself to sub up

That's funny because there's no dailies on Timeless Isle. If you visit MMO-Champion enough, you'd see that right on the front page. It is intended to just be an island w/ World Bosses and currency to buy 496 items, pet battle and on pvp servers ... pvp. Nothing more, nothing less. lol

No King rules forever, my son.

Originally Posted by hawtlol

The difference between the amount of time it took to actually get good gear is about the same amount of time as it currently takes. You just now do it in a more boring way by repeating the same shit over and over. Instead of doing a long quest chain that provides lore to the raid you are doing so you can even step inside of it, you are just doing the same quests enough times a week for tokens so you can run LFR and possibly a normal/heroic mode too if you are really trying to upgrade your gear and money for enchants and gems.

Attunements? There was no fucking lore attached to attunements, I did them all... and they didn't gear you anyway...