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

Blargh, cue the shitstorm of "WoW is dying!" posts. I really wish MMO-Champion would stop posting these numbers.

Originally Posted by Galdur

Tbh I'm surprised its not more than that....
Actuall subs are prolly even less concidering stolen/hacked accounts

Not to mention all the people paying but not playing anymore... I would be surprised if there's even 4 million active players.

In my last year of WoW (2011:ish), I probably logged in 5 times but didn't want to shut the payment for nostalgic reasons... I mean, it's "always been there to play when I wanted" so was hard to cope with the idea to NOT have it around... However, I eventually cancelled and never looked back!

Loved the game from Vanilla to Wrath, hate what it became after that... RIP best-game-ever-created!

Originally Posted by Dawon

Not to mention all the people paying but not playing anymore... I would be surprised if there's even 4 million active players.

SNIP...

I wonder just how many are in that same boat? Still paying but not actually logging in for any amount of real play time but paying cause it gives them options should they become board.

The ole stand-by game of sorts. Not that blizzard would care of course as long as you were still paying.

Originally Posted by Caerule

Blargh, cue the shitstorm of "WoW is dying!" posts. I really wish MMO-Champion would stop posting these numbers.

Why should they stop posting the numbers? I'm not one to say WoW is dying, but if it was dying, it shouldn't be covered up and hidden.

Why do you even care? Play if you want to, don't play if you don't want to. It's not that hard..

Originally Posted by Caerule

Blargh, cue the shitstorm of "WoW is dying!" posts. I really wish MMO-Champion would stop posting these numbers.

Me too, it flares panic because we love to live off disaster.

Originally Posted by Dawon

Not to mention all the people paying but not playing anymore... I would be surprised if there's even 4 million active players.

In my last year of WoW (2011:ish), I probably logged in 5 times but didn't want to shut the payment for nostalgic reasons... I mean, it's "always been there to play when I wanted" so was hard to cope with the idea to NOT have it around... However, I eventually cancelled and never looked back!

Loved the game from Vanilla to Wrath, hate what it became after that... RIP best-game-ever-created!

Indeed Ive been like that for preaty much most of mop
Both me and my wife still pay subs but log on maybe once or twice a month to do something relaxed

Originally Posted by Draahl

Still about 6 million more subs then any other mmo. And i still enjoy raiding, which is my only reason for playing wow.

guild wars 2 have 2-3 million logging in every day to play, yeah it's not subscriptions but it is quite abit, and sub based MMO's are far and few between now really.

Originally Posted by Salech

guild wars 2 have 2-3 million logging in every day to play, yeah it's not subscriptions but it is quite abit, and sub based MMO's are far and few between now really.

^I'd like to see a concurrent active user peak for WoW (NA & EU & OC) because I have a feeling it is closer to that number than 7.7 million.

Originally Posted by Salech

guild wars 2 have 2-3 million logging in every day to play, yeah it's not subscriptions but it is quite abit, and sub based MMO's are far and few between now really.

Personally I don't mind the subscription. I actually prefer it over (kind of) free-to-play and buy-to-play, because it arms the developers with more money... in theory. What I do mind is most of that money going into the pockets of the owners of the company, not even that much into the developers' pockets; and the game left to fend on its own against all reason. The main reason WoW was so frantically successful, was its casual approach to online open-world role-playing games. When all other mmorpgs concentrated on raiding, WoW concentrated on providing a living world for players to adventure in. But with the first expansion the world got unbelievably smaller, and the focus was once more on end-game; when it was the mid-game that attracted and kept most players. Shinies instead of content worked to distract casuals for a couple of expansions, but the novelty wore off eventually, and now even more boredom has ensued. I wish they had kept putting out as much content as vanilla had with each expansion, or at least half as much. Even half would be better than what we actually got.

Originally Posted by Caerule

Blargh, cue the shitstorm of "WoW is dying!" posts. I really wish MMO-Champion would stop posting these numbers.

The majority of people here arent saying wow is dying, read the posts before "inb4 wow is dying remarks", there is some actual good points in here, go read them.

Originally Posted by Chickat

To be fair people mostly said its activations fault, and now when they say that it could be true. I dont know whether Blizzard will still be independent in development, but hopefully this doesn't turn into another ea bioware.

People say this like BioWare was ever a good developer. All their games were sub-par with an emphasis on cliche story. Any BioWare game was renown for this garbage story I found mediocre and NEVER for it's combat. You can't expect a developer to make compelling combat, which is everything an MMO is about, when they have absolutely no track record of doing so.

SWTOR failed because of BioWare.

Originally Posted by waddlez

guild wars 2 have 2-3 million logging in every day to play, yeah it's not subscriptions but it is quite abit, and sub based MMO's are far and few between now really.
---------------
^I'd like to see a concurrent active user peak for WoW (NA & EU & OC) because I have a feeling it is closer to that number than 7.7 million.

Could be interesting, but we are hardly seeing those numbers anytime soon...

What we know is that GW2 sold something more than 3 million copies and MoP sold something more than 4 million copies (the difference to the sub number is, again, due to China, were people do not buy expansions like in EU + US). Since GW2 still didn't launch in China, the numbers are comparable.
Despite what people generally think on these forums, GW2 is going quite strong, with most servers at full or high population and enough revenue coming from micro-transactions to cover for a new free content update released every 2 weeks.

To be clear, I can't care less about the whole GW2 sucks / WoW sucks controversy, which is quite silly. I am just pointing to the fact that while WoW is certainly the n. 1 subcription based MMO and most likely the n. 1 overall MMO when it comes to population, when you look at the Western market, US + EU, its leadership in terms of active players at this point, in 2013, is likely to be much thinner than most people think. This basically means that in the country where you live WoW is probably still the most played MMO, but not "by far".

Again, this doesn't mean that one or the other games suck. They are clearly both very strong games, if you look at them without bias or fanboysm. I am just suggesting that people here make evaluations about the numbers of WoW while looking too much at WoW alone (its mechanics, its content, etc.). But now the market is much wider and stronger than it was: if you want to understand what's going on, you should adapt to look around widely, in a less WoW-centric way.

not surprising at all, been downhill since cataclysm.

Good....

I think 5-7 million is the range it should settle out and Blizz can get a better grasp on developing for their player base rather than trying to develop for every player style on the planet.

To be honest, I've lost most of my guild and friends from WoW and the story's just not interested me from the Alliance perspective. I'm even expecting to let my sub lapse before the next expansion for FF XIV: ARR and watching EQNext (1 week to the unveiling!).

Originally Posted by ghosteagle

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

As much as I hate to get into these debates, I have to agree. 5 years ago the number of F2P games was fairly small and nothing with serious quality behind it. Now, thats changed quite a bit, there are dozens of MMOs that can be played without ever spending a dime and the quality has come up quite a bit as well. Times are changing in the MMO world.

Make it free-to-play or drop the price to $5 a month, I'd be back, but $15 a month isn't worth it for such an old game. The graphics really show their age, and it's not worth it at all.

Don't want to do that? Get rid of the old character models and put in new ones, then I'd be back and paying $15 a month.

and the reason for that is the blizzard store...
you're already making people pay 13 euro a month
but if you wanna have a ugly transmog helm you'll have to pay another 12 !
or a unique mount another 20 !

I've also heard or read somewhere on a website they're gonna add pay for extra xp boosts to lvl up quicker & pay for more Charms of lesser good so you don't have to do dailies anymore... ( apperently this is going to be tested on the Korean servers) anyways if they do this they just anal raped their own game.

Originally Posted by CaptainArlong

Make it free-to-play or drop the price to $5 a month, I'd be back, but $15 a month isn't worth it for such an old game. The graphics really show their age, and it's not worth it at all.

Don't want to do that? Get rid of the old character models and put in new ones, then I'd be back and paying $15 a month.

You mean the models they're working on and expected to be shown at Blizzcon as a feature for the next expansion?

Personally, I'd love a $100/year subscription option

to all those people that say that the game is too casual and easy now, how many of you have killed lei shen heroic? or even jinrock on heroic? yeah thought so. the raids are as hard as ever, and even the world 1st race this time lasted a month (only icc took longer due to LK beeing over tunned)