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

they made this game too easy. LFD + LFR killed the excitement of doing dungeons and raiding.

yes people said LFD / LFR is awesome because you dont need to spend time looking for people in trade or guild BUT at the same time i think it also removed the excitement from finally finding the right people and zoning into the dungeon / raid. It used to be excited to finish a dungeon! now you zone in, finish in 10 minutes and leave. most people dont even say thanks or bye. also nearly impossible to make friends in wow anymore as well. and why would you? when blizzard encourage you NOT TO.

i am seriously considering unsubbin for the first time in 7 years

oh and i am NOT a hardcore player and never have been. ive been casually playing the game since release. but it seems like at the end of the day its all about money. blizzard make it easy to play for ANY Player ensuring those players will pay for the game.

Originally Posted by Prag

They aren't really shitting on players. They're making a game as well as they can to cater, intelligently, towards as many players as possible. They aren't "indie", nor have they been since well before the masses began to join in BC.

How would you feel getting in front of a room full of board members and explaining to them why they should earn less money? Exactly.

People have this hard time coming to understand that the only "force" that's making you play is your desire to play.

It's a good game that's been around for a long time. It's natural that it will reach the end of its cycle.

I have quit 6 months ago, but dint think that this is because game is worse. Its just old, people had their fun from mmo, and they won't get back if anythung get better here.

I hope that wow stop at 4-5 m players and complete saga with 6 expansions. And then, warcraft 4 will see the light

Originally Posted by Prag

It's a good game that's been around for a long time. It's natural that it will reach the end of its cycle.

This is stupid...

Games can renewal too! "World of Warcraft 2" with frostbite 3 engine, without money eater managers, with thousands of designers, without subscription, one gamebox + 4 months/new content for free, no store, no feast of strengths, dramatic story lines, and developers who can read players posts about the game...

The WoW is not a problem, but the team behind that...

After Wildstar: 'Welcome WoW in the dozens of MMOs with 1-5 million subs" They deserve it!

I'm concerned with the company that bought Riot buying shares of Blizzard. As soon as that company bought it, champions began releasing solely at 6300 IP (rather than occasionally being lower). They also began banning people for talking trash, because the mute button is hardlulz, and have yet to address anything actually wrong with the game (rampant trolling and a horrid game client).

Originally Posted by Prag

They aren't really shitting on players. They're making a game as well as they can to cater, intelligently, towards as many players as possible. They aren't "indie", nor have they been since well before the masses began to join in BC.

How would you feel getting in front of a room full of board members and explaining to them why they should earn less money? Exactly.

People have this hard time coming to understand that the only "force" that's making you play is your desire to play.

It's a good game that's been around for a long time. It's natural that it will reach the end of its cycle.

So far as "shitting on the players" goes, the anti-consumer monetization choices they have been making can easily be considered "shitting on players". Agree with this or not, there are many threads already discussing it and it certainly makes a viable argument. An individual having a rough day at work because of a board meeting is really irrelevant.

Also, WoW has never been an indie game. Ever. It was released as a triple A title by a major development company. "Indie games" have nothing to do with the number of players/copies sold. "Indie" means they were independently developed, generally by a small group/company that didn't receive major financial backing by a publisher.

Originally Posted by dhru

This is stupid...

Games can renewal too! "World of Warcraft 2" with frostbite 3 engine, without money eater managers, with thousands of designers, without subscription, one gamebox + 4 months/new content for free, no store, no feast of strengths, dramatic story lines, and developers who can read players posts about the game...

The WoW is not a problem, but the team behind that...


After Wildstar: 'Welcome WoW in the dozens of MMOs with 1-5 million subs" They deserve it!

That isn't even how Blizzard was before they sold out.

ofcourse World of warcraft is dying, just like any other game or organism.
I started dying the second i was born. I peaked quite a few years ago physicly and way before i die, i will peak financially.

Does that mean i (or wow) be pronounced dead today? not bloody likely.

even if wow got less 7 million sub this year, wow will still be profitable and will not be die within 2 years.
If World of warcraft hadn't become more casual and easier to fir into a 'mature' schedule, most of the 150 members of my guild would have quit long before now. We all get older and the 20+ hours a week i raided years ago went to less than 10. Had blizzard listened to the hardcore wannabees, 700.000 per quarter loss would probably have been wishfull thinking but even then, had the game still been profitable, the game would still not have died.

Threads like these always show up when wow loses subscriptions. The game isn't dying anytime soon. Most of these players will be back in patch 5.4. For now, enjoy the crowd less streets of your capital cities.

Originally Posted by Arewn

So far as "shitting on the players" goes, the anti-consumer monetization choices they have been making can easily be considered "shitting on players". Agree with this or not, there are many threads already discussing it and it certainly makes a viable argument. An individual having a rough day at work because of a board meeting is really irrelevant.

Also, WoW has never been an indie game. Ever. It was released as a triple A title by a major development company. "Indie games" have nothing to do with the number of players/copies sold. "Indie" means they were independently developed, generally by a small group/company that didn't receive major financial backing by a publisher.

I'm well aware of both the meaning of an indie company and Blizzard's history, but thanks.

If people think the Blizzard store is really anti-consumer, they probably haven't played any other recent games, MMO's in particular. Nothing they've monetized, aside from the game subscription and expansions, is actually necessary to play the game.

My poorly illustrated point is: The folks at Blizzard want your money. Just like the vast majority of the people we all deal with day-to-day. Not having the willpower to stay away from obvious money pits is not the fault of a company with a vested interest in success.

Originally Posted by lazzy

I do agree with the social aspect being gone but that leads up back to Blizzard making the game to easy.

I think part of that came in with Paid Server transfers and Blizzard doing nothing about the 150+ servers with no-low population.

My guild was the top guild on a Medium population server and we could not get people to transfer to it to keep our recruitment numbers up. The guild finally bit the bullet and transferred to Kel'Thuzad. People keep overlooking the paid character fees. Blizzard rakes in tons of money off of these services that should be free with a paid MMO subscription.

Their inaction says it all. They make too much money by not fixing server issues and letting people pay to transfer. I think people are finally catching on to this and are cutting their subscriptions. I know I have and I love the Warcraft Universe. I just cannot back this company with their current design philosophy.

Now they are taking people's subscription money to develop an in game store where they can sell you crap that you won't be able to obtain in game through other means and still charge a subscription. I cannot wait to see what the Q3 shitstorm on this looks like combined with lackluster 5.3 content and summer attrition.

Originally Posted by supermage

Threads like these always show up when wow loses subscriptions. The game isn't dying anytime soon. Most of these players will be back in patch 5.4. For now, enjoy the crowd less streets of your capital cities.

Really? Prolly less than 10 level 90 players on the streets of the captial cities(both fractions combined!) on my server at peek times. I shall enjoy that? Even if you take all the servers of my entire realm pool together it would likely not make an enjoyable amount of players on horde side. That's the reality for german Dalvengyr.....

You make a HUGE mistake believing that the situation on your server reflects all others....

Originally Posted by Pacster

Really? Prolly less than 10 level 90 players on the streets of the captial cities(both fractions combined!) on my server at peek times. I shall enjoy that? Even if you take all the servers of my entire realm pool together it would likely not make an enjoyable amount of players on horde side. That's the reality for german Dalvengyr.....

You make a HUGE mistake believing that the situation on your server reflects all others....

Virtual Realms will help. Eventually it might lead to the concept of seperate servers disappearing, but one step at a time.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by smiiiff

even if wow got less 7 million sub this year, wow will still be profitable and will not be die within 2 years.
If World of warcraft hadn't become more casual and easier to fir into a 'mature' schedule, most of the 150 members of my guild would have quit long before now. We all get older and the 20+ hours a week i raided years ago went to less than 10. Had blizzard listened to the hardcore wannabees, 700.000 per quarter loss would probably have been wishfull thinking but even then, had the game still been profitable, the game would still not have died.

Pretty much this.

Still boggles my mind how many people hang around here to complain about a game they appearently don't like or play anymore.

Originally Posted by Tails

We are saying the same thing. MOP offers a lot of "I did this I'm a God" type things, people not caring about them shows that actually hard content is not really cared for by many people, so the lack of hard content wouldn't be either. Whatever is killing the game slowly isn't about hard content since few people actually care about that kind of things.

Actually we are not.

I'm saying people enjoy hard content because they feel rewarded when they finsh it and get a good item. The reward has to be REWARDING. Brawlers guild doesn't offer anything people care about neither does Challenge modes. Hence why seriously not many people do them, there is no point.

Let's take Xt in Ulduar for example since a lot of people managed to get to this boss. You did him on normal sweet you get some good loot. You figure your guild has the gear to do it on hard mode. Now you find yourself in the same raid doing the same boss but you're now good enough to activate the hard mode and manage to actually pull it off. That's rewarding. Brawlers guild and Challenge modes are not the same thing.

Originally Posted by Mazaxist

they made this game too easy. LFD + LFR killed the excitement of doing dungeons and raiding.

No they didn't, and no it isn't. If you're choosing to play the game on easy mode then you can't complain its too easy. Come back when you've done Heroic Raiding during current content, or you're a Gladiator ranked PvPer. Before then complaining the game is too easy is pretty hilarious.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by lazzy

Brawlers guild and Challenge modes are not the same thing.

They are rewarding in a different way. And you're not forced to do them, people do them because they want to.

Originally Posted by majesta

I think part of that came in with Paid Server transfers and Blizzard doing nothing about the 150+ servers with no-low population.

My guild was the top guild on a Medium population server and we could not get people to transfer to it to keep our recruitment numbers up. The guild finally bit the bullet and transferred to Kel'Thuzad. People keep overlooking the paid character fees. Blizzard rakes in tons of money off of these services that should be free with a paid MMO subscription.

Their inaction says it all. They make too much money by not fixing server issues and letting people pay to transfer. I think people are finally catching on to this and are cutting their subscriptions. I know I have and I love the Warcraft Universe. I just cannot back this company with their current design philosophy.

Now they are taking people's subscription money to develop an in game store where they can sell you crap that you won't be able to obtain in game through other means and still charge a subscription. I cannot wait to see what the Q3 shitstorm on this looks like combined with lackluster 5.3 content and summer attrition.

Paid xfers do mess with the social aspect to a certain point. It has nearly no impact compared to LFR and LFG.

Before LFR and LFG when you found good players to run with you added them to your Friends and you ran shit together.

This no longer exists. This got replaced by doing LFR or LFG.

Even guilds are pretty useless now since you can see all the content from doing LFR. Guild are nothing more than for perks at this point.

Blizzard dragged their own game through the mud. I'm pretty sure they didn't think this long ahead, which is silly considering people said this would happen.

Unsubbed after almost 8 years.
25 man is burned out running LFR + normal/heroic. 10 man casual died due to difficulty of 10 norm.
Expected things this expac to have improved by the last patch. Instead...5.4 is looking like a continuation of an extremely shitty expansion. Im not paying for it any longer.

Needs to become a much darker game to prevent the ageing player base from leave :/

The game is like 9 years old. Wow is on a decline because the game has become stale. It's that simple. Anything they do won't being back subs to the golden days. subs will raise next expansion. Game is still massive and people who complain its to easy blah blah get over yourselves. You didn't told you so to anyone. christ

Originally Posted by The Illusive Man

That is a big drop compared to my favorite WoW time which was WotLK. Wasn't there 11m subs back then? Now its 7 million? That´s kind of a big drop but I noticed that the most subs were lost after Cata.

They tore apart 25man raiding guilds with Cata.

Damn ...i'm one of those losses actually ...i blame it to lack of development of the Alliance in what was supposed to be a slightly more Alliance oriented expansion. That and the super boring (again, for Alliance) patch 5.3.

But don't worry, i'll be back, i'll be back ...i just play a couple games and go back to WoW. :P