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

Well look like any cash shop item is really making them 1 mil overnight!!

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And people sorry to tell you this but.... Activision = Blizzard, Blizzard = Activision! they are the same!

Old players quit , it's normal , it's the life .

And no new players replace them .


Why should a new player start playing WOW , where you have to
1. buy the game
2. buy the expansions
3. pay monthly subscription
4. on top of monthly subscription there are microtransactions. ?


When he could start a free to play game where you got to pay most of the times only 1 of the 4 things I put before ...

Well played Blizz/Activision, and with the new WoW Xpac coming next year, and new Cod lined up for this/next year.. You'll recoup the expense hopefully soon..

4. on top of monthly subscription there are microtransactions. ?

Most of you forget microtransactions are optional. Not a requirement.

Originally Posted by Strychnine

Most of you forget microtransactions are optional. Not a requirement.

But sub is not optional. That means players now have a choice to play games that all have micro transaction ingame shop. But only one of them has forced sub for just login in...

Get it now ?

Originally Posted by Strychnine

Most of you forget microtransactions are optional. Not a requirement.

So is choosing not to buy the game, its expansions & subscription time. You're not only paying for the game, you're buying its expansions every 1.5-2 years, a monthly $15/£9 subscription and even then you don't have access to the entire game unless you dish out more money for the money-store EXCLUSIVE items. You can't even earn them in the game, you HAVE to buy them if you want them on top of all the other fee's Blizzard chuck at you. But keep throwing the 'It's optional' argument if you honestly feel that that justifies the store, but I personally think it kinda sucks that Blizzard is taking development time away from the game to work on 'optional' content which you must pay extra for.

Originally Posted by Buck-Shot

Well played Blizz/Activision, and with the new WoW Xpac coming next year, and new Cod lined up for this/next year.. You'll recoup the expense hopefully soon..

Ghost has been spanked by BF4 preorders already. Not looking good for any Activision Blizzard franchise except for World of Starcraft, but that got delayed so...

Wow I expected WoW to loose a lot more. Maybe SoO will earn us some subs.

Originally Posted by Feanoro

The decline began right after 3.2 and the massive design philosophy shift towards "make it easier, more convenient, cater to people who don't care to try". It's funny how people who weren't there try to pontificate how the past was such a bad game... well, then why did that bad game have nothing but growth?

We've gone from a model where the serious raiders had one mode, 25s, and the more casual, busy, or family/friends types had their mode, 10s, to 5.4's upcoming SEVEN modes (LFR, 10F, 10N, 10H, 25F, 25N, 25H). Unless you think Blizzard doesn't occupy the physical universe, you have to realize that to deliver more modes in the same amount of time means quality has to be cut somewhere. This also, as many have commented before me, completely removed the ability for people to raid with guild and then help friends on the off nights.

We've gone from a model where being at least polite if not social was encouraged and required at the high end to one in which there's little accountability and the rule is trolling, jerkish behavior. Polite, friendly people are the exception now. This causes a vicious cycle where LFG/LFR have made themselves necessary.

We've gone from a model where people said "Next time, we'll get a little further. We have something to shoot for. Look at those guys, I want to be like them" to one in which if you don't do absolutely all available in a lockout (be it dailies, valor cap, arena points, whatever content), you're treated with contempt. The very people who used to complain that raiders and grand marshals were "elitists" are now far worse than any of their old accusations. Side note, the "elitists" used to be the trainers for the rest of the population. Believe it or not, most recruitment in vanilla through Ulduar said "Gear is not a problem".

Frankly, unless Blizzard swallows their traditional pride and actually admits the design philosophy shift has failed, you're going to continue to see subscription drops, especially during the current economic climate where people are seriously evaluating where their entertainment dollars go.

Well can you realistically expect the community in a MMO to stay the same? If Blizz had stick to the old way of no LFD (i care not for Raids). WoW decline would have happened faster than now, or it probably wouldn't have gotten that high because you know why? At the time when WoW launched, it was wayyyy more forgiving & convenient than what was on the market.. If blizz didn't implement more convenience, the competition would have beaten them to it.

Look at any mmo launching now, or the past 3yrs. If it uses the HOLY trinity setup, person will question why it doesn't have a LFD setup, because LFD solves a major burden and if it doesn't then expect numbers to start dip by the first "free month" passes..

WoW has spoil the MMO crowd with it convenience and as a result other new titles better have at least of that convenience in place if they want to survive.
All these games that have gone F2P should be happy wow is still P2P becuase in all honesty the is NO MMO out now, that has the fluidity, and feel that WoW has...

So subs drop when summer comes, damn I guess everyone must be blind to miss this fact every year.....

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.

Exactly this. It is like they took the TBC model everyone said they wanted, and then made it 100 times worse than how it was, made it extremely repetitive and gated gear behind dailies, no new 5 mans or heroics, and gave it to us like that and said "THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED, RIGHT GUYS?". No Blizzard, no, what are you even doing anymore?

As long as Blizzard has 1mil+ active subs they will continue to make money off WoW.

Originally Posted by waddlez

Ghost has been spanked by BF4 preorders already. Not looking good for any Activision Blizzard franchise except for World of Starcraft, but that got delayed so...

Where that news that said BF4 has more pre-orders.. Also next D3 xpac will make a profit (despite most forumers bashing it), next WoW Xpac will make a profit. Next CoD will turn a profit. I would say they are pretty ok.

I have no doubt that BF4 will be big, but you think Activsion care how big BF is if CoD still rake in the doe and turn a hugh profit. Over the last couple of years evyrry CoD has sold more copies than the last, but what has slowed is the rate of said copies being moved. Black OPs 2 is still in the Top ten lists every month, where is BF3? If anything BF series sells a bulk at launch then fade after 3months, CoD sells alot in a month then maintain the rest of month.
IF EA had CoD on there hands they too would throw 6 dev houses at the series LOL but EA can't pull that crap with Dice, lol..

I only find 2 major deference between the 2, graphics engine (which i care less about), play style (one fast pace, the other not so much)...

Originally Posted by luciano

This is a huge win for Activision-Blizzard. Vivendi was trying to siphon profits from them to bankroll their losses elsewhere -- AND pay out dividends to Vivendi holders with Act-Bl money. It was pure BS.

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

I agree with you this is a positive. However, they will still be a public company. They will still be run to benefit their owners. I know nothing about the Chinese company Tencent and what their input will be.

Originally Posted by ProfessorTjc

As long as Blizzard has 1mil+ active subs they will continue to make money off WoW.

Kinda, but i think with so much servers etc. they need more than 1mil active to keep things normal.. But before it reaches the even point, they'll still offer a sub choice but then offer a F2P choice as well. But im guessing the sub choice will come will alot of perks..

Originally Posted by Nidix

So subs drop when summer comes, damn I guess everyone must be blind to miss this fact every year.....

Becouse summer inc in April ? - this data is from Q2 2013 (April - June period) - your summer break drop will appear in Q3.

Originally Posted by Buck-Shot

Where that news that said BF4 has more pre-orders..

It was on Google, you know, that really popular website/company/verb?

http://www.examiner.com/article/batt...t-gen-consoles

So many people writing "loose" instead of lose in these comments, really people you are hurting my eyes.

Boub was pretty quick to run some damage control filler posts on the subscriber losses.

Love the spin this place puts on the game.

Who cares about if they lost subs ofc they did, it's over a year after over a million people got suckered into buying the 1year subscription.

But honestly i'm more interested in the whole buying of shares part of the story. Afterall Tencent who is a part of the group who bought some of the vivendi stocks is also the parent company of Riot Games (league of legends) whom they bought some years back. And also got a big stake in asian mmo's. QQ games portal and others. So far they have handled this fine, but it does concern me a bit that one company is buying up shares. And not just in one developer but in more and more, with the underlying competitor potential between Blizzards upcomming "tower defence" game and lol beeing the first concern. It feels a bit like if 1 company owned sony and bought shares in microsoft aswell.