WoW Down to 7.6 Million Subscribers

Originally Posted by kreebs

I just cancelled my subscription today. No flying, no money.

Grats bro.

Honestly, I'm surprised it's not lower. I always figured the majority of people unsubbed at the end of an expansion.

Surprised they didn't lose more tbh, q2 will be pretty harsh. Given where we're at, and that they were unable to back up their earlier comments regarding getting content out quicker, they should lose a lot more before WoD ships. Too much sieging.

What will be interesting are the WoD numbers, particularly with regard to how many people come back because of how awesome it sounds, and how much that is offset by however many babbies actually do throw their toys out of the cot and quit over the flying thing. Those are gonna be interesting numbers, if we can even make sense of them with what little data we get. I hope they put 'no flying' in the cancel sub feedback thing to get legit numbers, even if we'll never be privy to the facts. I expect it to be no more than 10 000 people.

Originally Posted by Xaros

What now?!?

/sarcasm

We lost another raid tier. That's what now.

Originally Posted by Mormolyce

It's taking as long as it always takes. Also looking at the sub history, the year we spent in Sunwell and ICC and DS had little noticeable impact on subs, they're being too strongly driven by other factors.

Personally I hope they take their time, I have a lot of CMs still to run and I should really go get me a Kor'kron wolf...

That wouldn't be such a big deal if the game wasn't 10 years old and the devs hadn't told everyone how confident they were they'd get the content out super quick at Blizzcon or if WoD offered a major update to gameplay.

An expansion pack for such an old game shouldn't have giant, unexpected technical hurdles and shouldn't be in an alpha state at this point. Especially if they're cutting corners by eliminating flying and cutting down on garrison features.

I'm not surprised the numbers aren't lower. The strategy to buy 90's was perfect. It makes people feel like they're cheating without really giving them any advantage. It's a major psychological short term boost that I'm sure a ton of people where happy to pre-purchase for.

And once you have that 90 you might as well hang around and play them.

Originally Posted by brandonsurge

Having played GW2, it suffers from the same thing many other newer mmo's suffer from, a very generic and boring combat system. being so severely limited in regards to your action bar, so few skills and the fact that you can be chasing an enemy who is clearly in melee range yet your melee range abilities wont go off (just another part of that "smoothness and polish" that WoW has that I mentioned earlier). Just a few of the reasons why GW2 never became a "WoW Killer"

Umm melee abilities in gw2 don't require the target to be in range (or even a target selected), they activate anyway. 95% of gw2 abilities are like that, even the ranged ones. In WoW terms, all melee abilities are an AoE cleave with varying radius.

Also WoW is taking the GW2 approach of having fewer skills...so it's coming your way whether you like it or not :P in Blizzard's words "it's removing complexity, not depth" and that's so true.

Finally, anyone who claimd GW2 was going to be a "WoW killer" must be either stupid or misguided because the two games are catering to completely different crowds and playstyles. In terms of class roles, playstyle, progression, endgame, PvP, PvE, etc GW2 is so incredibly different from WoW the two can't even be compared. Besides the lack of sub fees, as if that wasn't enough of an incentive :P

One of the main reasons I picked up GW2 was because I wanted something that didn't have a constant gear treadmill and PvP honor grind happening every seasons, just something I could log into and play to the fullest extent and log out. No afk'ing in cities waiting for raids to gather or queues to pop, it just lets me jump right into the action which is what I wanted due to having a 24/7 shift-based job.

Anyway lets get this topic back on track!

Originally Posted by bryroo

That wouldn't be such a big deal if the game wasn't 10 years old and the devs hadn't told everyone how confident they were they'd get the content out super quick at Blizzcon or if WoD offered a major update to gameplay.

An expansion pack for such an old game shouldn't have giant, unexpected technical hurdles and shouldn't be in an alpha state at this point. Especially if they're cutting corners by eliminating flying and cutting down on garrison features.

I'm not surprised the numbers aren't lower. The strategy to buy 90's was perfect. It makes people feel like they're cheating without really giving them any advantage. It's a major psychological short term boost that I'm sure a ton of people where happy to pre-purchase for.

And once you have that 90 you might as well hang around and play them.

Psychology indeed. I can only imagine a great big chunk of that 7.6 million will play no matter what. I wonder what the behavioral science is behind that. I wonder how many people actually make an assessment about what they're doing or just prefer the routine for its own sake. I wonder what percentage of that 7.6 million is actually having fun on a regular basis. I really do not begrudge them their choice in the slightest, but after reading a lot of experiences, I can't help but wonder.

I believe Blizzard is moving away talent to Titan. A number of experienced and talented developers are vital when developing MMOs, and i don't think Blizzard can acquire the people required from outside. Thus they have to pull people away from their other games like Diablo, Starcraft but mostly World of Warcraft. This has the effect of increasing the time between major content updates, thus steadily reducing the number of subscribers to the game.

Obviously Blizzard wants WOW to return to 12 million subs again, but have deemed this an impossible fear with such an old engine. They can tweak and work it like they want, but it's only going to become more and more repetitive spells, mechanics and quests. New models, new raids, new zones can only bring a temporary break on the decline. If they where to stop the focus on Titan, or better yet not even begin with it in the first place. I do believe their sub count would have been higher, with more frequent content output. But in 3-5 years they can't beat the dead horse hard enough to the inevitable sub count where the income can no longer weigh up for the cost of development.

The game had a good run, and it will for a couple more years but i don't see it updating at this rate in five years.

Originally Posted by MMKing

I believe Blizzard is moving away talent to Titan. A number of experienced and talented developers are vital when developing MMOs, and i don't think Blizzard can acquire the people required from outside. Thus they have to pull people away from their other games like Diablo, Starcraft but mostly World of Warcraft. This has the effect of increasing the time between major content updates, thus steadily reducing the number of subscribers to the game.

Obviously Blizzard wants WOW to return to 12 million subs again, but have deemed this an impossible fear with such an old engine. They can tweak and work it like they want, but it's only going to become more and more repetitive spells, mechanics and quests. New models, new raids, new zones can only bring a temporary break on the decline. If they where to stop the focus on Titan, or better yet not even begin with it in the first place. I do believe their sub count would have been higher, with more frequent content output. But in 3-5 years they can't beat the dead horse hard enough to the inevitable sub count where the income can no longer weigh up for the cost of development.

The game had a good run, and it will for a couple more years but i don't see it updating at this rate in five years.

Titan was delayed just as indefinitely as Starcraft Ghost several months ago. It isn't happening. My guess is that it had too many similarities to Destiny(?) and they decided against the proposition of competing with their business partners.

Originally Posted by MMKing

I believe Blizzard is moving away talent to Titan. A number of experienced and talented developers are vital when developing MMOs, and i don't think Blizzard can acquire the people required from outside. Thus they have to pull people away from their other games like Diablo, Starcraft but mostly World of Warcraft. This has the effect of increasing the time between major content updates, thus steadily reducing the number of subscribers to the game.

Obviously Blizzard wants WOW to return to 12 million subs again, but have deemed this an impossible fear with such an old engine. They can tweak and work it like they want, but it's only going to become more and more repetitive spells, mechanics and quests. New models, new raids, new zones can only bring a temporary break on the decline. If they where to stop the focus on Titan, or better yet not even begin with it in the first place. I do believe their sub count would have been higher, with more frequent content output. But in 3-5 years they can't beat the dead horse hard enough to the inevitable sub count where the income can no longer weigh up for the cost of development.

The game had a good run, and it will for a couple more years but i don't see it updating at this rate in five years.

Blizzard has already stated a few months ago Titan being put on an indefinite hold. They brought the devs from Vanilla/BC that were on Titan back to WoW to work on WoD in fact.

I thought it would be more. With no new content for so long I'm surprised its not lower.

Yeah... seems like WoW will stabilize at ~7M subs for a while.

Originally Posted by McNeil

I was right about a loss... didn't expect it to be that low though

That = being wrong.

Originally Posted by miguelcrespo85

WoW is a dying game, every expansion is just Copy and Paste content... this is why FFXIV is the best MMO on the market atm

Yeah. Enough members to rival the population of most states in the Union. Definitely a game that is 'struggling'. *eyeroll*

Originally Posted by miguelcrespo85

this is why FFXIV is the best MMO on the market atm

Oh you just made my day... It's been weeks since I have laughed so hard a tear fell from my eye. Thank you for that good Sir

Originally Posted by zer0point

Yeah. Enough members to rival the population of most states in the Union. Definitely a game that is 'struggling'. *eyeroll*

It's just dying in the Sylvia Plath sense, not the terminal illness sense.

Can people please stop quoting that FFXIV guy already? I think the point was delivered :P

Originally Posted by Bugsy

Oh you just made my day... It's been weeks since I have laughed so hard a tear fell from my eye. Thank you for that good Sir

Honestly, I think games like LoL are pulling more people away than other MMOs, when I talk to people they usually aren't even aware games like FFXIV exist. They don't remotely have the exposure to compete.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Xuvial

Can people please stop quoting that FFXIV guy already? I think the point was delivered :P

Why, is it that bad? I only liked the original nes version.

Everything will eventually die at some point. I wonder if the people who played with sticks were in a panic during the the advent of radio when everyone stopped playing outside

Originally Posted by niker99

the only reason it still has that many subs because most are addicted to it or have the feeling that its a part of their life cause it has been around for so long now they cant leave, if Wow got released today, Yes TODAY in its current state, i could promise u it would never be the mmo it is today, and would probably not even reach over 3m subs, cause Shitty low lvl content, bad balanced pvp and content thats faceroll, oh yeh enjoy 13 months of no content cause u know, even games with a lower sub count when they are about to release an expansion release content updates till the expansion hits, sure the expansions blizzard release have plenty content and u may say all the numbers and changes are more then other mmos but they also got around 7 MILLION subscribers more + mounts in store and insta 90s or whatever then any other mmo out there so its kind of funny,

Excuses, excuses, excuses. The content wouldn't be released as it is TODAY ever... It would be tuned for a new game release vs. tuned for sprinting from L1-85 to reach current content. How do I know? Because that's exactly how it was released when it was actually NEW. Its not like the game it was then didn't have a shit-ton of pvp balance issues, PITA questing issues, etc. It totally did and it still grew to support much more than 3 million players. Why? Because the good things far outweighed the bad and its value was better than its competitors. Not much has changed.