Update (9:15 PM EDT): Added 6.2 notes update

WoW Down to 7.1 Million Subscribers
Blizzard had their Q1 2015 earnings call today, announcing that WoW is down to 7.1 million subscribers at the end of Q1 2015. This is down 2.9 million from the Q4 2014 call that listed WoW at 10 million subscribers. This appears to be the largest drop in subscriber count in the history of the game.

  • Tokens are not included in this timeframe, as they launched in Q2.
  • World of Warcraft’s revenue performance at constant FX has been more stable, driven by continued strong uptake on value added services, and price increases in select regions, which partially offset subscriber declines, particularly in the East.
  • Heroes of the Storm had over 11 million beta sign-ups.
  • Hearthstone is now at 30 million players, up from 25 million last quarter.

Don't see a chart? Enable javascript!



Patch 6.2 PTR Notes Update - May 6
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
General Changes

Garrisons, Followers, and Outposts
Garrison Buildings
  • Mine
    • Mineral nodes should now only be displayed on the mini-map when a character is inside the mine. Characters with Track Minerals active will continue to see mineral nodes from outside the Mine.

Raids and Dungeons
Raids
  • Bonus Roll Changes
    • Seal of Tempered Fate can now be purchased from the Fate-Twisters for gold and no longer has a cap on how many can be obtained per week. Additionally, characters can now hold up to a maximum of 20 Seals of Tempered Fate (up from 10).

Classes

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Blood
  • Mastery: Blood Shield's Physical damage absorption shield from Death Strike now also counts as having an active mitigation effect active.
Talents
  • Breath of Sindragosa now costs 20 Runic Power per second for Blood Death Knights.

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
General
  • Tranquilizing Shot has switched functionality with Glyph of Tranquilizing Shot. Tranquilizing Shot no longer costs Focus but has a 10-second cooldown.
Glyphs
  • Glyph of Tranquilizing Shot has switched functionality with Tranquilizing Shot. Glyph of Tranquilizing Shot causes Tranquilizing Shot to cost 40 Focus instead of a 10-second cooldown.

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Talents
  • Flameglow now absorbs up to a maximum of 20% damage from each attack (down from 30%).
Armor Sets
  • Tier-17 2-piece set bonus for Fire Mages has been redesigned. It now reduces the cooldown of Inferno Blast by 2 seconds.

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
General
  • Cloak of Shadows now has a 90-second cooldown (up from 60 seconds).

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Armor Sets
  • Tier 17 4-piece set bonus for Restoration Shaman now reduces the mana cost of Chain Heal by 50% for 8 seconds (down from 75% reduction for 10 seconds).

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Armor Sets
  • PvP 4-piece set bonus for Destruction Warlocks has been redesigned. It now causes Incinerate to deal 25% more damage on targets affected by the Warlock's Immolate.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Armor Sets
  • Tier-17 4-piece set bonus for Arms Warrior has been redesigned. It now reduces the cost of Mortal Strike by 5 Rage.
This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW Down to 7.1 Million Subscribers started by chaud View original post
Comments 1310 Comments
  1. Prag's Avatar
    Didn't really need to see the earnings statements to know that they're losing subscribers. The whole selling gold for real money thing pretty much spoke for itself.
  1. KainneAbsolute's Avatar
    They really need to analyze what they did good and bad in the last expansions. If you dont bring good content, even the fast expansions wont save the game. They need to develop more the characters and accept they need to write better stories. Garrosh had a big potential, the infinite dragonflight had a big potential, we had the chance to explore better Nerzhul and Guldan...but they they didnt.

    WoW is popular because we played the RTS games. We played as Arthas, Illidan, Sylvanas, Jaina, Thrall...we know the story of them, we know their mistakes and goals. Thats why i was really INTERESTED to play Burning Crusade and know what happened to Illidan. In Wrath i wanted to kill the Lich King because he caused so much pain and sorrow to many characters...I played Warcraft because i wanted to be part of the story and i stayed because i enjoyed pvp and raid. In the RTS games we were able to learn more about the identities of the races and factions.

    Many stories between each expansions arent developed ingame. Many are told in books, short stories in the website, etc. Why we cant have a Warcraft 4 and develop those or new stories? It is really easy to introduce new characters in the RTS game. For example I think it would be cool to play with Yrel in a rts game.
  1. arcaneshot's Avatar
    I started reading these comments and then suddenly lost interest and finished all my garrisons.

    That's how much peoples' conspiracy theories matter to me.
  1. charliesheen126's Avatar
    The subscription drop is about to get way, WAY WORSE. While 6.2 will bring back some of the subs, they will be lost fairly quick. WoD is going to have a pointless filler pvp season like MoP, "Season 3 Warmongering". This means a content drought will happen, I am guessing around 8 months at the very least. Blizzard as a company is beyond disappointing. With all the money they make this is what we get. WoD is a two tier expansion to push out the next expansion faster right? Nope, less content in the expansion that is HIGHER priced then the others, and we get a content drought anyways.
  1. mmoc25fb373f9a's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Zanryu View Post
    The subs no longer count since everybody who is really into WoW get their gametime through gold -> WoW Token.
    Quote Originally Posted by Jasper Kazai View Post
    Does this count the amount of people who are now paying for the game via WoW tokens?
    You do realize that these quarter ONE numbers and the token came in TWO?

    Well deserved the drop! theres only one way now and that is down

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozenbeef View Post
    Kinda deserved, timeless isle alone had more endgame than wod 6.0-6.1 combined >.<
    No it did not but worry not you can judge that for yourself with TI 2.0 in Patch 6.2
  1. AlmightyGerkin's Avatar
    7.1 million wow thats a big decline. In my opinion its cause 6.1 never really did anything to keep people in the game. Twitter and selfies cameras what on Earth were they thinking with that bandwagon that they jumped on.
  1. Wildtree's Avatar
    Ghostcrawler nerfed the subs

    Thanks Obama



    did I do this right now?
  1. Blade Wolf's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xaelai View Post
    If you think you're going to get an "explanation" for this, you're out of your mind.

    Blizzcon = Hype Train.

    That's it's #1 purpose. They'll hold a con, make ridiculous amounts of money (seriously, $200 almost for VIRTUAL tickets!?!?), and Hype up whatever they got cooking on the back burners waiting for people to hoot and holler and throw money at them.
    Not as much an explanation, i'd rather just hear how they'll try to spin this disaster into something.
  1. Xaelai's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by arcaneshot View Post
    I started reading these comments and then suddenly lost interest and finished all my garrisons.

    That's how much peoples' conspiracy theories matter to me.
    Conspiracy theories?

    Lol.

    What "Conspiracy" are you saying that we're trying to do here?

    Subs go down, and we're discussing the myriad of reasons as to why people are quitting in droves. Like... an over-hyped expansion not meeting expectations is being the #1 over-arching reason.
  1. nightfalls's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by KainneAbsolute View Post
    They really need to analyze what they did good and bad in the last expansions. If you dont bring good content, even the fast expansions wont save the game. They need to develop more the characters and accept they need to write better stories. Garrosh had a big potential, the infinite dragonflight had a big potential, we had the chance to explore better Nerzhul and Guldan...but they they didnt.

    WoW is popular because we played the RTS games. We played as Arthas, Illidan, Sylvanas, Jaina, Thrall...we know the story of them, we know their mistakes and goals. Thats why i was really INTERESTED to play Burning Crusade and know what happened to Illidan. In Wrath i wanted to kill the Lich King because he caused so much pain and sorrow to many characters...I played Warcraft because i wanted to be part of the story and i stayed because i enjoyed pvp and raid. In the RTS games we were able to learn more about the identities of the races and factions.

    Many stories between each expansions arent developed ingame. Many are told in books, short stories in the website, etc. Why we cant have a Warcraft 4 and develop those or new stories? It is really easy to introduce new characters in the RTS game. For example I think it would be cool to play with Yrel in a rts game.
    WHAT?! You weren't engaged when Garrosh got arrested by the Pandaria Police and got released so he can go do time travel and wreak more havoc in alternate universe Draenor where Velen gets sacrificed, Doomhammer gets 1-hit-kapowned, and Yrel goes from prisoner to Exarch in less than a day?
  1. plaits's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by nightfalls View Post
    Yeah, to be honest, while features were good, I don't get why they tried to move so far away from the Wrath model. At its core, it was both the height in terms of overall sustained subscribers (versus the short burst of MOP). I didn't get to play Wrath endgame, but Wrath was why I started playing the game.

    As you said, it needed refinement and maintenance, but not a whole new shitty model.
    Yep. Classic case of fixing something that wasn't broken and inevitably breaking it in the process.
    I guess the devs needed to justify their jobs with continual tinkering, even where that tinkering is detrimental.
  1. bryroo's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Iflash View Post


    How some people seem to be reacting.
    You beat me to it.

    You'd be crazy to not expect some drastic changes incoming.

    Hell, they might even turn on flying now.
  1. Xaelai's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by AlmightyGerkin View Post
    7.1 million wow thats a big decline. In my opinion its cause 6.1 never really did anything to keep people in the game. Twitter and selfies cameras what on Earth were they thinking with that bandwagon that they jumped on.
    Usually a x.1 patch has a new tier of content.

    Did we get a new tier of content?

    Not really, no. No Dailies, no new dungeons (they opened a raid that existed from the start about the same time 6.1 came out). They slapped some items on some NPCs, allowed us to do some of the things we should have been able to do from the start and called that an x.1 patch, lol.

    Worst x.1 patch ever. It had pretty much zero content in it. Even Cataclysm x.1 was better than THAT, as sad as that is.
  1. Chickat's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by papajohn4 View Post
    and seeing 6.2 patch it seems they did not got the message...they continue in the same philosophy, it seems they think that wow tokens will save the situation, but only for a while..
    6.2 was too far ahead by the time people left to change it. Any real changes will be in the next raid tier, or more likely next expansion. Tbh next expansion might be too far along to significantly change too. 7.0 or 7.2 will see their answer. Just quit for a year and come back.
  1. Themanintobuildafire's Avatar
    I knew it was going to be massive. My server used to be packed 24/7 with over 100k+ just on Horde side...now outside of the prime time playing time it is pretty much empty...sub drops or people stopping logging in is what does that.

    I just feel like there isn't a lot to push me towards group type activities...without socialization, the game gets boring.

    I love PVP - they have done fuck all to stop the botters, hackers and cheaters this season. Why bother playing in those conditions. I bet a shit ton of pvp only players quit because of Blizz's lack of attention in addressing these issues.

    I love PvE - it is BORING. I think they need better carrots. LFR without tier is a waste of time once you have seen it or done with part of your ring quest. Raids themselves really need to be re-designed. 4 levels sucks and the power of the ilvl difference is just retarded. Mythic being 20 people only also killed a lot of people from trying that difficulty. Blizz really needs to go back and look at raiding. I'd rather they had a Flex difficulty and a heroic (original heroic) and ditched this mythic concept. Fuck LFR. Also give the world bosses really awesome shit that drops and make MORE world bosses. Ruk sucks so much people don't do him after the first day or two of the week...don't even know if people are doing the first two world bosses on my server anymore...never see it happen. In MoP we farmed ALL the bosses cause they ALL dropped mounts...and they were a cakewalk as the xpac went on and so not a big hassle.

    Garrisons are great for gold, but suck for actual content. Good idea but just too much sitting solo = killing the game.

    Blizz you need to really get your shit together or subs are going to keep bleeding. I predict it being like a snowball. Once people stop logging in, server gets emptier, it promotes more people to cancel and like that snowball...
  1. Aurora's Avatar
    Something under discussed that may have accounted for some portion of the leavers was the awful stability in the first month of WoD that at numerous times made the game unplayable. There were obviously the login issues, phasing issues and general lag we all enjoyed but there were also seemingly realm specific issues that the masses probably never knew about, like on ours they somehow rolled our realm back a week from its intended date to a point where highmaul didn't open when it was supposed to and we had to wait a further week for the problem to correct itself. Support was generally awful and in Europe at least average wait time on tickets were at the time greater than 11 days. I don't think I'd ever seen a game with support and communication as bad as WoW was during WoD's prolonged launch, I could imagine those used to a better standard getting sick of being unable to play as intended quite quickly.
  1. nightfalls's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xaelai View Post
    Worst x.1 patch ever. It had pretty much zero content in it. Even Cataclysm 6.1 was better than THAT, as sad as that is.
    For once I wasn't happy to hear "no more Trolls, finally!" Seriously. Even fucking bringing more trolls would have been better.
  1. Xaelai's Avatar
    WHAT?! You weren't engaged when Garrosh got arrested by the Pandaria Police and got released so he can go do time travel and wreak more havoc in alternate universe Draenor where Velen gets sacrificed, Doomhammer gets 1-hit-kapowned, and Yrel goes from prisoner to Exarch in less than a day?
    I woulda been interested in SEEING the Trial....

    Oh wait, they put it in a book that they expect us to pay more money for. Somehow, playing the game isn't enough to see the major plot as it unfolds. I remember when books were just small side-stories that people read when they wanted to know more. Now, Books are required reading if you want to understand what's happening in the game, lol.
  1. Prag's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by arcaneshot View Post
    I started reading these comments and then suddenly lost interest and finished all my garrisons.

    That's how much peoples' conspiracy theories matter to me.
    You really zinged all those idiots by taking the time to tell them you weren't going to take the time to read their comments.

    Seriously.

    Way to go.
  1. mmoc2469da80bf's Avatar
    $$$$2,9MILLION$$$$ down , its a start . Now lets see if they act on it . Personaly i think they will not or not enough .
    Remember these people are real stuck up guys on a high horse , and they are used to condecend , ignore and insult their costomers .
    The "WE FEEL" , and "We will adress that soon" policy will have to go . So 2,9MILLION might dent their ego , but another 3 MILLION will
    be needed to get their High Horse cut down from under them .So lets see if this flick to the wrist we gave them will scare them a bit .
    Otherwise rinse and repeat that will get these lazy moneymilkers back in line .

Site Navigation