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.

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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. Alupinya's Avatar
    The only reason i quit is the ability pruning they did I could never get into it after they took so much away from my main
  1. mike2014's Avatar
    all i read was the people that tryed our gone now the real fanbase is still here from this announment
  1. kamil84's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mark01gt View Post
    IMO activision is ruining the game. They now own blizzard and are pushing store purchases rather than content and what we actually want. Corporate knows best. Maybe the loss of subs will allow them to wake the hell up.
    The directive of WoW have no ethics anymore, it is not the same company it once was. When they have no ethics it is up to the players to tell them NO. Unfortunately WoW is so big and has many idiots that do not realize that buying these mounts are hurting the game. They keep doing it and I'm afraid things may only get worse.

    They sell this Runesaber mount, they make the money from the lost subs and more. They are making so much more already with the P2W Token. All the 3 million lost subs when coming to an end result mean Sh!t, they can clean their asses with what you think and reasons for leaving. You know why? because they know that you will come back for the next expansion and they did get the money anyways with less and gated content. Meanwhile the people that still play this game out of addiction or social bonds are stuck with mediocre and cut content that goes to the store to milk them more.
  1. Alvito's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    You're assuming Blizzard hasn't been tossing some extra tokens into the AH. The system is designed so you couldn't tell if they were doing this (or the opposite; keeping some tokens out of the AH that someone bought.)
    Why in the world would they do that? The gold has zero value to them. Letting people play for free cost them money. You are insane if you think they are putting up tokens just so people can keep buying them with gold.
  1. nipa101's Avatar
    Haha yes good job my unsub brothers! soon we will force blizzard to sell WoW to a company that will care for it. I for one would love if 343I was to buy it off them but hay that's only because I like weekly content.

    Anyway I think you got what you deserved for treating us like cows that you milk for money.

    WE ARE NOT MONEY, WE are living people that deserve what we are paying for
  1. mmoc4d4e0f36a6's Avatar
    I don't know how these fanboys come to think that such an increase and drop is normal in an expac lifetime. Neither the 3 mio. gain, nor the 2.9 mio loss is "normal" or "expected" by any means. Stop acting stupid by playing fools. And yes it is really that bad, no matter how much money you think they make. When a company has to do SOMETHING to actually cover and make up for the losses, it IS bad.

    Now to the "this game is 10 years old"-bullcrap. Yes this game is old. But it also has a huge base of fans, who are playing or once have been playing this game. In fact: of all those accounts that where created only a very small minority is still playing. Look up, Blizzard states that 100 mio. Accounts have been created, only a moron believes those are all Test-Accounts which don't exist long enough or banned bot-accounts, because bots never get banned.

    Blizzard did announce WOD, and 3 Mio. People thought that sounds great. People were willing to give Blizzard another chance and were excited about the game. There is no "it is old, can't get people excited over this", the extrem rise in numbers at WOD-start prove that there are still people willing to play IF the game is done right. But Blizzard didn't get to keep those. They made announcements which they didn't keep, and dropped the ball. They MISSED the chance to turn this downward trend around, and this time they did really have a chance.

    Nobody has to agree with that. But saying "it is a old game" and "this was all expected and is not that bad" is flat out lying to yourself.
  1. Hatorri's Avatar
    Because they treat us as money and not as living people they went down to 7.1M subs, and if they dont change this way they will go more down.. people want quality on what they pay for.. and lately Blizzard dont offer that, many times things are doing in game, sounds like they do a favor to people who dont deserved.
  1. mike2014's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by nipa101 View Post
    Haha yes good job my unsub brothers! soon we will force blizzard to sell WoW to a company that will care for it. I for one would love if 343I was to buy it off them but hay that's only because I like weekly content.

    Anyway I think you got what you deserved for treating us like cows that you milk for money.

    WE ARE NOT MONEY, WE are living people that deserve what we are paying for
    No just no not even close profits when higher in wow regardless of the sub los you do know that right and that new mount is going to push the profits even higher translation wow is still king and no where near even to dying.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Arrclyde-79 View Post
    I don't know how these fanboys come to think that such an increase and drop is normal in an expac lifetime. Neither the 3 mio. gain, nor the 2.9 mio loss is "normal" or "expected" by any means. Stop acting stupid by playing fools. And yes it is really that bad, no matter how much money you think they make. When a company has to do SOMETHING to actually cover and make up for the losses, it IS bad.

    Now to the "this game is 10 years old"-bullcrap. Yes this game is old. But it also has a huge base of fans, who are playing or once have been playing this game. In fact: of all those accounts that where created only a very small minority is still playing. Look up, Blizzard states that 100 mio. Accounts have been created, only a moron believes those are all Test-Accounts which don't exist long enough or banned bot-accounts, because bots never get banned.

    Blizzard did announce WOD, and 3 Mio. People thought that sounds great. People were willing to give Blizzard another chance and were excited about the game. There is no "it is old, can't get people excited over this", the extrem rise in numbers at WOD-start prove that there are still people willing to play IF the game is done right. But Blizzard didn't get to keep those. They made announcements which they didn't keep, and dropped the ball. They MISSED the chance to turn this downward trend around, and this time they did really have a chance.

    Nobody has to agree with that. But saying "it is a old game" and "this was all expected and is not that bad" is flat out lying to yourself.
    Nah those people were oldschool players from tbc time all this means most our gone now only a few stayed period.
  1. Caolela's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by BenBos View Post

    So 30 million played HS already in 14 months time. 11 million are playing the CLOSED beta of Heroes. 25 million bought Diablo3.


    You're hyping HotS. That is 11 mil. sign-ups, not 11 mil. playing it. A big difference.

    I've played HotS. Today I saw on HotS forums the hotslogs numbers which are: >10% (about 1 mil.) actual players, 2.7% (300k ish) playing Quick Mode, and .5% (50k ish) playing Hero League. Even if hotslogs' numbers are off a bit, that's a pathetic showing for a major title set for release in a few weeks from a major dev house.

    HotS still has serious issues such as lag/network, server, terrible MMR system that no one likes, and many others. What's more, the gameplay gets stale pretty soon because it's too repetitious and dumbed-down for the fun you may get from it. But hey, you can spend up to 10 bucks each for heroes you're tired of grinding gold for, and there's 35 of them with many to come. And you know Blizz...they really know how to make a soul-killing grind. Also doesn't feel like many in the game since I've seen a lot of the same players in random matches. I uninstalled it.

    Sound familiar? Sure does to me.

    What I don't get is why people can't see what Blizz has been doing for many years now, or they go ostrich and pretend it isn't happening. It's about max profit for least effort/cost, and lie and PR spin to get your money.

    It is NOT about them not knowing what the fuck they've done that wrecked WoW, or not knowing how to fix it. They know exactly what they're doing.

    How many increasingly shittier WoW xpacs does it take for people to realize that Blizz is like Lucy saying, "...honest Charlie Brown! I promise! I won't pull the football away this time. C'mon Charlie Brown...run over here and kick it!"??

    "Fool me 3 xpacs...umm...fool me...won't get fooled agin'!" Even Shrub, The Man-Ape From Crawford® wasn't that dumb.

    MoP was bad enough. I left last July and uninstalled because I saw what WoD would be and didn't buy for one second anything they said during beta. I was right then and I am now.

    Unsub and don't come back. Don't use gold for tokens, just leave. Don't spend a cent on their other titles. That's the only thing that'll get Blizzard's attention.
  1. mmoc3514689de5's Avatar
    My favourite part was when they openly admitted to know in advance that WoD will bomb, so they raised xpac price and cranked the hype to 11 for pre-order-with-boost sales specifically to make up for expected downspike.
    This very strongly implies they have no more capability to even try a salvage a trainwreck DLC.
    GG
  1. Markusfh's Avatar
    Maybe now they will consider stop nerfing the fcking ww monk overall and pay attention to pvp for once this expansion
  1. DeiVias's Avatar
    Maybe there's alot of people like me that after 11 years are just over it and want something new so have unsubbed.

    It's not as if the game has now become horrible, it hasn't, i simply don't get excited to play it like i use to, it's expected after this many years.
  1. enlight03's Avatar
    Ditch LFR.
    Ditch LFD.
    Ditch x realm crap.
    Bring back the feeling of server community.
    Bring back 10 and 25 raiding, only normal and heroic difficulty.
    Bring back professions.
  1. Caolela's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by enlight03 View Post
    Ditch LFR.
    Ditch LFD.
    Ditch x realm crap.
    Bring back the feeling of server community.
    Bring back 10 and 25 raiding, only normal and heroic difficulty.
    Bring back professions.
    GL widdat. That ship has already sailed and gone off the edge of the sea, for all of the Flat-Earther's out there that believe Blizz will ever revert those greed-grabs.

    They depend on fanboys and assorted half-wits to believe the PR spin they spew out, which Blizz has honed to near-perfection, and the Fellow Travelers are equally as adept at gleefully forking over their cash to support it like drunken sailors on shore leave. But they forget the hangover soon after it's over, only to repeat the cycle next time.

    A form of insanity, sort of like Stockholm Syndrome.
  1. dextersmith's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by nightfalls View Post
    Blizzard, in the end, was just way too short-sighted in how fun people would find their game and didn't look past the first month of launch. Then after their initially good result, they foolishly doubled down on no flying and same content in 6.1, and now it's biting them in the ass.
    No, it was hubris. They first considered no flying because they wanted people to marvel at their world.
  1. markdall's Avatar
    Well whatever you don don't bring back flying. Can't let the griefers lose a small % of their prey and wouldn't want people to "swoop down and loot a quest item". Oh wait, that'd make leveling alts a little more bearable.

    Then again mythic BRF and the terrible mechanics are what made me stop raiding.
  1. rpdrichard's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by markdall View Post
    Well whatever you don don't bring back flying. Can't let the griefers lose a small % of their prey and wouldn't want people to "swoop down and loot a quest item". Oh wait, that'd make leveling alts a little more bearable.

    Then again mythic BRF and the terrible mechanics are what made me stop raiding.
    People can manage to deal with it while leveling like they did in MoP, but no flying at level 100 is completely pointless, and this is one of the thing that has contributed to the 2.9M sub loss, with some luck they'll correct course, not only with flying, before the trend continues.
  1. mmoc0da4e3afdf's Avatar
    I'm sad that so many subs are lost, but to be honest, Blizzard is one of the worst companies when it comes to listening player feedback (in WoW, I can't say for other Blizzard games).
  1. mmocecb415a382's Avatar
    Even though I'm not currently subbed, I love WoW. So many great times but I unsubbed due to my uncontrollable addiction to playing it. I didn't like a lot of the changes/new expansions but to me it was still WoW. However I've quit again for the 10000000 time and hopefully will never play again but it does make me very sad to see it declining.
  1. Tyze's Avatar
    Im one of the banned ones, I tried honorbuddy. Leveled one to 100, did some bgs while I was away but that's it.


    I deserve my bann sure, but im not a full time botter. I was just so fucking bored to level up and didn't have money to boost and it's too expensive.
    Otherwise im a full active player, well.. Not anymore Actually not that mad that I got banned, soon summer, and tbh I'm a bit bored with the game. Lack of things to do for me.

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