10.3 million subscribers

[starlord]

i guess they'll be shuting down the servers any day now... alas poor wow.

[Rapti]

i guess they'll be shuting down the servers any day now... alas poor wow.

Actually it wouldnt be a stupid idea to merge some servers... for the quality of the game.

[pimpeddakota]

What makes me think they don't get it is because they are going to start with twice a week raid resets... so what your saying is your going to allow us to tear though the content twice as fast....

[Deficineiron]

Am I the only one who's noticing that in Q3 they nearly lost the same number of players they lost back in Q1 and Q2 COMBINED!?

difference is that q1 and q2 were losses in the west offset by china growth. this time a slight majority of losses were in china, with may be 300-350k in the west. If trend continues, we get another china loss in q4. no idea what to expect in the western sub world.

I don't think china numbers are important except as a verification on the trend in the west. The west is now down over 1.3m this year, still losing each month 6% of the playerbase.

[mvaliz]

What makes me think they don't get it is because they are going to start with twice a week raid resets... so what your saying is your going to allow us to tear though the content twice as fast....

Wait... what? What twice-a-week raid resets?

Did I miss a news item or something? o_O

[Rapti]

What makes me think they don't get it is because they are going to start with twice a week raid resets... so what your saying is your going to allow us to tear though the content twice as fast....

Old raiding content, not new. Its a big difference and to me a welcomed change.

[dubbz]

What makes me think they don't get it is because they are going to start with twice a week raid resets... so what your saying is your going to allow us to tear though the content twice as fast....

They aren't going to make current tier twice a week resets....lol ignorant people.

[Abrasion]

i guess they'll be shuting down the servers any day now... alas poor wow.

I'm surprised they haven't merged any servers yet .. some were painful to play on, and that was during the summer when I quit before even more sub losses.

There's no reason not to merge at this point.

[mvaliz]

I'm surprised they haven't merged any servers yet .. some were painful to play on, and that was during the summer when I quit before even more sub losses.

There's no reason not to merge at this point.

Hells yeah there's a reason not to merge servers! Because Blizzard sells server transfers - so why bother merging them when the players can PAY YOU to transfer their character to wherever they want?

Trust me, Blizzard probably thinks like this - and that they probably believe it's actually a service to players to let them choose where they can transfer to from their failing/dying server. :P

[Deficineiron]

If each expansion produced fewer sales, tell me how is it that blizzard grew to having 12 million subscribers? Because if we went by that logic then the decline would of started a very long time ago and not just with the release of cataclysm.

maybe because their primary growth market doesn't require buying expansions? Yes, that logic suggests that the decline probably began mid-wotlk (west), when china growth started masking western sub erosion.

Good deduction. You should take a look at historic mmo revenues and factor in the entire value-added aspect.

---------- Post added 2011-11-09 at 04:33 AM ----------

Very funny and very blurred mosaic of voices following a major announcement.

Not excactly to be wondering why this game stopped being something good when company stopped designing a game to play and started designing a game that "all would like".

The last decision they must have made that was related to the game and not its popularity was the one about difficulty, having Sunwell as contemporary raid, and being couple of months before WotLK.

The only thing is, that nobody back then was demanding to "see sunwell", and they (the devs) went out saying "we believe that to deisign a magnificent raid that only 1% of the population will see is bad design". It was suicidal.

That statement spread like fire, and the new wotlk easymode generation used it to support "their rights" as customers.

Overall it is better to play a game that you re not able to see 100% of it. You know why?
Because you know that the part you dont have access to IS THE BEST!!!
And that gives you a reason to keep playing and keep enjoying as a bigger % of the game becomes available to you.

Actually to date I have yet to see anything that can dispute this viewpoint with numbers. Sub growth ended a month or two after wotlk release. I still don't see the benefit of an mmo world where nothing is unattainable.

[Abrasion]

Hells yeah there's a reason not to merge servers! Because Blizzard sells server transfers - so why bother merging them when the players can PAY YOU to transfer their character to wherever they want?

Trust me, Blizzard probably thinks like this - and that they probably believe it's actually a service to players to let them choose where they can transfer to from their failing/dying server. :P

True enough. Seems like one way to milk money from an annorexic cow that's bleeding subs.

[mvaliz]

maybe because their primary growth market doesn't require buying expansions? Yes, that logic suggests that the decline probably began mid-wotlk (west), when china growth started masking western sub erosion.

<snip>

...I would like to interject to this statement that Kung-Fu Panda was released into theaters by Dreamworks in 2008, mid-way into Wrath of the Lich King.

Make of that what you will. ^_^

[ihyln]

Meh, WoW Brazil's launch and 4.3 coming out will get more subs. I'm not worried about it.

So kidnapped people waiting for their ransoms to be paid out will have something to kill time with?

I thought Brazil was just full of Amazon women and killer spiders

[dan828]

Wait... what? What twice-a-week raid resets?

Did I miss a news item or something? o_O

They're already trying it out in a couple of markets....um Korea and Taiwan I believe. Just trying it out for now it looks like.

---------- Post added 2011-11-08 at 08:44 PM ----------

I'm surprised they haven't merged any servers yet .. some were painful to play on, and that was during the summer when I quit before even more sub losses.

There's no reason not to merge at this point.

Yeah there is...that profit that went up even though there have been sub losses? Part of that comes from "value added services" eg, server transfers. Along with sparkle ponies and BoE pets, it's keeping their profits high.

[Deficineiron]

...I would like to interject to this statement that Kung-Fu Panda was released into theaters by Dreamworks in 2008, mid-way into Wrath of the Lich King.

Make of that what you will. ^_^

wow kfp/pokemon release sometime next year.

I have enjoyed working through the numbers and getting some idea of how blizzard mmo revenues work. I think I am done, though. maybe pop back in when netease comments if anything useful (probably not), or for q4 report in 3 months. The numbers game won't provide further action until then.

I still miss the wow game I enjoyed in bc and some parts in wotlk, but at some level of acceptance have integrated that it is irrevocably gone. private options (vanilla preferred) don't have all the bugs worked out enough to justify effort, though I still enjoy questing in that world as I did years ago.

edit - to clarify, I finally quit wow due to my leveling bracket bg's being FULL of pathing bots. did only bg's for last 9 months in-game, about 800 wsg's. wsg doesnt work so well when half your team isn't human. I think this might illustrate that a lot of the people who quit did so for other-than-headline reasons, meaning not everyone was upset that cat heroics required 5 brains.

[Osmeric]

I mean, you can be the one lemming who thinks he's smart because he stayed on the cliffside... but then gets all lonely and depressed because his friends all left - and that's when the eagle swoops down, kills you, and feeds you to her children...

Ok, I'm going to call you on a mangled metaphor violation here.

[PACOX]

1.7 million subs unaccounted for. F2P MMOs and Rift must be failing amirite?

[mvaliz]

Ok, I'm going to call you on a mangled metaphor violation here.

I realized that when I was writing it... which is why I wrote the second line to that quote... but you subsequently deleted it. Why did you delete it! :P

[Tokas]

MOP will make quick work of that. Take that asia!

I wonder what x-pac would have they made if it was in europe all those losses ^^ Now we get pandas :/ Imagine it was in Egypt... x-pac based around camels and sand all over the place....

[jjson334]

meh Blizz will get over it i now have 3 accounts..... does this help at all xD