WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers

[Zokten]

Well I apologise for apparently giving you more intellectual credit than was necessary.

You missed it.

[Arbs]

Other games are holding on with anywhere between 0-1 million players/subscribers. Yet somehow we're supposed to get up in arms about WoW having 9x that many people? I can see exactly how it's nothing to worry about and I'm currently playing Rift. Throwing around 'fanboy' because people have common sense and not knee jerk reactions is silly.

Wise words

[[Apok]]

Those who left are probably people that havent played prior to WotLK, because they cant handle the grind and effort which the game requires again.
Its nothing to be upset about, wotlk and cata kids...

I can't bring myself to play much any more, i hate daily quests, yet i would happily farm like was needed for loatheb in vanilla.

The lack of choice with regards to direction of progressin your character via a certain means is boring and annoying.

[briktal]

Good, one wotlk kid less. People nowadays expect to get everything for free without putting in any effort.

Five years would be mid-TBC.

[Deleted]

This is what happens when you casualise the game

[FiveOneTwo]

WoW is "dying" in about the same way that a healthy 40 year old man is "dying."

the game was never going to live forever. and its finally reaching a point where its starting to get "old" (in both gameplay and tech, 8 years is a long time to be playing ANY game with regularity). it will probably lose numbers bit by bit from here on out. but ill start worrying about a lack of support on blizzards end when the game actually reaches numbers that aren't still largely unprecedented. in other words. lets save this inevitable "doomsday" conversation for another 3-4 years.

[Djuntas]

Good, one wotlk kid less. People nowadays expect to get everything for free without putting in any effort.

Please, dont be hating. I don't think you'll find any people on this board, who haven't done long grinds before. BUT having daylies as the ONLY option, that is where it went wrong.

PS; Exalted Argent Dawn inn classic wow, early 40 exalted title inn wotlk way before most people. What have you done inn wow? Again dont be hating.

[RoKPaNda]

Expected. WoW is in a decline, and I'm saying that as someone that likes the game and has an active sub. It will never hit peak numbers again, and that's okay. It's not going anywhere.

[Bahska]

I was one of them. After playing for 5 years without a single lapse in my sub I finally got fed up with Mist's of Grindaria and called it quits.

lol dont do the dailys maybe? I hit 90 strictly from herbalism on my mage (Alt) and i have a 480 item level on him i never even went to the Townlong or dread wastes nor did i do 1 daily from anywhere else. Not even the tillers.

[Airwaves]

This thread is hilarious. What does it matter I am still having fun on wow. Oh yer and 9.6 MILLION people are also having fun! It's coming towards the end of a patch and it will go back up in 5.2. 9.6 mil still puts it millions of people in front of any other mmo ever made.

[Sarnaxxx]

You are putting a positive spin on a huge loss.

How many people do you think play in the U.S. and Europe? 2+ million respectively? Losing 1/4 of your market in one of those places is not something that you can just ignore.

I don't argue that this is a downturn in the size of the player base but did all 500k leave from US & Europe? They didn't lose 1/4 of their market in either of those regions. Those 500k came from the 10,000,000 players around the globe. They lost 1/20th of their player base, not 1/4. Is it declining? I don't think so personally but everyone is welcome to their own opinion.

[Tharkkun]

So? Just because 500k is more than most other mmo's have in active players doesn't change the fact that it's a huge loss. And a huge loss just means a huge loss, not that the game is dying or whatever, but I guess you're just a fanboy who doesn't like it when someone doesn't praise the game to a next level.

Just think about it, 500k may be more than most other mmo's have but it's still about 5% of all subscribers. And please don't forget that it's still a loss of about 7,5 million Dollar or 6,5 Euro I think, per month ofcourse. So I don't know bout you but I think that, even for a company as Blizzard, that really is huge.

Except the game losing players doesn't have a direct effect on me, yet. Sometimes I think people jump ship because there is a perception that the game is bleeding rather than asking the question "Am I still having fun?"

[Zokten]

There are plenty of MMOs out there, none of them come close to WoW's numbers, unless you want to count games like LoL.

I wouldn't think they would after the foot-hold WoW had in place before they came out.

When your players have lots of friends already playing and lots of time invested in they usually won't leave all to often.

[Mirishka]

Oh no, only 9.6 million subs now... the game is doomed! Doomed!

I think its kinda equal parts sad, equal parts pathetic that some of you guys all but celebrate WoW (or some other game that's 'cool' to hate on) losing subs. Maybe you're bitter players of failed competitors like TOR, or maybe you're just the kind of selfish people who love hearing about a successful person losing some of their money on the stock market.

I mean, imagine being in college and having family or friends all just hawking you and waiting for the moment you fail, making forum posts about how terrible they expect your grades to be/etc. That's some of you guys.

But yeah, clearly WoW is dying /eyeroll. Just like it was dying in Cata, just like it was dying at the end of Wrath, blah blah blah. Man I wish I was at the helm of a 'dying' game with 9.6 million players.

[dfjdejulio]

So what? A decline is a decline, WoW's "golden age" is long over, the game is going to keep losing players, will you still be using that defense when it's down to 3 million players?

I do not believe WoW will ever get down to 3 million players -- the folks running the business expect it to perform better than that, and my expectation is that if it ever got below, say, 6 million players, they'd begin the process of shutting it down. "If we can't be completely stinking rich, what's the point of doing anything at all?"

(The exception I see would be if Blizzard could do what Harmonix did and re-privatize, undoing various acquisitions. But I'm not so sure they're in a position to do that. I think they're being treated more like "Guitar Hero" and less like "Rock Band", if you follow my thinking.)

[Mort459]

You don't have any common sense. That's why I call you a fanboy. Because you're too blinded to see what's so obvious with a little thought put into it.

Cata lost subs because of a lack of content. That's logical and expected to happen in any game. Guess what just happened? Sub loss WITH content. What do you think that means? That means they are in deep shit, because even if they pump out content on a regular basis, people are giving less of a fuck more and more.

This is so obvious to see but apparently you can't wrap your head around it.

He plays Rift... and doesn't play WoW... but somehow he's a WoW fanboy. Brilliant. I love the internet.

(Note: Look at his post history and you see quite clearly what games he's interested in at the moment...)

[Peacemoon]

The 'magic' and 'soul' of WoW died a while ago in my opinion, and the game is has been in decline for a while. Everything that gave World of Warcraft that special 'online world' feel and that really harnessed the potential of closely formed online communities has been brushed aside in the name consumerism and convenience. A realm community used to be an awesome social group, you knew a load of people and a load of people knew and recognised you. You'd log on not for the daily grind but just to play with your online buddies. Now people barely know each other unless they go out of their way, and you just get randomly assigned to a random group with random people and that is supposed to simulate the enjoyment and comradeship of yesteryear. Well I'm sorry Blizzard - but it doesn't even come close. I for one see no reason to pay a subscription when I can just buy an offline RPG which is just as good and doesn't try to pretend to be massively multiplayer.

[Munashe the Cheetah]

9.6 million is a complete scam and a lie.

They should not count the chinese who do not have subscription models like everyone else. If a chinese plays 1 hour in a year, and pays $0.01 to do so to blizzard, that hardly counts as a subscription.

I wish they would stop trying to mislead the market and tell us how many europe and north american subscriptions they have, because that is what should be compared to other MMOs. Dont get me wrong, I love WoW, but it does not need more credit then it deserves, it already hogs the spot light almost entirely.

[Tharkkun]

God you fanboys never quit.

He's stating a fact. You're trolling.

[Skroe]

How many of those accounts are 2nd accounts and 3rd? I know just from promotions / RAF / SoR I have 4 to my name, 2 active. Many people in my guild are the same. How many of these are unique players? How many in North America and Europe.

The NA region has ~230 servers. It could easily be reduced to 90, and should. A lot of people should play WoW, but they're spread out to when the game was at its peak of its popularity in Wrath and they needed to spread players to lighten server load in ICC. It's three years later. WoW is far smaller.