Subs: Will they start reporting #s again?

[ComputerNerd]

Heh. Right.

No, I really doubt it. I've maintained that the sub numbers were never that great of a metric. Is it useful to have a count of subs? Sure. Does it mean that players are actually playing and consuming the content? No.

Exactly.
No matter what the numbers, there would be people desperate to twist them to suit their agenda.
If they were actually going up, that would prompt accusations of catering to the casuals.
Declines would be "proof" of some hate campaign.

The community is not capable of doing anything good with that information.

They will start again if the numbers are overwhelmingly positiv.
They already broke their no-numbers rule with Overwatch, so no reason to not expect it for WoW.

Pay once vs subscription which has a cyclic nature.
What rule exactly was broken there - and see proof of my above point, you just twisted those numbers into some bashing of blizzard.

[Deleted]

probably not, but the moment pre-patch hits I reckon they will start going up again

[Zarc]

I really wish they would. I get that it isn't any good indication of how successful the game is, as Blizzard is a business and revenue is what matters. And with all the in-game services and the in-game store and the Token which gives them more money than if everyone just payed the regular sub fee of course they have continued to do very well today compared to when their subscriber base peaked in Wrath. But it was a really fun thing to follow that curve. I have never seen the curve for revenue for World of Warcraft but I guess, as a public company, they report that? Or is it all aggregated on an ActiVision Blizzard level? If so they should've simply started to release the revenue curse together with subscribers so that they could show off how good their game is doing despite lower subs these days. Then they wouldn't have to feel bad about it. And I could get my fun curse.

[Binaris]

I doubt they will blatantly report numbers. Though i would not be shocked if it came about in a "leak"

[Mazeari]

Releasing sub numbers again when they spike, is admitance to the fact they stopped sharing sub numbers because they dropped too much.

[Deleted]

What rule exactly was broken there - and see proof of my above point, you just twisted those numbers into some bashing of blizzard.

Twisting what exactly?
We are talking about the implications of posting numbers vs. not posting them and Blizzard showed with OW's numbers, that they are willing to show numbers if something does well. Meanwhile we saw them abandoning the same thing when the numbers for WoW made for the worse.
There is a clear discrepancy here and your "you can not handle dem numbers!" misses any viable point here.

[stevenho]

They will not report anything for two reasons:

1. After launch spike, they will start dropping again and they would have to stop reporting again = bad PR
2. Their investors don't care about sub numbers, they care about quarterly earning report numbers.

[Lilija]

Short anwer: no

There is no long answer

[Daffan]

I doubt it.

[Vorkreist]

They will report they sold 6-7 mil expansion packs but not the 3 mil subs left after the first 2-3 months.

[Sylvaeres]

With Legion around the corner, and analysts are predicting a sharp rise in subs, possibly even rising over 10 million, do you think Blizzard will begin to report on their Sub numbers again?

It would make sense because when numbers are good, companies want to tout that they are regaining market share, and growing their user base.

Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest all report on the number of users they gain / lose especially when the numbers favor them.

I think Blizzard will begin to report on the Sub numbers come Q3 results, and Q4 results.

It depends. If they have a huge spike in subs, yes. If they have a small one, no shot. It's all dependant on the level of success

[ComputerNerd]

Twisting what exactly?
We are talking about the implications of posting numbers vs. not posting them and Blizzard showed with OW's numbers, that they are willing to show numbers if something does well. Meanwhile we saw them abandoning the same thing when the numbers for WoW made for the worse.
There is a clear discrepancy here and your "you can not handle dem numbers!" misses any viable point here.

They stopped reporting wow numbers because they weren't useful, due to the cyclic nature of subscriptions which despite occuring for a variety of reason were more often than not attributed to a single gripe.
Sales of a Buy to Play game are very different, and therefore there is no promise being broken in reporting them.
As those numbers were not being reported for a very different reason, this claim of a broken promise is twisting the information to suit an agenda.

[Treeskee]

Good riddance to sub #s. Great metric for shareholders, but awful for people who actually play the game. I personally prefer the little graphs we see from time-to-time on MMO that show X amount of people completing certain things.

[nyc81991]

They will start reporting sub #'s again if people actually start playing again. Right now it's lower than Vanilla and embarrassing for them. They only publicly put them out there to show off.

[DarkTZeratul]

Not true. The WoW token costs more money than the normal monthly subscription. It doesn't matter if you pay one month at a time for 3 months or buy 3 months worth of tokens. The tokens have more value.

Which still does nothing to skew the number of subscribers, because the only thing it's measuring is how many people are paying, not how much they're paying. As I said, even the base sub price is not and has never been a static value; with 7 million subscribers, they're paying anywhere from 1.008 to 1.26 billion dollars annually depending on if people are paying monthly or bi-annually. And that's not even taking into account price differences for game cards and the aforementioned hourly payments that are so popular in Asia.

[SteveRocks]

Which still does nothing to skew the number of subscribers, because the only thing it's measuring is how many people are paying, not how much they're paying. As I said, even the base sub price is not and has never been a static value; with 7 million subscribers, they're paying anywhere from 1.008 to 1.26 billion dollars annually depending on if people are paying monthly or bi-annually. And that's not even taking into account price differences for game cards and the aforementioned hourly payments that are so popular in Asia.

I don't say this to be rude, but I don't know what your point is. My post was in response to someone saying Blizzard would not report subscriber numbers because the WoW token skews those numbers.

[Bryntrollian]

With Legion around the corner, and analysts are predicting a sharp rise in subs, possibly even rising over 10 million, do you think Blizzard will begin to report on their Sub numbers again?

It would make sense because when numbers are good, companies want to tout that they are regaining market share, and growing their user base.

Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest all report on the number of users they gain / lose especially when the numbers favor them.

I think Blizzard will begin to report on the Sub numbers come Q3 results, and Q4 results.

They stopped reporting Sub numbers because it wasn't the best way to show the health of the game.

[DarkTZeratul]

I don't say this to be rude, but I don't know what your point is. My post was in response to someone saying Blizzard would not report subscriber numbers because the WoW token skews those numbers.

Oh, then I must have misunderstood and/or misread you. I thought you were the one saying that the token skews the numbers, which is false.

[Sheen26]

Never again because their game is dying and that's all it proves now. Honestly it's sad how blind Blizzard is to their community.

[Relapses]

Never again because their game is dying and that's all it proves now. Honestly it's sad how blind Blizzard is to their community.

Don't forget the part where Mike Morhaime ritualistically bathes in the blood of virgins.