"Legion pre-purchases are tracking in-line with the previous expansion."

[Osmeric]

One thing is perfectly clear... WoW paved the way financially for the other franchises to be built... now the other games are carrying WoW.

I have no doubt WoW would be slashed if it weren't making money. It's a not a growth opportunity anymore, so there would be no sense keeping it going if it weren't still profitable.

[Maudib]

I have no doubt WoW would be slashed if it weren't making money. It's a not a growth opportunity anymore, so there would be no sense keeping it going if it weren't still profitable.

"I have no doubt WoW would be slashed if it weren't making money."

Sooner than you think.

[Osmeric]

"I have no doubt WoW would be slashed if it weren't making money."

Sooner than you think.

Oh, I am well aware of the downward spiral of revenue/budget that will be the game's fate.

[roahn the warlock]

WoW is but a fraction of Blizzards revenue, most of it comes from Hearthstone. It's probably profitable but not by a large margin. So even if WoW would have 1000 subs Blizzard wouldn't go bankrupt.

Actually, I'd wager most of it now comes from Overwatch.

[Deleted]

Why do people care so much about how many other people play..

[xenogear3]

Why do people care so much about how many other people play..

When the sub dropped from 12 million to 10 million, Blizzard starts to have 2nd thought.

It started 3 new games.
Many developers are moved to Hearthstone, Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm.

Blizzard is much more overreacting than the trolls on this message board !

[Conscious]

If the subscriptions were notable they'd release the numbers.

Otherwise we're probably still looking at 4-5 million tops right now, with *maybe* another couple million from the launch bump.

[Osmeric]

And they are no longer releasing non-GAAP numbers, from which one could back out expansion sales estimates, at least to some extent.

[Granyala]

pre purchases is for the addicts and they obviously will never go away.
you have to be dumb to pre purchase, so this only shows how many stupid and addicted people still exist.

On single player games I agree.

Not so much when it comes to MMOs though because being there when stuff starts is a unique experience.

Even though my I acc is currently inactive and I don't plan on ever going back to raiding, I did preorder Legion because I still like warcraft and want to see the new story.

[Gimlix]

HAHA! So since Blizzard stopped revealing sub counts... and even though WoD was on a FAST decline... it's safe to assume everyone stopped unsubbing right when Blizzard stopped reporting.

Cool story. Anyone playing this game could see in-game participation continue to decline. 3 to 3.5 million TOPS are subbed to wow and that includes all of the world markets.

You must be a tard to leave, that in the short period of time, WoW lost another 2M. WoW usually stable downs after a heavy decline.

[Deleted]

[Vague ambigous Blizzard statement about Legion preorders taken out of context that never implied anything like WoW getting back to WoDs size due to preorders or even just the volume of preorders being same as WoD and isn't even necessarily 'positive' depending on the perspective you take.]

See stoopid haterz! Unless you can disprove my unproven assumptions wrong with the facts they conviently stopped reporting, of course only coincidentaly after subscriber decline became hard to deny, we have to assume my opinionated interpretations as undisputeable fact, because after all you are makin this claimthat my claim is not fact because its up to interpretation and kept vague compared to old reports!

See stoopid haterz! I picked up this 'they can not lie in financial reports' strawman and spam it everywhere and that automatically turns every ignorant, inconclusive, purely subjective or plain false missinterpretations/reinterpretation/false or hasty conclusion made by naive, clueless and dishonest fanboys into irrefuteable facts and you have to take every word by NotPromised Inc for granted like a naively optimistic fanboy. Duh that is the law dummy! Be warned I have this one bookmarked scapegoat in that one thread on page 3 out of 65 who called them liars after a fanboy made a missleading statement in Blizzards name, as proof.
There is no way Blizzard a profit oriented business, as I redundantly reminded you everytime you make demands, could have any intention of bending the words in a financial report in their favour. Like bragging with 'best selling video game based movie' on the exact same sheets which just means better than trainwrecks and unscrupulous doubling (by common standards) of key game performance metrics in financial reports and PR releases for years by redefining the word 'subscriber' into a massively infalting stretch no one else uses and causing continious missunderstanding for years ('15$/month per sub' and '10 Million are willing to pay 15$ per month' etc you know the drill) as totally 'transparently' mentioned in the fine printed footnotes of legaly binding docs on their IR page.

See stoopid haterz! There is no reason to put doubt in its ambiguity. They only stopped reporting numbers for WoW because their other games are soo successful they dont rely on WoW as much anymore, in my irrelevant opinion. Its not really important anymore for the investors, in my irrelevant opinion! It's completely unrelated to the decline of WoW, in my irrelevant opinion! Such a simple reasonable explanation, why cant the stoopid haterz conspiracy not simply accept my baseless claims and assumptions and agree with it? So stop drawing different conclusions than I assumed to be true. You are the armchair analysts! You are the conspiracy! And thats why you should have no doubts when god lord Blizzard makes another but now vague and ambigous NotReallyPromised(TM) statement for the the WoW preorder numbers which no one cares for anymore in their report, which totally doesn't contradict the excuse I just made.

Did I already use the chance to mention that WoW is actually financiallydoing nowhere near as bad as I want to admit thanks to unknown cash shop sales and tokens offsetting the subs losses I can't deny? Even if that is refuted by the reported online sales i have been refered to 15 times before that show clearly a significant steady decline since 2008, safe fluctuation due to occasional content releases, visible to the plain eye even in text form?

Why do you guys care so much about these numbers anyways? Who cares? Why keep disagreeing when I spam another thread related to that topic full with venom and nonsense only to switch over to a condensing I don't care act when reality doesn't go my way, usually the 12+ months past the expansion until shortly before the next?


Wew these quarterly threads again. Who needs a public damage control PR unit with a bunch of masochistic whiteknights as customer like this?

[Maudib]

You must be a tard to leave, that in the short period of time, WoW lost another 2M. WoW usually stable downs after a heavy decline.

In 4 months, from Dec 14 to Mar 2015 they lost 3 million

In 3 more months Mar to Jun they lost ANOTHER 1.5 milllion

It is now over a year since the last 5.6 million sub report.

Do you honestly not believe it dropped 2 million in a YEAR with NO content patches since?

Ha ha ha... lol.. you're just too funny!

[Pann]

In 4 months, from Dec 14 to Mar 2015 they lost 3 million

In 3 more months Mar to Jun they lost ANOTHER 1.5 milllion

It is now over a year since the last 5.6 million sub report.

Do you honestly not believe it dropped 2 million in a YEAR with NO content patches since?

Ha ha ha... lol.. you're just too funny!

In fairness both Cata and MoP had somewhat stable sub figures after their last patch was released it is entirely possible that WoD's sub numbers have followed this trend and levelled off.

With that said, I ran a Census+ scan last night and found just over 800 people online on my server to put this into perspective six months ago the scans consistently found 1300-1400 people and if I recall correctly there was around 2k online during the WoD pre-patch. Whether this is unique to my server or mirrored on others I do not know.

[Maudib]

In fairness both Cata and MoP had somewhat stable sub figures after their last patch was released it is entirely possible that WoD's sub numbers have followed this trend and levelled off.

With that said, I ran a Census+ scan last night and found just over 800 people online on my server to put this into perspective six months ago the scans consistently found 1300-1400 people and if I recall correctly there was around 2k online during the WoD pre-patch. Whether this is unique to my server or mirrored on others I do not know.

No... to be fair, neither Cata or MoP lost half of their subs in the first 7 months.

But yeah your census numbers seem fairly clear what is happening.

[Vineri]

In fairness both Cata and MoP had somewhat stable sub figures after their last patch was released it is entirely possible that WoD's sub numbers have followed this trend and levelled off.

With that said, I ran a Census+ scan last night and found just over 800 people online on my server to put this into perspective six months ago the scans consistently found 1300-1400 people and if I recall correctly there was around 2k online during the WoD pre-patch. Whether this is unique to my server or mirrored on others I do not know.

There is at least a couple of aspects to help muddle how many really play WoW. One of course, as mentioned is the lack of subscriber information. Blizzard can spin this to their favor since it's really the total revenue that matters to investors - to a degree anyways. I would like to really know how popular the game is overall, not just how many "whales" are spending extra income on Added Value. Added Value, from the cash-shop provide income in the absence of subscriptions, at least on the short term. Whales buy lots, to gain power via selling RL items for in-game gold. Subscriptions are more reliable to indicate health, IMO. Plus subscribers can also help to predict how much spending they may do individually on Added Value content.

The other aspect is the Cross-Server-Zones (CRZ) which can really mutilate the perception of a servers quality. It gives the illusion that the game (a players server) is heavily populated, yet players may not realize that a high % of all available servers - at a given time - are being stuffed into one. The illusion gives subscribers an outlook that the game is healthy, when really it's all smoke & mirrors.

The end result seems to be players believe millions of Non-China subs still play, their servers are healthy, and Blizzard won't release subscription numbers any longer, because they shouldn't need to (?), which is a good reason to be skeptical.

[Pann]

No... to be fair, neither Cata or MoP lost half of their subs in the first 7 months.

But yeah your census numbers seem fairly clear what is happening.

True, but both saw rapid decline within the first couple of quarters.

[Rorschachs]

In 4 months, from Dec 14 to Mar 2015 they lost 3 million

In 3 more months Mar to Jun they lost ANOTHER 1.5 milllion

It is now over a year since the last 5.6 million sub report.

Do you honestly not believe it dropped 2 million in a YEAR with NO content patches since?

Ha ha ha... lol.. you're just too funny!

If you geniunely hate the game, either play something else or get a life. People like you are such losers I can't believe it, who the hell tries to demoralize people that are playing a game out of hatred for the game? Do you seriously have nothing better to do than says completely inaccurate things on forums to look cool? F off.

[Maudib]

If you geniunely hate the game, either play something else or get a life. People like you are such losers I can't believe it, who the hell tries to demoralize people that are playing a game out of hatred for the game? Do you seriously have nothing better to do than says completely inaccurate things on forums to look cool? F off.

Sometimes, when common sense prevails, people get angry. And I don't fault you... it's just how you cope.

But to be clear... I don't hate the game... there are certain aspects of it that I really don't like because it's changed from when it was so good.

No, in fact, my feedback is in hopes it will help guide Blizzard back to what I enjoy. I certainly don't hold anything against you newer players that don't know what an amazing game this used to be.. so your perspective is greatly limited. With that in mind you are making the best decisions you can. Kudos!

[Foj]

Not really, no. Especially since WoD will be ending with lower numbers than MoP did so would have to sell much more than WoD did.

How ... what?

Did you fail to take into account that everyone has to buy the expansion?

[TheWindWalker]

How ... what?

Did you fail to take into account that everyone has to buy the expansion?

Nope, he did. That's the point. That more people will have to buy the expansion than currently play the game by a huge percentage.