Will WoW Ever See 13 Million Subs Again?

[Alvito]

it was at 5 6 months ago, if you follow the curve it was when they were still announcing numbers its at about 3.9m right now.
They stop showing numbers during the same period stuff like "number of players doing pvp dropped 30% in horde and 50% in alliance" happens is just too rich, deny all you want: people are quitting the game by the millions at this point, and they'll just keep quitting because it sucks.

How do you have this 5 number they haven't released that information for a long time and the last time they did was when it surged up during WoD. If the games population followed these growth cycles or as you are calling it a curve it would have died off over 5 years ago. If nothing else they have found a way into playing the game more since you can buy all of their other stuff with tokens now. So not only have they baited more people in to turn other content into f2p or f2b, they got somebody else to give them extra money to allow those people to do that.

[Barnabas]

if they'd bring back a lot of what made wotlk so good, they potentially could.

I doubt it because even the systems they have now are really good. I even praise many of them but the game itself is just at who cares levels regardless. The game hasn't brought anything really new to the table and it can't because the audience holds back the potential of it. Plus the story has changed so much it's pretty bad also.

[Nuba]

You're clinically insane if you actually believe that's the case. This simplistic view of Blizzard's development team is exactly the reason they barely talk to the community. You're so incredibly biased the very concept of critical thinking is foreign to you.

On behalf of anybody able to form a rational, well-thought out opinion of this subject, I'm sorry people like you exist.

have you seen Holinka? do you think he even got inside an arena in his life? and celestalon? does he even knows the name of 5 survival hunter abilities?
I know with holinka its just completely absurd the level of "out-of-touchness", celestalon just acts seems and feels like someone who only works at blizzard to get paid and simply couldnt care less about if his job is actually good or not.

[Alvito]

If it goes F2P it will.

Except if it is f2p then those aren't subscriptions.

[Kallisto]

Yes, this is exactly what happens, I couldn't put it better myself.
You can't trust devs as blizzard devs are doing the shit they are doing to please their customers, they just do that because theyre lazy and because there are a few (not many nowadays, thankfully) that will still play due to raw addiction rather than enjoyment

Are you crazy, you actually believe that Blizzard goes out their way to piss off customers. You know what pissed off customers means right. It means less money, it means less profits, this is what causes companies to go bust. Businesses are not run by Mr Burns trying to piss everyone off by being evil.

The main issue with wow I feel is that Blizzard is trying to cater to two polar opposite fan bases within the game that simply put you can't appease them both, which in turn brings in the pendulum issue that's been happening the past few expansions. Expac A has one side loud, Expac B caters to the loud in A but brings the other side loud, so C becomes like A and so on.

Blizzard could find the happy medium at some point but I feel that it won't help. The happy medium will likely be the rage centre for both sides since they're both so entrenched.

[Relapses]

have you seen Holinka? do you think he even got inside an arena in his life? and celestalon? does he even knows the name of 5 survival hunter abilities?
I know with holinka its just completely absurd the level of "out-of-touchness", celestalon just acts seems and feels like someone who only works at blizzard to get paid and simply couldnt care less about if his job is actually good or not.

It's honestly kind of adorable how you actually think a majority of the decisions Blizzard makes about class/PvP balance are the responsibility of single entities. I suppose when your world view is, "everything Blizzard does is shit," that's a really easy thing to say. One day you'll grow up and realize that there's often far more at play than just what you see from a Twitter feed. But then we'd be getting into adult conversation territory and I'd hate to overwhelm you.

[thatmikeguy]

No, companies will not invest heavily in an mmo to compete with WoW, and Bliz will not compete with WoW when it's making money. There are only so many ways of doing the same things anyway. The social aspects of an mmo can be good or bad, and people who I started playing beta with, well we are all old with responsibilities now.

[Barnabas]

have you seen Holinka? do you think he even got inside an arena in his life? and celestalon? does he even knows the name of 5 survival hunter abilities?
I know with holinka its just completely absurd the level of "out-of-touchness", celestalon just acts seems and feels like someone who only works at blizzard to get paid and simply couldnt care less about if his job is actually good or not.

Holinka does indeed play arena in wow.

[Sam the Wiser]

I thought we were at 50 million?! Jaylock, don't say it so?! Blizzard, will rise again!

[Relapses]

I thought we were at 50 million?! Jaylock, don't say it so?! Blizzard, will rise again!

Blizzard should take Jaylock's advice and make the next expansion just like Mists of Pandaria. We all know how much Jaylock loves MoP. Man, it was such a great expansion.

[Nuba]

It's honestly kind of adorable how you actually think a majority of the decisions Blizzard makes about class/PvP balance are the responsibility of single entities. I suppose when your world view is, "everything Blizzard does is shit," that's a really easy thing to say. One day you'll grow up and realize that there's often far more at play than just what you see from a Twitter feed. But then we'd be getting into adult conversation territory and I'd hate to overwhelm you.

aaand we're back to the point you simply can't have good arguments and just tries to insult me personally, how rich and adult of you!

in all seriousness, those are the "leaders" of the design and balance, and theyre literally clueless to the own game, the game they're meant to keep together, do you even expect the rest of the teams to be better?
and that isnt even the begining of the problems with wow: artifact power, weak/bad stories (for an mmo, this is outrageous), gating and those problems mentioned are only the surface.
No, seriously, do you think the artifact knowledge expand shit that came with 7.2 was actually done "hey players will love this lets add it"?? It literally disbanded my entire guild, literally, even the people who had just achieved gladiator in PvP for the first time quit the game, the pve people gave up right there.
My friend list of 199 players went from 20 people online at any time during day to 0-1 from the begining of legion to right now.
Not to mention new players, someone new would never ever prefer wow over any of the new F2P options even if wow was F2P itself

[mickybrighteyes]

Not to mention new players, someone new would never ever prefer wow over any of the new F2P options even if wow was F2P itself

qft... I've seen more players running around Wildstar, TSW, and DDO (this last one literally instances you inside regions by yourself). You know what, I might have to reload DDO, that was actually kind of fun in the 'open' world sections.

[Relapses]

aaand we're back to the point you simply can't have good arguments and just tries to insult me personally, how rich and adult of you!

in all seriousness, those are the "leaders" of the design and balance, and theyre literally clueless to the own game, the game they're meant to keep together, do you even expect the rest of the teams to be better?
and that isnt even the begining of the problems with wow: artifact power, weak/bad stories (for an mmo, this is outrageous), gating and those problems mentioned are only the surface.
No, seriously, do you think the artifact knowledge expand shit that came with 7.2 was actually done "hey players will love this lets add it"?? It literally disbanded my entire guild, literally, even the people who had just achieved gladiator in PvP for the first time quit the game, the pve people gave up right there.
My friend list of 199 players went from 20 people online at any time during day to 0-1 from the begining of legion to right now.
Not to mention new players, someone new would never ever prefer wow over any of the new F2P options even if wow was F2P itself

Alright Leafyishere, I'm sorry your guild LICHERALLY disbanded because of 7.2. It LICHERALLY pains me to hear that your anecdotal experience has become the universal standard for WoW's current state. Also, I'm sorry for talking down to you since you LICHERALLY must be a grown ass man and it's very rude of me to assume somebody who makes childish, thoughtless and completely unfounded accusations against Blizzard is, well, a child. That was mean of me and I'm LICHERALLY an asshole.

You know what? You're right. Blizzard sucks. And they're cucks, too. Is that a cool word to use? I hope so. I've been trying to get "hip with the hop" but apparently my old fashioned ideas of constructive, critical thinking are just so last year.

[Raugnaut]

13 million subs? Not likely, no. It would go against trends and statistics if it managed to boom that high again.

13 million "active" accounts? Yes, quite likely - Apparantly, WoW has had 100 million seperate accounts registered to its name. Even knocking off half (A huge knockoff) due to duplicate accounts by the same person, gold farmers, and ppl who played for 15 minutes and turned it off, thats still an astounding number.

[Uselessrouge]

no times of mmos are dead , poeple play fast food games now

[SoulSoBreezy]

13M concurrent users on a certain day at a certain time at during an expansion launch schedule, sure. Any other time? Not likely. But does it matter anymore?

Players often look at the big spike and big dip in subs at an expansion launch and write a "hype-to-disappointment" narrative. The truth is that we don't know have a full breakdown of the audience that buys expansion boxes.

Keep in mind that over 100M WoW accounts were created according to the 10 year infographic. Even if we assume that only 100 people play WoW today like MMOC insists on, that 100M+ is a HUGE audience to tap into during any expansion launch.

Ex-WoW players are a very big market, one that Blizzard can make large gains on if they deliver an expansion that tickles their interest, regardless of how enjoyable the long-tail is.

I guess the point I'm making is that 13M subs doesn't really matter anymore to Blizzard. Tapping into consumer interest for the sake of selling an expansion seems like a viable way to go.

[DaGhostDS]

Not sure where you guys get your numbers but that's more accurate :



As for the question, unlikely Cataclysm and WoD left a bad taste in a lot of old players mouth, most will probably never come back.

[Deleted]

MMOs have always been a niche genre. WoW's success is the edge case.
There will never be another MMO with +10M subscriber base. No one is even making tripple-A MMO's anymore, there's no new development, there's no buzz, the customer base is certainly not there right now.

MMOs are slowly returning to normality (where 500k "subs" is considered wild success).

[Sierra85]

the world is a very different place and mmo's are not what a lot of the casuals want. for alot of people they got their taste of mmo's during WOTLK. now they have experienced it, managing to capture all those players back. wont happen.

you have to focus on capturing the next generation, many of which are now anti wow due to its popularity and dominance in the genre. very similar to how new generations rebel against the old genres of music that the previous gen loved.

[Aggrophobic]

Dota 2 had 12.7m active players last month, how mad must Blizzard be right now. The shitty mod that poor people played who could not afford WoW, about to shit on their game.

But that is a f2p game. WoW could probably get more players but to actually make them pay a sub?
Nah, not 13 million.