Question: is wow population really low?

[FelPlague]

Out of curiosity, what is this content of which you speak? World quests? They're just dailies. Is grinding AP content? Is pulling a slot machine lever over and over and over content? Legion seems to me the -illusion- of content. When people don't have clearly defined goals to attain they lose interest. That is the result of putting RNG into every single avenue of the game.

the game has allways been the same, dont try to claim "none of this new stuff is content" when it is the exact same, and more stuff we had before...
there is tons of goals in legion
get the reps to exalted
get to X ilvl
beat Y raid
get the Z acheivment for doing M+
max out your artifact

[cocacolawheresthesoda]

The raging-boner kid version: WoW is dying, did you see the sub numbers?

The well educated guess version: We simply don't know for sure, but let's try to figure it out as best as we can.


Data-points we have:

- Blizzard, in their 2017 yearly investor briefing announced that Legion is slightly ahead of WoD. Precisely, which time of WoD to they refer to? Are they refering to a fixed time after release? Is 8 months into Legion better than the 8 months into Warlords? We can just assume this is what they mean.

- Blizzard has introduced the tokens and with them, a new way of acquiring credit, which also connects to other games, this could've been a huge boost to revenue.

- Latest entry for WoD's subscription numbers was 5.5 million



Facts:

- A game, especially one that introduced a payment system like WoW did with the tokens can have its value not on the amount of people paying the subscription (it does help to have more, ofcourse), but rather in the micro-transactions that occur. Though, not unlikely a few million players buy a million tokens each month, not sure if there's enough gold each month to buy them, a million tokens, at 200k would be 200,000,000,000 gold in total, quite the sum.

- WoW is a 13 years old game. It is, by far, one of the most, if not the best investment made in the gaming industry. The amount of money it generated for Blizzard is ludacrious. By any standards, this game will go down in history. If we are to follow the data, roughly from subscription numbers, which aren't as good indicators, WoW reached its post-peak. Means it's only going to go down-hill from now on, simply due to it not being new, it's just the natural line of every product.

- As of 2012, Blizzard has 4,700 employees

- As of 2016, their revenue was $2.43 billion.

- As of 2015, their revenue was $1.1 billion, largely only from WoW.

-- That's about $600 million paid just in wages, at an average of $80k, according to Paysa.


The conclusion:

Blizzard's going super strong, with its parent company Activision Blizzard huge numbers for the indsutry, they won't let it die, especially with the success that OW had.

Therefore, we can safely say that WoW is not what it used to be, this can also be seen from the number of guilds, number of PvE being done and overall item postings.

But it's still HUGE, for any product, even more so for such an old one.

* All of this is before taxes.

As known, Overwatch has sold 30 million copies, at a median of $47 (due to a sure big number of people paying the $60 for the game and most paying $40, a fair assumptions), that's $1.41 billion in OW sales, just the copies of the game. Then perhaps we could add in a bit of cosmetics, which we'll throw in at about $100-150m (this can be wrong, frankly, no idea, but I think it's fair to assume this sum.), for a grand total of about $1.6billion, which leaves us with...

WoW is probably sitting at around [edited]4 million subscribers, that would net the company between $600-700m based on their revenues from 2015 and their statement of WoD not being that much lower than Legion, assuming they mean 8 months into WoD vs. 8 months into Legion. Assuming 4.5 million bought the game, at about $50, that's $200m, which gets us to a grand of about $1-1.1 billion, for a total of about $2.4-5 billion, which is not too far away from our goal.

While I did follow the statement of Blizz for Legion being a bit ahead of WoD, I didn't take it as a full truth, since we don't really know.

You're welcome.


Sources:

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/...ainment/Salary

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...TVI_Slides.pdf

https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/9/145...arnings-record - They are using the 2016 shareholder report, from

http://investor.activision.com/ - wikipedia, as well as others take their data from here and make it digestible for readers.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/atvi?ltr=1

[Super Kami Dende]

Ive recently came back to wow and I play on sarg which is an extremely populated realm (one of the highest populated) but Ive noticed that its now a medium realm and theres only like three realms that are above medium and a few medium and the rest low. Ive only seen a handful of people on the broken shore.... Is wows population really died that badly?

they doubled server capacity in WoD since people were xfering to specific servers and making them full constantly. so the population stayed the same but the size grew.

I.e. former server imagine numbers were 4800/5000 which was High near full/queues. they then doubled the capacity so they became 4800/10000 brought it down to medium.

Basically servers that say Medium now are the "high" servers of pre-upgrade.

[MoanaLisa]

As I said, its the only data we have. think its best to promote Warcraft Realms as a DEFINITIVE source, since it might put pressure on Blizzard to actually release the numbers again. We should want those numbers. Blizzard needs to do better here. So please embrace Warcraft Realms until they get those numbers out. Thanks.

It goes pretty much without saying that Blizzard has their own definitive source. Since they know they aren't likely to pay any attention whatsoever to someone attempting to put together a pressure campaign using a source that has long since been discredited. Development costs from the past have been made available and it's very safe to say that the game is profitable based on expansion sales alone.

[HordeFanboy]

Yes its low more than ever.

[ComputerNerd]

I would like to know the numbers but sadly they stopped showing them since WoD

Because those determined to bash blizzard could not see anything good from sub increases, only either accusing blizzard of lying or catering to the wrong crowd, as in not throwing all their resources at a fraction of the paying customers.
ANY resources put into players who aren't them was deemed a waste, every bit of content that ONE player finds not appealing is deemed unnecessary.

"This is why we can't have good things".

In short, stupid people are why blizzard don't want to be as transparent with numbers.

[TheFirstOnes]

Everybody's quit the game. Every. Single. Player. The are zero real WoW players. The people you see online in the game are figments of your own imagination placed there by Mike Morhaime after he used the truckloads of money he got from pre-WotLK WoW to forcefully indoctrinate mankind into WoW-addicted clones whose organs are harvested by aliens. The few people you see participating on this message board are ex-WoW addicts who've escaped the Matrix and browse this forum to cackle maniacally at anybody who dares to have a positive opinion about the current state of the game.

....

Eh? Wha..?

H-How?

....W-Where do you come up with this stuff?

- - - Updated - - -

The raging-boner kid version: WoW is dying, did you see the sub numbers?

The well educated guess version: We simply don't know for sure, but let's try to figure it out as best as we can.


Data-points we have:

- Blizzard, in their 2017 yearly investor briefing announced that Legion is slightly ahead of WoD. Precisely, which time of WoD to they refer to? Are they refering to a fixed time after release? Is 8 months into Legion better than the 8 months into Warlords? We can just assume this is what they mean.

- Blizzard has introduced the tokens and with them, a new way of acquiring credit, which also connects to other games, this could've been a huge boost to revenue.

- Latest entry for WoD's subscription numbers was 5.5 million



Facts:

- A game, especially one that introduced a payment system like WoW did with the tokens can have its value not on the amount of people paying the subscription (it does help to have more, ofcourse), but rather in the micro-transactions that occur. Though, not unlikely a few million players buy a million tokens each month, not sure if there's enough gold each month to buy them, a million tokens, at 200k would be 200,000,000,000 gold in total, quite the sum.

- WoW is a 13 years old game. It is, by far, one of the most, if not the best investment made in the gaming industry. The amount of money it generated for Blizzard is ludacrious. By any standards, this game will go down in history. If we are to follow the data, roughly from subscription numbers, which aren't as good indicators, WoW reached its post-peak. Means it's only going to go down-hill from now on, simply due to it not being new, it's just the natural line of every product.

- As of 2012, Blizzard has 4,700 employees

- As of 2016, their revenue was $2.43 billion.

- As of 2015, their revenue was $1.1 billion, largely only from WoW.

-- That's about $600 million paid just in wages, at an average of $80k, according to Paysa.


The conclusion:

Blizzard's going super strong, with its parent company Activision Blizzard huge numbers for the indsutry, they won't let it die, especially with the success that OW had.

Therefore, we can safely say that WoW is not what it used to be, this can also be seen from the number of guilds, number of PvE being done and overall item postings.

But it's still HUGE, for any product, even more so for such an old one.

* All of this is before taxes.

As known, Overwatch has sold 30 million copies, at a median of $47 (due to a sure big number of people paying the $60 for the game and most paying $40, a fair assumptions), that's $1.41 billion in OW sales, just the copies of the game. Then perhaps we could add in a bit of cosmetics, which we'll throw in at about $100-150m (this can be wrong, frankly, no idea, but I think it's fair to assume this sum.), for a grand total of about $1.6billion, which leaves us with...

WoW is probably sitting at around [edited]4 million subscribers, that would net the company between $600-700m based on their revenues from 2015 and their statement of WoD not being that much lower than Legion, assuming they mean 8 months into WoD vs. 8 months into Legion. Assuming 4.5 million bought the game, at about $50, that's $200m, which gets us to a grand of about $1-1.1 billion, for a total of about $2.4-5 billion, which is not too far away from our goal.

While I did follow the statement of Blizz for Legion being a bit ahead of WoD, I didn't take it as a full truth, since we don't really know.

You're welcome.


Sources:

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/...ainment/Salary

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...TVI_Slides.pdf

https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/9/145...arnings-record - They are using the 2016 shareholder report, from

http://investor.activision.com/ - wikipedia, as well as others take their data from here and make it digestible for readers.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/atvi?ltr=1

You sir...

I like you. Let's be good friends, wise one.

[Liandryl]

Ive recently came back to wow and I play on sarg which is an extremely populated realm (one of the highest populated) but Ive noticed that its now a medium realm and theres only like three realms that are above medium and a few medium and the rest low. Ive only seen a handful of people on the broken shore.... Is wows population really died that badly?

Since they implemented multiple instances with other realms, you will never really see that many people in the outside world. You could be on the same server as your friend and be on the same spot and not see each others if you are in different instances.

It is really hard to know how many people really play the game, but you can have a general idea of how many people actually raid with wowprogress.com
It will only show you how many people killed a boss in heroic for the current content tho so it is not the majority of the playerbase.

[ls-]

Since they implemented multiple instances with other realms, you will never really see that many people in the outside world. You could be on the same server as your friend and be on the same spot and not see each others if you are in different instances.

But, damn, I hate when sharding breaks. Too many people, but too few mobs, new locations are designed w/ sharding tech in mind, each subzone, e.g., Soul Ruin in Broken Shore, is kinda suitable for 10-15ppl max, otherwise there's just not enough mobs...

[grexly75]

No. Not only is that going to do absolutely nothing to "pressure" Blizzard in any way (why the hell would they care?), but subscriber numbers really don't mean that much. So, someone is subscribed. Who cares? That doesn't mean they're actually playing, that they're engaged in the content. What matters more, and this is why Blizzard stopped with the numbers, is people participating in the content and what Blizzard makes from both services and subscription fees. Those two sets of numbers matter more than whether or not 5 or 6 or 10 million people have subs that may or may not even be playing.

Exactly people seem to think that having so many subs means there are that many playing, when in all probability there are half of that number..

[Zyrosis]

Warcraft realms shows wow pop is at or near record lows. That's all we have.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weekly...hp?serverid=-1

We can definitely say that CONTENT was NOT the solution for WoW. The people who were clamoring that if they just had more content, the game would be better are CLEARLY 100% wrong. All the things to do in Legion and the numbers are as bad as WoD.

I still assert that the KEY to a successful MMO is an in-game community. Blizzard has slaughtered the in-game community with loads of antisocial features. Ripping the antisocial aspects out of the game and rebuilding the community is the answer. But Blizzard absolutely refuses to do it.

Or it could be that WoW is a 12 year old game and it will fall, and continue to do so and there's nothing Blizzard can do to stop it. Also, What are these "antisocial features" you talk about? Because if it's all the Xrealm stuff or LFR and LFD then no, that won't make the game suddenly sore in subs, that will kill it faster. The gaming scene is a very different place than it was 12 years ago. WoW is still the reigning king of MMOs because MMO as a genre is dying as a whole.

[Lochton]

As I said, its the only data we have. think its best to promote Warcraft Realms as a DEFINITIVE source, since it might put pressure on Blizzard to actually release the numbers again. We should want those numbers. Blizzard needs to do better here. So please embrace Warcraft Realms until they get those numbers out. Thanks.

Yeah.. no..

Rather not push for false statistics and what almost feel like advertisement. And no, not going to push Blizzard much. Now, if you were an actual investor, you might have a better incentive, but I would still doubt it.

[Deathquoi]

Exactly people seem to think that having so many subs means there are that many playing, when in all probability there are half of that number..

That's not what he said at all but good try.

[HordeFanboy]

sub number=state of the game

We had big sub number in the best expansions (wotlk,tbc)
And the lowest sub number (wod,Legion).

Wod was piece of garbage so ppl left the game.
Wotlk was amazing so many ppl joined the game.
Legion is like wod + grind.
Do you see a pattern?
I hope

[Deathquoi]

sub number=state of the game

We had big sub number in the best expansions (wotlk,tbc)
And the lowest sub number (wod,Legion).

Wod was piece of garbage so ppl left the game.
Wotlk was amazing so many ppl joined the game.
Legion is like wod + grind.
Do you see a pattern?
I hope

The only thing I see is that your powers of logic are woefully underdeveloped. Hmm, perhaps WoD and Legion have fewer subs because the game is fucking old?

[Algrumm]

I'm fairly certain they said they significantly upgraded the servers (increasing capacity) about 18 months or so ago?

I could be imagining it, but surely they aren't running like it's 2004...

[HordeFanboy]

The only thing I see is that your powers of logic are woefully underdeveloped. Hmm, perhaps WoD and Legion have fewer subs because the game is fucking old?

Maybe Legion has low sub number because is wod 2.0 and ppl arent that stupid to play the same garbage.

[Deleted]

For me it seems it isnt lower than at the end of any other expac.

But anecdotal evidence is not really helping in a discussion where it is about numbers when noone publishes numbers.

So.. noone except blizzard knows.

[DarthMonk79]

Warcraft realms shows wow pop is at or near record lows. That's all we have.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weekly...hp?serverid=-1

We can definitely say that CONTENT was NOT the solution for WoW. The people who were clamoring that if they just had more content, the game would be better are CLEARLY 100% wrong. All the things to do in Legion and the numbers are as bad as WoD.

I still assert that the KEY to a successful MMO is an in-game community. Blizzard has slaughtered the in-game community with loads of antisocial features. Ripping the antisocial aspects out of the game and rebuilding the community is the answer. But Blizzard absolutely refuses to do it.

The thing is there are plenty of social aspects to and still in the game. It is the community that chooses not to use them or to be a bad community. Blizzard gave us LFG/LFR, they did not say, hey guys now that we gave you this why don't you act like pricks to everybody in your dungeon/raid, troll the chat lines, guild hop like crazy everytime you get what you want and screw the rest of the guild. That is the community and the people playing it that made all that hell. Just because there's LFG/LFR doesn't mean you have to use it, you can get guild members or friends to run you through dungeons. You can communicate with people in your zone other than to call them stupid or troll them. IF and its a big IF, people were to stop doing this stupid crap then the social aspect might come back. Unfortunately the odds are extremely low that it happens. For some reason people think just because they're on the internet and not with people they can act the way they do.

[Dracullus]

The only thing I see is that your powers of logic are woefully underdeveloped. Hmm, perhaps WoD and Legion have fewer subs because the game is fucking old?

Look at his post history. Do you really want waste time "discussing" with him?