Why do people say; that the amount of active wow players does not matter to anyone?

[Deathquoi]

Some people think, that if game is profitable, that it doesn't matter, how many players play it, cuz overall number of players, playing this game, shouldn't affect their personal gaming experience. They think, that maintenance costs scale linearly with number of players and xpack budget doesn't scale at all till some critical threshold (usually 1M players is referred as such threshold). Therefore till number of players won't drop below this critical threshold - overall quality of game won't drop.

I personally don't think, that situation is so easy. Not everything scales linearly. I played other game in the past and it's great example of what happens, when playerbase drops below some critical number and game loses stability as the result. The only difference between that game and Wow - is that Blizzard have enough money to make this process as smooth, as possible and therefore game won't just collapse instantly - this process can take many years. And, in fact, this process is already happening. We already have all signs of F2P-like collapse: things, like CRZ, Tokens, character boosts, etc.

Oh good, it's not a WoW whine fest till this clown shows up.

[caervek]

Seriously?

Yeah, it's quite sad when you get there ready to throw down and earn your [world quest reward] then see there's no one else there

[Segus1992]

Well Warcraft has been making more money now than it did when there were twice the amount of subs, so this doesnt really mean anything.

On high pop servers there are (in my opinion) still plenty of people to play with. Still plenty of guilds to pick from.

Yes sub numbers do matter, but people seem to be taking things way too far in their doomsaying.

Source on the bolded statement? I've heard similar, but nothing so bold as "more than at peak subs".

[WowIsDead64]

First signs of problems with playerbase - quality drop of "matchmaking" both in PVE and PVP. In PVP it's obvious and in PVE it's about availability of PUG players and static/guild recruits. Reason? It's not that easy to find N players, having the same levels of skill/gear, having the same preferences and playing at exactly the same time. That's, why developers have to always balance between quality of "matchmaking" and "queue" times. It's ok, when you have exceeding amount of players in every bracket. But when some bracket dries out and queue times start to rise for some category of players - developers usually have to soften matchmaking rules and mix them with other players. But this is just band aid solution, cuz dropping quality of content (both categories of players won't feel comfortable, when being mixed together) will cause more and more players to quit anyway. This is chain reaction - collapse of game. If it starts to happen - it can't be stopped.

[Swizzington]

The semicolon in the title has triggered me. Bigly.

[satimy]

Because they have been arguing that their view of the game wasn't the correct one since flying was taken away and now we see how much of a failure that vision is

[Deleted]

You need a defined amount of active players to have a "critical mass" for the game to work out - ideally, at every time of the day, every day. But on the other hand, you need some kind of separation of players in zones, so you don't get too many clustered people at once which can be bad for game performance and / or game experience. For an MMO, active player numbers are a bit of a prestige factor and also an advertising bonus.

The trend with more people playing solo is somehow fostered by Blizzard themselves. They have begun to fracture the community with different layers of difficulty. This is of course not the only reason, but it surely is one. To some degree, automatic matchmaking is also contributing to this- but I think this also comes from instable players / guilds. I would be happy to run all dungeons and do other content with my guild mates, but WoW has lost their appeal to them, and I don't have the energy to start another search for a new guild. I have been doing this often enough, I am sick of that.

[Doctor Funkenstein]

Why do people say; that the amount of active wow players does not matter to anyone?

Because denial is all they have to live on. Nothing matters to them, not even their own boredom. Wait wait, I mean, they're totally having fun guys! If they keep saying it enough, maybe it'll become true!!!

[Deleted]

More players is ofcourse better, but:

-it doesn't matter too much for the game experience as long as there are enough players to fill up more then a couple servers.
-were nowhere near the lower bound for profitability or even opportunity cost, especially now that money comes from non-sub sources.

[burzian]

Only your first point makes any sense, and that's easily handled by microtransactions. Every time I buy a race change or whatever other dumb shit, it pays for 1.66+ months of game-time that some "dead game" edgelord isn't buying.

[Deathquoi]

Because denial is all they have to live on. Nothing matters to them, not even their own boredom. Wait wait, I mean, they're totally having fun guys! If they keep saying it enough, maybe it'll become true!!!

If you keep telling me I'm not having fun, maybe someday it'll become true? What the fuck is your endgame, man? What's your goal? Are you attempting to convince people that they don't actually enjoy a game that they think they do?

[Evaddon]

Its a 12 year old game still retaining millions of people. Everyone should be impressed

[SoulSoBreezy]

Because those people want to speak as if they represent me.
The amount of active WoW players doesn't matter to me. Simple as that and I'm not trying to push this opinion on anyone else.

My question is why do you insist that I have to think the same way you do?

[Kyanion]

If you keep telling me I'm not having fun, maybe someday it'll become true? What the fuck is your endgame, man? What's your goal? Are you attempting to convince people that they don't actually enjoy a game that they think they do?

He doesn't even know what his endgame is. That's the scary part.

[Aleks0410]

#2 is BS, you either never remember majority of people you encounter, or even want to forget them ASAP, that's true even in Vanilla.

You must've played on a really anti social realm in Vanilla.

[Deleted]

The only people who give a shit about sub numbers are the ones who are trying to justify their hate boner.

[Sansnom]

I seriously don't get that statement at all. Because it does matter.

1. more players is more cash for more things added to WoW (the biggest reason I guess)
2. more players means you have more choice to play with people (if you like playing with people)
3. more players means the world feels less empty (as WoW stands the numbers of servers "shards" is finite and if your connected server/shards suck... your experience will be lesser due to it feeling like a single player game
4. more choice in guilds (don't like a guild? Find the next one... good luck finding the next one if there are far fewer players outthere, especially if you can't play during special hours)

All in all, this is an mmo. And as such you require people. Also this site will become a ghost town as would others... less people ingame? Less websites that get updated... because there isn't any money in it anymore. etc etc

1. True. More subs means more revenue which should transfer more content.

2. Is not really true. Most people I would imagine play with people within their guilds. So a million more or a million less players will not be visible.

3. Maybe. Much depends on the tech and the people. A 50 000 people can seem crowded in a stadium but empty in a empty. And people rarely venture out in the world since there is little reason to.

4. Potentially. But the quality of the guild also matters. More choices does not necessary always mean better choices. 100 Fast Food is not better than 10 restaurants.


Having more people is a good thing but it does not automatically implies everything else would better in relatively.

[Kyanion]

1. True. More subs means more revenue which should transfer more content.

Not totally true. They can make the same amount of money with less subs now because of the Bnet Token being sold for 20 bucks that only gives 15 in Bnet to the person using gold.

[Zyky]

Well Warcraft has been making more money now than it did when there were twice the amount of subs, so this doesnt really mean anything.

EDIT: Can't find the source where I read this. Consider it fake news. Apologies.

On high pop servers there are (in my opinion) still plenty of people to play with. Still plenty of guilds to pick from.

Yes sub numbers do matter, but people seem to be taking things way too far in their doomsaying.

And they'd be making even more if they could manage to keep the subs up, instead of pushing players away with bullshit, halfassed "content" like "kill 100 demons" or forcing unfinishable grinds onto players.

[Doctor Funkenstein]

If you keep telling me I'm not having fun, maybe someday it'll become true?

Nah, it became true a while back. People like you are just in denial or, much more likely, arguing otherwise just to be the trolls you are. "Da game is parfect, Blizerd is run by gods, we shud love averythang they give us even tho they be phoning it in for yearz naow!!!!"