Originally Posted by
rda
There are many places with numbers that suggest that Legion is (a) absolutely not gaining subs and continues to lose them, and (b) loses subs at about the same rate as WoD did, give or take.
Let's take a look at raiding, for example. Let's compare the number of kills of easiest boss on easiest mode tracked by wowprogress - taking easiest to make the sample as wide as possible, while still comparing apples to apples:
WoD, tier 17, first boss in Heroic HM: 42070
WoD, tier 18, first boss in Heroic HFC: 29017
You can see that the number went down. That's because the game is losing players. There are other factors, yes, but the main one is that players stop logging in.
Now, Legion:
Legion, tier 19, first boss in Heroic EN: 39561
Legion, tier 20, first boss in Heroic ToS: 24161
What do we see here.
First, the numbers for Legion are going down same as in WoD. It stands to reason that the game is losing about as many players proportionally in the relevant segment. Now, since it's not all players and only the relevant segment = raiders, perhaps more stable than all players - this does not mean yet that Legion lost as many of the overall players as WoD did. But that's not the only set of numbers, you can look at PVP, activity graphs, whatever, and they all show the same thing - Legion is losing players pretty heavily, not much slower than WoD.
Second, the numbers for Legion are a bit lower than for WoD as they stand. And this time, since the numbers only apply to the segment of all players, the segment that we think is more stable than all players, the effect on all players is likely noticeably larger.
That was one example.