Predictions for Q4 WOW sub numbers

[Aurust]

Might as well start now....

As you know Blizzard reported extremely disappointing sub numbers for Q3. What will the results for Q4 be?

Im going to say 1 mil - 1.5mil sub loss for the following reasons....

1) Accelerating sub losses i believe will result in a vicious sub loss cycle especially on dying realms...Blizz doesnt seem to care and people i think will not pay $100+ to transfer their main and alts to a realm where they can actually play the game

2) TOR will be released as a direct sub competitor to WOW at a time when wow is the weakest and vulenrable it has ever been in its history

3) Compelling other single player**edited**/ non MMO games from many genres...Skyrim, BF3, MW3

4) Patch 4.3 looks to be much of the same....except for transmog which i doubt will be enough to stem the tide...keep in mind Q3 saw the release of firelands and resulted in INCREASED sub losses.

5) Blizzcon/MOP beyond a shadow of a doubt has divided the community more than any previous xpac....although it will peek the interests of many, i doubt they will resub in Q4 just to play 4.3 and then have their gear/gains erased with a new xpac (assuming they resubbed just for MOP in general)

6) Diablo 3 coming out early next year and the hyper power juggernaut GW2 shortly after may prevent people from wanting to continue to invest time in WOW if they already had made the decision to definitely move on to those games....

These are my opinions and i believe the net effect will be devestating....what do you guys think?

[Lusitan]

i expect profits to be up cause of MW3 and ELITE, but subs will be around 8.8m, mainly cause of SWTOR

[Deleted]

Subs will drop again drastically with the release of said major title.

Call of Doody modern derpfare 3 will keep the profit up though.

[Deleted]

subscriptors,be aware of diablo 3!!!!!

[Puremallace]

Look at the competition, then you tell me:

Skyrim: Easily 200 hours of content and people will play it full time
Rift: 1.6 new island and other stuff..noone in my guild has hinted of going back to WoW to check out 4.3
ToR: The 800lb guerrilla in the room 17 world of new content...yes it might get old, but for a good 1-3 months it will be entertaining

[Vaelkyri]

Hard to call, I was expecting a drip in q3, but nowhere near 800k. ouch.

Im gonna say less than 500k again, despite being on the PTR and seeing that 4.3 is just more of the same.

[Corjha]

Im gonna say less than 500k again, despite being on the PTR and seeing that 4.3 is just more of the same.

Of course its the same. You're playing the same game silly. You might just be bored of WoW in general.

4.2: 1 new raid, whole buncha new dailies.
4.3: 1 new raid, 3 new heroics, transmog, new DMF (its actually pretty fun now)

Also keep in mind that Wow has a very vocal minority, and you can't base the opinions of the community off of the forums either. On top of that most of the loss was from Asia because they burned through the content to quickly.

A LOT of people un-sub from WoW in between content. They likely will re-sub eventually its just a matter of time.

I think a gain of 0-500k. MOP will bring back subs too.

[Deleted]

If they would stop being stubborn and admit (and capitalize) on the fact that people liked old xpacs better, they would just make a couple of vanilla / tbc / wrath servers and at least in my opinion, a lot of players would come back. They should also merge a few dying servers so people stop complaining about underpopulated servers.

For example, I wouldn't cancel my account when MoP starts if we'd have vanilla servers.

I voted 500k-1m loss. It's a vicious circle, MoP will not save this game.

[Marooned]

Just play the damn game until you enjoy it! Leave others alone!

[Marema]

it's a no brainer that people will go play other games but to call it devestating is absurd.

"hi, I'm Blizzard and I still have the most subs in the history of this genre and I will still have more subs regardless of any game that comes out but I'm devestated for still being the best thing going."

[Deleted]

Yeah well you've been talking shit about WoW for awhile now so it's no surprise you think the next quarterly report will be "devastating" it's almost as if you want WoW to die. 4.3 will bring people back (like myself) MoP will bring more people back. I'm guessing a slight increase on the 10.3 next time, even with the upcoming competition, I sort of expected a loss this quater as 4.2 is used up. 4.3 needs to come out in the next couple of weeks, and MoP sometime in mid 2012.

[Guilegamesh]

Just play the damn game until you enjoy it! Leave others alone!

Exactly! I don't follow the quarterly reports of my favourite cereal, car maker, heating company, etc. It's OK to not like things.

[Deleted]

Considering that Q4 involves my resub and alot of others too. My entire guild came back around blizzcon.

Q4= Blizzcon + a patch that involves the heaviest addition to WoW in my 6 years; The Raidfinder. It will revolutionize WoW. I havnt been able to raid at all in Cata because of the difficulty for pugs. Raidfinder will change that.

Raidfinder is so extremly welcome for gamers like me. I can even describe how much this will change the game for me and other casuals. It's completly insanly fucking awesome.

I predict WoW going up to 13-15 million subs with Mists of Pandaria. 1 million + in 4.3-4.4

[ringthree]

I don't know about numbers, but what I can guarantee is that people like Aurust will continue to make posts where they are being "objective" to bash WoW to validate their self-worth.

My opinion: The 11 million figure was ridiculously high even for WoW. It had over saturated the market, and the decline was an inevitable adjustment. It might decline again, it might not, but the point is that it's not declining because of content or any failure Aurust and his ilk perceived to exist. It just had too many casual players (and I mean real casual players, like people that don't play WoW all the time, not like people that play the game casually) and this is the purging of those players.

If you don't think that Blizzard knows some of it's player base is ephemeral, then you are kidding yourself.

[iceberg265]

I was expecting a drop of more like 200-300k for Q3. 800k is a rather large amount so who knows what will happen next. I voted for the 500k-1mil loss option, and count myself as one of them.

[Aurust]

Just play the damn game until you enjoy it! Leave others alone!

Hey do you see that? That thing behind you up in the sky? Thats the point of this thread flying over your head.....

[Deleted]

they'll have 0 playing then tehehehe, just kidding.

But from what i've seen the difficulty of deathwing looks easier than it should be for endgame. sooo, i reckon alot more ppl will quit

[Sackman]

They need to revert leveling and gearing back to vanilla levels, with the item squish, while keeping content fulfilling with lots of other things to do - like grinding up mats and reputation for gear through dailies and questing, and other time sink like activities. Instead of making everything go really fast like it does now.

If it took people several months to acquire gear, and if that gear could be used throughout the entirety of the expansion even with upgrades available, people would do it. (Making it so with upgrades available through later instances, they could upgrade the item they spent ages working on into that better item, providing a noticeable benefit, but not a benefit that means the item before couldn't complete the content - also of course providing a noticeable visual upgrade).

With that in tow - people wouldn't be "through the content" right now and instead would be "enjoying" or certainly gearing up, whether or not they enjoy it ofc subject to debate, regardless, the content would still be doable, but they have another facet of their character to grow - their own strength in the eyes of themselves and others. This allows elitists who are like "look at my gear etc etc I worked so hard for it", and regular players to enjoy the content, and their epeen.

Content would still be doable, once you have the gear from heroics you can do all content through the expansion - but you can get stronger by gearing up, making content easier (certainly hard mode content), with the benefit being noticeable but marginal. This gives people another incentive to play between patches and to continue playing and enjoying the gearing process. Rather than gear being throwaway junk, they would take pride in what they had acquired - and know that it would last a significant amount of time.

That would certainly make me more inclined to stay with the game, at the moment I feel like they want me to participate and enjoy the content they are throwing out, but tbh the story in their at the moment is haphazard and hard to follow. WotLK was a great storyline and I would have enjoyed being pushed through Ulduar and Lichy, and the story for Firelands was noticeable and fun but still rather shallow to be rushed through. If I had gear to acquire through all the questing - with gear being rarer but much less important, providing visual upgrades and certainly upgrades to the character, but not such massive substantial extra 5k dps upgrades, I would continue to play and gear my character up after content was done.

What do I think of sub numbers? Games getting old, I expect something like 200k loss, I expect lots to come back and still lots more to leave.

[Aurust]

Yeah well you've been talking shit about WoW for awhile now so it's no surprise you think the next quarterly report will be "devastating" it's almost as if you want WoW to die. 4.3 will bring people back (like myself) MoP will bring more people back. I'm guessing a slight increase on the 10.3 next time, even with the upcoming competition, I sort of expected a loss this quater as 4.2 is used up. 4.3 needs to come out in the next couple of weeks, and MoP sometime in mid 2012.

What makes you think 4.3 wont be used up just as quick?

[antonatsis]

300 Q1 600 Q2 800 Q3 well if the trend continue then around 1mil Q4
(Random numbers are random :P )