Article explaining exactly why WoW subs are going down

[Faithshield]

Hey guys. Bergg here--you may remember me as the author of the Troll Regen Thread. Please check out my article, which attempts to list the specific reasons why WoW has recently lost subs. It's not an extremely serious article--I just hope that it may help some of you more easily identify what aspects of the game you may or may not like.

http://www.gatheryourparty.com/artic...what-happened/

I'd appreciate any and all criticism, as this is my first published article. --And if this is considered spam I am very very very sorry! Edit: Oh god, forgive the signature, it's more than a year old!

For what it is worth I completely agree with you, and I've always been against things like dungeon finder.

WoW IS a social game. The social and political aspects of it is what kept people hooked, just as you described.

It's about time Blizzard employed a sociologist to their Dev team, who's sole purpose is to promote these qualities and reintroduce community. Because that is the one thing that is missing from the game these days, and the one thing they have continually (although not deliberately), undermined with almost every new implementation. They focused on the soloist and the outcast, to the detriment to groupies and realm communities as a whole.

[Mionelol]

1 million annual passes can also be seen as only 10% of the playerbase ready to suscribe for one more year, even when given a mount (for which a lot of people would give 15$ or 25$ or whatever the price would be on store), Diablo 3, and a MoP beta access, all for free.
A huge majority of the suscribers (note that I didn't say 90%, because not everyone was probably aware of it, despite the huge advertisement) is actually considering taking breaks in their suscription during the upcoming year.

You can tweak numbers and make them say anything you want. Numbers do not matter.

[mvallas]

1 million annual passes can also be seen as only 10% of the playerbase ready to suscribe for one more year, even when given a mount (for which a lot of people would give 15$ or 25$ or whatever the price would be on store), Diablo 3, and a MoP beta access, all for free.
A huge majority of the suscribers (note that I didn't say 90%, because not everyone was probably aware of it, despite the huge advertisement) is actually considering taking breaks in their suscription during the upcoming year.

You can tweak numbers and make them say anything you want. Numbers do not matter.

Why are so many people focused on the Annual Passers for the results of Q1? Wasn't the APers also present in Q4!?

I think the implementation of the new SoR in the last month of the quarter is FAR more likely a reason for maintaining Q1 subs than annual pass. =/

[Mionelol]

You can tweak numbers and make them say anything you want. Numbers do not matter.

Which part of that is too difficult to read exactly ? I'm seriously starting to wonder whether you ever read more than the initial sentence before replying to a post.

People arguing over numbers are morons.

Infracted

[Kevyne-Shandris]

All I read was that you didn't adapt to the changes of the game. Players who excepted to not be able to do everything in Pugs decided to join a guild. You and many other players wanted to continue the Icc style with everything fast and pugable but failed to do so. The playerbase wasn't ready for a difficulty system similiar to Classic and Tbc. Which is honestly a sad but true statement.

You didn't read. The things I listed had zero to do with adaptation, it was the crappy design of Cata -- and there's no surprise that players saw it, didn't like it and left.

How crappy?

Heavy CC and melee without appropriate CCs. So you go into the ONLY dungeons available with a group that could be ONLY melee, and it's a disaster.

That's a lack of foresight in their very design. It's like they can't connect the dots. Heavy CC fight = needing an appropriate CC ability.

In all of that data they claim to have and know, that slips by. And you want folks to believe Blizzard understands it's own game?

You can't adapt if it doesn't even EXIST in the game.

[MoanaLisa]

1 million annual passes can also be seen as only 10% of the playerbase ready to suscribe for one more year, even when given a mount (for which a lot of people would give 15$ or 25$ or whatever the price would be on store), Diablo 3, and a MoP beta access, all for free.
A huge majority of the suscribers (note that I didn't say 90%, because not everyone was probably aware of it, despite the huge advertisement) is actually considering taking breaks in their suscription during the upcoming year.

There are a lot of 'subscribers' for which the AP wouldn't apply in any meaningful way, anyone in China for example which is a really giant chunk of people. The number of people, seen as a percentage, who actually did sign up for what was essentially a promotion is far and above the usual for this sort of thing. By any measurement AP was a huge success. Just a couple of extra data points to add to the conversation.

[Deficineiron]

That might be. Any thoughts behind that part of the graph would purely be assuptions, like you say. What I have a vague memory of though, but which might be incorrect(because I really didn't pay that much attention to it back then), is that I thought WotLK was actually released in China, then taken offline again shortly after because of the drama it caused. I recall this as why they suddenly needed to remake a lot of the WotLK content in a hurry to suit the chinese law, which ended up taking a while and were also the cause of the sudden media attention. That could explain this, if this was the case. If anyone knows anything about this, feel free to share.



I may be misunderstanding you here, but as far as I can see, the big offline-period is marked between Q2 and 3 as it should be. Q4 is not showing as a drop point, but as everyone being back online as far as I can see. If this should be a new high, I am unaware of, but in Q1 2010 it shows that WoW global is approaching 12 million again, as it had in Q4 2008. You certain the eastern peak wasn't in Q1 2010 instead of Q4 2009?

Either way, the point with linking the graph was just to point out that WoW hit 12 million twice during WotLK, and not only at the end of the expansion, as assumed by many.

---------- Post added 2012-05-11 at 08:43 AM ----------



Are you talking about Cataclysm or WotLK now?

If you are talking about WotLK, then you have some serious superiority problems. I was at the time in one of the most successfull guilds on the realm, and we didn't give a rats ass what happened in 10 man. In fact, it barely mattered what the majority of the other 25 mans guilds did even because we knew we only had 2-3 real competitors. No accomplishment issues there, for certain.

just off the top of my head - q4 2009 cc stated new high in china. this doesn't mean, of course, q42010 wasn't higher, or that it didn't grow sequentially in china. I am pretty sure every quarterly report from netease described growthin revenues and cost of revenues (mostly payments to blizzard) of wow in the year after they released it. I don't know if q1 2 3 of 2010 were sequential comparisons.

bc released in china sept 07, wotlk in sept 2010, cat. in july 2011.

---------- Post added 2012-05-11 at 04:56 PM ----------

1 million annual passes can also be seen as only 10% of the playerbase ready to suscribe for one more year, even when given a mount (for which a lot of people would give 15$ or 25$ or whatever the price would be on store), Diablo 3, and a MoP beta access, all for free.
A huge majority of the suscribers (note that I didn't say 90%, because not everyone was probably aware of it, despite the huge advertisement) is actually considering taking breaks in their suscription during the upcoming year.

You can tweak numbers and make them say anything you want. Numbers do not matter.

when you actually limit yourself to subscribers ABLE to get annual pass and not people who pay by the hour anyway, it was more like 25-30% participation. 1.2m annual pass is a huge % of the western base.

China does not get annual pass. China does not have people paying montly subs. china players don't pay money to blizzard directly. china player are over half the total of wow players.

[stumpy]

Why are so many people focused on the Annual Passers for the results of Q1? Wasn't the APers also present in Q4!?

I think the implementation of the new SoR in the last month of the quarter is FAR more likely a reason for maintaining Q1 subs than annual pass. =/

Never mind that money obtained through a promotion is worth the exact same amount as money obtained from the basic subscription. Or that, being strictly voluntary, both of these deals still require the player to be willing to subscribe to WoW.

Contrast with Bioware, which on the eve of its investor call signed half its playerbase up for an extra month whether they wanted it or not.

[DeltrusDisc]

This article was an excellent read and I found myself nodding a lot. Well done!

[xanzul]

And all it took is giving out free copies of Cataclysm and Diablo 3 left and right.

It shouldn't take such promotions just to 'stop the bleeding' - hell, giving away a $60 dollar game and $40 game should have boosted subscriptions out the ass.

There's no certainty knowing why World of Warcraft is slowly declining, but it's clearly still an issue.

So those 1.2 million annual pass holders were going to quit until they were given Mop beta and a mount for a game they hate? What?

[Naraga]

Whoever wrote the article is wrong, didn't mention pvp/arena once (which is the main reason why subs drop).

[BenBos]

Since the subscriptions did no longer drop the article becomes meaningless as it "proved" CATA improved OR the "subscriptions would have dropped further".

At least that was the faulty logic of the OP.

There are a dozen other reasons why subs dropped by 15% over almost 2 years now (12 M - 10.2 M) but in game issues were hardly relevant. World/internet/habit/aging changes were far more important.

The OP was contradicted with his own logic as subscriptions went flat again.

---------- Post added 2012-05-11 at 11:03 PM ----------

You didn't read. The things I listed had zero to do with adaptation, it was the crappy design of Cata -- and there's no surprise that players saw it, didn't like it and left.

How crappy?

Heavy CC and melee without appropriate CCs. So you go into the ONLY dungeons available with a group that could be ONLY melee, and it's a disaster.

That's a lack of foresight in their very design. It's like they can't connect the dots. Heavy CC fight = needing an appropriate CC ability.

In all of that data they claim to have and know, that slips by. And you want folks to believe Blizzard understands it's own game?

You can't adapt if it doesn't even EXIST in the game.

I think that the subs dropped because the PvP gear was not brightly colored enough and the back of my coat was red instead of deep blue...

[ScarletCrusader12]

Sometimes i wish i were just a newbie... just starting out, in a world full of amazingtasticness...
I hope this is what they do with MoP. Bringing you into a new world, new bosses, and you not knowing what's going to happen next. Hell, maybe i'll even read the quest text!

[Taenathal]

Honestly, if I happened to be new to WoW in recent years I'd probably end up quitting. The game world was just so much more vast, atmospheric and formidable back during the early stages of the game. Yet the questing experience has become a linear train track for the most part and many enemies - even the formerly dreaded elites - are easy to dispatch. I guess a lot of the reason for WoW gripping me initially is that the levelling experience was a large part of the game. You felt like you accomplished something, you needed to plan your pulls tactically and perhaps most importantly, you needed to form groups and interact with other players to do some of the more difficult quests.

Then again, I came from a single player RPG and survival horror background. I've always enjoyed it when games encourage me to plan and think on my feet. Exploration and discovery is pretty important, too - yet most of the hidden quests are now no longer available.

[nietz]

I think that the article pushes the argument a little too far, but I can see the validity of the basic points. I certainly had more fun in WoW when there was a sense of elitism —*there was a basis for bragging rights, for individuals and for guilds. That seems like a negative thing, but it is positive in the sense of good competition and a certain degree of social structure. The "everybody is a winner" approach that WoW has taken certainly has many positive side effects, not the least of which is giving everyone a fair shot at finding something to enjoy in the game, but in many respects it has cut the soul out of the game.

I never had time for raiding, I never played competitive PvP, and I can't stand dealing with people with huge egos, so I probably wouldn't survive in a hardcore raiding guild or arena team. I have always been a casual player, but even as a casual, I had more fun playing WoW when being a casual was something to aspire away from, even if in small ways. Not everyone can spend 30 hours a week playing the game (nor should they, really), but the social pressure created by a certain degree of elitism within the game made me a better player when I started playing in 2006. It made me keybind my abilities, pick up useful mods, learn my class well, and generally gain a higher level of mastery than I probably would have if I had started playing just a year ago or something. I was actually known as a good healer on my first server, and made lots of connections with people. It felt good to have "renown," as the author of the article put it.

But the game has become anonymousitized.

[anyaka21]

Why are so many people focused on the Annual Passers for the results of Q1? Wasn't the APers also present in Q4!?

I think the implementation of the new SoR in the last month of the quarter is FAR more likely a reason for maintaining Q1 subs than annual pass. =/

I actually wonder how successful the SoR was. Truthfully, at least from my speculation, 80%+ of the population probably has at least 1 85, and giving them a free level 80, to me, isn't much of an incentive.

The AP, in my opinion, just has more monetary value in it, and that's why they got 1.2mil commitments for it.

The question I have, is essentially all the D3 AP's, are they all NA/EU? And as thus, of the 5mil WoW population, basically 20% bought it?

[Taenathal]

The SoR was a pretty controversial move. I'm pretty sure the uproar caused by it resulting in a good number of players leaving, since it is pretty questionable to reward a player who quit the game with a free level 80 character when a very large portion of the current expansion revolves around the level 1-60 content. Makes me think the aim was to lure back some of the players who quit during this expansion, though obviously I can only speculate.

[Pann]

I actually wonder how successful the SoR was. Truthfully, at least from my speculation, 80%+ of the population probably has at least 1 85, and giving them a free level 80, to me, isn't much of an incentive.

The AP, in my opinion, just has more monetary value in it, and that's why they got 1.2mil commitments for it.

The question I have, is essentially all the D3 AP's, are they all NA/EU? And as thus, of the 5mil WoW population, basically 20% bought it?

The AP was only offered in NA/EU and at the time of its introduction it is likely that they accounted for closer to 4 million than 5 million subscribers. Thus 1.2 million sign ups is an amazing success I don't think that anyone, including Blizzard, thought that so many would take the offer.

[SamR]

I doubt even the raging forum posters actually ended up quitting over SoR. If they were going to quit over people bypassing content, they would have quit over RaF already.

It's just a WoW forum thing. Notice how quickly "SoR is a slap in the face!" turned into "OMG, where's my beta invite???"

---------- Post added 2012-05-11 at 05:37 PM ----------

Honestly, if I happened to be new to WoW in recent years I'd probably end up quitting.

Plenty of new players to old vanilla WoW ended up quitting. Didn't Blizzard release some stat about some large number of new players quitting before even hitting level 20 and canceling their subs?

[finskee]

It's just a WoW forum thing. Notice how quickly "SoR is a slap in the face!" turned into "OMG, where's my beta invite???"

Yeah its easy to leave out the fact that many people who did the year pass really just were hoping to get that beta invite. That's a good percentage of the dedicated who are still playing wow or will be soon, yet that also makes the servers seem less populated. D3 will make it seem even worse. MOP release will be when we see who's really still playing wow. Besides sales numbers they will have their server stats. The big stat they will be looking at in the first month will be how many accounts have a character or more that hits lvl 90.

Its been said before but I'll say it again. If they want to they can go back and figure out why every player quit without ever getting feedback. They can look at your playtime stats, your raiding stats, they can focus down on how much time you spend pvping or grinding pets. If they choose to they can read through your whispers, your guild chat, your trade conversations, all of it. They know why you quit better than you do.

And to get back on topic:

"M’uru still garners more respect than Deathwing because M’uru didn’t get nerfed into the ground."

Muru: http://wow.joystiq.com/2008/07/15/muru-nerfed-in-2-4-3/