You believe MoP will return WoW to 12million subs?

[Libram]

The Subs will jump back up, probably a little over 12mill. Give about half a year and it will possibly all just decline back into 10mill because the new players will grow tired of the older content and they want to see the newer flashy stuff, which costs $$ because they will have to buy all of the expansions just to play in the new zones.
In a noobies eyes fresh into the MMO/PC Gaming world, they probably will see it as a scam and just trash the forums.

[Pann]

OP blizzard will once again give the hungry throngs of wow loyalists another basket of delicious treats with their latest offering: MOP. Yes subs will go back up, in part because the older players will return, from breaks starting and ending within the current content and those players have been sitting out since prior expacs, and they will have new a market share from the the 1st time mmo crowd 13-17yr olds, that were too young to be tired of the game. Add to that all the wisdom they have gleaned from all the prior expacs as they dial it in even better for the old and especially new players.

I suppose the next step is to make the game cross platform beyond pc and mac to counsels that have mouse and kb peripherals or make the interface gamepad centric, there is the phone gamer crowd / tablet crowd so there is room for that too.

The developer should have aspirations of achieving 100million subscribers and can do so thru a variety of technology advancements, proper testing, lots of research, heavy investing and a healthy dose of innovation. Blizzard is brand you can buy into and really if you haven't considered purchasing stock you should (disclaimer I am not licensed to officially provide financial advise, all investments you take on are your own risk, do not invest any money into the market that you can not afford to lose).

I don't think anyone is going to question that there will be a surge in subscribers when MOP hits but the big question is whether those players stick around for an appreciable time.

Traditionally MMOs that require a subscription fee do not fare well in the console market, the XBox 360 and PS3 both have large hard drives, internet connectivity and the ability to use a keyboard and mouse if it was a viable move Blizzard would have made it already.

Quite frankly WOW achieving 100 million subscribers is ludicrous even Pancaspe keeps his over estimations within the bounds of reality.

[Graph]

With all of the new stuff plus pet battles, I'd say its going over 12 million maybe even close to 13. Subs always go up with a new xpack, Happens every time.

[Goatfish]

I can't see it actually increasing by any amount, the game's old and boring, the concepts are pish poor and the 'queue for gameplay' status of the game is disgraceful.
It's a tragedy to see a once beautiful, immersive and compelling game consigned to the scrapheap of 'crappy MMOs' a long with Aion, Rift and such.

By scrap heap of mmo's you mean a normal and more reasonable number instead of an obscene fluke that no one saw coming? Subscriber numbers of the point WoW reached is far beyond the norm for MMO's, and some of those 'scrap heap' games are still perfectly fun and in some cases receive more updates and content, as well as having a more interactive dev base than WoW. I definitely wouldn't call an mmo with even just 250k players a scrap heap or dead. 250,000 players is a good sized city. The biggest reason people might think an mmo is dead or dying (such as WoW) is because of servers where a majority has quit leaving server population more around 1000, a number smaller than some peoples facebook friends list. When servers are consolidated well and populations managed correctly, even a game with 10,000 subscribers can feel alive and vibrant.

[Nearmyth]

I think it will probably go to about 11 million subs if it's advertised well, and dip back to 10 mil subs.

[Future]

The parroting in this thread is hilarious.

That aside I don't think it will either. I'll still be playing the game, but I think the addition of Farmville and Pet Battles is just a bit too far. The game being more casual is fine as long as there are still hardcore elements, but gimmicks just to try and keep people entertained out of raids is just stupid.

WotlK had a decent balance of keeping me entertained at least; WG was a decent place to hang out for some PvP even when battles weren't on and, raids were easily puggable by alts with two difficulties available. Blizzard should have just brought dual lock outs back.

To conclude, while I like the new talent system and the Monk class, as well as the attempt to fix world PvP and keep out of cities, I think the game needs something a bit more new or different to bring people back, not copied gimmicks from Facebook (ffs) and Pokemon. Peace.

[rebecca191]

I personally don't think it will ever go that high again.

[laserguns]

I quit wow 2 years ago but I plan to return in MoP. Having been disappointed by both swtor and tera and having no intention of playing gw2, I have no other choice.

Seriously, why the fuck must MMO developers launch MMOs missing features ?!? Why the hell must every MMO get mauled and eaten by WoW because its devs never do a good enough job to make sure their game at least floats, not necessarily challenge wow but at least not bore/piss off the players after the 1st 2 months.

Competition for WoW ?!? These junk MMOs can't even keep players who don't play wow anymore, interested for more than 2 months, let alone pose a threat to WoW.

Olympic swim competition starts. 2 contestants drown after the 1st 2 meters. Epic fail.

Most of the AAA MMOs aren't actually that bad, it's the players that pack up and go back to WoW because that's what they really want. Or a lot of players are burnt out on the genre as a whole, and end up going back to WoW simply because it feels like home, where the friends and familiarity always are.

[Strafer]

No, they will reach 25 million subs.

[pimpdaddy]

Nope. I think it will continue to drop in subs, you'll probably see a spike in numbers at release than a large drop after that. WoW is getting old and people are burnout on it. I've only played it for 2yrs and I've been unsubbed for 6months, I played Cata for as long as I could, just couldn't take anymore. I was planning to come for MoP, just to play with my old guildies but after looking at some of the beta gameplay, I highly doubt it now. I'm actually having more fun playing SWTOR, but I think D3 killed it

[Archdruid Dehydrate]

There will be alot of pple returning its not hard to see that, its just how long will they stick around is the question from what i see on MoP it will be a good long while.

[Easo]

It will raise, i dont doubt that. I just cant know whether it will reach 12 million mark, will fall shortly, or stay the same.

[ghostnet]

I don't really think so. I bet a lot of people will leave WoW in favor of Diablo 3. Best case scenario: WoW will continue to stabilize at ~10 mil subs.

I'm seriously over hearing people say that people will leave WoW for D3...... Most of the people with D3 are annual pass holders, plus D3 is very WoWlike and is very close to WoW in terms of battlenet stuff. Blizzard aren't losing any money from people playing Diablo, and their all bound to come back to WoW when mists launches. Think of diablo atm as, for most people, a time-spender for until mists launches. But yeah, noone is really "leaving" WoW to go to diablo, and as for the other MMO's, wow is by far the best. The other MMO's just cater for the people who "want a change from wow" and for example star wars fans would rather play SWTOR than wow, thats it.

[AVPaul]

As we can see time goes futher and futher, but Blizzard are working on some useless perks instead of making "real game". So they are making everything for the game but forgetting to actually make the game itself again. So nope, I think. The game will continue to decline in MOP.

[Eroginous]

MoP is bringing so many QoL improvements to the game I can't fathom it losing any more subs than they have lost already. I can see a great many people subbing just to play stuff like Pet Battles without even paying any attention to other content.