WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers

[Zergal]

Again, opinions don't matter, numbers do. If the game wasn't enjoyable the sub numbers would show that, as they do now.

But go ahead and keep living in denial if you'd like.

So what you're imlpying is that Justin Bieber is actually a good artist? Same logic applied.

[Sarthan]

So what? A decline is a decline, WoW's "golden age" is long over, the game is going to keep losing players, will you still be using that defense when it's down to 3 million players?

When was its Golden Age bud? In Vanilla? Because that is wrong we had less people playing. I doubt you even played from launch or Burning Crusade.


WoW Is dying!!!!!! OMFG Who cares I still find plenty of people to run my 25 man guild.

[Chry]

So what you're imlpying is that Justin Bieber is actually a good artist? Same logic applied.

A good artist to his fans, yes. Likewise, WotLK was a good artist to its players.

[Dakz]

That is a good news, maybe they will start to listen player base wishes. I think that majority is PvP community cuz they fucked up so hard (again) Hopefully they can balance more in 5.2 so that we can expect WoW in near future to become eSport again.

[Zergal]

Was to be expected, 6 months since Pandaria and the first REAL patch content is not out yet.

On what planet do you live, its been 4 months, wich is completly acceptable between 2 raiding content patches.

[Duster505]

Before LFR and dailies there was nothing. You're bored? Go run around and kill stuff or herb. No dungeon finder so sit around in your major city and beg for a tank/healer! Or Raid and throw your face at a wall for 8 hours. Dailies were one of the alternatives for something to do.

No - dailies in MOP offered not alternatives... they were pretty much the only way to progress at an acceptable rate. Too many RPG progression systems were tied to them. REP - Valor - Lucky tokens. Rep and tokens not possible to get any other way. Thats not alternatives. Thats the only way.

Before LFR there were guilds. Guilds that had maybe not the best players in the world but still had players that were doing content in the game and socialising instead of screaming in LFRs.

Blizzard should be looking to strengthening guilds in the game again. Good guild is for life. And Im not talking world first. And thats why WOW is now loosing subs.

[kojinshugi]

Depends on the metric. On the money-making metric, popular = better. On the quality metric, popular != better. Just look at Twilight.

Twilight isn't universally popular though. It has a very large audience among its niche demographic, but it's near universally reviled by others. WoW is like Star Wars - people from every walk of life and demographic enjoy it.

Broad-based appeal seems to be the only objective way to ascribe quality to something. Because if you go by subjectivity, i.e. you and I considering Twilight and Justin Bieber to be horrible dreck, then we don't really have any basis of saying that the subjectivity of Twilight and Justin Bieber fans is not valid.

[Zokten]

What numbers are these? I'm quite sure Blizzard doesn't release subscriber numbers for D3, what with D3 not having subscription.

Yes, but people have being using xfire, how many people the D3 says is playing, etc

Not sure how good all of it is but based on it, things don't look so hot.

All I know is that the economy is doing fine whenever I pop in and play. Things sell fast and there's plenty of stuff available.

I'd hope so there is a pretty hefty bot problem right now.

And for all its co-op stuff, D3 is not an MMO. It's a glorified single player game. It doesn't need to retain millions of active players years after its release. In fact, it's better for Blizzard not to have to deal with launch-level numbers for years.

Wasn't saying it was, just seems its not holding people's attention very well.

[Celista]

You think it's terrible game design to not have the most optimal way of playing be "sit down and grind for two 12-hour sessions"?

Seriously, get a job and a family and try doing that.

Having to do 30 minutes of dailies every couple of days to remain competitive in an MMO endgame is not excessive. You may as well whine that raids lockouts force you to attend every week for months, instead of being allowed to spend a 72-hour caffeine fueled binge session getting full epics.

It wasn't 30 minutes of dailies, it was 2 hours' worth of dailies at the beginning of this expansion. And that was only doing the dailies that rewarded gear for my class, that wasn't including Tillers for cooking or fishing dailies or the serpent riding dailies...

Mob grinding vs dailies grinding IS more family friendly, wtf? Where are you even getting your rationale from? You can grind a lot or a little at once depending on how much time you have, unlike dailies which require you to log in every day.

Both mob grinding and gating valor items behind rep and making dailies required in order to spend valor is bad, but dailies (as they are in MoP) are NOT an improvement from straight mob grinds. If anything they are even worse.

[Exodeus]

You think it's terrible game design to not have the most optimal way of playing be "sit down and grind for two 12-hour sessions"?

Seriously, get a job and a family and try doing that.

Having to do 30 minutes of dailies every couple of days to remain competitive in an MMO endgame is not excessive. You may as well whine that raids lockouts force you to attend every week for months, instead of being allowed to spend a 72-hour caffeine fueled binge session getting full epics.

I have had a job and family since before i started wow and i prefer to do my grinding in the middle of the night or on days off tho my current job only allows me to play every other month.

[Bianconeri]

WoW is still to MMORPGs what The Beatles is to pop music, what Star Wars is to sci-fi epics, what Muhammad Ali is to boxing. A decline is a decline, but I just have to laugh at the doomsayers.

[Sarthan]

Was to be expected, 6 months since Pandaria and the first REAL patch content is not out yet.

I highly doubt you are 16/16h and have completed all the reputations.

[Methias]

The people complaining about rep grinding would have loved Vanilla... AD rep grind for nothing other than cheaper Nax entry = win...

[dfjdejulio]

im going to laugh at this comment when blizzard announces titan as either free to play or free if you have wow

Now, "free if you have wow" is something I could easily see happening. Once they have more than one MMO, I could easily see them saying you have a "battle.net" subscription and not a "WoW" or "Titan" subscription. That may in fact be the path they take to mask a decline from investors.

Given the precedent set by WoW, I do not think their investors would accept a straight-up F2P model for "Titan" right from the start, not based on the information we have today.

[beanman12345]

A good artist to his fans, yes. Likewise, WotLK was a good artist to its players.

LOL @ you thinking justin bieber is a good artist. that is hilarious. way to loose any credibility on this site.

[Raiju]

yeah you completely ignored the fact that i said they dropped the first quarter... and the fact that the only person i was really directing that to was the one who said the highest subs wow ever had was 11 million in bc and again dlc and expansion IS the same thing its all about how much a company puts into it.

if i make a game and then i sell an expansion to that game but the only thing thats in it is a vanity item then thats still an expansion

If you never want to sell a game again and have everyone in appropriate countries get refunds by law, sure.

Also I'm not sure if anyone would believe you if you advertised it. That or false advertising, another thing you'd have legal issues with.

But please, go on about how your idea of expansions is both practiced and normal, and not DLC.

I saw you said they dropped the first quarter, it still means nothing. Getting sales when you release a game means NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Look at Diablo 3. Look at Bioware. Getting sales means nothing if that franchise is a dying shadow afterwards. WoW hasn't had that happen (yet, although I don't believe it will), but basing anything off immediate sales is a fanboy argument at best when it comes to subscription games.

He also stated that they hit 11 million in BC in response to someone saying they only had 6 million (and that 11 was the peak). Both are correct. He never said it was the HIGHEST, just that it peaked. Peaked. Because it was the peak then.

[Aquamonkey]

Twilight isn't universally popular though. It has a very large audience among its niche demographic, but it's near universally reviled by others. WoW is like Star Wars - people from every walk of life and demographic enjoy it.

Broad-based appeal seems to be the only objective way to ascribe quality to something. Because if you go by subjectivity, i.e. you and I considering Twilight and Justin Bieber to be horrible dreck, then we don't really have any basis of saying that the subjectivity of Twilight and Justin Bieber fans is not valid.

There are also more technical valuations of those things. Like scene composition, script direction, character development, acting depth, dialogue, etc. These things aren't limited by genre. Even silly movies can have high quality in these aspects.

[Bathory]

Oh no!! ONLY 9.6 million!

[Exodeus]

The people complaining about rep grinding would have loved Vanilla... AD rep grind for nothing other than cheaper Nax entry = win...

But then again if you played alot you were exhalted or close to it anyway from baron runs with friends :P

[lazzy]

I think Blizzard is lying about the real numbers