WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers

[OscaR]

Neither do the haters.

That said, 9.6 million is likely a statistically significant drop from "over 10 million." Anything amounting to a drop of ~5% will raise investors' eyebrows.

LOL, the "investors" must be raising the brows up and down a whole lot if these numbers move them.

[mikencarly]

God you fanboys never quit.

Your a cock sucking hater not even 5% of the playerbase wow is still king.

Infracted

[Deleted]

It doesn't surprise me

[jabs]

This post reminded me I need to unsub my wife's and my own accounts.

[bloodwulf]

I am not a hater ( i currently have an active sub) but I hope that Blizzard would concede the fact that World of Dailycraft is just not keeping people interested. Several guildies have quit because of gear disparity between others. You either have to grind dailies or get lucky in LFR. My fiancee is considering quitting because she has done dailies and run lfr since it came out, and has been stuck with a 463 weapon because she can't get a drop in lfr (with elder charms).

[dokilar]

just about where i was expecting the numbers to be. i honestly was expecting anything other than a 500k swing in either direction. WoW's heyday is long past and has been for awhile. people will claim that other people who claim WoWs heyday was BC are just wearing rose colored tinted glasses but i really believe its the truth. it was a time period in which i had the most fun out of just about any game ive ever played.

for me personally BC was a new beginning, it was something out of the ordinary. WOTLK came around and it had me hooked because i wanted to see the ending of Arthas. Cata proved to me that WoW was essentially the same thing its always been but that they had killed off any meaningful characters i once cared about (even though i remember deathwing from wc2). this was a major reason i quit during Cata. it wasnt because of the gap in content releases, it wasnt because there were imbalances across the classes. it was because after playing the game for as many years i had i realized it was essentially the same thing it was when i first started playing.

before people jump on my ass about my opinion id like to say that i dont think WoW is a bad game. in fact i love blizzard games, warcraft 1 was the first computer game i ever played and ive played them all ever since, with the exception of MoP and SC2, but i truly believe that this games best days are behind them. WoW will continue to be popular, it will continue to sell well in all its incantations and the sub number will ( i believe at least) probably rise again above 10 million subscribers. unfortunately for someone who loves the WoW lore as much as me, this doesnt translate into an enjoyable game

[Immitis]

LOL, the "investors" must be raising the brows up and down a whole lot if these numbers move them.

there making more money than last year. thats all that matters. wow could have 3 million subs as long as profits are up for it they dont care

[Dragaunus]

More dailys.... less players...

[Deleted]

mists ISNT a game, its dlc.

No, it's expansion, and not dlc (which means "download content"). Which is more like a new game.

[nekobaka]

LOL, the "investors" must be raising the brows up and down a whole lot if these numbers move them.

It raised enough eyebrows for an investor to ask a question regarding the stability of the player base.

[Donald Hellscream]

i knew guildwars was gonna keep leeching subs, i bet swtors free to play model have pulled subs from wow aswell!! now okay i am joking it is more than likely just because the game is aging and people go on in the search for their next holy grail. Besides this is not stopping me from logging in and having fun so there is no good reason i should care about the subscription numbers.

[Deleted]

Nuff said.

Morhaime just said "majority of the loss is from China"; which suprised me a lot.

[Deleted]

By god people take any chance to claim wow is on the decline... All that's going to happen is a bunch of people re-sub for next patch, burn out while waiting for last patch, maybe re-sub again, a tonne of people with leave because of the ICC syndrome and next expansion pops up epic trailer, everyone's hyped, back to 10 million subs for a few months. Then the cycle repeats itself.

I think people don't give Blizz enough credit when it comes to bouncing back from 500k~ sub losses, in the end this means nothing to me, I'm still gonna play the hell out of the game and enjoy it :3

Also kinda surprised that D3 got that many sales considering all the things it lacked in, wondering if they counted the annual pass subscribers into that 12 million.

[Zokten]

you can still sub to swtor too does that mean it doesnt have a free to play option and that it ever had more subs than wow?

You do know that only ROi was F2P.....while RO was Sub/pre-paid cards.

Also the F2P servers didn't really come into play till 07/08

[SodiumChloride]

I don't really see what the big deal is. People drop their sub for all sorts of reasons.

Year-end vacation is over. No time.
Tired of current content.
Simply burned out.

I remember World of Warcraft as it used to be, not the casual abomination it has become.

Heh. If WoW was still the way it was when it launched, Blizzard would be down to 1 million subs by now. Zero content for non-raiders. Raiding being only for the hardcore 5%.

[Immitis]

No, it's expansion, and not dlc (which means "download content"). Which is more like a new game.

dlc and expansion are the same thing

[Tharkkun]

Morhaime just said "majority of the loss is from China"; which suprised me a lot.

Not really. Chinese players probably grinded their brains to 90 in a day, then capped their valor in 1-2 days. Got bored and quit. They thrive on grinds which doesn't appeal as much to NA/European players. Remember when Wow officially launched in China over 5 million of the subs were from there so there's a lot of room for them to bleed still.

[Ylera]

an 8 year old game is in decline it seems. but still providing entertainment for a lot of people, not sure why people feel the need to posture about it either way. you think wow was gonna last forever?

[Immitis]

You do know that only ROi was F2P.....while RO was Sub/pre-paid cards.

Also the F2P servers didn't really come into play till 07/08

everquest 2 also had a sub for a while too. i dont see how this is in anyway proving your point

[Duster505]

Early after Cata launch it was talked about in an interview to someone high up in Blizzard that WoW was no longer bringing in as many new players to offset the losses and that going forward that they would need to be focusing more on player retention.

Mike Morhaime just made a statement that the playerbase is more ready to leave and that they have made changes in MoP that are directed in keeping players engaged in the game and faster content patches to keep them occupied. First quarter report after Cata launch the developers did say that their goal was faster content patches and trying to keep players involved and their first large hitter was the daily zone which sadly was as far as they went to follow through with their goals. Going back to the grind model in MoP seems to have been the better way to go in terms of player engagement unlike the gut the grind model that Cata had adopted.

The subscriber loss is small, though it comes close to what Cata left off to show that at the moment MoP is not doing any better in terms of subscriber numbers. The shift to the new VP gear being behind a raid grind instead of a daily grind might be related to the subscriber loss.

What we can say for sure that the grind in MOP is aparently not solving any issues. So - BLizzard already failed to improve on Cata model when it comes to that. We are only 4 months into the expansion - and Im one of those that left cause of the new systems. Nothing in 5.2 will make me return. If something - It just proofs to me I did the right thing leaving the game when I did.