What's your predictions for the Q1 Call?

[Gimlix]

They are behind us but not a full day.

It's 07:20 in the morning at blizzard headquarters, about 9hours behind from Norway where I live.

Any chance we will hear them before EU is like sleeping?

It's 16:35 atm in EU. (The Netherlands)
When is the meeting?

[-Superman-]

hopefully i am one of the many thousands that stopped playing "hello World of Colorscheme island panda adventure pokemon extreme"

I am really interested in seeing how many subs they lost. Esp knowing 5.3 will bring nothing cool to keep the content hogs happy. im going to say 75k-100k subs lost(i hope for way more than that though)

I'm surprised by people who hate the game, yet cannot seem to walk away from it. Maybe you don't hate it. Maybe you are just unhappy it is not the same expansion and community you started with all those years ago.

On Topic: I hope subs and profits go UP and make the doomsayers lose their friggin minds. I'm not a fanboy, I just hate pessimists.

[ihyln]

I'm surprised by people who hate the game, yet cannot seem to walk away from it. Maybe you don't hate it. Maybe you are just unhappy it is not the same expansion and community you started with all those years ago.

On Topic: I hope subs and profits go UP and make the doomsayers lose their friggin minds. I'm not a fanboy, I just hate pessimists.

I only hope for subs to go down so Ghostcrawler will finally get fired. The guy just does not know what he is doing if you read his tweets and hasn't since WOTLK

[Gimlix]

hopefully i am one of the many thousands that stopped playing "hello World of Colorscheme island panda adventure pokemon extreme"

Honestly the game should be f2p at least just baseline leveling. You gain no rep or currencies no professions except first aid a very low gold cap but you can level to cap. This way people would not be so discouraged when they get to cap and realize the roles/specs they have to play in pvp/pve are not what they were hopein to play. Speaking for new players as I got pretty much every class @ cap.

I am really interested in seeing how many subs they lost. Esp knowing 5.3 will bring nothing cool to keep the content hogs happy. im going to say 75k-100k subs lost(i hope for way more than that though)

Go back playing CoD lol, "hello World of Colorscheme island panda adventure pokemon extreme" says enough you are a kid.

[-Superman-]

I only hope for subs to go down so Ghostcrawler will finally get fired. The guy just does not know what he is doing if you read his tweets and hasn't since WOTLK

As far as I know, all official announcements are still made from the fan site, and his tweets are seldom much more than food for the media freaks.

[Jeleh]

400-600k loss, based on content getting old, shine wearing off and dead servers forcing more to quit via boredom.

[Gimlix]

400-600k loss, based on content getting old, shine wearing off and dead servers forcing more to quit via boredom.

WoW hasn't been this active for a while, I haven't seen such amount of activity anywhere.
All queues of RBG'S/LFR/Dungeon/Scenario haven't been this since like 2 years?

EU/US i think is still rising, but Asian area will drop like 200k again.
That's all my prediction, and we dont live there so why should we care

[Jeleh]

WoW hasn't been this active for a while, I haven't seen such amount of activity anywhere.
All queues of RBG'S/LFR/Dungeon/Scenario haven't been this since like 2 years?

EU/US i think is still rising, but Asian area will drop like 200k again.
That's all my prediction, and we dont live there so why should we care

Yet they still lost subs over the first quarter of the expansion during a Christmas period no less. Now the new stuff has worn out, people have done the raids finished the new content and dead servers are still driving people away from the game.

I see nothing which would indicate the subs will stay/rise from where they currently are.

[Pann]

WoW hasn't been this active for a while, I haven't seen such amount of activity anywhere.
All queues of RBG'S/LFR/Dungeon/Scenario haven't been this since like 2 years?

EU/US i think is still rising, but Asian area will drop like 200k again.
That's all my prediction, and we dont live there so why should we care

Whilst you might have seen increased activity being on one of the largest EU realms but unfortunately the reality for many of us on not so populated realms is quite the opposite.

[Osmeric]

Yet they still lost subs over the first quarter of the expansion during a Christmas period no less.

They said that was mostly (entirely?) in Asia.

[Gimlix]

Yet they still lost subs over the first quarter of the expansion during a Christmas period no less. Now the new stuff has worn out, people have done the raids finished the new content and dead servers are still driving people away from the game.

I see nothing which would indicate the subs will stay/rise from where they currently are.

New raids haven't been finished, there is a few who have done 13/13 HC ToT.

If you like it or not, 5,2 has been amazing.
And First Quarter US/EU didn't lose any subscribers, China lost them.
So yes i see reason to let it stay the same amount.

[Dristereau]

Expecting losses tbh, just for the simple thing of the game advancing and PVP not really being in a much better position than 5.0. Hoping they actually mention something to do with EU/US Server Merges, seen as though there are way too many dead or dying realms now. Also would be nice for me, given that I did one Server Transfer today and am currently looking at another three in the next two weeks or so.

[Seranthor]

i really hope they announce how they will combat low population, there is less than 30 players of each class at level 90 online at any given time... you can well say that there are less than 300 lvl 90 players in my realm -.-

hopefully they do merge servers, with the amount of players i see online i do expect a 500k sub loss at least.

The investors, who the call is for, probably dont give a damn about combatting low population... they care about the financial performance of the company (which is what the call will be about)

[Shampro]

I predict this thread will reach the 50 - 60 mark in about an hour after the call. Because people care too much about it.

[Jeleh]

The investors, who the call is for, probably dont give a damn about combatting low population... they care about the financial performance of the company (which is what the call will be about)

That all depends on if low population servers generate more cash via "forced" payed transfers or retaining subscribers. Right now the company just wants to milk what they have but eventually it will dry up and they will wish they had retained the greater numbers at an earlier stage before they got bored and went elsewhere.

[Seranthor]

I only hope for subs to go down so Ghostcrawler will finally get fired. The guy just does not know what he is doing if you read his tweets and hasn't since WOTLK

I hardly think GC will get fired over Subs... Sorry, but keep praying... maybe one of the Old Gods will hear you.

[mvaliz]

New raids haven't been finished, there is a few who have done 13/13 HC ToT.

If you like it or not, 5,2 has been amazing.
And First Quarter US/EU didn't lose any subscribers, China lost them.
So yes i see reason to let it stay the same amount.

Yup - I mean it's like...Chineese subs - so what? I mean - it's not like they're humans with feelings and ideas of their own or are capable of forming their own opinion. Unlike us Westerners and Europeans - who are the only ones who count as real human beings.

(/sarcasm)

PS. If somebody here says "But they have a different subscription pay model!" - I'll print out this post, fold it into a paper airplane, and throw it just over your head....

[Gimlix]

Yup - I mean it's like...Chineese subs - so what? I mean - it's not like they're humans with feelings and ideas of their own or are capable of forming their own opinion. Unlike us Westerners and Europeans - who are the only ones who count as real human beings.

(/sarcasm)

PS. If somebody here says "But they have a different subscription pay model!" - I'll print out this post, fold it into a paper airplane, and throw it just over your head....

We don't live in China, Why should we bother?

[mvaliz]

I hardly think GC will get fired over Subs... Sorry, but keep praying... maybe one of the Old Gods will hear you.

...that's like saying "A manager won't be fired over a continual loss of sales".

If there is a massive and long enough loss - you bet they'll replace his ass!

I mean, hell, look at Diablo III - by most PC game standards its box sales were AWESOME - and yet they immediately shuffled Jay Wilson off to another project before they even GOT a replacement for him after the mass exodus of players from the game and, subsequently, the expected RMAH sales plummeted. You don't shuffle off the main guy who's responsible for a successful project 2 months AFTER its release if it really met their expectations.

But, again, on topic - I must reiterate that I don't believe the sub loss will be anything major either this quarter. 200-400k subs tops IMO...

[Benggaul]

I do not think blizzard would bother keeping servers open at that point

They might not keep ALL of the servers online at that point, but they most certainly would still have several up and running. Even as few as a few hundred thousand subs is enough to sustain a moderately updated/maintained MMO. I would expect that they'd give in and combine servers much like MMOs in the past have done and would cut the dev team significantly, but there would still be access available to subscribers.

Eve Online, for example, is a pretty substantial sub-based MMO that only has somewhere in the neighborhood of 300k subs, yet still releases expansions and updates within reasonable intervals.