WoW Down to 8.3 Million Subscribers

[Freia]

See... this is the issue with your type of people... you claim that people have been saying WoW is dying since the beginning... maybe... but that group wasn't nearly as big as it is now... and the arguments that they made back then were probably over stupid things... whereas now I could make countless arguments about how the quality in the game has declined.

You can post a bunch reasons why in your opinion the game has declined in quality. All you have is your opinion, which is the same as all the other nah sayers in the past had--their opinions.

[glycerethe]

way to take it to one end or the other. there needs to be a middle ground. gear should not fall from the sky nor should it take months to get ONE piece of gear. but since you seem to know what the answer is, tell it.

You started posting on the forums non-stop since 6pm til 10pm, that's 4 hours of rage, holy sh1t.

[lyxx]

Blizzard expects to have less subscribers at the end of the year than they do today.

Lets make some prediction - i expect 6-7 mln

[Osmeric]

No i am looking at the actual revenue report
Subscription, licensing and other revenues 2013=334mil 2012=298mil

And those are GAAP numbers (and I believe include some non-WoW stuff).

The more appropriate numbers are under "Online Subscriptions" on page 5 of the press release. Notice the 47M in net deferred revenue causing a large difference between the GAAP and non-GAAP numbers.

[Luxeley]

Huge drop! The bottom line is, Blizzard needs to provide "greater" quality if they want to maintain their pay for play business model. They got away with not fixing Outland and Northrend, not adding new dungeons and raids with patches (doesn't need to be part of a progressive, just part of a greater choice), not doing new character models, not fixing PVP (increasing baseline resilience will make it 5xs worse!) and not fixing server imbalance and dead servers. They know what to do about everything, they simply choose not to because it costs T & M (time and money). Hopefully, Blizzard realizes they must provide more for their subs and increase the overall value of what they put out because apparantly people are choosing the free to play model over Blizzard. This is a wake up call, let's see how blizzard responds: do we see a major overhual of the game or do we get a new cool mount to buy and another 1,000,000 retarded dailies to do?

[Darth Primus]

Make it free 2 play like other mmog already ?!?!?!?

[Testaxc]

If you compare to peak players not too far in the past we're now at 1 in 3 people no longer playing WoW from that era.

[Snakebyte]

A direct result of them screwing us multiboxers. I knew they would lose a ton of subs. Lost 7 from me.

[Deleted]

RE: Hearthstone Gameplay

They should probably play WoW more often and get in touch with their community instead of defending the failure they call "design philosophy".

[mikencarly]

-- As of March 31, 2013, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG, with 8.3 million subscribers.(2)

For the quarter ended March 31, 2013, Activision Blizzard's GAAP net revenues were $1.32 billion, as compared with $1.17 billion for the first quarter of 2012 they are no were near dying lol.

[Deleted]

Hearthstone is starting and i am ready! Looking forward for it to be released
Liking the TCG already, this would make it all a bit easier and leave more space in my drawes (which are getting full of cards :P)

[Deleted]

-- As of March 31, 2013, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG, with 8.3 million subscribers.(2)

For the quarter ended March 31, 2013, Activision Blizzard's GAAP net revenues were $1.32 billion, as compared with $1.17 billion for the first quarter of 2012 they are no were near dying lol.

Irrelavant, since Activision Blizzard contains more games than just World of Warcraft. They didnt lose 1,3 million subscriptions because they are so awesome.

[Metacrias]

1. Asia is where most of these subscriptions have been lost. They burn threw content at double the rate due to 2 weekly resets. And the MMO market in Asia is HUGE , they have 5-10 mmos that are exactly like World of Warcraft but F2P or a lot cheaper and easier to get a hold of.

2. If you look at there quarterly earnings for WoW they actually went up since Q1 of 2012 so there may be a uptick in US subscriptions and a down tick in Asian.

I rarely comment on articles here but I felt compelled to do so to this article, but the very first comment I saw (the one quoted!) said pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Basically, China is the source of most lost subscriptions and for a variety of reasons, primarily those mentioned by ADman but also things like the rapid development process, changing legal systems regarding internet usage, new policies on trade resulting partly from the very, very recent transition in power from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping (if you don't know the name, learn it - he's the second most powerful person on Earth and will be for the next 10 years...), etc. all have worked to make the Chinese market for most things, including WoW, highly volatile. Plus, the way they pay for the game also matters - they can lock up a subscription and start it back up much more easily than we can in the West.

[Floross]

That last hearthstone game the devs shoulda lost.

[Onzay]

Why do they say "Most of the decline in subscribers came from China." They make it seem like their Chinese fans don't even matter.

[Siddown]

Why do they say "Most of the decline in subscribers came from China." They make it seem like their Chinese fans don't even matter.

That, or it is simply stating a fact.

[Vulcanasm]

The game was successful when it didn't cater to casuals.

It's funny how insistently you double down on demonstrably wrong explanations. This game peaked in subscriptions during WOTLK -- the most "casual"-friendly expansion, when 25% of guilds killed normal-mode Lich King. It saw the most rapid expansion during Burning Crusade -- when the game was retooled every patch to be successively friendlier to "casual" gamers.

Like I said, "casual" is a term bandied about by basement-dwelling neckbeards, and it always means the same thing: "anyone who plays less than *me*".

Any time you mention "casual" like it's a dirty word, you lose all credibility.

[morfraen]

WoW is getting old. Subs will keep spiking with each new xpac and falling after no matter how much blizzard tried to redesign things. 8.3m is still larger than anything else out there.

[Taurrus]

What do you guys think it would work to increase that subscribing amount, lowering the monthly fee to $10?

[thorkin69]

then may I ask Just how stupid are you for playing with crap??? you said it , not me. does your Mom know you are playing with" crap "? or is it that you don't play anymore but have no other life than to come on a WoW based subject forum and throw " Crap " opinions that those of us that do still like the game?