Is it possible for wow to ever regain its subscribers and stability?

[Chickat]

Wow down to 8.3m subs from 12m in 2010. Do you think wow can regain the subs and become stable again, or is the game just old. If it isnt old thats the problem what do you think the reason is for the sub losses.

[hablix]

No, it will never reach 12 million again, but it may stabilize at some lower number. I don't think we've hit that floor yet though.

[Prokne]

Subs first went up because of the popularity of the RTS games. Part of the reason they dropped so badly in the beginning of Cata was because the LK was dead and the game was over for a lot of people. In order to get the subs much higher, Blizzard will have to boost interest in the game with another non-mmo title.

If you are just looking to stabilize subs, they just need to release more content in a shorter amount of time. About every 2 months so people are unlikely to unsub during down time between patches.

[Vankrys]

concurence is becoming strong.

I believe game dev learned lessons from the success of some MMOs (wow, GW2) and the faillure of others (swtor, tera, secret world)
I believe they do have a better understanding of what make MMO succesful and some are even experience in making MMOs (even if it has failed)

I think the future for wow can only become harder. And that excelent news for consumer. Because from competition rise excellence and innovation in product. Blizzard will have to try very hard to keep or regain market share, while other company know thay can grab market share if they release quality product with the right formula

Exciting time ahead, maybe not for wow, but for consumer, sure is

[Arbs]

More than likely no, but I could be wrong !!

[mellowconundrum]

I feel like WoW lost a spark back when WotLK ended, and while MoP is definitely up there in terms of quality, it's more like it and people are just slowly growing apart. It's still fun to play but less so each time.
Subs will probably never peak like they did, but I don't see WoW suddenly cascading downwards. We'll probably just see constant erosion as time goes on rather than one large drop.

[Shinoashi]

the whole mmo genre is taking a hit as a whole, so no, i highly highly doubt it.

[Asmekiel]

Get down to a stable subscriber base, most likely yes. I however doubt it will grow back to 12M+ subscribers. But who knows, stranger things have happened.

[NewOrleansTrolley]

Unless it gets another huge series bump, like South Park, I don't see it.

[Kraenen]

yes. wow will gain 5 million subs from the newly discovered alien planet of Porthos, who will then be brainwashed to enslave new worlds for increasing their subscriber base. as has been prophesied.

[underdogba]

I seriously question Blizz's assertion that "casuals" are disproportionately part of the subscriber loss, because what I'm seeing in practice is that the demographic is people right in the middle who play endgame content at a strong level, but do not push greater than 3 raid nights a week. These are the people that I see dissapearing and becoming near impossible to recruit. I see no shortage of people doing dailies and LFR, and the top tier competitive guilds are still there.

[Vankrys]

bliz itself said they expecting sub to continue decreasing. To release such a pessimistic (thus potentially damaging) statement publicly, you can be dam well sure subs are going down this year.

[Brachamul]

My belief is that they broke the social aspect of wow when Dungeon Finder came along. I do think that dungeon finder was a good thing, but nothing was implemented to compensate for the destruction of the social mesh.

To illustrate that, i can just cite what happened around me when MOP was released. I talked to my sister about it, we both got our copies, then her boyfriend got his copy, then some of our friends, then our guilds ... in only a week, about 20 people i knew had gotten back into the game because their friends had too. And same thing happened backwards about a month later. Nobody had time to raid properly, and random raiding just felt clumsy and not fun, so a few of us left, and the entire crew followed, because let's face it, most people log in to play with people, either RL friends or WOW friends. When your friends start quitting, so do you.

[Chickat]

I honestly dont think theres anything they can do at this point. I dont know if its the fact that the lich king, or that cataclysm was terrible. MoP is good, but i think once the players started leaving for whatever reason it started a flood that cant be stopped. Even if MoP is good, if theres no friends to play with you will quit too, which will make the remaining people you knew quit as well and so on.

[IceStationZebra]

The answer is simple. Want to increase subscribers, have another recession.

Players keep saying Blizzard did this or that. The truth is during a Recession, people don’t have money to go places and do things and look for the best bang for the buck. Games provide this. Historically, game sales go up during a recession.

Add in the fact the US and other countries were fighting an unpopular war, with a healthy dose of Fear mongering, propaganda replacing news, and people felt hopeless. It was a great time to be a game developer. During these times people needed others to be with and WoW filled that empty space and put some hope back in their lives.

As we recover from the recession, people can afford to go out and enjoy their friends away from home. All we are seeing is a correction to what the normal non recession subscribers would be. Enjoy WoW, Blizzard did a pretty good job.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

At the rate of this freefall, WoW will be relatively dead by the end of this year.

3-4 million players left. Which for WoW, which peaked at 12 million, is at best 33% of its peak remaining.

They have one chance to avoid that. And that's to absolutely smash Blizzcon this year. If they don't introduce the next expansion as something truly revolutionary, then WoW's history.

[Darksoldierr]

No, a current 15year old (+-2-4 years) player, who never played with Warcraft series will see nothing in WoW that other MMOs cant offer.

[Chickat]

At the rate of this freefall, WoW will be relatively dead by the end of this year.

3-4 million players left. Which for WoW, which peaked at 12 million, is at best 33% of its peak remaining.

They have one chance to avoid that. And that's to absolutely smash Blizzcon this year. If they don't introduce the next expansion as something truly revolutionary, then WoW's history.

Were you seriously going to quit wow because of trispec....

[Mormolyce]

Well it might go back up again when the next expansion comes out, and then down, then up then down...

But if you're asking about its long term future, obviously no game is around forever. And at the moment the MMO market appears to be shrinking and non-F2P MMOs are a rare thing. So if you're expecting a 9 year old game to suddenly start growing exponentially then no, that's silly.

---------- Post added 2013-05-09 at 06:32 AM ----------

Were you seriously going to quit wow because of trispec....

Something in my mind broke the day I read a thread by a guy who was threatening to quit the game because they removed the keyring.

THE KEYRING!

[Chickat]

Well it might go back up again when the next expansion comes out, and then down, then up then down...

But if you're asking about its long term future, obviously no game is around forever. And at the moment the MMO market appears to be shrinking and non-F2P MMOs are a rare thing. So if you're expecting a 9 year old game to suddenly start growing exponentially then no, that's silly.

---------- Post added 2013-05-09 at 06:32 AM ----------



Something in my mind broke the day I read a thread by a guy who was threatening to quit the game because they removed the keyring.

THE KEYRING!

I seem to remember a few complaints about that as well. I'm contemplating my future with wow atm. I love it, and im still having fun, but i dont want to waste my time if its going to die.