wow subs at 7.7m

[Vankrys]

but 12million subs means 12million games (wotlk) 9.6million at start of Pandaria means 9.6million games sold,

people still believe that? wow has other model in other part of the world that does not requires you to buy the expansion.
for instance, MoP sold 2.8 millions in the first month and yet reported 10 millions account. that means that a quater of wow account is a MoP subs. Now, i know some people still sub without buying mop, i can't imagine they are that many though.

[Killadrix]

Until the drop in subs begins to impact my experience in the game, I don't afraid of the number.

[Alewen]

I'm not certain that quality is the best word for the nature of the change - there has been some very good work done post-Wrath. In a lot of ways, when it comes to world design, story, and setting, MoP is comparable to BC. But the underlying game is far, far weaker now than it used to be. Little bits of the structure of the game have been being ripped out for year after year, with nothing taking their place. It's become increasingly obvious that during Ghostcrawler's time as Lead Systems Designer WoW gameplay has become hollowed out - there's less classic MMO-style play (numbers, synergy, gearing and building your raid comp right, for example) and more near-arcade-style fights (stand here now, now move here, hit this button in the right 2-second window). Blizzard can build the shiniest world in the history of MMOs, but if the underlying game isn't compelling, players will leave. (Conversely, players WILL put up with a degree of old graphics and crappy content if the gameplay is fun and engaging.) I think MoP did make some steps in the direction of making WoW a better game, but it was a sort of "two-steps forward, three-steps back" approach.

As for why the folks in charge at Blizz can't see it... very few people (especially in the American corporate model of business) have the fortitude to say, "We screwed the pooch on this one, chief - put someone else in charge here." As Upton Sinclair famously said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

And we have a winner. It very much is exactly as you said. Been a whole lot of design decisions by Ghostcrawler that just added up. And he and the others with him will never admit they messed up or are wrong, ever. And as they create more and more mistakes, the more it eats away their subscription numbers. Do other MMO's play a role in subscriptions going down? Sure. Chances are there's people playing WoW right now, that are only playing till one of the soon to be released new MMO's comes out. I know someone that is doing that. They don't like the direction WoW is going, they think the quality of the game has suffered over the years, but it is their only option for right now till I think they said ESO comes out. There's probably people waiting for ARR to come out as well.

But I am still predicting there wont be an expansion announcement, and predicting the game will either go free to play in 2014, or be shut down. And I must stress, this is worse case scenario, especially if they keep the holier than thou attitude and will never admit they were wrong and take steps to fix it.

[Etrigan]

I think we are starting to stabilize a bit now, also, odds are people are getting rid of second accounts and what not.

I got rid of like 3 just the other week... Haven't been playing on them for months, just forgot they were there

[Zaqwert]

Graph of announced subs, you can see rapid growth till a peak, then kind of a hold, now a steady decline

[Deleted]

Even though I've quit playing WoW, I still like the universe and have an ember of hope left burning for Blizzard that they can become their own company again despite the (evil) Activision. 7.7 mil is still a lot but They really should make WoW 2 or a release a very high quality (new engine) expansion and not just milk WoW till it died.

[But I Hate You All]

If you look in terms of revenue rather than the copies sold the number would be different - I guess we could take some multibox people out of it, but 12million subs means 12million games (wotlk) 9.6million at start of Pandaria means 9.6million games sold, as I said minus the multiboxers lets say -25% - still beats most of those before we talk about subscription/vanity pet/ server transfer/name changes etc... revenues.

9.6million active players is not 9.6 boxes of mop sold

[Valizix]

I hope Blizzard gives WoW back it's testicles and makes the game how its meant to be played.

Give us 2 vanilla servers and watch a huge return of players.

[Flower Milk]

Until the drop in subs begins to impact my experience in the game, I don't afraid of the number.

I guess you don't play on a dead server then. It's pretty bad right now. :/

[leaks]

Give us 2 vanilla servers and watch a huge return of players.

... for a month

[Flower Milk]

Give us 2 vanilla servers and watch a huge return of players.

I probably wouldn't agree with this many years ago, but seeing how the game is now, and seeing so many people I know leave who have been playing since Vanilla or even beta, I think the biggest thing I've seen is people who want a Vanilla or BC server or experience back. WoW private servers are getting pretty big lately, I don't play on them but I find it interesting to see how many ex players have chosen to play on them now instead of retail.

[Lord Blackmore]

And why should we just accept what blizzard did with the game ? You are one of those sheeps what just accept and follow everything what others say or do? If you didnt notice some poeple actualy care about this game more then others what dont give **** and dont want to let blizz comepletly destroy this game.

Because it's their game and they make the decisions. There are exactly two choices. One is accept what Blizzard does and enjoy it for what it is and the other is stop paying Blizzard and quit. The problem is, of course, that people who clearly don't like the direction the game has taken would rather pay Blizzard for doing things they don't like instead of voting with their money and quitting.

I'm not saying people shouldn't complain. But people also need to be realistic about their expectations. The game isn't going back to the BC model, Blizzard isn't taking flying mounts out of the game, LFR and LFD aren't going anywhere, etc. And if some people really want that then then it's probably time for those people to move on instead of hanging around here moaning about how horrible Blizzard is.

- - - Updated - - -

Give us 2 vanilla servers and watch a huge return of players.

I'd give it a couple of months and those servers would be in population decline.

Most people don't remember all of the lousy stuff from classic. All they remember is the good parts. It's not going to take long before people realize how much of a pain in the rear end leveling was and how long it took to get to max level. And for those hearty souls who actually make the entire journey to 60, there's nothing left after Naxx is cleared or they finish whatever content they want to do from classic. And for PvPers, it might be a return to the old ranking system, where you pretty much had to pvp all the time to maintain your rank. A system that most people hated back then.

The reason people look back fondly on classic wow is that for most players it was a brand new experience. Everything was new. And because of that we weren't as aware or bothered by various shortcomings. In 2013, hardly anything is new. A lot of players who would potentially go back to classic wow would find the experience frustrating.

[ro9ue]

EQ1 did a "Vanilla Server" type thing called a Progression server and it was pretty cool. I highly doubt it would cause some surge in subs though, especially since going back to vanilla you are undoing so many quality of life/convenience changes and wouldn't work with the current MMO audience.

[Aurakol]

I've transferred twice since I started waay back when. I started on Lethon when it was still a thriving server. It slowly started to die out towards the end of TBC and I stuck with it until the end of cata, when there was literally one alliance raiding guild left from the many there were in the years before. Then I transferred to Suramar when it was a "new player" population. The server thrived for a while but like Lethon slowly died out. It's still decent, but it's pretty dead compared to what it used to be. Now I'm on Stormrage, if that fate manages to happen to stormrage I fear that I, too, will find another, more stable game instead of trying to keep up with the declining population.

[d0e1ow]

Has it occurred to anyone that subs are dropping for a laundry list of reasons, not just your one pet peeve with the game or an assumed demographic analysis?

A. Teens and kids don't want to play WoW. Well, having recently returned to the game, I've met SEVERAL teenagers while playing, mostly leveling and piddling around. On the flip side, my brother (12), thinks WoW looks like a boring game and has zero interest.

B. The original subscribers are too old/have moved on with their "lives". Define "too old". I've met people who play this game in their early teens up into their 40's. I started playing at 17, am 24 now. My responsibilities have shifted, but the fact is, if I have free time, I can choose to spend it on WoW. This is true for anyone of any age at any time. People don't wake up on their XYZ birthday and say, "WHELP, I'M TOO OLD FOR THIS, THAT, AND THIS NOW!" At the same time, people do have children, move to countries where internet may not be as robust, hit economic hardship, go into time consuming fields, etc, etc, so yes, sometimes life is a factor, but it is not the sole contributor. Next.

C. The game is too easy now. This is again subjective. Many people never clear the end game content fully. This seems counter-intuitive to the idea that the "game is too easy." At the same time though, the current raid system is criticized for failing to encourage players properly to excel and push into further difficulties. My ex loved this game because she felt there were enough options for her to enjoy herself without ever raiding. This was before pet battle days even. She was not interested with the raids and never felt things were "too easy". It was a non-issue with her. She played what was fun irrespective of difficulty. I'm sure there are many players such as herself out there, thus this generalization is false. On the flip side though, many old school players (myself included) feel that the experience of prestigious content has been cheapened recently, leading to some level of malcontent.

D. It's because the game isn't F2P. Drop the sub and people will come back. Perhaps. It's hard to say. This isn't entirely true either though. The game would probably see an initial surge of returning/new players, but would they stay around? Would they be willing to buy the inevitable stream of premium content that would follow? Like I said, I have met MANY people while leveling up a new character and MANY of them have actually been players either on a trial account or only owning the Battle Chest, not Cataclysm or MoP. Many of them seem unwilling to purchase the expansions, but would this change with a F2P model when instead of expansions we are purchasing access to raids and instances and battlegrounds a' la SWTOR? DotA is a F2P game, and honestly, I spend FAR more money buying little cheap items on there. It adds up right under your nose. F2P isn't the cure-all magic bullet to bring subs back, and the lack of F2P is not what is killing the game outright. This game will never be free, no game is, the only difference is in how they take your money from you. I prefer the sub model as is. Generalization false.

E. My server is dead, and instead of transferring, people just quit! Look, I am a huge advocate for free server transfers, but you and your server going on strike with your subs, however noble, is not what is "killing" this game. There are plenty of servers with high pop players, and do you know how many of the people on your server who claimed they would never transfer actually did? Sort of like people who claim they will never re-sub... but eventually do. So no, "dead servers" are not killing the game. It's an indicator of the game's issues for sure, but the game already had to be losing subs before a realm could wind up with a dangerously low population.

These are just a few of the sweeping "this is why the game is losing subs" statements I see everytime a report comes out. They are foolish and they are mostly steeped in your own bias and wishful thinking. The game is old, it's too easy to some, it's too time consuming for others, it's lonely for John, and it's too social for Jane. People come and go for their own reasons. So please, my little Ms. Cleo's, pack up your crystal balls and post something better than the reasons we've been hearing since 2004.

[El_Diabl0]

E. My server is dead, and instead of transferring, people just quit! Look, I am a huge advocate for free server transfers, but you and your server going on strike with your subs, however noble, is not what is "killing" this game. There are plenty of servers with high pop players, and do you know how many of the people on your server who claimed they would never transfer actually did? Sort of like people who claim they will never re-sub... but eventually do. So no, "dead servers" are not killing the game. It's an indicator of the game's issues for sure, but the game already had to be losing subs before a realm could wind up with a dangerously low population.

The last time I quit was because my server died (Aug 2012). Now I have so many reasons to stay clear of WoW I'll probably never return.

But I agree with you, it's not a single aspect of the game that is killing WoW. But in my opinion, in trying to make content easier and more accessible to everyone regardless of play style, the game is becoming less *addictive*. And if you say "but normal and heroic raids are still hard", well, most people could care less about them now that they can see those raids through LFR, but LFR in itself doesn't keep anyone for long. I would say that it drives people away because of how frustrating and how boring it is.

[hambadger]

So I logged in on Earthen Ring today.Place seemed kinda... empty.

I suppose it would be, with another 600,000 lost subscriptions this quarter. Are you guys done? Kinda feels that way. I've been here since launch. I remember when Westfall used to be new and exciting and seeing someone with a mount was neat, and an epic mount? He must be rich!

Where did that go?

I'm starting to feel like you guys don't learn from your mistakes. You did that big Silithus event, and it took the servers down all day. It was a neat idea, I can't fault you there, but it didn't work out well. So you repeated it with Hellfire Peninsula when BC launched. You swore you would never do that again and launched WotLK with two starting zones to alleviate traffic. That was good, but then you turned right around it kinda felt like you did the same thing with Cata and that unpopular water zone, and regressed so badly for Pandaria. That first night was great, by the way, sitting there in the little horde of gyrocopters for 3 hours.

Diablo 3 came out and I'd never really played the franchise before, but hey, it was free with my one year "Please don't go to Star Wars" deal. I got up to about Act 2 on the Inferno difficulty, and even the weakest monsters could kill me in two hits. I got the feeling that you guys never actually played this section of the game, it was so painfully unpleasant.

You nerfed healing in Cataclysm and many said it was awful and unpleasant, myself included. Raiding was miserable (My guild lost 6 healers out of 7 we had at launch in a brief 3 month span). You lost something like 2 Million people over the course of the next nine months. You put in the LFR system, which was supposed to make the game more accessible, but it felt like it really took the point out of raiding. By the time my guild reached Deathwing on regular mode the mood was "ugh, finally" instead of "Woah look at that guy". Why? Well we'd killed him a dozen times already on trivial mode, and the loot we picked up between the two difficulties was such a trivial increase in power no one noticed or really cared.

So here I sit on a rainy saturday evening, and I log in and out of the 107 characters in my guild, I'm the only one on. My friends list had a single name lit up, someone I've only talked to a few times in the past month. We talked for a little while and he went outside to play a rousing game of lawn bowling. Five years ago we would've been running heroics to get our daily badges or try for a rare mount or recipe or something.

We used to strive for things in this game. It was an accomplishment to get a skill to 300 or 375, pick up a rare recipe, craft some special use case piece of gear. Professions have become a box on the "new expansion checklist". I learned a lot of elixirs again, but no one has ever asked me for them. The ones I made to level are still sitting in the guild bank, untouched and unwanted. Flasks are just too much more effective, too easy. Why would I bother with some secondary stat elixirs when I can just chug a core-stat flask and that's it for the night?

It feels like you have a lot of potentially interesting systems in place, but turned around and preempted them all with something easier and boring, which sort of trivialized it all. Like crafting. All those nice bits of armor, more or less made useless by better items available with cheap, easy valor or even just dropping in 5mans. (JC Rings/necks, for example)

Anyhow, that's my piece on it. I can't imagine how stressful it must be, having lost so many players. On the other hand, the community has been telling you what's wrong for the past few years. Blizzard you say you listen..........guess not.

[Osmeric]

EQ1 did a "Vanilla Server" type thing called a Progression server and it was pretty cool.

Fippy Darkpaw!

[Superchief]

/fast forward

Alright guys we're only down to 3 million subs, WoW is still the biggest mmo no big deal. Blizz just shrugged it off as a few players from China. Not even a dent! There is no way it's possible the new character models on the Blizzard store caused this, the complainers don't know what they're talking about.

[Lord Blackmore]

/fast forward

Alright guys we're only down to 3 million subs, WoW is still the biggest mmo no big deal. Blizz just shrugged it off as a few players from China. Not even a dent! There is no way it's possible the new character models on the Blizzard store caused this, the complainers don't know what they're talking about.

What's your point?