I would be quite surprised to see a huuuuge sub loss. I logged onto my trial account the other day and things seemed quite busy - still many "high" and "medium" servers.
In all honesty, as more players have been quitting the Wow community has been improving significantly and I'm referring to people who actually subscribe and actually play the game not those who hang around these forums just so they can endlessly bitch about a game they no longer play. As far as I'm concerned keep the losses coming.
THEY'RE GONNA LOSE ALL THE SUBS!
Am I doing right?
Anyone?
Video games tend to become less popular as they age and this is especially true of mmos. Or do you think all mmos gain subscribers infinitely and it is only wow that doesn't? If you are going to talk about Wow subscriber loss and claim age isn't a factor then you need to show this isn't the case for other mmos that are around the same age. wow doesn't exist in a vacuum.
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If Blizzard were "cashing out" they wouldn't be hiring significantly more developers and artists and they certainly wouldn't increase the rate of content releases either. Wow is doing just fine despite subscriber losses.
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Sadly the mods justify these threads by saying players would just spam the forums with them anyway. Sometimes I wonder if they even understand their role here as moderators. It is rather funny since they will close just about any other type of thread for little to no reason but the second a thread pops up about subscription numbers (this one is a good example considering the call won't be for nearly another TWO MONTHS and the OP is well known for making threads to cause flamewars) and all of a sudden they forget they have a lock button and act all helpless about the situation.
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Stop with the revisionist history. TBC was heavily derided for retconned spacegoats and space ships and blood elfs and many, many other things. People have complained about this game for its entire run and to pretend people didn't have issues with the game until Cata is a flat out bold faced lie. I love how you people insist pandas don't fit wow and yet for some reason space ships crash landing on Azeroth is a-ok.
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Wow is an mmo. If you want a grind free game you are playing the wrong genre of game.
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Highly doubtful since Wow has more developers than ever with more to come plus they still have extra help from those who were shifted over from Titan. There is no way in hell Siege is going to last much more than 6 months.
I'd say 500-700k down because it was an off quarter. We'll likely see the rate of decline start to slow in Q4 2013 as hype begins to build leading up to and following the announcement of Expansion V. We'll likely see a bump for Q1/2 2014 depending on what comes out of Blizzcon.
If it's true revenue is down 54% for the last 7 months, I'd say expect sub losses to air toward the 700k rather than the 500k.
FFXIV - Maduin (Dynamis DC)
Activision has no reason to mess with Blizzard Entertainment as they are quite capable of turning a profit on their own without intervention. Kotick didn't get to where he is by making games less profitable and messing with Blizzard would do exactly just that.
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Possibly but not until he gets ATVI's company bylaws changed which prevent him from controlling any aspect of Blizzard Entertainment's management. The thing is though he has no reason to do so as Blizzard Entertainment is a company known to succeed on its own without being micromanaged. If Kotick is as greedy as people claim then he would know better than to do anything that might put Blizzard's profitability at risk.
I can only suggest that since you have such a problem with the moderation and topics discussed here that you find another site that is more catered towards your needs.
Your post has very little to do with the post you are replying to. Are you seriously suggesting that there have been no complaints about the Pandaren not fitting in the WOW universe? Whilst there were complaints in TBC about "space goats" it is largely irrelevant as there was not overall sub losses at the time.
By the way the poster you keep quoting has you on ignore so your message will not get through to them.
I think Blizzard would like to keep as many players as possible and telling some of them that the genre is not for them is not really a viable financial option.
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I would think that seven figure sub losses for three years in a row is reason enough for Kotick to consider intervention.
Perhaps because they had already increased their development team prior to announcing more hirings and determined their changes in regards to streamlining development would allow for optimal use of more employees? Just a thought. Blizzard tends to never give specifics on anything of this nature so the fact they did pretty much means its a done deal.
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Yes it is something to discuss when the meeting actually happens...which won't be happening for TWO MONTHS.
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Perhaps it has something to do with the fact no matter what Blizzard does, pvpers are never ever happy. In fact a huge portion of development time for 5.3 was dedicated solely to pvp and the end result was yet more bitching and whining and moaning.
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The numbers quoted in the developer interviews were based on actual real numbers given to them by other Blizzard employees whereas you assume everyone at Blizzard lies about everything. Sorry but I will take their word over yours.
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Maybe just maybe there would be more to do on Timeless Isle if the QQers didn't raise holy hell any time anyone at Blizzard said the word daily. And if people want an alternative to dailies maybe they should start explaining what they want because we are just going to keep getting more stuff like Timeless isle otherwise.
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So basically you haven't been there. Got it.
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They didn't push anything back. In fact when they first announced connected realms (virtual realms) they even said it wouldn't go live immediately upon 5.4 launching. The patch hasn't even been out a week and they have already decided on the first realms they are going to merge so I can't imagine they are going to put it off much longer. Most likely what they are doing now is waiting for realm populations to become stable since new patches always cause population spikes. It would have been incredibly stupid to implement connected realms on the same day as a major raid patch.
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And why is that? It will hold people for as long as 5.2, 5.0, 4.3 and every other raid patch to date did and NONE of those had flex raiding. It is funny how people are continually trying to downplay the content in this patch. It is so obvious it has the haters scrambling to find things to bitch about since so many player concerns were addressed in this patch.
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The absolute latest the beta will start is January. Considering the timing of Blizzcon and how close it is to the holidays it may be tricky for them to start the beta any earlier than that but they could still surprise us.
This thread was destined for funny things...
It has succeeded
-topic answer- I'm not an analyst but I would assume just average the two previous quarters out, take into consideration non game content related sub losses, and there you go. At least...for a rough estimate. But they could have gained some since tuesday when 5.4 hit!
Lots of people I know came back for 5.4 so I'm a little reluctant to believe that it would be more than 400k loss but it defiantly isnt a gain :P
He's not a soulless hatemonger, he just wants the mmo genre to progress. I believe it is with the variety of new mmos available and coming soon. Yes, Blizzard did help popularize the mmo genre with its excellent polish and accessibility but every king's reign comes to an end. The tides have changed and though WoW will still be around for many years to come, it looks like it's long standing monopoly of the genre will slowly dissipate.
Wanting something to fail so improvements are made isn't a bad thing. Hell, we just saw with the massive amount of backlash towards the XBox One that people can cause significant change even to a multi billion dollar company. A lot of times failure is the only way customers will see improvements from companies and their products.
Um, I'm not quite sure of your point here. Aside from 5.0 which was the start of the MoP expansion, 4.3 and 5.2 patches lost a massive amount of subs. In fact the quarter in which 5.2's ToT released was the 1.2 million sub drop which was the worst in the franchises history. I think it is a good patch but I doubt it will stop the bleeding.
Yep I could see that...The new isle also seems to have upset alot of people and does not seem to be much content. The pushed the patch out in time to get people back right before the quarter ends. quarter 4 should have massive lost if they do not have a trick up their sleeves
Free 7 day trial for patch 5.4 HMMMM. They did this last time for another patch which I have a feeling they do count towards "current subscribers".
Originally Posted by High Overlord Saurfangi7-6700 @2.8GHz | Nvidia GTX 960M | 16GB DDR4-2400MHz | 1 TB Toshiba SSD| Dell XPS 15
I doubt that free trials count towards the current sub numbers however it clearly is a promotion aimed at bringing back subscribers and obviously the launch of a major content patch is going to be the most effective time to hold such a promotion.
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I agree that unless there is more content to be released soon 5.4 is not going to be able to hold on the subscribers.
And people are already discussing this? Lol, i am always curious when i see the reports on the front page but we are still in the middle of September. I will come back in November. But since i am already here i am just gonna say that it's gonna be a small loss, 100k-500k imo.