Pally Collector, 785+ Mounts, 1740+ Pets, 715+ Toys, 34000+ achieves.
Good thing is the hater a quite for know..bad thing is they'll come back even more mad and hating...
This is only 2.5% increase in the Holidays. It's natural. People have nothing to do around the Holidays.
It will go down again, if it's not already back.
From what I'm seeing the subscription numbers dropped sharply after the launch of cataclysm. I know myself and a bunch of old wow players (friends of mine) quit around the same time because of the changes implemented by cataclysm as a whole. The content didn't thrill us and the major changes they made to the classes (I.E. paladin holy power) turned us off. However, we did play for a couple months before hanging up our hats. The sub numbers continued to tank after that because I think most people, myself included, couldn't get behind the MoP lore and content. Obviously, I've come back but a couple of my close friends never will. They've moved on.
Point being I don't think you can pin the drop in subscriptions to any one game change. It was a bunch of them stacked together that turned people away. I think WoD will go a long way in restoring some of those subscribers, but WoW will probably never get to the numbers they had in their prime. I've returned because I've accepted that like music and other forms of art, things change. I had to push aside the concept of restoring WoW to it's former "glory" during BC and Classic and accept that it's a different game that I still enjoy playing.
you guys seem to forget that blizz introduced the new "recruit a friend" system.. and when people are stupid enough to pay 20euro for a mount.. then there are people who buy themselfs a new account or 2 or 3 to get the new recruit a friend mounts and the new pets... the numbers off those players is quiet large... i for myself know somebody who did this.. and has now a 3 month payed wow account sitting around doing nothing but giving him the gryphon mount.. and i dont know many players in wow (like 5).. so i bet the numbers off "throw away accounts" are quite large. + the wow battlechest was sold for just 5 dollars... i bet people buyed the shit out of it. so i dont wonder that the numbers are rising cause of people so stupid buying 3month accounts (2month buyed playtime (for the mount or pet reward) + 1 free month) to get all the recruit a friend mounts and pets.
and the players who want to use the RAF leveling bonus.. in the last time i saw many people in randomdungeons who had a 2nd char just attached to them and grinding xp... (resulting from the 5euro/dollar sale..)
funny how u all dont think about it and just say "yeah woohoo"... in fact most of this numbers are "fake" numbers and not real players.. think about it..
It WILL be interesting though when they finally decide to retire the WoW lore. Think they'll keep making books even when they've finished with the games or do you think they'll just keep making games as well?
They could do the whole alternate time/parallel universe thing. Not thing I'm saying it would be good or bad, but they could reboot the graphics engine and continue the warcraft lore in a parallel universe.
expansion's not even close to coming out tho. even if the beta was in progress, a rise in subscriptions at this point of an expansion is surprising to say the least.
regardless of *how* they determined the numbers, and how much they fudged them, its fair to say they were equally fluffed and fudged in the past, so the fact that we are seeing a RISE in subscribers is interesting.
and to be perfectly honest, they were MUCH more inclined to fudge the numbers when facing having to report HUGE drops earlier... the incentive to fudge numbers to change from a 'small rise' to a 'medium/large rise' is minimal... especially if it means making it harder to hide losses in the future.
and by fudge, i mean stuff like offering a week of free account time, and then counting them as 'active accounts'. if they did that now and fudged a million subs from it... then they have to do it again in the future, or face having to report a 1m drop in subs.
If you say so.
So many "expects" predicting it will go one way and or another. Why are you people so fascinated about the numbers? Does it make you all enjoy the game any more or any less?
Or is this just another "I was right. I told you o. I told you so"?
If you like the game, good. If you do not, move on. There are other games out there.
I returned recently, but not within the quarter this represents. But I was *talking* about *maybe* returning at that time. Clearly, all my fans were inspired by that. So, you are welcome, Blizzard. Hehheh.
Look for that sub number to go higher as we get closer to WoD. A lot of us old TBC fans are coming back for this expansion.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
These numbers doesn't mean sh*t nowadays. WoW battlechest is so cheap that many people buy a couple more just to RaF themselves. And dispite all this still has less ~45% subs than Wotlk/Cata...
I am not buying this. At all. My server is a ghost town and the queues are longer than ever. I feel like this is the equivalent of people buying their own book to get it on the NYT Best Selller list.