Will WoW Reach 10 Million Subs with WoD?

[DPA]

Considering they may lose another 2,000,000 subs due to insanely stale content (no content changes for over a year), I would say no. This is without considering what the ramifications of a possible change in game that ends flying in current content.

If WoD could maintain 5,000,000 that would be a HUGE victory for Blizz. I see the game getting down to 3,000,000 to 3,500,000 and then going B2P.

Speculation based on?

[Deleted]

No.

I think Blizzard is better off dropping World of Warcraft and keep their attention on the games they got or begin to create something new.

[Feali]

Not with this 1 year dry period.

[Angella]

As one of those players, Wildstar looks shit.

Wow was at 7.8M subs at last check-in in February and MoP brought 1.1M subs in at release. There will be some additional bleed from the 7.8M as we wait for WoD and I'd expect the 1.1M subs xpac release bump to be a bit smaller.

Blizz will be lucky to have over 9M subs at WoD release. Don't expect 10M+ unless Blizz decides to do a Burning Legion expansion.

[Barkloud]

As one of those players, Wildstar looks shit.

Maybe it is not for you then. I myself have been in about 4 or 5 beta weekends. It is enough to get me to unsub to WOW until it releases. I bought the Wildstar pre-sale instead of the WoD presale.

In the interim I have been playing Rift, Secret World and Star Wars, which has been more than filling my time.

[Feali]

As one of those players, Wildstar looks shit.

Seconded. Watched streams: Looked interesting. Played beta myself: Fucking boring.

[mikencarly]

yes 10 million easy.

[draykorinee]

No, You're mad if you think they will. Ill resubb 100% (still subbed).

[Deleted]

You never know how good an expansion will be, but according to the downward spiral they're in since Wotlk, another year of no content and with something around 7 million subs at this point, I'd say it's very unlikely. Nevertheless, if WoD gets better than we all expected, it could be picked up by the masses and it could definitely be possible they have around 10 million subs again at some point. Ofcourse, WoD needs to be REALLY good. Still, that's not impossible, but very unlikely. WoW has had his best point, and that's not a bad thing at all after almost 10 years. If it gets under 1 million subs in 5 years, so after 15 years, I think they can look back at one of the most memorable games of all time.

[Barkloud]

Speculation based on?

My experience playing MMORPG's. I have been a loyal MMORPG player since UO launched.

I play most of all the big franchises. Blizzard is slowing down, not ramping up. I cannot think of one new feature in the past two (maybe even three) expansions that was not taken from a competitor. Blizz is at a point where they solely emulate the successes of others. They no longer create content, they copy it. Which is okay.... For the most part I like the games they copy.

[iceberg265]

Personally I think they are going to be down under 4million when WoD finally launches. The launch may spike it back up to 6mill but no more than that.

[Orange Joe]

Old and nostalgic WOW gamers are going to eat up Wildstar. It captures the good essence of Vanilla/Early BC WOW.

Unbalanced and bugged to hell?

[Hexian]

Cant wait for panscape or det to jump in here and say 10 mil at least

[Jimson]

Very doubtful. Honestly, if Bliz can retain their current sub base with a +/- 5% variation after a year of no updates, I'd consider it a massive victory for them.

[iceberg265]

Cant wait for panscape or det to jump in here and say 10 mil at least

Pancakespe will claim 20mill.

[Jaylock]

LOL Wildstar.... Thats like saying AoC killed WoW. I expect to see Wildstar F2P in ~8 months.

OT: 10 Million, probably not. Maybe a spike to the 8mil mark. Then back down to 5.5-6mil. Depending on raid cycles and Blizzard's knee jerk reactions to healing changes, item/ability squishes, we may see a drop to 4.5mil mid xpac. Also expect a few losses from the "no flying" crybabies.

It is already ftp. You buy the game and get the free month, and you can use in game currency to pay your "sub" fee or you can pay real cash to pay your "sub" fee. Either way, you can do stuff in game to keep your subscription ongoing. Its a genius model. I see millions of "subs" in their future.

[Thetruth1400]

Its impossible, I think the game should be lucky to have atleast 6 million subs after the long wait. The game is old and will never gain that much subs anymore, even if WoD is going to appeal to the older fans. Most people I know going nostalgic over TBC already moved on with their lives.

Couldn't have said it any better myself. Almost since launch of MoP has this game seen constant declines. The game launched on September 2012. Since then, here is how things have gone;

Q3 2012 - MoP released. 10 million subs.
Q4 2012 - Christmas season. 5.1 is released. 400K subs lost. 9.6 million subs remaining.
Q1 2013 - Patch 5.2 released. 1.3 million subs lost. 8.3 million subs remaining.
Q2 2013 - Patch 5.3 released. 600K subs lost. 7.7 million subs remaining.
Q3 2013 - Patch 5.4 released. No loss / No gain. 7.7 subs remaining stable.
Q4 2013 - Christmas season No new content until WoD. 100K sub gain. 7.8 million subs remaining after a small gain.

All in all, MoP went from 10 million subs down to 7.8 million. That's a loss of 2.2 million subs, or roughly 22 percent of their subs lost. In all of MoP, they had one quarter of gains, but that gain was so small that it might as well have not even mattered.

WoD is trying to touch on nostalgia, but that's a massively hard sell. TBC launched over 7 years ago. The last patch for TBC was in March 2008, or 6 years ago. Anyone that quit after that point has 6 years of life in which they've most likely found something else to do. Additionally, with the complete lack of content being offered, there's almost no chance that it's going to draw in those people that remember a ton of things to do.

So to answer the OP's question, no. Nothing that WoW can do will ever see this game anywhere near 10 million subs again. The game is way too far gone for what it was before and has aged. WoW of old and WoW of today are completely different, almost to the point of being different games. They're similar, but different. They've coasted for years on the same old same old because they haven't had competition. Now that they're seeing negative happening to them, in terms of massive sub losses, they're going to have to revitalize the genre if they want to continue to be a success.

[MoanaLisa]

Anything is possible but probably not. Given the amount of time between now and WoD the starting point certainly won't be at 8,000,000. It will be lower; probably a lot lower. If it does get to 10,000,000 after launch it won't stay there. I don't care how excellent the expansion is. The game has aged to the point where a lot of people return for a brief time to do what they want to do and then take some time off until something new comes along. Personally I think Blizzard has accepted that.

[Thessik-Irontail]

Unlikely, but I guess it's possible. I wouldn't be shocked to see it start out with 8.5-9 million and then teeter out slowly over the course of the expansion.

WoW is currently at 7.8 million isn't it? You think a new expansion with a theme that everyone likes is going to only draw 700,000 players back? I think that is a unreasonably low estimate to the point that it is bordering on insanity.

[Calfredd]

It is already ftp. You buy the game and get the free month, and you can use in game currency to pay your "sub" fee or you can pay real cash to pay your "sub" fee.

It's not really f2p though, it's p2p with alternative payment methods or at least that's how I see it. Think EVE Online does something similar.