WoW Down to 6.8 Million Subscribers

[Osmeric]

That's bullcrap. They didn't dumb down talent trees because people were quitting. They dumb game down because people whine all the time. Right now we see lots of people whining about dumbing game down and they seem to make it a little bit more complex.

The nice thing about the theory in your rant there is that it's entirely unsupported by the evidence, AND it enables you to feel angry at Blizzard. Good job!

We have no evidence that whining causes any game design changes at all. None. There have been cases where changes have occurred after whining, but correlation is not causation.

A more intelligent theory would be that the devs were annoyed that so many players were screwing up at talent choices, and this was causing problems with content that gets designed/tuned assuming they hadn't screwed up. And the devs have stated that when players get blocked, some tend to quit.

In general, choices that serve only as ways for players to screw themselves are bad game design. We're seeing more of this in WoD with removal of reforging and meta gems.

[notorious98]

All the whiners who have unsubbed for their own selfish reasons like "not enough content" should have their accounts banned. This isn't about YOU, it's about supporting Blizzard through thick & thin in their time of need. If you can't stand by WoW's side when things get bad, you don't deserve her.

This post is awesome. I don't know if it's sarcasm or if this person truly feels this way. If sarcastic, the post is a 5/10. If this person actually feels this way, 10/10. Personifying a video game and demanding that people be loyal to a faceless company that looks at their customers as dollar signs. Fantastic.

[jonsnow7412]

I wonder if the people who are saying that the population always goes down between expansions even looked at the graph. That didn't happen until cataclysm. I'm one of the ones who quit then and never looked back. I played a healer and got to watch everyone around me get more powerful while I leveled up and got weaker. All they did was inflate the base cost while keeping the heals the same while tanks were getting huge health pools. Then when MOP was around the corner, they give fixed mana pools. It seems to balance their game they had to constantly crap on my healers where they turned into one pile of big little medium heals. Forget downranking etc. Then to top it all off, I see an extremely condescending blog post from GC entitled 'Wow! Dungeons are hard!'. Thank god he's gone but too little too late.

[mikencarly]

EverQuest topped out at about 800,000 subs in 2003 and they've just released what, their 21st expansion? WoW is dying. That's cute.

Yep lol and everquest is still going strong from what i heard.they pretty much have a mainted fanbase NOT everybody is going to leave there mmos the point of mmos is you play endless anyways is what the doomsayers don't get sigh...!Same rules apply to wow plus most players aren't wanting to start from the start all over again if they have lvl 100 chars soon just seems pointless to start again on a inferior mmos out there.

[Stormykitten]

Revenues up, player count down. Great for blizz but it shows how much we must pay them outside of the sub model these days.

[Zeromus]

So basically, vanilla and TBC experienced massive growth, and then the game started to stagnate and decline when they started to hyper-casualize everything in WotLK. Why am I not surprised?

[mikencarly]

So basically, vanilla and TBC experienced massive growth, and then the game started to stagnate and decline when they started to hyper-casualize everything in WotLK. Why am I not surprised?

Get it right the hardcore china playerbase left thats it nothing more nothing less.all sub loses almost every single one was from china which makes sense they hate easy games atleast most of them do.

[llewllew]

EverQuest topped out at about 800,000 subs in 2003 and they've just released what, their 21st expansion? WoW is dying. That's cute.

This. WoW is going to be a going concern for, essentially, ever. Or until Bliz can fold its subs into another product. Fretting about (or taking schadenfreude in) a WoW sub number drop misses the point entirely: This boat is unsinkable. If you don't like it, ride something else.

[mikencarly]

This. WoW is going to be a going concern for, essentially, ever. Or until Bliz can fold its subs into another product. Fretting about (or taking schadenfreude in) a WoW sub number drop misses the point entirely: This boat is unsinkable. If you don't like it, ride something else.

I agree 100% with you and that person if you don't like it ride something else well said!

[DSRilk]

We know WoW is not dying. The point is, whatever Blizzard has done from late Wotlk to late MoP has resulted in a huge drop in subs. Things need to change and you making excuses for Blizzard and attacking people isn't helping.

You are making the HUGE (and in my opinion flawed) assumption that there is no natural decline in subs on a game like this. The question is, are the changes they're making expediting the losses or belaying them. That's far more a matter of opinion than fact, I'm afraid. For me, it's about the quantity of content that I enjoy. New raids don't interest me. New dungeons do. New areas to explore do. Surprisingly, pet battles did (at least for a while).

I've never been unsubbed from WoW. That said, I actually decided to unsub about a month ago because there was LITERALLY nothing I was interested in doing any more, and it seemed like it would be months before something came along. The only reason I'm still subbed is because I had it set to six months and it self-renewed about a week before I decide to go on hiatus. I planned on resubbing when WoD came out, but at this point it looks like it'll be along before it actually expires, so...

[Syltraul]

What I do not understand is why people keep their subscription alive if they are not playing or taking a break from the game. For me I do cancel my account for the break I take from WoW - that is the way for me to show Blizzard - hey guys - the game is not interesting enough please put in new content. If all would do the same - maybe Blizzard would react. Therefore, Blizzard can lean back and say - hey guys just only 800k less - they will return for the new add-on. So do unsubscribe to show Blizzard they need to put in more content that is new if you don not play the game regularly and just idling waiting for new content. I Think that is a good way to show Blizzard – we are fed up with the current content.

For me, it's not a conscious decision. Over time I stop playing and eventually forget about it. $30 (I have 2 accounts) doesn't make or break my bank account. That doesn't mean it's worth paying for a service you're not using, I just mean it's easy to not notice it's still active. Over the course of my time playing WoW (late '06-present), I've taken numerous breaks and only this past year after having not played for 8 months (longest break to date) did I decide to cancel. Four months after cancelling, I have reactivated one of my accounts because I wanted to get one of my alts to 90 for WoD, but once I'm done leveling him I'll probably cancel again until WoD.

[Osmeric]

So basically, vanilla and TBC experienced massive growth, and then the game started to stagnate and decline when they started to hyper-casualize everything in WotLK. Why am I not surprised?

Why do you think they made the game more casual? Very likely it was because the stats were telling them why people leave the game. In Vanilla and BC, it certainly wasn't (for most people) because they had blown through the content.

So, yes, the game plateaued, and became more casual, at the same time, but to infer the latter caused the former is entirely unwarranted.

[Syltraul]

You are making the HUGE (and in my opinion flawed) assumption that there is no natural decline in subs on a game like this. The question is, are the changes they're making expediting the losses or belaying them. That's far more a matter of opinion than fact, I'm afraid. For me, it's about the quantity of content that I enjoy. New raids don't interest me. New dungeons do. New areas to explore do. Surprisingly, pet battles did (at least for a while).

I've never been unsubbed from WoW. That said, I actually decided to unsub about a month ago because there was LITERALLY nothing I was interested in doing any more, and it seemed like it would be months before something came along. The only reason I'm still subbed is because I had it set to six months and it self-renewed about a week before I decide to go on hiatus. I planned on resubbing when WoD came out, but at this point it looks like it'll be along before it actually expires, so...

Therein lies the problem. We're not really getting quality or quantity. With the amount of time between content patches you'd expect them to be quite spectacular, but they're not. There was about 10 months from the last content patch of Cata to MOP, and once MOP finally released it was a feeling of "meh." Like you, I prefer quantity of content, but if I'm forced to wait almost a year before something new to do, it better be worth the wait.

[bbr]

Well, from these numbers we can say cataclysm was the worse expansion - it all went downhill from there.

MoP brought a decent number back, but they quit again soon after that, and the decline continued.

WoD is going to see a similar effect I suspect, unless they really come out packing - but,. doubtful.
I suspect we'll be going under the 6 mil by this time next year.

[Ottius]

Here's a message to all the White Knights out there trolling on behalf of their beloved Blizzard:

We know WoW is not dying. The point is, whatever Blizzard has done from late Wotlk to late MoP has resulted in a huge drop in subs. Things need to change and you making excuses for Blizzard and attacking people isn't helping.

I'm neither a white knight nor a Blizz apologist, but do you have proof that the reason for that is what Blizzard has done, or are you just one of those people who think they know everything about everything and are just plain oracles?

For example, I have these arguments for you:
1. Most subs over the years were lost in the Asian market (Asia has its own market, different mentality, different desires in games).
2. Other western-oriented MMORPGs still have many millions less subs than WoW has and are also declining.

- - - Updated - - -

nice chart. Shows this is the first time WoW has been under 7M subs in 7 years. Kinda amazing when you think about it.

How is that amazing? The older the game is, the less people want to play it. Simple logic, nothing even remotely interesting. Unless simple logic is shocking to you.

[lyxx]

That graph here - looks almost like product life cycle graph - i suppose it's now in maturity/decline phase.

[john duo]

amazing, ppl here still claim that wow isnt dying dont they understand the graph?
no its not dying right away or next year but it will die , wow is at almost half the subs at wrath.

even blizz knows that, thats why thier xpacs are thiner and thiner every time, look at WOD is that going to be a big wow savier? not likly
thats the 1st ever xpac without any new class/race dont we deserve a new race/class once in two years?
it has on his features list more cut outs and round corners than actual new things, as a company you might want to think that after all this time and money made
they would be expert in making better,faster greater xpac for us, hell , they should have made wow2 by now
what is wod? a fight vs one orc army after a year long of fighting another orc army?
and look here is garrosh again....and now his father...whats the real story here?

blizz is allready adjusting its xpacs plan for a dying wow if you havent figured it out yet....

[Deleted]

PPL don't seems to realise that nowdays gamers are not same as 10y ago. Nowdays kids are spoiled brats who want everything easy. It doesn't matter what will blizzard do with wow, there is no way back. There are too many whiny bitches playing this game, that TBC or even Wotlk wow model would not be as profitable as mop or even cata. They cater to retarded kids... not casual players. They treat their loyal players like a piece of shit (payed transfers from dead realms) and they do nothing to stop bot plague in random bgs for years now, cus they scared that botters might stop paying them, LOL? I see no point in supporting such corrupted company and i am glad to see i am not alone. I still remember how blizzard was responding to forum crybabies in vanilla wow. They told them: "it's our game and if you don't like what we do with our game you can fuck off!" That's how much blizzard policy changed over the years... from honest guys to greedy motherfuckers in 10years.

[Osmeric]

Nowdays kids are spoiled brats who want everything easy. I

As opposed to the unspoiled players who want a large majority to pay for a game aimed at their small minority,

Yup, absolutely no sign there of being "spoiled". Nosiree.

[drdevious]

a full year of no new content at all in an expansion pack that was based off of a race that was added as a aprils fools joke during wc3. how can anyone be surprised at the subscription decline?

if we look at the graph the surge of people that came back during MoP release was no where near the amount that left during cata's last content patch to mop. let alone the amount of people that left during cata in general. if this trend continues then we can rest assured that the amount of players that will come back during the release of WoD will not match the amount of people that left during MoP ridiculous year of zero new content outside of the cash shop. let alone during MoP in general.

the instant blizzard had added paid characters was the moment that marked this game for death. wow is on a life support system that's failing and will be dead in a few more years.