Blizzard: 'We don't expect World of Warcraft to grow again'

[Axaron]

Not only unsourced, but their own title is clickbait that is a misquote of their own article.

[Pann]

WoW has an entire industry dedicated to either improving directly upon it or ripping it off wholesale. Sure no other individual MMO is a real threat to WoW, but most of them don't actually go out of business either. Someone plays them, there are a lot of them, and a lot of them have much lower barriers to entry.

And honestly EVE is such an outlier design-wise that I'm not even sure why observations upon it should be relevant to World of Warcraft anyway. Yes both products involve people logging into a persistent world to do things, but that's just about where any similarity ends.

As did EQ, UO, Lineage before it yet they all managed to grow or remain relatively stable until WOW conquered the genre.

Why? You are ignoring tens of MMOs that peaked long before the six year mark both pre and post WOW entering the market.

Two of those three games began to decline at least a full year before WoW came out.

Of the three games listed both UO and EQ subs have an accuracy rating of C the only one we can be sure of is Lineage. In fact the peak of 550000 for Everquest in 2004 is based on the estimates of Bruce Sterling Woodcock don't you think it is odd that SOE would stop announcing sub numbers in January that year when it started to decline but never announced a massive 20% growth?

There is also the issue that WOW would have had an effect on potential MMO customers joining existing games as hype grew it is likely that at least some of those that would have joined EQ, UO or Lineage would have held off purchasing them to wait for WOW.

The whole situation is far more complex than saying MMOs have a six year life cycle before they decline.

[risingforce]

The toxic community is my personal #1 cause of sub losses.
I know so many people who have played this game, and everyone of them mentions the asshole behavior of the present WoW community.
While I certainly think that this isn't the only reason for sub declines, it likely increases it's percentage with the age of the customer..
30+ yrs old players are simply too mature to put up with that immature dick head attitude that runs rampant in the game. I mean, in the adult world irl, people treat each other with respect

Yeah I totally agree with you. Being a mature player myself -I'm 33 -I find the community spirit terrible at times. I made my own progress to subvert the toxic majority however, and enjoy a tight but relaxed Guild now.

I feel very much that Blizzard could do more to improve the social accountability in game and without... and I think it's sad that they do not, for as you suggest, there would be more people staying with a more positive community and less cynicism.

[tiporispit]

UO didn't hit its all-time subscriber peak until after Age of Shadows. What's more, that game is still plugging away at like 18 years old or whatever. They even have staff on each shard that log in as lore characters and roleplay and do events and shit. Still. In 2014.

The subs peaked at AoS launch, you know, before everyone saw the game was ruined. The bank crowds were cut in half within 30 days of launch. They were ghost towns 30 days after that. Sure, it's still around, but an mmorpg without the "mm" part is pretty useless. There's a reason "The Second Age" pirate server has triple the population of any other server.

[Deleted]

That graph does not go anywhere near expressing reality. The reality is expressed with trends statistics from search engines. But if I post the graphs again, I will be infracted again because for some reason people here are hurt when they are presented with that reality.

Also, the only counter-argument is ludicrous since it's basically "we know about wow already so we don't search it" because that is completely irrelevant for new players that are the main point right now and old gamers also search for their old game occasionally too.

[Omega10]

a toxic community that expects perfection out of people

This is just the community reacting to Blizzard's design.

The design decisions made by Blizzard most definitely do NOT justify the toxicity and rude behavior of many of its participants, both on forums such as here as well as in game. Getting bent out of shape because others do not play as well as you claim to play is just plain arrogant.

The only good news about this toxic behavior is that as rude toxic raiders rant about other's playing skills, raiding becomes less desirable for most of the population, and Blizzard has to focus more on non-raiding content to keep afloat. The toxic behavior is so bad that I would not be surprised if raiding just plain disappears over the next few years. Raiders did it to themselves. And by the time that raiding goes away (if it ever does), there will be more than enough alternative content to replace it going forward.

Justify the toxic behavior if you want. It is the best way to change WOW from a raiding game into other types of content such as pet battles and garrisons.

[Deleted]

Only the players are blind.....the company knows it's sinking

[Naxere]

I wouldn't be surprised if they announce Titan (or WoW 2) after the next expansion. That'd be roughly 14 years since initial launch (and about the right timeframe for Blizzard to make a sequel based on previous sequels).

[wowaccounttom]

certainly not with them raising sub prices... expect something similar in north america in less than a year.

[Luko]

Only the players are blind.....the company knows it's sinking

Oh no! Look out everone! One of the longest running and most successful MMOs ever has lost a bunch of players even though it's remaining subscribed playerbase still dwarfs the all time peak of any other game in the genre!

Yeah, maybe you should just consider copy and pasting all of your bitter posts into a folder to pull out again in 10 years or so when they might be relevant.

[Deadite]

Oh no! Look out everone! One of the longest running and most successful MMOs ever has lost a bunch of players even though it's remaining subscribed playerbase still dwarfs the all time peak of any other game in the genre!

How is that even relevant? They have had the most subs since forever. You really think BLizzard care how many people play game X? All they care about is what they have lost.

'Hey we may have lost half our player base but we still have more subs than ESO!.....' Said no one at Blizzard ever.

[Dilbon]

meanwhile, LoL and CoD are huge and there is no community more toxic

That's because those games are nothing but competitive by nature. WoW still tries to make players have fun.

[notorious98]

This is no surprise. WoW will forever be the exception to the rule. Subscription MMOs are a thing of past. Too many options for too many playstyles and WoW looks very outdated compared to numerous other choices out there.

They had a shot to get back a decent chunk of the players they lost with the level 90 boost. But they needed to come out with a kickass expansion that was absolutely loaded. From what I've seen, they have failed.

[Twotonsteak]

DA COMUNITY BE TOXICCC!!!11

Fucking stupid shit that is thrown around every fucking time.

Ever watch trade-chat in any major city for more than a few seconds?

I mean...I don't know about your realm, but it doesn't take long on my realm for the "anal" jokes to start. Let's not forget the near constant trolling.

Let's face it...the community isn't exactly all cuddly love-love. Honestly it reminds me a LOT like the worst parts of High School.

[Luko]

How is that even relevant? They have had the most subs since forever. You really think BLizzard care how many people play game X? All they care about is what they have lost.

'Hey we may have lost half our player base but we still have more subs than ESO!.....' Said no one at Blizzard ever.

Of course they care, who the fuck said they didn't? I was directly responding to someone who claimed the game is "sinking." Context.

[Deleted]

And anyone is surprised by this statement?

They're just affirming what we've all believed for quite some time now. The game is in a slope. It's not a very steep slope, and the game will go on for several more years, but it's a slope nonetheless.

And no, it's not an admission of defeat or saying that the game is bad in any way - all things have a lifespan and WoW is on it's second half.

Between WoW, Diablo, Starcraft and now Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard has enough to keep the boat floating

[Tharkkun]

Every game has a life cycle, anybody who doesn't understand this is a fool.

It's why I laugh when you see Blizzdrones in quarterly threads saying they expect subs to go up to 10 million + in WoD

I think you imagine that people say this to justify whatever end you hope for WoW. Only 1 person consistently says this.