Do you predict WoW to hit 12M subs again?

[BenBos]

It will drop back down to 7 million by the end of the first raid tier.

1. I would be prudent here ... as with this OP ... he apparently always creates Polls and forms opinions just a few days before it comes true

2. Not this time: But it will pass 12 million for sure in the first part of 2016 if the next expansion builds up on this one.

Movie will be big and there will be an avalanche of new players, more than anyonone can even imagine right now. By how much ? I don't know.

The difference with THIS WOD launch : there are 10% newbees subscribing, the movie will add 40% newbees and a new generation of MMO gamers who were not even born back when the Warcraft series ended (2002)....

It all depends on the market too, but with no new extra ordinary game around I don't see a reason why it would NOT pass 12 million worldwide in 2016.

-----> As this launch proves: the number of ex (long term) WOW players is simply too BIG to not make it happen when the movie resets things.

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I can't believe people are saying "it most likely won't." when everyone was saying it wouldn't pass 8 mill if it was lucky and passed it to 10 mill ..

Short memories I guess Around 4 months ago, I said it would be between 8-10 million. I was declared a fool. by the usual suspects.

Now these usual suspects are in full damage control mode...

[Gaidax]

It all depends on whether they manage to keep to pushing out content fast. WoD is really well done, minus the launch issues (which were short lived to be honest), it looks like it's going to be a great expansion.

[Denkou]

I doubt it. I think WoW peaked with WotLK.

However, by no means is it dead or dying. It's very much alive and will be for years to come; I just don't think it'll be as successful as it was in Wrath in terms of pure sub numbers.

[BenBos]

It all depends on whether they manage to keep to pushing out content fast. WoD is really well done, minus the launch issues (which were short lived to be honest), it looks like it's going to be a great expansion.

Quite frankly, it is the best ever. Many different reasons, including the rare mob spawns, the non flying part, the massive phasing that players are UNAWARE of (so it works !), the cross server connected play, the rising economies, the FABULOUS integrated Garrisons play (based on VERY tried basics like FARMVILLE kind of addiction). It all begins to shine when you start to care even for you followers and track their progress. I mean, that's ... freightening.

I mean if you look at the complete picture, you simple have a LOT more - both technically (servers/client) and choices of game play.

And as I said: in 2014 Blizzard laid out the new backbone structure of WOW with their connected server mechanics. So I think you really have not seen the possibilities of this new server structure yet !

The way they could solve the 3 days server issues: they simply put every (connected) Realm in its own instance, with which they could simply double a realm's capacity... ALL implemented in ... 3 days.

Awesome technology they now have at their disposal. Like all new things they were overtaken by some BIG issues in the first few days, but in the end, and not many players understand this: this IS a kind of WOW2 rebirth (no longer are realms based on single server structures)

As of now, they can do pretty much they want as they got rid of the standard one server/one realm principle.

The sky is the limit in MMO design in future years.

[Axcel]

Lol



No it won't. We see boosts every start of an expansion. It'll go back down once people realize there's nothing to do besides Garrisonville.

I'm going to be completely blunt with you and how completely foolish you sound right now.
Do note, these contain the very last point and next point from each expansion. (Before launch and After Launch)
World of Warcraft has never seen this big of a jump in subscribers in it's entire life (Expansion launch wise) nor
has it ever had a drop until Cataclysm / MoP started.

Things are back on track after 4 years of crappy expansions. People are coming back and ready to re-enjoy them
selves in the mighty MMO.

As you can tell inside of this photo, you can tell that MoP and Cataclysm were both failure expansions compared to
any of the other expansions out there. They didn't actually have a drop in Sub #'s until the expacs 2nd sub announcement
inside of Cataclysm, and the first announcement for Mists of Pandaria. If there is an indicator of what they have done wrong,
it can be shown through Cataclysms and Mists of Pandarias expansions being the ONLY two expansions that have EVER
experienced a drop EVER.

[Wries]

I don't think it'll reach 12M but I am optimistically hoping we could keep the 10M for a little while longer. The garrison thing might end up being their greatest idea ever to keep the ones who can't commit much time into the game anymore. I expect some people to ask for a web-interface to the garrison part soon, though :P

[Axcel]

I don't think it'll reach 12M but I am optimistically hoping we could keep the 10M for a little while longer. The garrison thing might end up being their greatest idea ever to keep the ones who can't commit much time into the game anymore. I expect some people to ask for a web-interface to the garrison part soon, though :P

I can almost guarantee we will hit at least 11 million.

NA / EU launch Subs:
2.6 million. Which would put them at 1.3 million a piece
if you were to divide them equally.

Asia Launch Subs:
Oh wait, Asia hasn't launched yet, so lets shoot for 1 million
in this section and we'll have our 11 million goal. (This is less,
than what a single area for the initial launch had making it a
plausible goal.)

[Deleted]

Honestly,

Before I state this. I first want to say, I told you so. This is aimed at all of those pricks who were
flustering all over my thread and laughing how I thought that WoD would bring back a lot of people and
that WoD is extremely amazing (Since I was a Beta user). This is also aimed at the pricks who kept
saying crap about how I was completely wrong in my thread about the more subs causing the majority
of the issues on the servers. (Which I was gladly right about). Not to brag or anything.

Next, as my official prediction, I believe that we will be at 11 million users once Asia's release is upon
us, [b]and since they did everything the following way:

EU -> NA -> ASIA

They've learned and more than likely already fixed every single issue along the chain, so Asia will see
nothing but pure and amazing sub jumps for a brilliant Launch in their area.

Next, I've truly noticed the Blizzard Marketing team stepping up their game w/ all the new tricks and such
and I am almost positive that it's about to be circulating around the ASIA areas soon.

11 Million users isn't a far stretch either. If we were able to pull 2.6 million out of our rearends from just EU
and NA then I am sure we can pull that final 1 million from ASIA since if you divide that 2.6 evenly among
NA / EU then it sums out to 1.3 million a piece. (So we're aiming for a goal less than what NA / EU brought us).

Link to my thread:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-than-Expected

TLDR:


It's funny how ignorant some " Realist " can get. I was 100,000 off from the actual rise in #'s. How amazing.

You might get off your high horse and read the news. WoD was already released on 20.11 in Asia. Three days ago. There is no 'once it releases' anymore. What was that again calling others ignorants? Amazing irony? Besides China the release date in Asia was actually already the 18.11 but it got delayed. The people though where waiting already. They had all the pre expansion hype, thunder of advertisement, pre patch and pre expansion surge long before the 13.11 when the 10 Million figure was hit just like here. Most are already in that number. Concurrency isn't the same as general user activity, the latter is what makes subscriptions. When everyone rushes in on launch day it doesn't mean no one was playing occassionally or preparing before, just like it happens over here. When subs went up to 7.4 Million in the usual close pre expansion surge. Yes that was including Asians already too. They have only 1 week delay nowadays not months anymore.

The people who bought into the hype have mostly yet no clue if WoD is as extremely amazing as you call it. The buying, subscribing and bogging the server comes before evalutating if the expansion is actually extremely amazing. Not the other way. You can stop projecting your opinion as a beta player on the entire playerbase.

I'm totally sorry if you are offended by me mentioning some facts that sort of make your rant look stupid.

[xanzul]

I can't believe people are saying "it most likely won't." when everyone was saying it wouldn't pass 8 mill if it was lucky and passed it to 10 mill ..

The haters here are constantly moving the goal posts to keep their incessant whining relevant.

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I find it more sad that 12m subs would happen rather than being good. Mostly I feel bad for seeing all those players who year after year come back for a few months everytime a new expansion launches then stops playing. People that still are addicted to the game, mostly because there arent anything else interesting in their lives to make it up for the time u spend in the game. Going up to 12M is bascily the same as being back to the end of WOTLK again, feeling we havent really done anything meaningful since and ppl are still addicted to this game

I would want the sub base to be a steady number instead made up of players that are playing the game and not players who "kinda plays the game"

Blizzard is doing a great job right now tho and WoD feels pretty good

Or maybe just maybe people play Wow not because they are addicted but because they enjoy the game.

[Gimlix]

You might get off your high horse and read the news. WoD was already released on 20.11 in Asia. Three days ago. There is no 'once it releases' anymore. What was that again calling others ignorants? Amazing irony? Besides China the release date in Asia was actually already the 18.11 but it got delayed. The people though where waiting already. They had all the pre expansion hype, thunder of advertisement, pre patch and pre expansion surge long before the 13.11 when the 10 Million figure was hit just like here. Most are already in that number. Concurrency isn't the same as general user activity, the latter is what makes subscriptions. When everyone rushes in on launch day it doesn't mean no one was playing occassionally or preparing before, just like it happens over here. When subs went up to 7.4 Million in the usual close pre expansion surge. Yes that was including Asians already too. They have only 1 week delay nowadays not months anymore.

The people who bought into the hype have mostly yet no clue if WoD is as extremely amazing as you call it. The buying, subscribing and bogging the server comes before evalutating if the expansion is actually extremely amazing. Not the other way. You can stop projecting your opinion as a beta player on the entire playerbase.

I'm totally sorry if you are offended by me mentioning some facts that sort of make your rant look stupid.

Just so you know,
Blizzard said on november 13th it hit 10,000,000 subscribers and counting.
on november 20th it was released in asia.

So whole asia isn't counted in yet and asia is more then 50% of WoW's market.
So it's very easy for it to hit 12,000,000

[Garkanh]

while i personally really like this exspansion, almost as much as i liked mop, (and i really did up to the point of 14 month of SoO), but subs always goes up at an exspansion launch, just to dip down a few month after the first raids have been released. i expect subs to be arround 8 million in 5-6 month

[xanzul]

WoW is on the downward curve of the adoption cycle. Expansions always bring a ton of people back to the game who quit, so WoW kinda bucks this model a little bit by releasing something "new" every 2 years. Each expansion has its own adoption cycle.

MoP saw so few people return because of the whole panda hate thing. It was an irrational hate, but it still deterred people from coming back.

Uh...no. In order for it to be on a downward curve subscriptions would have to actually go down and stay down.

[Gimlix]

while i personally really like this exspansion, almost as much as i liked mop, (and i really did up to the point of 14 month of SoO), but subs always goes up at an exspansion launch, just to dip down a few month after the first raids have been released. i expect subs to be arround 8 million in 5-6 month

It's about matter of time, of course it will fall once again no matter what, but doesn't mean it can hit 12M a small period of time and that small period of times means WoW didn't hit it's peak after 10 years of time. Which makes Wow EVEN a more impressive game.

[xanzul]

No. Never.

People said the same thing about subscriptions hitting 10 million+ for Wod.

[Pickynerd]

Nope, once the newness wears off, bleeding will continue. They did added some really cool new features, but the grind at max level leaves little to desire.

The community is far to toxic for returning players to feel welcomed back, I think those accounts will be the first to retire once again.

[wonderlust]

By the time the movie is released, if the game is still around the 10M mark (or maybe slightly less) and the movie is a success, it could happen. I'm not expecting it, but I wouldn't be as surprised as I was when it hit 10M again recently.

[Deleted]

10 million players on the 13th. Considering it only just came out for Asia on the 18th I suspect we are already at 11 or 12 million

[xanzul]

while i personally really like this exspansion, almost as much as i liked mop, (and i really did up to the point of 14 month of SoO), but subs always goes up at an exspansion launch, just to dip down a few month after the first raids have been released. i expect subs to be arround 8 million in 5-6 month

What was the last expansion that brought 3 million subscribers to the game? Oh right. This isn't the norm for Wow and never has been. I said it before and I will say it again, expect the unexpected with Wow because it doesn't follow the mmo playbook like so many other mmos do.

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Nope, once the newness wears off, bleeding will continue. They did added some really cool new features, but the grind at max level leaves little to desire.

The community is far to toxic for returning players to feel welcomed back, I think those accounts will be the first to retire once again.

There was no new content for a year and yet subscriptions went up a full 2 months before Wod was released. How exactly is that "bleeding"? So when subscriptions go up they are really going down? The doublespeak here is unbelievable sometimes.

[reemi]

Maybe but won't last long...

I bet it will go to 12M, then decrease to 7M in 6 months.

[Deleted]

Aren't we at like 12 or even higher? Counting Asia of course. (they still count as subs so the game has way more then 10 mil)