WoW Loses 600k Subscribers, Diablo 3 Beta Q3 2011, Arena Passe, Blue Posts

[Seethe]

comic sans, am i doing it right?

p.s. I was ganna trash comic sans users, but i cant use papyrus.

p.p.s kudos if you got the joke.

[Myah]

Thats just the beginning. 600k is over the last 4 months and didn't blizz just launch a "BRAND NEW BIGGEST EVER" expansion? Blizzard also doesn't consider an account "canceled" until 30 days of inactivity. Here should be the bigger concern for blizz. The farmers who care nothing for the game but use it to make money selling gold will start to leave if the player base begins to leave. The farmers probably make up 20% of the current subs if not more.

5% drop in player base will soon if not already be followed by a 5% loss in farmers.

---------- Post added 2011-05-10 at 06:56 PM ----------



So you are saying only people who have been playing for 5 years are the ones quitting?

No, I never said that. I'm replying to people complaining about how good things were before and how bad it all it is now.


They need to release new stuff aswell work on old, cause, it is old. People keep comparing numbers of how many raids there were then and now, how much content

They make 10 bosses, 20 types of encounters (normal/hard). Some people go and clear hard mode in one month (cause it's so easy), of course they'll get bored, but some people will take months to get to that point. It's impossible to please everyone. They could hire 1000 employees to create and release 50 bosses to keep the hardcore ones busy, but even with 1000 more people working, doesn't meant it'll be quality.

Someone mentioned it lacks innovation, but honestly how much can they innovate without affecting the base?

My point is, it'll never be possible to please everyone.

[Noblia]

There is a lot of conjecture in these forums about why it's happened.

There is only one thing that is absolutely true without a doubt. Wow has lost it's momentum. It may have plateaued? Or it may be in for a decline? No one knows why? It can be a multitude of reasons? The one reason I am sure it's not, is the reason given... 600k cancelled subs did not blow through content that fast. Not when they ratcheted up endgame difficulty significantly vs the last expansion.

[Deleted]

Quitting this month aswell.

WoW has become boring as fuck. There's nothing left to do, and content is just *yawn*...

Nuff said, Blizz sucks balls.
Period.

[Cows For Life]

They're consuming content too fast and not because you've failed elsewhere.

Heh that's such an MBA answer. Really channeling Kotick there.

[Deleted]

How about the fact that probably 80% of players are casual, and this tier of raiding is one of the hardest we've ever seen... and it requires a pretty dedicated raid team/schedule to clear...

Maybe that turns people away?

You clearly did not experience the wrath period........

[jayremy]

Nobody is saying WoW is dying. Just that it doesn't appeal anymore, getting lackluster. Just because Jersey Shore is a bad show doesn't mean the stupidity is stopping the viewers. Same with the players. WoW is a giant amongst the MMO's. Any type of content will keep it afloat, no matter how mediocre.

Not horrible at all, this types of posts promote some discussion of wheter the game is improving or not. Anyone can voice their opinion.

Emphasis on mediocre, thats why my playing has halted. My experience felt less epic after BC, ulduar was the only time in WotLK did It feel great.

Sunwell, Hyjal, BT, karazhan, original ZA, TK, SSC, gruul's lair these were fun places, experience and mechanics. Many fun instances from start to finish, it was all available extremely early into the expansion. All they lacked in BC was some of the WotLK class changes balances, w/o the OP part of DPS buffs(and rets+DKs), that lead to screwing the fun part of healing in PvE and PvP.

WoW has just been worse ever since BC, the mediocrity of the experience has dulled my mind. The game has never ever really impressed me to the point of tears or utter excitement where I could just jump out of my seat. So many other games have impressed me, games like the MGS series for one example, so man of the old n64 games. Some of the latest great console games have really brought a great experience to me.

Blizzard is superb at their RTS games, they have more cinematic in the pre-release stage of D3 than all of WoW's existance. Warcraft 3 has like 2-3 times as many cinematics than all of WoW. I find it rather sad, you can even look at the SC2 campaign and it was great for telling a story and is a very popular and successful.

Its a shame how many games with no where near the ball park of revenue WoW makes, impressed me so much more then the developers of WoW. It had so much potential, likely still does, I don't see the devs utilizing it like they should.

Instead they keep feeding us the "carrot of mediocrity" hoping we keep carrying them on our backs providing content "good enough" but never truly great or innovative.

[pfunkmort]

one has to wonder how many of the losses were from the botting purge a month or two ago. I had at least 3-4 people in my personal sphere who got their accounts banned, and I don't know a ton of people.

also, as some places (like china) handle subscriptions on an hourly basis, I feel the numbers in general are slightly misleading. Losing 600k US or EU accounts is going to have a greater impact on them than 600k people who play 3 hours a month.

[Vasz]

Blizzard loses a small percent of its subscribers.. and that percentage is still more than most MMOs ever get... i dont know if thats sad or impressive.

By small percentage I think you mean 5%. Now thats a drop in the ocean to you in your maths lesson, but in the real world a 5% is huge. After all inflation is only 0.1% If they had a billion subscribers that's 50 million players. The numbers are relative to the total amount. Just because you didn't see 5 million people leaving doesn't make it any worse.

If your work place told you that you was getting a 5% pay cut, you would be furious. If you was on 50K a year that would be 2500 quid less in your pocket each year. Yeah 5% may seem small to you, but when your revenue is in the billions, its a LOT.

[Deleted]

one has to wonder how many of the losses were from the botting purge a month or two ago. I had at least 3-4 people in my personal sphere who got their accounts banned, and I don't know a ton of people.

also, as some places (like china) handle subscriptions on an hourly basis, I feel the numbers in general are slightly misleading. Losing 600k US or EU accounts is going to have a greater impact on them than 600k people who play 3 hours a month.

Exactly what I was thinking. EU and US subscriptions in total less than 4 million if I remember correctly. Losing even 400.000 at that number is a big fucking deal.

[Gulrok]

I think one of the biggest things is that gold farmers aren't paying for active WoW Subscriptions. It honestly isn't worth it to sell gold anymore. It seems that I've not encountered very many recently. Granted that there are still gold-sellers out there. I don't seem them that often.

[LGalucard]

Hmmm the way this article is written (and the way Blizzard is speaking), it feels like they think people went through the content too fast... Yet the first tier wotlk raid content was waaaay easier than first tier of cataclysm, if anything, Cataclysm lost subs because they decided not to cater to casuals as much.

Heroic 5s were pretty challenging, normal raids were pretty challenging, I got through them but trolling the forums I saw sooo many people getting discouraged and quitting, imo they toned stuff down too late. Most of the people trash talking the casuals couldn't handle heroic difficulty, yet they were worried about normal getting too easy. Also I had to laugh when Blizzard said stuff like "hey if heroics and raids are too hard just play normals!" (number of normal level 85 dungeons at the time: 3) Then they wonder why people got fed up and bailed.

I myself made it through all the heroics + normal difficulty levels, I'll admit I'm not hardcore enough for heroic raids but I had a good time of it... I've also been to plenty of Blizzcons, met a lot of the average WoW players, who enjoy the game for the social aspects as much as the game itself. That doesn't mean they don't want to raid, but I, as a guy in his 20's who has played a shitload of video games, raided a ton etc found normal difficulty raids right at about the level I wanted.... Now what about the 90% of people who have less experience/time/bananas/w/e than me... tough cookies?

The fact that they said in Wotlk "hey we more people to actually see the raids, because they really are cool content and they progress the story" then they turned around and said "hey play those three normal difficulty dungeons" in Cataclysm made no sense.

People want to be able to enjoy content, including raids. Look at Wotlk, plenty of subs with easier content, the more people who can enjoy bottom tier the better. I say put in another difficulty level (easy) and we'd be in a good place. Let casuals play casually and drop the "hey we can be hardcore too!" attitude Blizz, that isn't what got you where you are now.

You are right on the spot. This was the whole reason i quit. Ive been a gamer for more than 15 years , i have experience in a wide variety of games and genres , i found cataclysm normal modes , right on the spot i like and for a video game. However we gotta face the fact that most of the wow player base are not "gamers" and at the beginning of cata i saw my guild fail so hard at normal modes and simple stuff that for me was simply beyond reason. I gave up on wasting my much needed sleeping time on raids and i quit. I came back from 4.1 where regardless of the guild finder (no one seems to check the goddam guild requests) i couldnt find a guild or at least a competent once able to kill magmaw or going past it, the skill level that people needed to progress in wrath normals was simply a lot less and not to mention that you could carry people even in 10 man. Right now one death in 10 man is usually a wipe. Wanna see an example of how bad the situation is? Just see how many extremely fail pugs are there for ZA/ZG i could not bear it any longer i just quit again.

[Kiro]

I think one of the biggest things is that gold farmers aren't paying for active WoW Subscriptions. It honestly isn't worth it to sell gold anymore. It seems that I've not encountered very many recently. Granted that there are still gold-sellers out there. I don't seem them that often.

No, the biggest thing is that Blizzard failed on numerous levels, not gold farmers. There's no way to dolly this up at all, we all know better. They screwed up royally. They made some incredibly stupid moves with Wrath, and then into Cata especially. Content is weak, due to them absolutely wasting their time and money on 1-60 content. They didn't live up to their once again failed promise of "more content faster this time guys lol, we swear, lol", and players are not blind to it this time and leaving ship in mass. The game is in direct, and significant trouble right now, and with the lack-luster 4.2 months off, there's nothing in sight to save it. Blizzard has to sit there and watch their game burn. It'll take months for them to recover now for their follies of pulling their best talent and putting them on another project, and using the revenues from WoW to fund all their other projects while putting an apparent minimum of it back into their golden cow. The game will continue to bleed subscribers now at this point. Sending out that week free trial to people who canceled their accounts is a sign they know they're in trouble.

[Galvanon]

hardly that big of a deal, they still beat any other mmo in terms of subscribers by a long shot and it's the holidays here in america which means people are going and vacation which means they're cancelling their subscriptions for short while. Not to mention that a new tier of raiding hasnt come out since cata has launched. check the numbers one or two months into 4.2 and i can assure you that it will shoot back up.

Wrong, it is a big deal.

Shareholders only want to see profits go up. Doesn't matter if they still have blah blah subs. A loss is a loss and it's noted.

Sorry, but if I was a major shareholder and you came at me with that speech as to why I shouldn't consider moving my money elsewhere, I would consider you in panic mode.

[Smitzelplix]

Exactly what I was thinking. EU and US subscriptions in total less than 4 million if I remember correctly. Losing even 400.000 at that number is a big fucking deal.

That 4 million people have been going by is just the number their using because that's how many copies of Cataclysm that were sold in the first month. These people don't take into account that people have been getting into Cata at later times, I know a few people on my realm who just got Cata last month. I don't believe Blizzard has ever said how much each region brings in sub wise, so people just take that 4million copies sold announcement that Blizzard made for Cata and start preaching it as gospel.

[Crusch]

That 4 million people have been going by is just the number their using because that's how many copies of Cataclysm that were sold in the first month. These people don't take into account that people have been getting into Cata at later times, I know a few people on my realm who just got Cata last month. I don't believe Blizzard has ever said how much each region brings in sub wise, so people just take that 4million copies sold announcement that Blizzard made for Cata and start preaching it as gospel.

I have strong doubts that the amount will be much higher.

[Deleted]

In all honesty, I think that the 600k lost subscribers are botters or gold farmers who got ip banned or something. Either that or those people use to play WoW and now play Rift. I'd probably at least try Rift if they would actually let new users TRY their product first before committing to a purchase and subscription. Blizzard has a trial for WoW so why isn't there a trial for Rift, a competing product/service?

They do regularly give away weekend keys that enables people to try the game over a weekend.

[Smitzelplix]

I have strong doubts that the amount will be much higher.

It probably isn't but to say 4 million just based on the first month of Cata sales is still flawed, that's all I'm pointing out.

[Deleted]

The players are rarely right.. Just cause you play the game don't mean you know how it should be ran.

On the contrary, people who play the game every day for 6 years know a hell of a lot more about playing the game than the developers. The developers are good at designing a game and have a reasonable grasp of playing but compared with the sheer amount of the combined experience in playing the game by the massive player base, they know very little.

[Smitzelplix]

No, the biggest thing is that Blizzard failed on numerous levels, not gold farmers. There's no way to dolly this up at all, we all know better. They screwed up royally. They made some incredibly stupid moves with Wrath, and then into Cata especially. Content is weak, due to them absolutely wasting their time and money on 1-60 content. They didn't live up to their once again failed promise of "more content faster this time guys lol, we swear, lol", and players are not blind to it this time and leaving ship in mass. The game is in direct, and significant trouble right now, and with the lack-luster 4.2 months off, there's nothing in sight to save it. Blizzard has to sit there and watch their game burn. It'll take months for them to recover now for their follies of pulling their best talent and putting them on another project, and using the revenues from WoW to fund all their other projects while putting an apparent minimum of it back into their golden cow. The game will continue to bleed subscribers now at this point. Sending out that week free trial to people who canceled their accounts is a sign they know they're in trouble.

Why do you hate WoW so much and why do you think WoW is going to burn or die? There are games that are plenty older than WoW that are still running like Ultima Online and even the original Everquest (barring the SOE hack). WoW isn't going to die but I don't expect it to stay #1 which honestly isn't a big deal to me, as long as WoW is running that's all I really care about.