World of Warcraft is down to 6.8M Subs

[BenBos]

ESO had around 750k subscribed as of the end of June. And given all that they talked about at Quakecon I imagine it won't go down to much if at all.

The decline of both ESO and Wildstar was a disaster on ALL tracking tools already during the past months. Up to 80%+.

Of course you can negate XFire.

But when the SAME trend can be seen on Raptr, NO presence in VgCharts, NO presence on Amazon top 20 PC sales, NO interest on Twitch, both by streamers and followers, it is pretty much clear WHY these games don't publish ANY player numbers.

The 750k ESO are pretty much the total launching figure spread over 2 months and taken as a global estimate point.

WoW may have 6.8 million FIXED subscriptions, but all the rest stands at ZERO subscriptions with free to play numbers to massage the ailing MMO industry.

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If there is anything to say is that this MMO industry went free to play over the last 3 years. All subscription based MMO's in the west and most in the east went free to play after 1-2 years.

No doubt it shows a HUGE decline overall and the thing is: these "things" cost so MUCH more than the huge hits of today.

Supercell games or Zynga games on the iPad or Hearthstone or LoL are sooooo much easier to make with ONE map game play, ... you won't see much move any more as MMO's are concerned.

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Blizzard needs 160 + programmers (and many more helpers) to make ONE expansion for WoW for 4 years ...
While most iPad hits were made by 15 people over 1 year.

Guess three times where this will end ?

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Also : it is rather PATHETIC that people still use these old mmodata made up and fabricated by an idiot living in Antwerp. The site was no longer updated since ... mid 2013.

The reason is simple: subscriptions are replaced with meaningless free to play figures.

Every WoW hater stumbles over WoW subscriptions while the others were reduced to zero official subscriptions after 1-2 years due to free to play.

It is like comparing the New York best sellers books with some free printed pamflets distributed on a train station.


TLDR.

There is hardly an in game factor. There is the MMO industry going down the free to play road abandoning subscriptions and ... it is not a pretty sight.

As these MMO games cost a fortune to make and not ONE except WoW makes a fraction of the money that iPad Supercell, or LoL or even Hearthstone make, all single map games...

And then people wonder why Titan was scrapped.

[Gothicshark]

You're right about 2 and 3, but wrong about 4. Disproportionally was used in the official investor material, not marketing material. If they said "mostly" in the investor call, then you have to assume that it's true, i.e., most of the losses were in the East, not just disproportionally. However, I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that they misspoke in the call. The investor release has been vetted and carefully checked before release, while people can make mistakes when speaking off-script in an investor call.

Still Disproportionate means more than expected, it doesn't even imply it has to be the greater portion.

ie you sell jelly beans.

Red ones sell best, black ones sell slow.

You sell 10 units of red a day and 1 unit of black. if for any reason you sell 2 black units in a day it would be disproportionate. You still sell the 10 reds a day but the 2 black was a shock.

What I mean to say, there wording means nothing without numbers. As I pointed out 16 Chinese Servers were merged into 8 servers, where as over 100 western servers were merged. At the start of this Asia had equal or greater Subscription numbers and nearly as many servers. So if the sub loss is mostly out of Asia why are western servers being merged and Asian ones are not?

[bluspacecow]

And some math magic... We have total Wow 2013 revenue and donate, we don't actually want to include into our calculations, cuz it isn't brought to Blizzard via fair subs. All we have - is to divide total yearly revenue without donate included by amount of money, active stable western player could brought to Blizzard:

(1041M - 213M) / (12 * 15) = ...and... drumbeat...

The effective number of subscribers, Wow had by the end of 2013 year - is 4.6 millions of subs!

And. Now we have even lesser, then this.

1] As far as I know Blizzard have never released their free to play earnings separate from their subscription earnings. It's all rolled into one in their SEC filings.
2] You missed the part of the report you quoted which stated it was for both East & West

World of Warcraft players in the East have different charging systems then the west. Generally they pay by either the hour or the day. Wow Korea does have a 30 day plan.

Due to these different charging methods and the fact that any wow player who plays with a time card for just an hour is counted as a subscriber according to Blizzard reports means you can not make the calculation you did to arrive at a subscription amount for the West players.

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http://investor.activision.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1104659-14-57005

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* World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft , as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.

[Gothicshark]

1] As far as I know Blizzard have never released their free to play earnings separate from their subscription earnings. It's all rolled into one in their SEC filings.
2] You missed the part of the report you quoted which stated it was for both East & West

World of Warcraft players in the East have different charging systems then the west. Generally they pay by either the hour or the day. Wow Korea does have a 30 day plan.

Due to these different charging methods and the fact that any wow player who plays with a time card for just an hour is counted as a subscriber according to Blizzard reports means you can not make the calculation you did to arrive at a subscription amount for the West players.

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http://investor.activision.com/secfi...04659-14-57005

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Also the Warcraft earnings include Server Transfers, Name changes, Battlenet in game store, instant 90, ect...

I would say data mining sites have a better way to tell active western Subs by just pinging Servers at peak hours. Even then the margin of Error is too great to quote.

((p.s. in January last time I looked, only 1 million people were playing WOW during Server peak hours. Which is why I just except the official number and question where the lost subs really are. Because they can get away with lying if they don't provide real numbers.))

[Pann]

Can we just stop having this stupid and frankly slightly racist debate about Asian subs and/or "pandering" to Asian audiences? It's a layer of idiocy the forums could do without.

There has been nothing racist said about Asian players in this thread. As you seem to make these claims on a regular basis I am left with the feeling that you either do not understand what racism is or you try use a serious and deplorable issue in attempt to stifle discussion about WOW.

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Also the Warcraft earnings include Server Transfers, Name changes, Battlenet in game store, instant 90, ect...

I would say data mining sites have a better way to tell active western Subs by just pinging Servers at peak hours. Even then the margin of Error is too great to quote.

The problem with your calculation, apart from there is no way gauge the accuracy of Super Data's figures, is that you've not taken into account that the income from Chinese accounts is less than Western accounts not to mention multiple month subscription discounts thus the average spend per account would be less than $15.

[Gothicshark]

The problem with your calculation, apart from there is no way gauge the accuracy of Super Data's figures, is that you've not taken into account that the income from Chinese accounts is less than Western accounts not to mention multiple month subscription discounts thus the average spend per account would be less than $15.

Not my calculation, I'm saying you can't calculate for those issues and more. When I sub, I normally pay for 3 months at a time for 2 accounts. Alliance and Horde Accounts, dates back to when you could not roll up both factions on a PVP server. Since E.D. is my home I had 2 accounts, and still maintain both accounts... well not since May, but up to May of this year I kept 2 accounts. I had to close both because I disagree with the direction of the game in WoD and put my money where my mouth is.

Yes I paid for 2 accounts for 9 years. Plus other purchases.

[MMOmaxi]

I left because of poor game design.
Basically the game that was interesting enough to raid deep into the nights 4 times a week stopped being so around Cataclysm (though the signs were there since late TBC and all over WotLK, if we are being completely fair).

Basically, i don't believe that those who are staying in WoW are doing it for the game. They are doing it for the online communities they formed over the years. I'd stay if i was lucky enough to be in one of these, but i'm a loner kind of player, so that didn't work out and i left as soon as the game itself stopped working for me.

I need to point out that i feel sub numbers mean very little for current WoW, though. Oh, sure, shareholder money is nice and all, but for us players that is really not the point. The point is the product that is being delivered and whether we like it or not. I don't, that's why i left. Knowing that there are at least six million people like me is kinda nice , but, again, not at all meaningful.

The truth of WoW is that it, as a product, has a rather large stable audience that is unlikely to play any other game but WoW anytime soon. The only things WoW needs to do are:
- release just enough content to keep this audience entertained (and they current factual update schedule does actually seem to be it, despite all the moaning about protracted final tiers)
- release stuff that this audience will pay for above and beyond sub money

I expect WoW to stabilize around ±4mill subs and stay that way for the coming decade at least, making up for lost subs with increased amount of average payment per player from store.

[AVPaul]

1] As far as I know Blizzard have never released their free to play earnings separate from their subscription earnings. It's all rolled into one in their SEC filings.
2] You missed the part of the report you quoted which stated it was for both East & West

World of Warcraft players in the East have different charging systems then the west. Generally they pay by either the hour or the day. Wow Korea does have a 30 day plan.

Due to these different charging methods and the fact that any wow player who plays with a time card for just an hour is counted as a subscriber according to Blizzard reports means you can not make the calculation you did to arrive at a subscription amount for the West players.

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http://investor.activision.com/secfi...04659-14-57005

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I know everything you've mentioned very well. Also, I guess, paid services are falling into microtransaction category too. Anyway: if they're not included into F2P revenue, then effective sub numbers should be even lesser. Ok. So what is the purpose of using effective sub number instead of official Blizzard numbers? Just because average player don't actually know all this nuances and subtleties about different payment systems around the world. So when he hears "6.8M subs", his imagination instantly draws "6.8M of western players, paying 15$ per month" picture in his head. And this is just wrong - it causes players to be misled by subs number info. That's why we should use effective number of subs - it shows the real picture! And the real picture - 4.6M of subs max.

[Thimagryn]

So it's an anomaly because it doesn't have a single bad guy? Just like Classic had no ultimate bad guy..
Please.. Tell me more.

All you have to do is see how MoP was marketted compared to World of Warcraft in general. It's a very different tone taken from all other expansions. This isn't about a major conflict between Alliance and Horde, it was marketted as exploring a new land themed around the Pandaren culture. From the Blizzcon featurette to the finished MoP cinematic, everything was marketted to exploring this new land. It completely omitted the 'looming threat' aspect that has always been present.

But why would they do that?
Who are you to decide what culture is relevant to the Warcraft-universe?
Appeals to authority are some of the worst arguments, but it gets even worse when you consider yourself that authority

If it were the South Seas and not just Pandaria, it wouldn't have been criticized for straying from what people feel is 'Warcraft'. Personally? I love the Pandaren lore, their history and the culture. I think it's very Warcraft. But I'm not so blind to think that Pandaria's peaceful and foreign themes hasn't turned some people off. I'm not pointing at this as if it were the sole factor in sub loss over in the east, I'm pointing out that Blizzard's decision to focus on Pandaria has reasons beyond 'exploring new places'. All previous expansions share common threads of treading familiar material and fighting familiar villains.

Let's not forget that Pandaria itself was formed out of an April Fools joke. Blizzard has so much more material to cover it makes one wonder why they would take such a risk to develop the Pandaren culture only to end up telling a Horde vs Alliance story involving Garrosh and Old Gods...

And how was Pandaria the main-focus when two-third of the expansion was about Garrosh?

The marketting, which is what I'm mostly referring to. I'm not referring to the content we were provided. The Pandaren and Pandaria were at the forefront of every aspect of the marketting. The initial release shows off the Monk class and the Pandaren race and the Pandaren culture. The front cover has Chen. The Cinematic has Chen making peace with a Human and Orc to show them Pandaria. The expansion itself is called Mists of Pandaria. No one knew about Garrosh being the end boss until Blizzcon day 2, when Metzen was forced to out the secret so people could stop freaking out.

So let's list the facts that you just made up:
1. Focus on Pandaria.
2. Majority of audience is Chinese
3. Lore alienated a lot of players.

1. Marketting wise, there was a heavy focus on Pandaria.
2. The majority of the WoW subscibers IS Chinese. We've known this since Wrath's quarterly reports, and this has not changed.
3. It's not the lore that has alienated players, but the presentation of Pandaren culture. Warcraft is a medieval high fantasy focused on War. MoP was presented as exploring an asian-themed island centered on peace. The fact that Pandarens are fairly whimsical didn't help those first impressions.

There is a book that has made the same observation.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=XBWe...page&q&f=false

One Chinese player, for example, reports that "this game, in aspect of using Western myths, is very successful.... If there is only fighting in the game, it is less interesting." --
It seems very likely, however, that the Chinese mythology underlying the 2012 Mists of Pandaria expansion is a reaction to the extraordinary popularity of World of Warcraft in China and a desire to ensure that even more players have a cultural stake in the game's mythos.

It's not as if I'm stretching facts to make it work here. It's an observation, so take it as you will.

[Pann]

Not my calculation, I'm saying you can't calculate for those issues and more. When I sub, I normally pay for 3 months at a time for 2 accounts. Alliance and Horde Accounts, dates back to when you could not roll up both factions on a PVP server. Since E.D. is my home I had 2 accounts, and still maintain both accounts... well not since May, but up to May of this year I kept 2 accounts. I had to close both because I disagree with the direction of the game in WoD and put my money where my mouth is.

Yes I paid for 2 accounts for 9 years. Plus other purchases.

Sorry I wasn't paying attention to who was quoting who and I should have said the and not your in regards to the sub calculation.

[Sevyvia]

Because it makes it sound like they're doing a good job when they're failing to produce quality content and constantly losing subs, yet people always say "STILL MORE THAN ANY OTHER MMO".

"Failing to produce quality content" is an opinion, not a fact.

I understand that doomsaying is fun, though.

[Pann]

All you have to do is see how MoP was marketted compared to World of Warcraft in general. It's a very different tone taken from all other expansions. This isn't about a major conflict between Alliance and Horde, it was marketted as exploring a new land themed around the Pandaren culture. From the Blizzcon featurette to the finished MoP cinematic, everything was marketted to exploring this new land. It completely omitted the 'looming threat' aspect that has always been present.....

I have to disagree with you due to Chinese licensing laws the monetary value of a Chinese sub is considerably less than that of a Western one to Blizzard some estimates have put this at between four and five times less. It makes no sense for Blizzard to focus on a market that they have no direct control over and makes less money than the western market. Also if they were truly intent on focussing on the Chinese market it would have made sense to hire voice actors who had Chinese rather Japanese accents and not portray them a lazy western stereotype.

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"Failing to produce quality content" is an opinion, not a fact.

I understand that doomsaying is fun, though.

Well they are failing to produce any kind of content at present so it kinda a fact.

[Lethora]

an expansion pandering to the asian audience, failed horribly in asia. i'd call that a failure, objectively. we can only hope blizzard learned from their mistakes in doing 2+ years of content people don't care about. people cared about arthas, or illidan. noone gives a crap about the sha of fear, lei shen, or even garrosh.

themes/story aside, the problem is the glacial pace of content.

It's your personal opinion. I don't give a crap about Arthas or Illidan. I am most interested in Titan/Old Gods lore. Vanilla had that in Silithus/AQ, BC had almost none of it, but there was some other quality lore, WotLK made me have a nerdgasm in form of Ulduar which had BOTH Titan and Old Gods lore. Cata had Uldum for Titan part and to some extend Bastion/DS which attributed to Old Gods. MoP was heavily focused on Sha and Mantid which both have links to Old Gods but we also had plenty of Titan stuff in every patch. That's probably why MoP is my favorite expansion, because it provided quite a large exposure to the things I was interested in.

The point of my post? Your opinion isn't always right. There are always people who feel the other way.

[Deleted]

Good to see my prediction about MoP well overtaking Catashit in sub loss speed come so true.
It's going to be fun watching WoD start with a bang and going down fast (at least it looks so by now, the fucked everything up quite impressively, so those millions of WoD fans are in for quite a disappointment).

[Conscious]

"Failing to produce quality content" is an opinion, not a fact.

I understand that doomsaying is fun, though.

Depends on how you look at it.

If we were to go by the numbers, the content (game) gets worse and worse off each year.

Subscriber numbers generally correlate well with content quality and duration.

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Good to see my prediction about MoP well overtaking Catashit in sub loss speed come so true.
It's going to be fun watching WoD start with a bang and going down fast (at least it looks so by now, the fucked everything up quite impressively, so those millions of WoD fans are in for quite a disappointment).

Don't even think it's going to start strong at all. It's already in a hole.

[Aedeus]

Good to see my prediction about MoP well overtaking Catashit in sub loss speed come so true.
It's going to be fun watching WoD start with a bang and going down fast (at least it looks so by now, the fucked everything up quite impressively, so those millions of WoD fans are in for quite a disappointment).

It seems to be like multiplying. Cataclysm lost 2, Mists lost 4.. Does it mean WoD loses 6 ?

[Deleted]

The unfortunate thing is, is that I doubt WoD will bring those numbers back up to anything like 7.5m...

A shame, really.

[Mission]

The unfortunate thing is, is that I doubt WoD will bring those numbers back up to anything like 7.5m...

A shame, really.

The state of WoD in Beta so far, No doubt it will or even close to it.
Because it is not like a expansion, it really feels like a content patch that is costing us $$$$

If anything, I believe we will lose way more Subs once WoD is live, and alot of Subs.

Sure WoD has "some" "okay" stuff, but its just that, "okay" and its not awesome, WoW, amazing, and as I said and others, its really just a content patch.

Shame, but it appeared from first Blizz Con, that devs only had idea's and were looking on what to do and kind of just threw it together since then, to now.

Its not spectacular or exciting. Its flat, dull and just a toss together and a mess.

And its pathetic, really, they have had ages to plan ahead and create, but they are lazy and probably have internal issues with GC gone as well and quality of WoW which has been declining for some time is really showing and will show in this next so called WoD Expansion.

Time will tell, but when there is that many people already unhappy about lack luster in WOD that will reflect in Subs, and only 1.5 million pre-orders, says a bit in hype which isnt much at all, so far.

[WillFeral]

This thread is new and exciting!

Kappa

[Grogo]

This thread is new and exciting!

Kappa

So is your response...