It's startling how fast game activity is falling

[Deleted]

Another trend shows there has been a significant drop off in the number of guilds that are raiding.

For the MoP raids, only 31,059 guilds have killed at least one boss.
For Dragon Soul 62,648 guilds killed at least one boss.
For Tier 11 (Cata launch raids) 71,186 guilds killed at least one boss.

http://www.wowprogress.com/

That's less than half compared to the end of Cata when subs were at 9 million.

you can't compare kills at the start of an expansion vs kills at the end of DS/t11

[vindicatorx]

Xfire isn't really a reliable source as pretty much no one uses it anymore. Realms isn't very reliable either as it requires people to download and use it to track players. I'm not saying you are wrong but I'm saying the places you are looking at are very poor at proving you are right.

[whatthefudge]

Protip: Spend more time not playing the game and less time worrying about what other people do with their time.

[Osmeric]

Protip: Spend more time not playing the game and less time worrying about what other people do with their time.

I can do both of those at once!

[Deleted]

Xfire just shows the same statistics as Warcraft realms thus giving accurate info on the trend. Its not a question who uses Xfire. To discredit ppl using Xfire service puts you in the same category as those that discredit ppl that play WOW... And that just discredits your own argument in the first place.

I am not discrediting anyone. I am just saying it as it is.

In fact less xfire users on my WoW server are probably a good thing. There has to be a disproportionate jump in age average of players online when xfire shows a trend downside. I'd like that ;-)

xfire is used by a very specific group of people. This group of people is busy playing Black ops 2 now or AC3 and stuff.

[Pascal]

Don't care. I'm still having fun.

[Beefhammer]

I'm playing less because I'm feeling less obligated to work on dailies. I really, really, REALLY wanted my Shado-Pan and August Celestials enchanting recipes, they're the only reason I bothered with Golden Lotus. I wanted the Cloud Serpent mounts too, but that was finished aaaages ago.

It took less than 14 hours in about 14 days to hit revered with GL and SP. Less time if you run it with a group. It took me and my wife just the two of use(healer and tank) less than an hour a day to run all the dailies in the daily hubs each day until revered(exalted with the Klaxxi). It was much faster when we did a 5 man group. So people are making a mountain out of a mole hill over the dailies. Revered is all you need for anything good or considered "required" fro raiding and that takes minimal effort.

As for declining time what did you expect 2 months after a release? As another poster prior said, many got their raiding toons geared and got the rep they wanted then went back to normal playing times. I play on a medium pop server that is usually dead except for raiding guilds on most nights. Zones are empty most of the time prior to CRZ. I have not noticed a lack of players yet. People are out farming mats and hunting for rares like mad. I have seen many many long forgotten alts roaming the Pandaran zones. Daily hubs are just as filled as they were in the first weeks. While some may be experiencing one trend not all are the same and I highly doubt many other online games experience consistent time played months after release.

WoW is still the king by 8 million subs. Blizzard has made it more appealing and more accessible for shorter sessions allowing you to get stuff done quickly and enjoy your time. You still get more out of it the more time you spend in the game but gamers have changed, lifestyles have changes. There are way more pick up and play for a bit then log out types now than the 8hr a day second jobbers. Blizzard has done a good job of changing their game to suit to all types and reward all types accordingly. Less time logged in should be no concern to Blizzard. Sub levels approaching their competition would be worrisome to me. I do believe something would happen to fix those issues before they drop to 2M IMO.

[Deleted]

Actually it's not ignorant because it's valid that you need a randomized sample size, not just a particular type of player (the type that would even load that program on their machine). It's like taking a pole in the stats and only asking people in NY but claiming the result is the same across the US.

Again, what you are describing is not a deficiency in sampling size, it is a problem with the sample not being randomized, which is exactly what Osmeric just said.

[Deleted]

Xfire isn't really a reliable source as pretty much no one uses it anymore. Realms isn't very reliable either as it requires people to download and use it to track players. I'm not saying you are wrong but I'm saying the places you are looking at are very poor at proving you are right.

tracking 6 million charcaters is more then enough for a good sample.

[GrieverXIII]

K, cool. I still enjoy it and just joined a new and healthy guild so why should i care? I've seen a lot of people quit and my old guild disband mostly because people i was raiding with were people that recently got out of university, got a solid job in what they wanted, recently bought things like a house and had girlfriends they needed to take care of, they were all sad to go away from the game as they saw MoP as a massive improvement over Cata but they had higher priorities specially since its not the kind of people that can play a game like WoW casually.

I don't see many, if at all, people leaving cause "ERHMAGERD WOW SUQ".

[Verain]

When the expac came out, I raced to 90 with some friends in guild. Then everyone played like crazy to get their mains to the point where we weren't suffering.

Now we are into the meat of the game. Some guildies play a lot, some just show up for raids. It's about what I'd expect.

[duster2]

Another trend shows there has been a significant drop off in the number of guilds that are raiding.

For the MoP raids, only 31,059 guilds have killed at least one boss.
For Dragon Soul 62,648 guilds killed at least one boss.
For Tier 11 (Cata launch raids) 71,186 guilds killed at least one boss.

http://www.wowprogress.com/

That's less than half compared to the end of Cata when subs were at 9 million.

Yes - this is the part that BLizzard needs to change. LFR will not hold any person interested in the game. They need to get the difficulty of normal raiding content correct asap so that more ppl will use that feature rather than LFR. ATM the normal raids are slightly overtuned (and some bosses highly overtuned) compared to the ilvl available. Patch 5.1 will improve it .. but at the same time it will add more dailies that will push ppl away from their alts making the actual character pool for raiding smaller than ever.

The social aspect of MMO games is the key. Raiding is the strongest social aspect that WOW can offer - but it has to be balanced correctly and fairly. I feel BLizzard can do better when it comes to this. And somehow ppl seem to forget that the new 5.1 ilvl system is actually INCREASING the ilvl gap between ppl that are doing heroic content vs those doing more casual version. This will lead to next tier of content to be even more difficult - if not impossible for any casual player and will lead even less players to bother with raids than are doing now.

[BrerBear]

I don't have the data for BC. WCR had a graph showing monthly activity after the release of Wrath, which I think showed increasing activity for the first two months. I don't have a link for that handy.

But you're right, I shouldn't have said "after every expansion". So I guess the current decline is even more worrisome.

Here we go: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity-2009-02.htm

Wait just a minute.

I reviewed the data from your original post, including the spreadsheet. I don't think it backs up your assertions.
And I'll quote from your linked Nosy Gamer article.


"The Thanksgiving weekend in the United States took its toll on the gaming time of the Xfire community with 7.1% less time spent playing MMORPGs than the previous Sunday. The games facing the biggest declines were Guild Wars 2 (-32.8%) and the two games that fell off the list, Maple Story (-21.5%) and Rift (-20.5%). The three games that barely managed to defy the trend were Aion (+1.5%), Lord of the Rings Online (+1.1%) and Eve Online (+0.5%)."

WoWis declining less than other MMOs.

And let me quote and bold this one from you. Same blog, October 30 update:

"The Expansion Crash - This week saw a typical example of what currently happens after an expansion. For subscription games the big declines in player interest take place about 4 weeks after an expansion's launch as the first month ends and players begin to unsubscribe. World of Warcraft followed that pattern with the number of hours played declining by 13.1% as the Mists of Pandaria reached the 30-day mark."

Huh. Guess your whole premise was wrong.

[Deleted]

Wait just a minute.

I reviewed the data from your original post, including the spreadsheet. I don't think it backs up your assertions.
And I'll quote from your linked Nosy Gamer article.


"The Thanksgiving weekend in the United States took its toll on the gaming time of the Xfire community with 7.1% less time spent playing MMORPGs than the previous Sunday. The games facing the biggest declines were Guild Wars 2 (-32.8%) and the two games that fell off the list, Maple Story (-21.5%) and Rift (-20.5%). The three games that barely managed to defy the trend were Aion (+1.5%), Lord of the Rings Online (+1.1%) and Eve Online (+0.5%)."

WoWis declining less than other MMOs.

And let me quote and bold this one from you. Same blog, October 30 update:

"The Expansion Crash - This week saw a typical example of what currently happens after an expansion. For subscription games the big declines in player interest take place about 4 weeks after an expansion's launch as the first month ends and players begin to unsubscribe. World of Warcraft followed that pattern with the number of hours played declining by 13.1% as the Mists of Pandaria reached the 30-day mark."

Huh. Guess your whole premise was wrong.

noones comparing it to other mmo's we are comparing it to itself.

The WCR data shows WoW's activity in cata took 3/4 months to get back to pre cata activity and in that time they lost a million subs(with a million more to follow). and now MOP has taken only 2 months to get down to pre MOP activity, thats all people are saying, it might translate into another loss, it might not only time will tell.

[duster2]

Wait just a minute.

I reviewed the data from your original post, including the spreadsheet. I don't think it backs up your assertions.
And I'll quote from your linked Nosy Gamer article.


"The Thanksgiving weekend in the United States took its toll on the gaming time of the Xfire community with 7.1% less time spent playing MMORPGs than the previous Sunday. The games facing the biggest declines were Guild Wars 2 (-32.8%) and the two games that fell off the list, Maple Story (-21.5%) and Rift (-20.5%). The three games that barely managed to defy the trend were Aion (+1.5%), Lord of the Rings Online (+1.1%) and Eve Online (+0.5%)."

WoWis declining less than other MMOs.

And let me quote and bold this one from you. Same blog, October 30 update:

"The Expansion Crash - This week saw a typical example of what currently happens after an expansion. For subscription games the big declines in player interest take place about 4 weeks after an expansion's launch as the first month ends and players begin to unsubscribe. World of Warcraft followed that pattern with the number of hours played declining by 13.1% as the Mists of Pandaria reached the 30-day mark."

Huh. Guess your whole premise was wrong.

You seem to forget that some games have events - not just patches. GW2 dropped because it had so big event the week before.

[Darkhallows]

Honestly I love the stuff added by 5.1; the Brawler's Guild is fuckin' awesome, and the raid battle pets alone have kept me going for hours. Still need the pup...and Viscidus...

[Osmeric]

"The Thanksgiving weekend in the United States took its toll on the gaming time of the Xfire community with 7.1% less time spent playing MMORPGs than the previous Sunday. The games facing the biggest declines were Guild Wars 2 (-32.8%) and the two games that fell off the list, Maple Story (-21.5%) and Rift (-20.5%). The three games that barely managed to defy the trend were Aion (+1.5%), Lord of the Rings Online (+1.1%) and Eve Online (+0.5%)."

WoWis declining less than other MMOs.

That in no way contradicts what I wrote. And look at the data going back to MoP release: the decline is not a thanksgiving-only event.

And let me quote and bold this one from you. Same blog, October 30 update:

"The Expansion Crash - This week saw a typical example of what currently happens after an expansion. For subscription games the big declines in player interest take place about 4 weeks after an expansion's launch as the first month ends and players begin to unsubscribe. World of Warcraft followed that pattern with the number of hours played declining by 13.1% as the Mists of Pandaria reached the 30-day mark."

Huh. Guess your whole premise was wrong.

My premise that activity is declining is wrong, because ... activity is declining?

[Barnabas]

College finals have been approaching and many students just don't have the time for wow for a couple more weeks. Xfire has a lot of chinese students that use it as well.

[Peacemoon]

Vanilla WoW also had godawful quests, pointless gear checks, and mindless boss fights.

Stop rewriting history.

And like all MMO's, this was overlooked because of a fun and cohesive online community.

I will say time and time again, what makes WoW and MMO's uniquely appealing is the social aspects of the game. In terms of pure gameplay, WoW just cannot compare with single player RPG's.

In that context, anything that undermines this cohesive online social community is very detrimental to the game. This includes anything that is cross-realm and promotes anonymity, like dungeon finder, or CRZ.

If you want to isolate the exact point where WoW began to fall, in my opinion, it is shortly after the release of the cross realm dungeon finder.

[Beefhammer]

Another trend shows there has been a significant drop off in the number of guilds that are raiding.

For the MoP raids, only 31,059 guilds have killed at least one boss.
For Dragon Soul 62,648 guilds killed at least one boss.
For Tier 11 (Cata launch raids) 71,186 guilds killed at least one boss.

http://www.wowprogress.com/

That's less than half compared to the end of Cata when subs were at 9 million.

Those stats show the last recorded guild killing Magmaw in T11 the day before the first DS kill of Morchok. So lets look at how many guilds have killed one boss in T14 after the first SoO kill is recorded. Then you will have a better comparison.