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

WoW Lost 600k Subscribers, down to 11.4M
Activision Blizzard's earning call was today and we learned, among other things, that the WoW playerbase is down to 11.4M players. That's 5% less than before the expansion and it seems that players went through the Cataclysm content faster than expected.

Blizzard also promised faster release of new content and expansions during the call.

From Curse.com
During today's Activision Blizzard earnings call, World of Warcraft and its expansion Cataclysm were two very hot topics. Listeners asked a number of questions related to the game, more than any other title or franchise in the publisher's stable.

Of note, World of Warcraft's subscriber base has reached pre-Cataclysm levels, according to Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment. He then later stated an actual number, with subscriptions at the end of March clocking in at right around 11.4 million.

That's down by about 5% from the announced 12 million mark late last year. Interestingly enough, that was right before Cataclysm released. In fact, it's actually lower than the milestone reached in 2008 with the release of Wrath of the Lich King.

But one important thing to point out, and Mr. Morhaime touched on this as well, is that World of Warcraft's subscriber base does not change linearly. It fluctuates based on content consumption, which players seem to be doing a whole lot of -- at a more rapid pace -- with Cataclysm. "Subscriber levels have decreased faster than previous expansions," he said.

Surprising? Not really. We have to remember that when these numbers were pulled, Cataclysm was in a bit of a lull. The expansion had been out for close to four months, and most of its content had been consumed by a large percentage of the player base -- aside from heroic raids.


Diablo 3 Public Beta in Q3 2011
The 2nd big interesting thing from the earning call was the announcement of Diablo 3's public beta in Q3 2011, it looks like the summer will be busy between Patch 4.2 and Diablo 3 ... For more Diablo related news, head to Diablofans.com.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
The 3rd quarter reference in the earning's call today was a calendar quarter, meaning that we're aiming to launch the Diablo III beta between July 1st and September 30th. Keep in mind that it's our current goal, and of course that can change as development continues.

2011 Arena Pass: Phases
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
The 2011 Arena Pass is split into several different phases. To help you gain a more detailed understanding of how this year’s Arena Pass will unfold, you can find an explanation of the different phases in this article. You can also find out which matches are counted towards receiving a pet or title!

Registration Phase
4 May – 21 June (9pm CEST)
During this period you can register for the European 2011 Arena Pass Service. Registration will be closed outside of these dates.

Practice Phase
11 May – 8 June
During this period you will be able to enjoy the Arena Pass Realm and practice your setup with your friends. Matches played during this phase will not count towards the pet and title prizes.

Ranked Ladder Phase 1
8 June– 22 June
All Arena Rating points will be set to zero when this phase begins. Ranked 3v3 matches played during this phase will count towards the pet and title prizes. If a player switches from one Arena Team to another, the Arena Team that the player joins will have their Arena Rating reduced by 150 points.

Ranked Ladder Phase 2
22 June – 4 July (9pm CEST)
Ranked 3v3 matches played during this phase will count towards the pet and title prizes. During the Ranked Ladder Phase 2 of the Arena Pass Service, players cannot switch Arena Teams.

Prize Eligibility
Ranked 3v3 matches that count toward the pet and title prizes will start on 8 June 2011, (once the weekly maintenance has ended) and end 4 July 2011, at 9pm CEST.

Please note that phases begin once weekly maintenance has finished on the dates specified, and end at the beginning of maintenance on the dates specified (unless stated otherwise).

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Legendary Staff availability
It's actually easier to get started on the path to acquire this legendary; the journey itself is more difficult though. Regardless, players who have cleared the prior tier of raid content are the only ones eligible to begin the quest line -- any player who's part of a group which is capable of accomplishing that probably has a good shot at getting a staff for themselves. (Source)

Legendary Staff - Guild Pet Reward
We're doing something wholly unprecedented in the history of World of Warcraft, by making the acquisition of this Legendary result in a pet for the whole group responsible. Never before has an entire guild been able to acquire any kind of item for helping a member acquire an item or achievement.

We thought that was pretty cool. (Source)

Legendary weapons in 5-man instances?
At least for the foreseeable future, we’re shying away from the model where individuals or five man groups can acquire legendary items, because that could have several possible effects which don't mesh well with our idea of what these items should represent. The items might become common enough that orange becomes the new purple, or so random that the acquisition doesn’t feel particularly good, or we’d have to include a lot of artificial controls on how many of those items end up on a given realm despite a thin veneer of accessibility. Any way you slice it, we think that this would diminish the appeal of these items, and that’s not the way we want to go for now.

We do want the path to getting them to be more than a scavenger hunt though, and we’re continually trying to make the experience of acquiring a legendary weapon more… legendary. We learn as we go. For example, we’re unlikely to ever again do the Molten Core / Black Temple style legendary drops where sometimes you get lucky and more often, you don’t. We think that was really excessively random, and perhaps more importantly, it lost the entire sense of ceremony involved in forging your weapon. To return to the point of discussion that spawned this thread, Dragonwrath is almost the polar opposite of that. Sure, there is a “gated” portion of the quest line, which involves killing Firelands raid bosses, because we want this weapon to be something that a group has to work for and so that nobody is completing their legendary on the first week. But there is also a ton of other content as well: many new quests, legendary-specific raid boss fights, and a great personal challenge which evokes the spirit of those old classic World of Warcraft epic quests. The staff is really awesome in itself, and is rewarding for the whole group which completes it. I think that’s pretty cool, and I hope that those who get the opportunity to pursue the staff feel the same way. (Source)

Legendary items are only for people lucky enough to have a raid!
I'm not sure that you can call being a dedicated raider a matter of luck.

When someone plays a video game, they’re usually faced with a lot of choices. World of Warcraft has a ton of choices, and being part of a guild and choosing to raid is one of the more important choices one makes. World of Warcraft has also had a pretty clear structure of progression for a long time. There’s leveling content; all the quests, dungeons, and events which one can experience as they increase in power toward maximum level. Then, at the level cap, there are some new tiers of content. Top end daily quests, five man dungeons and heroics, battlegrounds, PvP zones and the like. This is all extremely accessible, and (we hope) all players who reach maximum level in World of Warcraft will experience all of it. Then, for the players who choose to pursue the necessary preparations and relationships, there are arenas, rated battlegrounds and raids. Those are the most demanding World of Warcraft experiences available, and we hope that most players will make the choice to take their skills there and see at least some of that content, since there are some very rich experiences to be had.

Raids in particular are intentionally challenging environments, and they are meant to stand up as obstacles to overcome, to reward players who are willing to develop the relationships and coordination with other World of Warcraft players to meet and beat the toughest challenges the game has to offer. They represent achievements to aspire to and we put a lot of time into that content and try to make it rewarding because we want you to want to see it.

Legendary weapons are legendary in part because of lore, and in part because of the grand adventure it is to achieve them. They are intended to represent a goal for an entire guild and raid group, and acquiring such a weapon reflects on the raid and guild as a whole. This helps us keep these items rare, which makes them more exciting and prestigious, which, in turn, allows us to make them more powerful. (Source)

The Daily Blink
I didn't post anything from The Daily Blink in a while and they said I can have my Garfield plush back only if I resume posting. I liked this one a few weeks ago but couldn't post it because of all the Patch 4.2 content, fixed!

This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW Loses 600k Subscribers, Diablo 3 Beta Q3 2011, Arena Passe, Blue Posts started by Boubouille View original post
Published on 2011-05-10 06:01 AM
453 Comments
Comments 446 Comments
  1. mmoc128e560295's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Boubouille View Post
    That's 5% less than before the expansion and it seems that players went through the Cataclysm content faster than expected.
    They are wrong.
    All my friends around me who played WoW aswell, all quit for the same reason : Boring, old, been there done that.
    Aswell the fact that there are still tons of semi-hardcore guilds struggling to get all content down on HC-mode makes their argument pretty worthless.

    Ohwell, the result will be : Quicker release of more revamped boring content.

    On a sidenote, WoW is a great game, it gave me lots of days fun and playtime..but it seems its just losing lifespan.
  1. Reparator's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by wordup View Post
    As you just did to me, you mean, YOU like to play with your peers? Considering the amount of universal guilds vs. the language specific ones, I'd say you're in the minority.
    One minority is put off by this, other by that and suddenly millon players are gone ... The 600k figure does not show how many subscribers WoW has lost, it shows that with new players that joined WoW, the total loss amounted to 600k. Also lots of players who still pay for the game have cut their gameplay time considerably.

    Quote Originally Posted by hamski View Post
    A big misconception you guys are making is that the "WoW killer" doesn't even have to be an MMORPG. With DOTA2 and Guild Wars 2 coming soon, people are going to wise up to the fact that Blizz doesn't really care about PVPers or gameplay anymore, they'd rather continue lining their pockets with purchasable non-combat pets and make sure no hybrid class is ever, ever without a raid spot and move on.
    Recently I picked up SC2 and I have to say the level of polish of it compared to WoW is amazing. And it's Blizz product no less. SC2, GW2, LOL, DOTA2, ME3, Skyrim, DS3, D3, Witcher2 ... there are lots and lots of rpg games coming, each one of them will bite a bit of WoW playerbase off ... for that not to show Blizz will have to step up their game. 600k players lost every 4 months = third of Eu/North America playerbase every year.
  1. underdogba's Avatar
    The purpose of this kind of news is basically Blizz being smart about controlling the message. Yes, WoW has lost 600k subscribers, but through this news story, Blizz gets to purpetuate the myth that there ever actually were 12 million subscribers.

    The subscriber number milestones are calculated using this methodology--
    World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
    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.
    When Blizz puts out a press released claiming a certain "subscriber" figure, there is a certain notion of what constitutes a "subscriber" that you are likely to assume. Unfortunately this is not what they mean. Specifically in the Chinese market, there is no such thing as what you consider to be a traditional subscription, as players basically log into "Internet Game Rooms" and are charged for time useage. Basically anytime any single one of these people just decides to login for a minute, it counts as a subscription.
  1. Killtorz's Avatar
    Wait until people who have taken their cc of of their accounts show up. Many pay for 3-6 months at a time and have not been counted in these numbers yet.
  1. mmoc80afdcec58's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by tufy1 View Post
    Well, you can't really blame them. The only potential competition is still a few months or even a year away, whereas past competitors, while successful on their own, failed miserably to take its crown away. If I were Blizzard, I'd be pretty confident that I can weather the "next storm" as well. Let's face it - if Bioware fails (god forbid, but given EA in the background, I'm still holding breath), the only competition to WoW in the forseeable future will be Blizzard's own MMO.
    I disagree sir. Many people have put hundreds of hours onto their characters on WoW. If you want to take those players you need to bring something new and inventive. Sure, the name Star Wars will be sufficient on its own to grab some costumers but from what i have seen so far, the game is an exact WoW copy. It does not bring anything that makes me go 'Wow, i wonder why blizzard hasnt come up with that, that's really smart and seems enjoyable and different from what i can do now'. And the fact that EA is there is indeed scary, looking at their track record with DA2 and Warhammer. The fact that they had to spend over 20 million dollars on marketing already and 80 million more on development and pretty graphics leads me to think this is a Deal or No Deal situation for Bioware. I've loved them in the past but i'm afraid that time is over, and so might Bioware.

    I'm betting on Guild Wars 2, if Blizzard doesnt come up with a good plan to stop the game from leaking players at this rate. Now that game looks highly inventive to me, is made by people that broke off from Blizzard a few years ago, and managed to make a game where people didnt blow up instantly and required a lot of tactics and planning. Ofcourse, i'll be playing the Witcher 2 till then. But the Star Wars MMO has failed to impress me, and wtf 100 mill development.
  1. Wolfie of Medivh's Avatar
    i think the biggest problem of Cata is they considered Heroic Raids part of the raiding progression. Regular Dungeons->Heroic Dungeons->Regular Raids->Heroic Raids->New Tier Regular Raids->New Tier Heroic Raids. In Wrath, Heroic Raids were a bonus - something you could do for additional challenge/reward, but Hardly required. YOu could go from 232 ToC to 245 ICC and be fine. I don't know if that's the plan here. To me, I think most people see Heroic Raids as being very separate.
  1. ExordiusExNihilo's Avatar
    In today's world of statistical analysis where we decide to sit down and count things others people have not counted before we do like the look back and try to attach meaning to certain things like a 600K loss of player base. It is so easy to sit there and blame the one thing xxx did not like or the one thing someone's friend didn't like, but most people don't quit for just one reason (that is based upon the premise people are rational to begin with).

    As I have seen it, games follow a very similar progression (in this I mean MMORPGs). The point at which wow has arrived is the point of post critical mass. At critical mass is when most people will allude to in this thread calling it great which I am guessing was in WotLK. People in general will allude to this and say it was the best time ever with great social dynamics and great content. But, a game has a life cycle, it does not last forever in the sense of massive subscriptions. After they hit critical mass it starts to slowly decline for this and that reason, most companies know this. So companies are faced with a few choices: either try to gain those supporters back (this is hard) or let the game run its inevitable course and hope everyone latches onto Blizzard's next big thing.

    There is no way you can attribute one thing to the fall of this giant that was built, but we must also reflect and see some trends with other games. There are reasons people quit not caused by the game. This includes such thing as the economy not improving much lately, maybe people are being forced to reconcile their lives and turn away from such extraneous things as wow. This includes pounding the pavement more for work and spending less. (I am sure lots of people know a person in WoW struggling to make ends meet, but still playing WoW as an escape that probably shouldn't be.) And, there are also reasons of the game that drive people away, like rehashed, reskinned, box bailed content.

    There are symptoms which pop up in every game because of the progressions from start up to build up to critical mass to decline. An example or symptom of this which can always be seen in a critical mass -> decline (purely in my opinion) is the people themselves. People will often state that others are elitist, and it probably is true, but this is inevitable. When you get to post critical mass people have seen everything, done everything, and are jaded. The best way to know if they are in this state is when third party programs can build your best character for you like simulationCraft and rawr. The interest is in the discovery. You cannot simply recreate the game, it has to follow the same premise it always has or it is a different game. So thus the whole hop to another game mentality is achieved. You can hide the formulas or you can keep changing them, but eventually people figure it out and start making tools to uncover the veil or predict the changes. We as humans have the clever gift of making tools which make tools.

    In the end the end of the game is inevitable, empires don't last forever. There will probably be hard core nerds holding onto this game till Blizzard decides to break down the servers. But, until then Blizzard will make the next thing for you to fall in love with start the rise up to critical mass and decline again onto the next thing. The worst part (I think) is that we like it this way. If you believe in market, this means we want it this way for this kind of thing to keep recurring.
  1. mmoceb1605b3cd's Avatar
    Diablo 3 will have a public beta? Exciting!
  1. Drakhar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xaroc View Post
    Well im one of the 600k :P and dont plan on going back, become happy for my freedom and not 4 hours planned almost every night.
    warrior with 3 legendary and close to 900k gold just thrown in the corner to rott :P
    Oh man, so am I! I cancelled my second account!

    The fact that you are not only lurking here but posting as well means you will be back, not sure who you're trying to convince. Throw in the fact that you're flaunting your legendaries and gold just makes you look even worse.

    The drop is expected, and the only thing that will come of it is more morons posting this as "proof" that the game is dying. To which I say: lawl 600k...

    So D3 beta in Q3, ANet better get their shit together because no one will care about GW2 before long.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cakka View Post
    This just Blizzards lies. Rift already has 2 million subscribers, so WoW has lost at least that many.
    Roflcakes, evidence please. I'm willing to bet Rift active subs are less than 600k (or if I'm wrong, I have no doubt they will be within a few months).

    The number of posts by people claiming to have quit but still posting here is frankly, extremely sad. I say "claiming" because I can't comprehend the level of addiction it would take for you kids to be celebrating a (relatively) minor loss in subs like it validates you having quit months ago.
  1. Ariahna's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Arganaut View Post
    IBut I think the biggest factor has to be down WOW burnout. If you think players who started in TBC, god forbid Vanilla, that is going on 4 years of the same old linear and progressive game style. Kudos to Blizzard for keeping it entertaining for so long, but for me, and apparently many others the appeal is just not there now.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sersel View Post
    They are wrong.
    All my friends around me who played WoW aswell, all quit for the same reason : Boring, old, been there done that.
    ^This

    This weekend I deleted my ilevel 365 priest (and all my other characters) that has been my main since TBC, and left the game. My subscription won't technically expire until next month. The game has become mundane over the last year, and life is really too short to chain yourself to a computer for multiple nights in a row when the game is no longer fun. Anyone who finds it fun just hasn't played long enough yet.
  1. Vargas's Avatar
    Its not just people clearing content faster than expected, thats probably a small portion of it. A lot of people either don't have the time to play it right now or just plain didn't like Cataclysm.
  1. Galactis's Avatar
    I was one of the many that quit, due to lack of DEPTH TO THE GAME ANYMORE.
  1. quras's Avatar
    There used to b e a great post on a site called Digital Castration (way to bad he took the site down and it's personal invite only now. You can read about his last shutdown blog here: http://www.wowguideonline.com/blog/2...1/#comment-392 ) that talked about how blizzard has created their own definition for subscriber and that the numbers blizzard posts are not really all that accurate.

    However, knowing that subscriptions are down. I wonder what the real numbers are these days as I bet actual subscriptions are quite a bit lower.
  1. mmoc80afdcec58's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Drakhar View Post
    Oh man, so am I! I cancelled my second account!

    The fact that you are not only lurking here but posting as well means you will be back, not sure who you're trying to convince. Throw in the fact that you're flaunting your legendaries and gold just makes you look even worse.

    The drop is expected, and the only thing that will come of it is more morons posting this as "proof" that the game is dying. To which I say: lawl 600k...

    So D3 beta in Q3, ANet better get their shit together because no one will care about GW2 before long.
    Yeah, let's have them race the game out so they can be faster than another game, in this case D3. Prime reasoning there matey, you fit right in with the dev team of one of the hundreds of failed MMO's. Also, lol comparing these two games.
  1. Senaelanna's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Drakhar View Post
    Oh man, so am I! I cancelled my second account!

    The fact that you are not only lurking here but posting as well means you will be back, not sure who you're trying to convince. Throw in the fact that you're flaunting your legendaries and gold just makes you look even worse.

    The drop is expected, and the only thing that will come of it is more morons posting this as "proof" that the game is dying. To which I say: lawl 600k...

    So D3 beta in Q3, ANet better get their shit together because no one will care about GW2 before long.
    I love this argument, because it has absolutely no backing. I quit in December, and shall not be playing WoW again until they fix the most obvious, glaring issues with the game. The drop wasn't expected to be this soon, or this obvious. Lots of fanboys will be crying from the hills content lull, harder content, blah blah blah, but the fact of the matter is that Cataclysm simply wasn't up to the standards created by the other expansions. Couple that with some other amazing games coming out within the year, and Blizzard could easily see a larger drop in subscription numbers.
  1. Galactis's Avatar
    Yeah lets not rush blizz. Lets keep it like old style, it's done when it's done. VOTE GUILD WARS 2. and i'm lookin forward to D3
  1. tonedingo's Avatar
    I would love to be playing right now...but with gas prices, the price of food and everything else climbing...it is sad to say that $15 is becoming more important everyday. All 5 members of our household play..my wife and 3 sons. That is a large chunk of money for us right now. No point in 1 or 2 of us playing if we all can't...so for now, frozen until things get better. Might be bad news for blizz in regards to our subscriptions. Might be time to run some economic stimulus specials...but I doubt it.
  1. gargarr's Avatar
    Well, I find myself playing less and less lately. no reason to play. I can't commit time to raiding so why try? it sucks now. spending an hour begging for raid leaders to accept me due to the ridiculous ilvl requirements you have now, and when some raid leader does invite me and we go to a raid dungeon someone fuck things up ending up killing the raid. People quit, raid is over. Another two hours of my life wasted.

    I remember i had no problem getting into ICC back in the day even though i wasn't in a guild. few epics from Ulduar were enough. It's different now, entry raids are harder. and It's just frustrating because no guild will accept someone who can't commit to sit for 3 straight hours. no guild i know of play for an hour or two a day max, so i can't be in a guild and it seems that can't raid. So why play?

    I think i am not the only one of feel like that. maybe this is why so many peolple quit.

    Since there's no chance for me to see Firelands anytime soon i will quit once i clear the 4.2 single player content.
  1. Seejay's Avatar
    This is just my opinion but I think the problem isn't progression but rather from the ground up. We came from WotLK where grinding heroics was easy but also fun. When Cata hit we're forced to spend hours upon hours slowly making our way through heroic dungeons to try and get whatever loot we could. By this point I'm sure a lot of people had already grown tired of it, perhaps forcing you to find a new guild before you'd even hit raids.

    Sure WotLK was easy, and yes getting epics and raid ready gear in general took a minimal amount of time, but you could mess around with friends while doing them, chat etc. The shift to making them more difficult came too soon imo, people just weren't willing to invest hours in 1 piece of loot, and frankly I agree with them.
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