WoW Lost 300k Subscribers, Patch 4.3 this year, Blizzcon 2011 Tickets, Blue Posts

Originally Posted by iliketohealsometimes

Oh, look! Someone who apparently knows the exact reason why each and every one of those 900k people left the game!
Wait. No he doesn't. He's assuming. Because he's an ass.

Oh look a person that quotes another person and thinks he can win discussion with insults. Yeah you are resorting to insults only because you have no valid counter arguments. GG sir GG.

Originally Posted by Beyond2

It makes me happy to see more people leaving the game. As sick and twisted as that sounds, maybe blizzard will wake the fuck up and make tier accessible to non-raiders like it was in WotLK. Or at least give casuals something to do with rewards that aren't recolored rehashed shit, while raiders get all the new shinies. The new quest zone was a joke; I saw the rewards, I saw how little they value their casual players. "Just give em recolored rares, they'll eat it up. toss in a recolored mount too for kicks" No thank you blizzard, my money will go elsewhere. Make your game casual friendly like it was in WotLK and we'll talk about me re-subbing. If it takes another 1,100,000 people to leave to make a round two million, I hope blizzard it will get blizzard to fix their shit. I want to play WoW, but not in an environment where I have no hope for obtaining an armor set unless I'm a hardcore raider.

With all the nerfs to the previous tier it's very easy nowadays to walk around in full T11 without too much effort. It's about as difficult as the average heroic 5 man, which normally every casual player should be able to clear. Being mad about not being able to access the FULL T12 right away (every casual player can get their 2 set bonus), is just a bit egocentric. Wearing the full set of the latest tier should at least feel a bit rewarding for a while, since it actually took some effort to obtain them. If you do not wish to raid at all, there are ways to gear up so you won't fall behind, but since its a multiplayer game, it's logical that those who complete the raids will have it faster (since they actually NEED the gear to clear those raids aswell).

I did my best to keep my post 'flame-free', so please respond accordingly.

Originally Posted by BenBos

If CATA REALLY was bad, the game would have lost 50% of its player base already.

6% - 9% drop after EVERYBODY tried and came back last year is peanuts in retention drops.

They're not done losing players yet. Clearly these slides are in the high yield US/EU markets. That's a larger profit chunk for them that it would be if they were overseas(where they were still gaining subscriptions worldwide to counter the loss of subscriptions here). Clearly the growth there has stagnated and the losses in the western countries are mounting. It's likely a drop of over 25% in US/EU.

Originally Posted by Blooddeity

Oh look a person that quotes another person and thinks he can win discussion with insults. Yeah you are resorting to insults only because you have no valid counter arguments. GG sir GG.

There are no valid counter arguments. There is no proof that the people who left unsubscribed due to dissatisfaction with current content. There was no argument to begin with. Moron.

Originally Posted by Xilurm

Positive changes? People were all bashing Lich King because it was "too" easy and now they are praising it while they are bashing Cata. Believe me when i tell its gonna be the exact same thing with the next expansion. I can't help but think people are leaving wow because they dont know what they want anymore.

No, people know exactly what they want. That's why they're leaving. When you take away positive things you put in place, it tends to piss people off. You might understand that if you weren't such a fanboy.

And while overall WotLK was worse than BC, one of the things that wasn't bad about it was raid accessibility. You maximize your subscriptions based on that business model and then suddenly no longer offer it, you can sure as hell bet you're going to see backlash for it.

Originally Posted by Kaeleena

It's impossible to know why they left the game. Suffice it to say they were there before and gone now, so clearly the game doesn't have the value to them that it did prior to Cataclysm.

But they didn't go to other MMo's either. as WOW gained popularity in tracking gaming sites.

People were lured into "free to play garbage". Certainly a possibility. People cut on expenses not willing to pay 15 dollars? Certainly.

But those staying actually paid more because Blizzard made far more profit.

We will see this more in the future.

We spill the overhead: the guys dropping in and leaving. I couldn't care less: these guys spend more time on forums than on Blizz servers.

My question is: what is the hardcore staying players %. I think this mass is HUGE. Could be more than 60% of the players.

No one is leaving his avatars behind after 5 years as such. Despite economics.

Originally Posted by iliketohealsometimes

There are no valid counter arguments. There is no proof that the people who left unsubscribed due to dissatisfaction with current content. There was no argument to begin with. Moron.

So you insult more? And people growing tired of Blizzard's apporach to the game as a reason to leave is a very valid argument. Yet you only demote yourself to insulting.

I think people need to step back and look at the bigger picture. How many players has the game lost that were hardcore raiders and how many were just casuals who got bored of the game? You don't know those numbers. If the majority of people who quit were casuals then it really wouldn't matter because they aren't part of the core population of the game, the vast majority are either raiders or PvP players, or even a combination of both. Anyone who says that Cataclysm has been a rehash of anything we have seen before seems to be forgetting that a lot of what we have experienced in 4.2 has been somewhat new, especially in the Firelands. If 4.3 is going to be the biggest content expansion since Cataclysm came out without being a new expansion in itself, then I am sure Blizzard has plenty up their sleeves. The issue of not enough battle ground and arena maps being added to the game over the years we discussed in a blue post recently and I am sure they must be working on something of that nature. I would hope that in addition to new PvP content, we do see more then one raid zone. Quite frankly Firelands is insufficient so unless they plan on having a new tier out by Christmas time, which is more then likely given raid tiers generally last 6 months or so, they better pony up the goods with a huge amount of content for the raiders to explore. For me as a raider, I would love to see a content tier that is dynamic in terms of progression requirements, rather then being linear or making guilds choose which bosses to do first just because they are easier. I don't want to see a linear path in an instance like Bastion of Twilight and would like to see more open ended zones where you can access the majority of bosses without cockblocks of other bosses. Kind of like how you can do every boss in Firelands except for Ragnaros and Majordomo Staghelm at any given point, but in order to get to those two you have to kill Baleroc. I personally love the encounter designs in Firelands as well and fights like Lord Rhyolith and Alysrazor suggest to me that the encounter designers have been actually listening to the players and giving those who mean the most to the PvE aspect of the game what they want. Firelands has been one of the more enjoyable raid tiers for me since Wrath of the Lich King came out.

hmm losing another 300k subs... hmm :/

largest patch , 5m and 1 huge raid? 20 bosses? lmao

I don't see it affecting much, Still A LOT of players regardless. WoW still has a heart beating

I'm anxious of 4.3 hmmm...

Originally Posted by BenBos

But they didn't go to other MMo's either. as WOW gained popularity in tracking gaming sites.

People were lured into "free to play garbage". Certainly a possibility. People cut on expenses not willing to pay 15 dollars? Certainly.

But those staying actually paid more because Blizzard made far more profit.

We will see this more in the future.

We spill the overhead: the guys dropping in and leaving. I couldn't care less: these guys spend more time on forums than on Blizz servers.

My question is: what is the hardcore staying players %. I think this mass is HUGE. Could be more than 60% of the players.

No one is leaving his avatars behind after 5 years as such. Despite economics.

Ditigal Castration estimated the total number of World of Warcraft accounts, active and inactive at over 40 million. So no, the number of players that have been playing the game for 6+ years is actually far smaller than you seem to believe it is. They built their 12 million subscription maximum around a huge turnover rate.

I laughed really hard when they acted like pushing out more raid and dungeon content was the solution to the loss of their player base.The developers who are working on Wow-content are so ridiculous in their decisions that it's amazing the game is still live at this point.Non-stop continual stealth nerfs to arena pvp.Unwillingness to respond to critical issues, like hunter weapons costing twice as much for absolutely no reason.Failing with simple things like honor/conversation in the season 11 rollout.Turning arena into a horrible grind to try to force rated BG's instead of making rated BG's themselves more enticing.And then after messing with PvP in such a horriblly destructive way for so long.. they think the solution is to appeal to the pve heroes.Lol at dying game.

Originally Posted by Kaeleena

The game doesn't have to be what it's become. It's completely unoptimized, the current raiding tiers are totally uninspired. The Devs were seriously on heroin when they decided to reverse all the positive changes they made during Lich King in favor of a more exclusive raid environment. You know what exclusivity means? Not everyone can do it. It breeds contempt and locks people into playing with other people that may not want to play with or may not even like. It creates cliques within large guilds where those closest to the officers are rewarded for being pets and those that aren't willing to kiss ass long enough get nothing, and that's completely ignoring the fact that until 4.2 T11 normal modes were completely overtuned. It's called a normal mode for a reason. If a large percentage of normal players are unable to clear normal modes, clearly they are higher than normal difficulty. Save the heroic difficulty for the heroic modes. Let the heroic mode players go directly into the next heroic mode tiers, let the heroic mode gear be higher ilvl than the new normal mode tier, that way normal mode guilds still have reasons to go back and clear old heroic mode content, but don't make a game system in which normal players aren't compensated adequately for a reasonable investment of time.

And you're right, 1/2 way through 4.0 I knew Cataclysm was a bomb and quit playing til 4.1. During 4.1 T11 raids still weren't puggable even with Zandalari gear, and with 4.2, a new tier of gear, and lots of raiders with open IDs for Tier 11 content, it's actually finally in line with where it should've been all along, but guess what? For alot of people that's too little too late, and they won't be coming back. I spoke with my wallet, because that's the only thing Blizzard listens to anymore, and they made changes that directly effected my gameplay because of it.

So, you think that T11 (current end game for 4.0/4.1) should be facerolled to death, but at the same time T12 shouldn't?

Makes no sense, sorry.

What you refer about positive stuff from WotLK was the fact that you could grab higher ilvl gear from easy bosses in 25man, then roflstoproll everything on 10man lolversion of the same raid. To be more specific, ppl would faceroll up to Saurfang and slowly grab a T10 264 token + whatever dropped (then leave the pugs) and with their 4pc T10 264 + ilvl 264 gear, faceroll the icc10 (that was designed for 232 geared players).

That get boring really fast. They've lost way more customers with that they're loosing now. Believe it, the way you say it's "correct", those players would just start QQing that they should be able to do heroic modes too.

You're bored with WoW, it's an old game by now. We all end up tired of it. There is a point where there is nothing they can do to give all the players the lost sense of "wow!!!! awesome!!!!" of a fresh game again. Some will get tired before you, others after you, but everything comes to an end. And WotLK model just made this slow process faster. And now there is probably nothing they can do to slow it again... worse when they are all focused on other project (they're on it way before Cata).

And as ppl alread mentioned... the economic moment is really bad. It's not only wow that is loosing money... everything is.

Originally Posted by Kaeleena

No, people know exactly what they want. That's why they're leaving. When you take away positive things you put in place, it tends to piss people off. You might understand that if you weren't such a fanboy.

And while overall WotLK was worse than BC, one of the things that wasn't bad about it was raid accessibility. You maximize your subscriptions based on that business model and then suddenly no longer offer it, you can sure as hell bet you're going to see backlash for it.

Wotlk model can't be supported. Not by Blizzard not by any other company and in the long run it is even killing a game.

It is called burning through content and you ALL had your armies of alts in Wotlk, and after 3 days you were crying for more content.

No company can create content this fast, and it was good Blizzard resorted back to less content and more challenge.

Oh I was frustrated too when they nerved mana. Guess what ? I played another class and tuned my intrest in something I never did before.

That's why the game itself isn't responsible for a 3% month drop in dire economic summer times.

But a real BAD expansion would have seen drops of 50% or more in 3 months time even.

@Silkwraith: I agree that instancing the game too much is making the world seem less alive. My suggestion for expansion-5 would be to tear down the walls between all the servers in a region. Make it so that all players in a region can meet up, enlarge the cities so that vendors/banks/auctionhouses are numerous, enlarge the geography to encompass massive amount of people, make the "m" in mmo really mean "MASSIVE", real city size, not amusement park sized. To pull off such a feat would be reinventing the genre, something any gamedeveloper would try to do.Ps also enlarge the geography so that that one literally could fly around the world, if one wanted it, make it a real sphere, not a 2-d plane with bump maps. Dream larger would be the goal.

Originally Posted by crsh1976

Not surprised at a second loss of subscribers, Blizz did push out 4.2 before the end of Q2 in hope of limiting the hemorrhage, but we're close to 1m subs lost in the 6 months following the release of a new expansion. I don't think WoW is dying, but no matter how you want to spin it, this confirms there's something wrong with this expansion.

There is something wrong with it, and it's called "lack of content". They took all their time to refurbish old zones, which no-one past level 60 cares about, and even characters who level could live with they way the zones and quests were before Cataclysm. I have some alts, and yes it was nice to go through the new quests, but that's not why I play the game, I play the game with my main, which is at max level and likes to see new high level content - and in that regard they failed.

You have no choice at all anymore in regards of progression. You are on a linear path that leads to boredom, both in leveling, raiding and gear. No options means people get bored and quit.

Originally Posted by BenBos

Wotlk model can't be supported. Not by Blizzard not by any other company and in the long run it is even killing a game.

It is called burning through content and you ALL had your armies of alts in Wotlk, and after 3 days you were crying for more content.

No company can create content this fast, and it was good Blizzard resorted back to less content and more challenge.

Oh I was frustrated too when they nerved mana. Guess what ? I played another class and tuned my intrest in something I never did before.

That's why the game itself isn't responsible for a 3% month drop in dire economic summer times.

But a real BAD expansion would have seen drops of 50% or more in 3 months time even.

No one quit because they blew through all the content the game had to offer in 3 days. It's because they completed the normal modes and didn't feel the heroic modes were worth the uptick in challenge or they weren't able to raid at all. They geared their toons up through heroics and hit a brick wall. That's what happened. That's why they nerfed all the content so hard. It was overtuned and tons of guilds that had killed H LK weren't able to see H Nef or Cho. They beat their heads against the wall for months and either ended T11 with uncompleted heroics, or were brick walled earlier than that.

Funny that you say no game company can sustain the Lich King model when the game peaked at the very end of Lich King and has only gone downhill everyday since Cataclysm launched.

Originally Posted by Kaeleena

Ditigal Castration estimated the total number of World of Warcraft accounts, active and inactive at over 40 million. So no, the number of players that have been playing the game for 6+ years is actually far smaller than you seem to believe it is. They built their 12 million subscription maximum around a huge turnover rate.

I think one of the economic reasons of the 6% and then 3% subscription drops is indeed a wrong recruitment system.

CATA was designed to lure in new players with excellent programming techniques in changing worlds as soon as level 10.

Problem was : you still needed 4 boxes. Sold ... seperately.

They began changing that now in July with the endless free trial and co buy of WOW+TBC.

But the bottom line yes: those are economic factors, not in game factors.

As for the retention rate of the hardcore: my guess still stands at 60% though. I know it is amateurish, but when I watch my RL friends playing, they stay. Above that platform you see a lot of players coming and leaving in a 2 years bracket.

But don't underestimate the hardcore player base. Like D2 and WC3 show: that market is simply HUGE even after 12 years.

Originally Posted by Kaeleena

No one quit because they blew through all the content the game had to offer in 3 days. It's because they completed the normal modes and didn't feel the heroic modes were worth the uptick in challenge or they weren't able to raid at all. They geared their toons up through heroics and hit a brick wall. That's what happened. That's why they nerfed all the content so hard. It was overtuned and tons of guilds that were killed H LK weren't able to see H Nef or Cho. They beat their heads against the wall for months and either ended T11 with uncompleted heroics, or were brick walled earlier than that.

Funny that you say no game company can sustain the Lich King model when the game peaked at the very end of Lich King and has only gone downhill everyday since Cataclysm launched.

You mean, tons of guilds that killed Heroic LK at 85? There weren't "tons of guilds" clearing Heroic LK at 80...

Heh. I'd like to win that computer, actually.. So I could sell it.