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

All I can say is that blizzard had it coming. I guess I am one of those 300k subscribers dating 3 month in the past. My reason was simple. Overall community... I know what you quoters want to say: "get a guild" or "get a decent friend list" etc... and you know what? I will agree with you! Those are great ways to shield myself from that problem, but how long do I have to shield myself? Protecting yourself and moving away from that problem wont make IT go away. Yeah I may be avoiding this swamp of mainstream by wearing stilts of guild and friends but everytime I look below I see this swamp... and it wont go away. At time like this I often ask myself why blizzard doesnt hunt down such behaviour and doesnt propagate adleast a minimal standard of common courtesy and respect toward others? Why can't game communities have an australian mood about them?

put this in perspective for you all:

blizzard is losing 162 MILLION DOLLARS per year by losing 900k subs. that's a pretty large hit to a bottom line, is it not?

There is no real war in world of warcraft.

Originally Posted by tempz

I really hope cataclysm ends next patch. Ive hated this from day one, didn't enjoy the zones one bit, the raids seemed very boring and there was nothing new in them. Also im so sick and tired of dragons now, i seriously hope to never see one again, i really do hope all the aspects die in the hour of twilight and the old gods who have been pushed into the spotlight just fizzle out with them. This of course is just my view on cata and i'm sure there are alot of people who do enjoy it, i just believe that many others have left because of the same reasons i have, The burning crusade and wrath of the lich king seemed to have a certain atmosphere and personality about them, cataclysm just didn't seem to have that and seemed more like a huge patch to me.

I completely agree. Cataclysm is just not inspiring to me - so much re-hashed, remade content. Nothing really like BC or Wrath in terms of that "new world" feeling. Outland and Northrend were entire worlds to explore and play in. Everything in those zones just had a feeling of being so unique to those zones and it was just great. To this day I will go to Outland and Northrend just because I miss playing those zones. The remade, scattered zones of Cata don't give me this kind of feeling. I think the raids are alright but I'm a casual player and I think the game is getting a bit difficult for casual players. Heroics will always be for hardcore players and they should be but normal content is requiring more and more of a time investment with not as much fun in return. I also feel that boss mechanics are not anything new - they mostly involve things that happen over and over. How about more boss fights that are a progression of different events rather than repeated spawns doing the same things or whatever. Just my opinion - I like WoW and I'm not quitting or anything. I just hope 4.3 gives it the kind of life Wrath did for me.

Originally Posted by AnnulV

put this in perspective for you all:

blizzard is losing 162 MILLION DOLLARS per year by losing 900k subs. that's a pretty large hit to a bottom line, is it not?

And yet, revenue went up. Magic?

Originally Posted by Serpentsatellite

especially when there's still nearly nothing to do once hitting 85, outside of raiding (for a PVE player.)

I don't understand what you people want. Besides raiding, what does a level 85 PvE player do?

1) Quests? They just added a ton of normal and daily quests. If you really hate them that much, then don't do them. They are pretty much in line with the rest of the quests that have been in this game. If you don't like those either, then you don't really like questing, do you?

2) Fine, you don't care about quests. Dungeons? You don't have to go through the process of finding a group anymore, or even traveling to the dungeon. There is an entire LFG system and they added 2 more dungeons in 4.1. If you find the 2 troll dungeons stale, do the regulars. You still get VP for those up to a certain point. Do you expect them to pump out a new one every week? No other MMO does that - it's just not reasonable to expect.

3) Alright, you really want to just travel the world and do fun/random things. There are HUNDREDS of achievements that you can do, reputations you can build, and places you can explore.

4) You like to work with your guild? Do guild challenges and guild achievements. These are fun to do, since (IMO) working with others is one of the main attractions in WoW.

5) And finally...play an alt! There are 10 classes, 10 races, and lots of zones to quest in.

It's really hard to argue that this game lacks content for non-raiders.

I don't understand these people who argue "I don't have time to raid regularly, and I am mad that I can't PuG." First of all, if you're mad about people who raid getting better gear than you, you really need to consider the logic of that. What do you want the gear for? If you're not raiding, you need awesome gear for...? Or is it that you want to show off your awesome gear in SW/Org? Let me tell you a secret: no one is inspecting you anyway. Second of all, you're all making finding PuGs sound so much harder than it actually is. I have PuGged many raids on my crappy alts, and never had a problem. Perhaps you are approaching LFM requests the wrong way. If I'm leading a PuG, and someone responds who can't even type like a human, I assume they can't think like a human either and quickly pass.

And by the way, there is plenty of PvP to be had. Limiting yourself to 1/2 the game and then crying NO CONTENT SO BORING!!!! is kind of ridiculous.

I will have to wait and see what Blizzard does with patch 4.3.But me and a lot of my friends we have already got a new guild started up waiting for the release of Star Wars The Old Republic and eventually Guild Wars 2.I just don't see Blizzard putting out anything that will bring me back to the game.It gets to a point where you have to say it's time to move on and I am past that point already.

The boring gear treadmill in raiding to get gear that will be outdated has killed what soul this game had.And this stupid idea that Blizzard has to keep designing armor with a theme does not help.So what your left with is a dead world that nobody cares about while people just sit in Stormwind and Orgrimarr and show off there blizzard store mounts while chatting about how boring the game has become.

Where is Deathwing,besides popping up in random areas that nobody is at.There is no sense of danger in this game.Molten front is a daily quest snoozefest.Where are the random bosses attacking cities.This game peaked with the zombie invasion and the fun slowly dried up.Game feels like a theme park with one rollercoaster.Eventually you get tired of the ride.

Originally Posted by codsafish

6 year old game, it is getting old. The numbers will go down once new games are out, 900k subs lost and there isn't even any other actual decent MMO to play or even any good FPS games really atm. BF3,SWTOR,Guild Wars 2, tons of other titles coming in 2012 like D3. Thats going to be another big hit on WoW, and by the time those games are out, WoW will be 7 years old...senior citizen...it will soon be branded "too old" and new players will stop coming .

You realize that WoW lives so strong because it became a culture? People are leaving cause the culture is being killed, its no longer that cool to play it, cause your friends are leaving too, and the diference between a challenge and faceroll became gigantic, being old is the least reason of them all, and there are millions of players who play other mmo's that say WoW is the worse piece of crap game they ever played. WoW is the only one who can kill WoW, and they are doing it.

The other mmo's are learning whit WoW's mistakes, and more people will leave cause the other developers are learning enougth to catch WoW players attention, i bet next patch will be launched when Swtor will go live, like they did whit Rift, lol, and not even that will save the day.

This is no surprise, and it is a big deal no matter what anyone says. No company can shed $160,000,000 in revenue a year without being concerned. This expac has been horrible except I do enjoy the raid content. But there were some changes that drove people away.

Heroics were hard at first
Raids are more like Ulduar difficulty (that's why a lot of people never cleared it until ToC came out)
Revmping old world with ports to all the zones killed the "world" feel
Combining 25 mand and 10 man lockouts
Only 2 heroics are really viable to cap Valor if you didn't raid cap
xrealm RDF has lead to a loss of community.

I only still play because I am part of a raid team, and only log on twice a week for raids. There just isn't as much to do, perhaps it is because the spent a lot of time on revamping the old worlds. Personally I like the raids and like the fact that heroics were hard at first, but it really was a crappy business choice. Is there any surprise the peak subs was in WOTLK? Sure the vocal minority ripped it as a crappy expac, and now it is in vogue to say it sucked, but they had a peak in LK. People could PUG, we ran both 10 man and 25 man, I lead PUGs or "see the content" runs for guildies. There was even a reason to do fishing and cooking dailies, not this homogenized approach that is all over the game. I for one would have stopped playing myself if I didn't enjoy my fellow raid members.

My own 2 cents The dailies have too much of a I HAVE TO DO THEM feel. Not to mention you have to KEEP doing your dailies EVERYDAY for WEEKS just to get to the NEXT hub of dailies. (Hyjal dailies btw) then there are the godawful fail heroics that should be LK fun run by now. Add in the Troll fails and i feel like i died in RL as well as in game. The troll urns are mini raids in themselves and with fail groups its just too painful to want to try. the GODAWFUL waits for these fail heroics then to only quit after 45min with 5 wipes I am a Vanilla Wow starter and I have had my fair share of raid good times and bad, I am tired and just dont feel the need to have WOW as a part time job along with my RL job and family. WOW gave me great memories it s time to move on is all. To all the continuing wow players have a blast with the raids and heroics kill many a boss and get your gear enjoy wow . I will be of doing something with my time lol dont know what yet but hey it will be something

I haven't played wow in a few months not sure if i still like it ummm can anyone send me a scroll of rez I wanna see what changed, US sever relam bloopscalp name maddmax. I heard there is a fire lord thing now haven't keep in touch with whats new.

Did anyone else notice that deathwing is on top of yggdrasil/Teldrassil? With a turtle carrying it on it's back and everything.
Who exactly is that turtle? Is it that turtle ancient?
What are the 4 symbols around the picture? One looks like the twilight hammer.

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..

*cough* Tier 11 *cough* They nerfed all the 4.0 raids by 20%. EVERY SINGLE goddamn mechanic, health bar, damage, etc, was nerfed by 20%. That is a MASSIVE difficulty change. Sure it is not new stuff, but be happy that you didn't play BC where getting raid gear was impossible if you didn't raid. (oh wait, isn't that how it is SUPPOSED to be?? Raiders getting raid gear..... OMG who would have thought??)

And VALOR POINTS. You can get HALF of all your gear slots (includes THREE out of five tier pieces) filled with 378 gear by just farming ZG/ZA. Wanna know what it was like in BC? Dungeons ---> get Kara gear ----> get SSC gear ----> get BT gear -----> wipe on trash in Sunwell.

You are already getting spoon fed gear, so think about what you are saying.

Originally Posted by Beyond2

Or at least give casuals something to do with rewards that aren't recolored rehashed shit, while raiders get all the new shinies...

The whole point of those rewards is to prepare you for the raids. Think of it like a job. You gotta start somewhere. You want that sexy raid gear??? Work for it and find a better guild. What is the problem raiding like two nights a week??

Originally Posted by Beyond2

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"...

They are just dailies. Easy dailies. The mount looks awesome, I don't know what the hell you are talking about.

Originally Posted by Beyond2

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. "...

It is already casual friendly, you just want EVERYTHING with minimal effort. IT IS A VIDEO GAME. Games don't give you special items/ending unless you play harder difficulty settings.

Originally Posted by Beyond2

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.

*see first quotation*

Originally Posted by davesurfer

Revmping old world with ports to all the zones killed the "world" feel
Combining 25 man and 10 man lockouts
Only 2 heroics are really viable to cap Valor if you didn't raid cap

Positively agree. Why did they combine the lockouts? Is this some weird way to keep people playing longer? LOL. Also, I'm happy that Blizz gave us VPs back in T11 raids but still, they need to realize that most people view getting VPs as work; a daily grind - something they have to do rather than something they enjoy doing. There's no place for that kind of feeling in any game, especially one you're paying a monthly fee for. I realize that WoW is a community and a living game in itself and there are responsibilities that are not always fun, but such limited ways of earning VPs burns people out fast.

As always Mr. Boub your research and investigation skills are incredible (especially this week). Very good articles last two days, a bunch of gaming sites are quoting you. Can't wait to see more.

Originally Posted by BenBos

I said it multiple times already.

But ... surprise ... this is a gaming forum, so people tend to look only through their very narrow minded gaming glasses.


Some kids really think that the nerving of a class (in their view) or the design of a raid or dungeon would influence the game by dropping 3 or 6 % in a quarter.

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.

.

I left WoW after playing since launch day because Cata was bad. Not bad in terms of lacking quality but bad in terms of lacking ambition. It's just the same raid/gear grind, made more difficult, with a gear reset to make all the WoTLK gear obsolete. No Path of the Titans, no Dance Studio, no new class, nothing new to keep the game fresh for long time players. Even the "new" content contains a lot of recycled maps, ideas, and content.

I didn't leave because my class was nerfed (I played mostly warlock and druid, both of which seemed pretty good when I left post Cata) or because I didn't get the epic drop I wanted or because the game is too hard or whatever. I left because there's no apparent direction from Blizzard. It seems like they're content to simply cash checks. They crowded out all the competition then decided to take it easy. Hey, let's bring back Ragnaros! Hey, let's bring back Zul'Aman and Zul'Farak, etc. There's no hunger, there's nothing bold about their design. I'm sure they put a ridiculous amount of time and effort into revamping all the old world zones, but honestly who cares? Was any one saying "Gosh, I wish I could go back and level another alt?"

Anyway, I'm sure I don't speak for every one who quit, I'm just saying that this element does exist, and the longer the game goes on without ambitious changes, the more people like me will quit. The fact that only 300k quit last quarter speaks more to the fact that nothing new came out. When SWTOR comes out, expect to see that number jump up to a million in a quarter, whether it's any good or not, just because it will seem like a viable jumping off point for many people. Another batch will leave with GW2, and so on, and for the most part they're only going to come back possibly to try out the next expansion for a bit, then leave again.

Wow reading these comments just makes me frustrated.Everyone please stop having flame wars you're killing my brain cells.It seems only mmo-champ and the official forums are QQing. everyone else I know in game and out thinks its cool. What's wrong with you guys? There's no challenge to the game? Are you F***ing kidding me??? This game has been as hard as ever. You can't PUG firelands, you can barely PUG the other raids, Heroic firelands is IMPOSSIBLE, Zandalari heroics take HOURS, oh my god what other challenge do you want in the game? WoW is loosing subs because they got bored and will come back with the next patch. Why is it so hard to understand? 300k subs is nothing to you because you still play with millions more.

Patch 4.3 will be the "largest content update since Cataclysm"

New player models, new features and new zones.(..)J/K, Earthlands and Waterlands inc.

Originally Posted by Vasz

You have to understand that number is AFTER people came back from firelands and new accounts. By the time next expansion comes out (Q2), there will be 5-6 big games on the market all fighting hard for subs.

Yeah! WoW is gonna die! Just like when Warhammer Online, Final Fantasy 14, Rift, Aion and every other MMO came out! Oh wait, all those games bombed months after their release.

Originally Posted by Barou

You have to remember, 600k was lost in Q1, 300k Q2...which means that it will be less and less each quarter - assume 1/2 each time:

150k Q3
75k Q4

All in all, you will have a million subscribers lost through gripes and rage quitting. However, new accounts are opening - and guess what - more will open once the next release comes out. Blizzard really has nothing to worry about...

You're drawing the wrong conclusion from those numbers. 600k left in part because of Rift. 300k left without any big MMO, in spite of the new push to attract customers as well as a major patch (remember that's -300k NET, not gross, so the actual losses were likely much higher).

To me, that actually looks like dissatisfaction is gaining momentum, even if the numbers haven't. I expect to see a million+ losses for WoW in fiscal Q3, in part because of a lack of real content, and in part because of SWTOR and a lot of major single player titles.