WoW stabilizes over 10M subscribers, down 100k in Q4 2011

Remind me again why we even care how many subscribers there are? O_o That was the least of our concerns a year ago.

Originally Posted by Vayshan

All those haters who like to see WoW die... if WoW loses millions more they will do something to bring those ppl back Just saying. They're not gonne let their huge cashcow bleed to death.

Which is why I am following these reports with interest and hope they keep dropping like flies in the upcoming year. I want wow to be good again, but for that to happen, they need to get a serious wakeup call that the course the game has taken is not the right one. I am personally hoping that the losses of Q1 will make them get their act together and realize that doing wow the activision way will only get people fired, so we can get back to having a good mmo.

Also, for the swtor haters; swtor has been out 1½ month, it got 1.7 mio subs, which means it has grown faster than wow ever did, and 1.7 million subs is still HUGE for an mmo. Sure, a lot of that is initial influx and it will likely stabilize and find it's growth rythm in the upcoming months, but at least TRY to understand the numbers you are dealing with and how to put them into perspective.

Originally Posted by Pancaspe

Well you were all correct. Blizzard is bleeding subs. At the current rate of 100,000 per quarter WOW subs will equal TOR's in a little over 20 YEARS.

Paranoid sycophants like yourself are the exact reason I love reading these obvious troll bait posts. Well done, good sir. What you fail to realize though, is that WoW lost nearly 2 million subscribers in a year. That means WoW is dead in a few years, by your logic of course, give or take how poorly, or well, Mists of Pandaria performs.

I also love how anyone who says anything about WoW is infracted, but people can say crap about TOR all the time and nothing happens. Quite frankly, both TOR and WoW are great games; this obvious paranoia from people who want to see one or the other fall is nothing short of the greatest of comedies.

Originally Posted by peggleftw

i dont know why people hate the idea of 2 mmos being sucessful at the same time. wow wont die any time soon, even with half od its current subs it would have an impressive amount of subs and more than any others on the market. seriously 7years and having more than 10million subs is amazing. but people should stop comparing it to SWTOR, that game is 2months old and people are already comparing the sub numbers.

Its because some people are just very depraved, and are honestly either dedicated to their game of choice like a sports team, or scared to be apart of a game that has a chance of failing. Either way, it is unhealthy for both the person and the market.

WoW is a good game, SWTOR is a good game, and as is Rift. The only games that were ever flops, were Conan and Warhammer. Hell, if the servers are still going, Final Fantasy XI was a fantastic game too. You don't need a business major to realize that a successful market, that is not stale off a singular MMO, is a healthy market.

Originally Posted by Bombkirby

Remind me again why we even care how many subscribers there are? O_o That was the least of our concerns a year ago.

oh its a cool thing to do now, you cant enjoy a game now unless its really popular and isnt losing subs.

---------- Post added 2012-02-09 at 11:31 PM ----------

Originally Posted by PuffY187

It wouldn't be surprising either to see even more people stop playing when the stupid panda expansion comes out.....

well i am looking forward to panda land.

---------- Post added 2012-02-09 at 11:33 PM ----------

Originally Posted by A Challenger!

Paranoid sycophants like yourself are the exact reason I love reading these obvious troll bait posts. Well done, good sir. What you fail to realize though, is that WoW lost nearly 2 million subscribers in a year. That means WoW is dead in a few years, by your logic of course, give or take how poorly, or well, Mists of Pandaria performs.

I also love how anyone who says anything about WoW is infracted, but people can say crap about TOR all the time and nothing happens. Quite frankly, both TOR and WoW are great games; this obvious paranoia from people who want to see one or the other fall is nothing short of the greatest of comedies.

i dont know why people hate the idea of 2 mmos being sucessful at the same time. wow wont die any time soon, even with half od its current subs it would have an impressive amount of subs and more than any others on the market. seriously 7years and having more than 10million subs is amazing. but people should stop comparing it to SWTOR, that game is 2months old and people are already comparing the sub numbers.

Originally Posted by bob0001

They lost 1.8 million subs during a year with 3 tiers of raid content in it.

There is no new content until MoP at the end of this year.

That means at least nine months of just playing DS over and over again.

People be crazy but one thing they are not is dumb.

This guy knows it.

Originally Posted by Merawen

What happens when the 1 Million annual Pass users want beta test MoP? They will need PLENTY of Beta Servers.

Short story here.Thy did not give you a date to when thy will let you into the beta (sadface) thy will pick any date thy feel suited to let annual pass user enter it might be at the start of the beta consider your self very lucky then or it might be at the end.

To fanboy of blizzard its still a 100K loss don't try to cover that loss by saying its not manny it is still a loss in a month where blizzard try's to stabilize it.Q123 of this year will be very interesting to give a close look at.The statement that it is stabilizing is inaccurate till you see Q1 andQ2 of this year.Im not a wow hater bud i have the feeling that were still looking at a sub loss overtime. The game is 7 years old pretty nice to have a 10.2 mil sub base after 7 years this game has had it pride it will not die bud it will keep loosing sub Q after Q till thy hit with something new.

The only thing we can conclude is that at the moment WoW is losing subs.Whether this is beneficial for us players or not,will prove over time.But it's certain shareholders aren't happy.

Originally Posted by counterhero

Umm no then blizzard will send your info to a collection agency to get the rest of there money that you said you would pay in the contract.

Really tired of seeing this.

The annual pass IS NOT a legal contract, is NOT binding and you are NOT required to continue to pay for it.
The annual pass IS possible to opt out of.

Call blizzard, write a ticket and ask all you have to do to opt out of it is STOP PAYING. The only penalty for not paying is?

Losing your mount
Losing your free D3
Losing your MoP beta invite.

That's it. That's all there is too it.

The slow death of WoW has begun. They have bled subs steadily for a year now and will continue losing them, probably, during the next year as we see more competition in the market.

Personally I am rooting for Blizzard to get knocked down a few pegs. They once had a great game. Maybe it was laziness setting in, or greed, but they slowed the output of new content. They have been dumbing down the game, homogenizing classes, and recycling old content. This is all just my opinion, of course, but I believe more and more people are coming to the same conclusion over time.

Originally Posted by ZRebellion

The only thing we can conclude is that at the moment WoW is losing subs.Whether this is beneficial for us players or not,will prove over time.But it's certain shareholders aren't happy.

I really do NOT want to sound like a doomsayer or a dick here, but no matter what the WoW sheep (yes, sheep. I mean the people who are so devoted, they will tear down anyone else not in love with WoW) say, two million subs lost over a year is not good whatsoever. They need to stop puffing this up as "WELL, IT IS ONLY TWO MILLION" and realize that two million is huge compared to the subs WoW GAINED through Wrath of the Lich King, Burning Crusade, and such.

Does no one remember how Activision-Blizzard made commercials about their millions sold? They gained subs then, they hemorrhaged them now. Again, not doomsaying here, but realistically speaking, that is not good.

EDIT: Also, a bit off topic, but goddamn do I like your portrait.

Suck it SWOTR?

Originally Posted by Weep

WoW is limping to the grave and everyone knows it. Those sub numbers are outrageously inflated by the asian market. Now the only people playing wow are people new to MMOs or people that begrudgingly play because they have so much time put into their characters that they feel trapped. Sorry, but the truth hurts and no matter how much you want to avoid it...eventually you'll come to your senses and realize that there are much better things to play out there.

What ARE you talking about?

Do you have any proof of that? I know several people that have left after playing since vanilla and BC. Time =/= commitment. If it did people would cheat on their wives of 20+ years.

Are you saying that the Asian players are not people? Since you say its "outrageously inflated" by them but that insinuates that they somehow don't caount.

There is not truth to hurt just you making up crap, come back with some actual proof and we'll talk but as of right now you look like that average wow-quitter who has to act bitter to justify his leaving.

Had to look up what Skylanders was. Spyro the dragon online....okey dokey. Rest is no surprise. Blizz still hemorrhaging subs but the annual pass slowed the bleeding. Further delay on a Diablo 3 release opens up the possibility that people will not keep their agreements (there is no bad side, you'll just have to buy Diablo if you want it) and Blizzard is walking a thin line until they get something released. Activision is outperforming Blizzard and slow production and delays make investors nervous. Interesting that the Blizzard DOTA will be a f2p model instead of free. Experimentation for the future of WoW.

Just for the record, there are 158 contires on planet earth with less than 10 Million population

Originally Posted by Thuran

Which is why I am following these reports with interest and hope they keep dropping like flies in the upcoming year. I want wow to be good again, but for that to happen, they need to get a serious wakeup call that the course the game has taken is not the right one. I am personally hoping that the losses of Q1 will make them get their act together and realize that doing wow the activision way will only get people fired, so we can get back to having a good mmo.

Also, for the swtor haters; swtor has been out 1½ month, it got 1.7 mio subs, which means it has grown faster than wow ever did, and 1.7 million subs is still HUGE for an mmo. Sure, a lot of that is initial influx and it will likely stabilize and find it's growth rythm in the upcoming months, but at least TRY to understand the numbers you are dealing with and how to put them into perspective.

Its not about having to receive a wake-up call or a requirement of an impending wake-up call per se...

Check: http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company...as;sortby=Team

and you will see :
!Lead 3D Character Artist
Art Manager
Senior Software Engineer, Server
Senior Quest Designer
!3D Character Artist
3D Prop Artist
Associate 3D Character Artist
Director of Business Operations
FX Artist
Professions Designer
!Senior 3D Character Artist
Senior 3D Environment Artist
Senior Game Designer
Senior Software Engineer
Senior Software Engineer, User Interface
Server Reliability Engineer

as listed under World of Warcraft where ones starting with ! state urgency.
From this a person that has some knowledge on how IR and business-life works, realizes that, these guys have problems in the development due to probably lacking capable employees to handle it, hence, the strict criteria. However, you can't be just accept every drooling developer-wannabe gamer, who has never properly finished a project that fit industry standards(software, hardware or reporting alike) as an employee just to high probably have them set you back in your goals.

Now, regarding the "Activision-WoW" myth, it is an urban legend, and the supposed way they are handling the game in parallel with that concept, had actually made the game triumph. Why?

Vanilla: Terrible content accessibility
TBC: Karazhan, heroics and Arenas brought in more subs
WotLK: 10m mode inclusion and easier content brought in subs, until Ulduar the might Guild Breaker hit, and apparently, people being ashamed at how hard they had failed it after the breeze the Naxx 2.0 was, had chanelled the pain of their broken pride to fling crap at anything released afterwards.
WotLK, 3.2 and further: Subs increased further
Cata: Entry content pre-4.1 had the exact effect of 3.1, and lead to further sub-losses. FL with its initial form negated the gain of 4.1,
Cata, 4.3 and further: With annual pass and LFR, things are getting back to normal

I may not be happy with the current form of gameplay and have my suggestions, with properly presented technicality for improvement in game-play, however, I'm not blind to interpret that the data of losses account for the delusioned idea of simplified game-play leading to it.

Hence, lose your illusion, the game may not be in a good situation and present indications of going in a bad way, however, it isn't for the reasons you seem to kid yourselves with.

I got the beta for D3 its not what I had hoped still have to wait and see if it lives up to what blizz hopes it will.

Originally Posted by Nerraw

Guess not as many left for SWTOR as was advertised.

Not sure you can say that. I'm playing SWTOR. I still have 2 active WoW accounts. I disabled my third one. I am likely to discontinue a second. I'll keep at least one live due to the annual commitment deal and get my free Diablo III. I suspect a fair number playing SWTOR are keeping their WoW account active for now. But that could turn if they decide to play long term and cut down to one active game. Watch the numbers in 6 months and again about a year from now. Those will tell the long term story.

Originally Posted by Crofford

The slow death of WoW has begun. They have bled subs steadily for a year now and will continue losing them, probably, during the next year as we see more competition in the market.

Personally I am rooting for Blizzard to get knocked down a few pegs. They once had a great game. Maybe it was laziness setting in, or greed, but they slowed the output of new content. They have been dumbing down the game, homogenizing classes, and recycling old content. This is all just my opinion, of course, but I believe more and more people are coming to the same conclusion over time.

Indeed, most people rationale will realise the game is in a downward spiral. It's a slow one though. If you look at the charts for subs and how they point to the earth, most investors would run. I think there is major mitigation at work there with the figures. Kick up the ass Blizzard? Show us what you have. If you are not having a gun pointed at your heads that is. And who knows..

To all the people saying this is a showing of WoW slowing bleeding to its death you are retarded. The games population goes up and down, it is never a steady number, especially not a number that will always go up. WoW is still very very much alive.

Originally Posted by segoplout

Indeed, most people rationale will realise the game is in a downward spiral. It's a slow one though. If you look at the charts for subs and how they point to the earth, most investors would run. I think there is major mitigation at work there with the figures. Kick up the ass Blizzard? Show us what you have. If you are not having a gun pointed at your heads that is. And who knows..

Investors wouldn't escape while the game has 10,2M subs, however, they high probably would if it were around 7~8M next year.