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

Originally Posted by godofslack

Jeez 100, 000 subscribers lost with annual pass and a brand new patch. I can't imagine how bad it would of been without.

That's the point I keep getting at but the pro-wow people look at it that they lost 'only' 100k due to TOR. Imagine if the patch and annual pass thing wasn't there.

Not so bad, I guessed somewhere around that. New patch and whatnot around the last quarter to not make it as harsh as the previous one.
I still hope tho that Blizzard's eyes open a bit and getting their old EPIC feel back, I'd resub in a heartbeat if they did. </3

Originally Posted by dokhidamo

Blizzard is a good company, but they have one flaw. They're too... seperated.Q2 launch of D3, "Oops, that must mean no MoP till the second half of the year"HotS launches this year, "Must be the quarter after MoP."Because of D3 Blizzard had to delay a game that could easily have been ready for Q2 of this year (late Q2 but still Q2).

Well, you also have to take into account, closer to the publishing date, more of the company gets involved. Many of the finishing touches in production are done by the same group(whereas core development is done by different teams). Point for example(not that he's a last minute thing, but to the idea of divided teams), Russel Brower has a hand in the music in all the franchises, despite their release dates. There are other parts of the production effort that, no doubt, are spread across the 3 franchises(like music,cinematic directors, and more). To say that the 'delay' is entirely because they just want to spread the products around is not very accurate. There is an amount of time between these releases for Publishing to kick in(and blizzard's mentality of the most effort in specific areas means they will halt release if need be to wait on an aspect, like music or cinematics, to finish.)

I really wonder if Diablo 3 is being delayed to "finish it" or to delay the massive loss of subs it will cause wow when it releases...

Originally Posted by Necrolepsy

<4 million, down from ~6.5 million western subs. Asian subs give them very little money. That's about a 35% loss in subscriptions. It will probably swap with swtor by Q2 2012. (swtor = 4 mill subs, wow = 1.7 mill subs).

I love how people keep pulling this numbers out of their... well anyways.

Before the Q4 reports came out we knew that blizzard had lost 1.7million wow subs.

"Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said that the large part of the lost subs came from the Asian market, but that WoW remains one of the "most popular online game in China" and is still the largest subscription MMO in the world."

http://www.gamersbook.com/scene/news...-in-six-months.

So IF your number is correct and western subs started at 6.5 million then how exactly did it drop to ~4 million if "a large part of the lost subs" are from the Asian market?

On another note. Swtor really isn't doing well. They currently sit at 1.7mill subs after selling over 2.5million copies of the game. So Swtor is down 800k subs in what, a month? Yea that looks real good for a game trying to combat something 6 times its size. Thats right, currently wow has 600% of the subscribers that Swtor has.

Now of course here come the anti-wow people that are either Bitter that wow didn't die and their game did or quit wow and must bash it to back up their choice, and what are they going to call me? Fanboi or some such? Not at all. I WANT competition i WISH they would release a GOOD game to compete with wow because if they would it would make blizzard get off their tail and bring out more content and features in a more timely manner rather than dragging their feat.

Originally Posted by mrwingtipshoes

On another note. Swtor really isn't doing well. They currently sit at 1.7mill subs after selling over 2.5million copies of the game. So Swtor is down 800k subs in what, a month? Yea that looks real good for a game trying to combat something 6 times its size. Thats right, currently wow has 600% of the subscribers that Swtor has.

A lot of those people also expected TOR to blow WoW right out of the water day 1, which isn't going to be the case for any game.

What I find funny is that they're "happy".. have they just come to accept that subs are always going to go down? Didn't they say that usually subs pick up around december?

10,000,000 players x $15/month x 12 months/year = $1.8 billion dollars.

I'd be happy.

Originally Posted by mrwingtipshoes

So IF your number is correct and western subs started at 6.5 million then how exactly did it drop to ~4 million if "a large part of the lost subs" are from the Asian market?

On another note. Swtor really isn't doing well. They currently sit at 1.7mill subs after selling over 2.5million copies of the game. So Swtor is down 800k subs in what, a month? Yea that looks real good for a game trying to combat something 6 times its size. Thats right, currently wow has 600% of the subscribers that Swtor has.

Your numbers are off bit a quite a bit. WoW never reach 6.5mil subs in the NA/EU market, it was only around 4.5mil. Blizzard back in 2008 released their number breakdown while giving an interview, its also the only time Blizzard was upfront with their subs.

"Blizzard said today that those 10 million paying subscribers include 5.5 million players in Asia, 2.5 million in the US and 2 million in Europe."
Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...ts_10_mill.php

Considering SWTOR is only 2 months old and is only marketed in the NA/EU region it's subs are roughly half of WoW in the same region area, which is also where the majority of the income comes from. That's not too shabby for a young MMO.

---------- Post added 2012-02-10 at 02:33 PM ----------

Originally Posted by tkc-von

10,000,000 players x $15/month x 12 months/year = $1.8 billion dollars.

I'd be happy.

Would be if that were true, but it's not. Only the NA/EU subs pay $15 per month. Asian subs pay in 4000 minute blocks for $4.66 USD, which comes to ~7 cents per hour.

Happy to hear 10million is still an amazing achievement and one that wont be surpassed for a long long time.

I am glad to hear blizzard's world of warcraft has stabilized at 10M players. One thing I would like to note however is I think many many players submitted onto the 1yr contract w/ Blizzard for Diablo 3. I think this really buffered the loss in players. I know I myself had barely been hanging on for the past 3-4 months. I got the 1yr subscription since I knew I was going to be playing for long enough for it to balance out with Diablo 3. Since the announcement of cancelled Blizcon however I really lost much of my incentive to play, going from about 3000 minutes a week to 100-500; work does play a part of this as well.Regardless, I do not feel # of subscriptions sufficiently displays the success of the game atm but of course in terms of income, that's all that matters on blizzards part.

OMFG 10 MILLIONWOW IS DYINGOk i'm done laughing at the speculators.Apparently SWTOR didn't cripple wow like you thought. :P Oh and I made 7% on my investment in 2 months.

Originally Posted by Jasyn

Very impressive. I bet they dread the next quarter (or two) before MoP launch, though.

Next quarter, speculators will be saying "next quarter DOOM IS NEAR"

People... it has NEVER been 10 million. Nor is it 10 million now. It is in fact, less than 4. Activi$ion Bli$$ard is fudging the numbers to prop up their stock and results. Maybe next quarter they can give out Heart of the Swarm for free.

People... it has NEVER been 10 million. Nor is it 10 million now. It is in fact, less than 4. Activi$ion Bli$$ard is fudging the numbers to prop up their stock and results. Maybe next quarter they can give out Heart of the Swarm for free.

You do know that lying on an earnings call would mean they'd have to lie on the SEC filing as well? The penalties for securities fraud (which is a felony btw) are very severe, especially in the current climate.

Of course, I could just recognise that some people just are desperate for WoW to die and Blizzard to fail. Can't think of why though, because the more successful and competitive gaming companies there are, the better it is for the gamer.

How many times do we need hear "next quarter will be WoW's death" before we can start calling these individuals idiots?

Originally Posted by Callax

I feel compelled to address this post.

We don't know why all of the 1.8 mil left. I know a guy who left because his job was taking a lot of time, I know someone who left because to them the game was boring to them, someone who left for RIFt, someone who left for SW:ToR, someone that left because they had a kid, etc, etc.

So I honestly doubt that 1.8 million people left because Cata changed things.

Indeed, and I am one of those who left during Quarter 3. You haven't even listed my reason, so that list is definitly very long!

Those of my friends that left, also have their unique reasons for doing so.

---------- Post added 2012-02-10 at 10:50 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Venteus

How many times do we need hear "next quarter will be WoW's death" before we can start calling these individuals idiots?

Actually, a lot of people stated several months ago that they didn't believe Q4 would be where the losses would be, but rather O1.

Gonna be fun seeing if there is any hold in that. I certainly love these estimation threads, even though I don't tend to participate. I just like seeing how people think.

Originally Posted by mrwingtipshoes

Now of course here come the anti-wow people that are either Bitter that wow didn't die and their game did or quit wow and must bash it to back up their choice, and what are they going to call me? Fanboi or some such? Not at all. I WANT competition i WISH they would release a GOOD game to compete with wow because if they would it would make blizzard get off their tail and bring out more content and features in a more timely manner rather than dragging their feat.

Not really anti-wow ... more like anti attitude that Blizz displays with WoW. I would be much happier if D3 and SC2 was done by company other than Blizz ... that way I could forget about them completelly. But you have to take the good with the bad.

Originally Posted by runeb1980@hotmail.com

People... it has NEVER been 10 million. Nor is it 10 million now. It is in fact, less than 4. Activi$ion Bli$$ard is fudging the numbers to prop up their stock and results.

My god, I have never heard such utter shit in all my life.
It is not in "Activi$ion or Bli$$ards" to fake this shit, the consequences are too big to even think about it. Do you understand the world of shit they would be in if they were "fudging" numbers?
I don't understand why people call out that this is fake info (I know you're not the 1st to say this sort of thing). Just be told that this IS the figures, that's it, end of story.

Originally Posted by Repefe

Not really anti-wow ... more like anti attitude that Blizz displays with WoW. I would be much happier if D3 and SC2 was done by company other than Blizz ... that way I could forget about them completelly. But you have to take the good with the bad.

I have yet to see someone not complain about a gaming company.

You would not even have had those games if it were not for Blizzard. Just had to throw it in there.

---------- Post added 2012-02-10 at 10:57 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Eein

OMFG 10 MILLIONWOW IS DYINGOk i'm done laughing at the speculators.Apparently SWTOR didn't cripple wow like you thought.

To be quite honest, I believe that most people that chose to play SWTOR over WoW actually have their WoW subscription running out in january, which means Q1.

2012 year is the end ... of mmosseriously mmorpg is a dead genre