Diablo 3 - Activision Blizzard Q4 Conference Call - Diablo III Planned for Q2 2012

WoW stabilizes over 10M subscribers, down 100k in Q4 2011
Activision Blizzard latest earning call revealed that World of Warcraft lost 100,000 subscribers last quarter, following the loss of 800k subscribers announced last quarter and 300k loss from the quarter before that. The game lost 1.8M Subscribers over the year but the number seems to stabilize over 10M and it wouldn't be surprising to see it go back up with the release of Mists of Pandaria this year.

World of Warcraft now has 10.2M active subscribers.


  • World of Warcraft lost 100,000 subscribers, down to 10.2 million. This was a total lost of 1.8 million for the year.
  • Diablo III should launch in Q2
  • More than one million Annual Passes have been sold in the West.
  • Blizzard is happy with how the subscription numbers held up during the most competitive quarter ever.
  • When asked about churn since the competitor's launch, "December was a good month for us."
  • There are ~50 million active Battle.net, Call of Duty multiplayer, Call of Duty Elite, and Skylanders WebWorld users.

This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW stabilizes over 10M subscribers, down 100k in Q4 2011 started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 579 Comments
  1. Shoukyaku's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ghul View Post
    subs started stabilizing when LFR came out, dont splurt nonsense yourself dude ~~

    and what does actively losing subs even mean? is it possible to lose subs passively?!
    The subs arent "stabilizing". And stop picking a timeframe of one month in comparison to an entire expansion. Ill repeat what i said once again because i can see youre just trying to argue for the sake of arguing. During Burning Crusade when their philosophy wasnt catered towards the casual playerbase their subscriptions started soaring and continued to do so during Cata. They have done NOTHING but bleed subs this ENTIRE expansion. Losing 100k subs isnt "stabilizing". Once again, this ENTIRE expansion theyve done nothing but lose people. Did i say it enough times? Now gtf outta here and take your boat back to denial land.
  1. Azerox's Avatar
    Darwin comes to mind, good riddance!
  1. Uthur's Avatar
    SWTOR lost 15% of its subs already, i am betting Q1 will be a increase for WoW which is weird since there's nothing to do till MoP
  1. Hobb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ril-gania View Post
    OHMAHGAAAWD wow has only 10mio subscribers left, clearly the game is dieing...
    Considering it's down to same point in subs as it was 4 years ago, yes its fading but not dead yet.
  1. Awe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Pancaspe View Post
    I love how the haters are now rallying around "The Next Quarter"Guess what? More of the same next Quarter, Total WOW Domination.One MMO to Rule Them All!
    I am a hater. NOT. I still think WoW is best MMO ever made. But facts are facts. SWTOR (which is rather bad in the long run IMO, I already unsubbed) has nothing to do with it. WOW is on unprecedent subs decline. It never happened before on such scale. I want WoW to be successful, as much as any other MMO as if it matters. More good games = more quality time. But I am going to eat my own foot if WoW will not get a big subs hit in Q1 and Q2 2012. I can see this happening right now. Lots of people I know quited recently. Including people who played this game since 2005. It is not that I WANT this to happen. I just observe what is going in. And if Blizzard will not do something big, WoW will loose a lot of subs until MoP. And then after MoP we will see what happens.
  1. Santoryu's Avatar
    The only way for wow to stabilize and indeed increase subs is to provide casual-friendly content along with challenging content for those who seek it AND not nerf that challenging content just to have it seen by those who do not have the time/skill to do it.
  1. Domiku's Avatar
    i sort of feel sick, was expecting more loss tbh end of expan and all people will just leave when there is not much todo. MoP might bring a few back but unsure it is about pandas after all????? Still 100k and that many subs lost in a year is massive i bet the stock holders wont be to happy. I look forward to less content or content of a poor quality during MoP.
  1. mmoc8079c24a04's Avatar
    IS it just me or Blizz actually earned 400 mil dollars less in 2011 then in 2010? 1.25 vs. 1.65 bn dollars in 2010. as per page 11 of the pdf file.

    Also to people who are saying my mmo is better then your mmo, one question, are you five?
  1. mmoc08bbbf072a's Avatar
    well what can you say only totally new environment introduced that patch was darkmoon island. Obviously people feel like cheated and dont want to pay subscription anymore. Atleast I felt like "wtf?!" after first day of raiding normal mode, and it wasnt just me, like half of our 25 man guild spoke in ventrilo that this instance sucks monkey balls and i've never before heard so many people saying that about raid instance on ventrilo.

    Remember in TBC times and Wotlk Ulduar times people actually spoke on ventrilo how awesome this raid is, not the opposite.
  1. Intrepid1's Avatar
    I'd like to point out that this number only counts subs that ENDED WITHOUT RENEWAL. That means if your subscription ended 1/1/2012 it is not considered Q4 of 2011. So I wouldn't get to thrilled about boasting ONLY 100K loss, for the year it was a huge loss for blizzard and the trend will continue. You know something is wrong when the die hard blizz fans are cheering for only 100K lost. When was the last time WoW gained subscriptions instead of losing them is a better question.
  1. Black_One's Avatar


    nuff said ... I'd like to see what's going to soften THAT blow xD
  1. Krolikn's Avatar
    Haha now they are all talking about Q1 2012. This will keep going until they think they've won. That other game will die before then considering its performance so far I'm just assuming things like the rest of you........
  1. Elethiem's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nerraw View Post
    Guess not as many left for SWTOR as was advertised.
    Wow reports people who were subscribed in the past 30 days of the end of the quarter. Swtor opened on the 20th of December (13th for early access) so you could quit on the 4th of December and it would still count you as subbed. The next quarter will be more revealing.

    The Annual pass, LFR and Dragon Soul should have resulted in a sub increase, but its still a decrease which is a surprise. The next quarter will be a sharper drop.
  1. Prancing Minstrel's Avatar
    While I don't want to come running to ToR's defence, keep in mind that not only did 100% of it's players not immediately cancel their WoW sub at purchase, nor have less than 11 days left on that subscription at the time, there were also that plenty would have recieved it for Xmas, as I did. That leaves an even smaller window for it to have had an impact, so don't put too much thought into ToR's impact on the drop.
  1. mmoc82917dc2e8's Avatar
    What happens when the 1 Million annual Pass users want beta test MoP? They will need PLENTY of Beta Servers.
  1. Alayea's Avatar
    100k sub loss. Not surprising since there hasn't been much of a big hoo-hah as there was during Cataclysm's first 6 months as players were readjusting from WotLK.
  1. Repefe's Avatar
    Wasn't Q4 supposed to be the quater when subscription will go up ? Q1-Q2 are quaters full of nothing for WoW ... well Blizz will be promising players dozens of new features and great gameplay from MoP. I heared that one before ...
  1. mmoc30578fef2c's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Asatru View Post
    Fabricated information.
    That's likely yeah.
    Also, nice valknut.
  1. mmoc08bbbf072a's Avatar
    well what can you say only totally new environment introduced that patch was darkmoon island. Obviously people feel like cheated and dont want to pay subscription anymore. Atleast I felt like "wtf?!" after first day of raiding normal mode, and it wasnt just me, like half of our 25 man guild spoke in ventrilo that this instance sucks monkey balls and i've never before heard so many people saying that about raid instance on ventrilo.

    Remember in TBC times and Wotlk Ulduar times people actually spoke on ventrilo how awesome this raid is, not the opposite.
  1. Serj Tankian's Avatar
    Good news, everyone! I think we have finally perfected a way to keep all of you in Azeroth!

    I feel that the Annual Pass is a big roll in less subscriber losses. But nevertheless I hope the quality of MoP is better than that of CATA.

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