WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers

Originally Posted by mikencarly

Well done blizzard!9.6 milion for a 8 year old game = WINNING! CHARLIE SHEEN STYLE!

It's 3 months old game.

MoP was released on 25. Sep 2012 and Q4 ends on 31. Dec. Half a million loss is A LOT.

I think it's also important to note that while 9.6 million is a HUGE number, it is about 20-25% less than WoW's peak number of subscriptions, which topped 12 million world-wide.

Originally Posted by Jagoex

Neither do the haters.

That said, 9.6 million is likely a statistically significant drop from "over 10 million." Anything amounting to a drop of ~5% will raise investors' eyebrows.

I quit playing about 2 years ago but I still get annoyed by haters sometimes, they really are worse than annoying fanboys because atleast the fanboys know what they're talking about (most of em anyway).

Why I'm interested in the sub #'s:

I'm an active player (since very early wrath) and am concerned about the health of the game I love. I like the current p2p model and content development.

Why haters are interested in the sub #'s:

BECAUSE THEY ARE STALKING A VIDEO GAME THAT THEY USED TO PLAY.

Blizzard counts every sub in Asia as a full sub, when in reality they are only 1/10th of a Western sub. WoW really only has 5.3M subs.

It's happening

this is the beginning of the end for wow

this is what happens when you cater everything to casuals

don't say i didn't warn you

I remember World of Warcraft as it used to be, not the casual abomination it has become.

I'll be honest, I was hoping for a huge loss so there would be a lot of drama. Then I'd have a lot of fun reading threads about it, not like the 10+ pages of boring dribble that this one has become. 500k is nothing. Boring. Moving on.

Originally Posted by Reyzzz

I'm just gonna quote this so everyone can see how ignorant you are.

Thanks, honey.

Originally Posted by Zokten

So thats why it had subs till 2011?

you can still sub to swtor too does that mean it doesnt have a free to play option and that it ever had more subs than wow?

Originally Posted by Spotnick

Some people really don't understand those numbers. The issue is not the amount of people leaving, but the brand new people buying and playing the game. If those numbers drop it's because WOW does not attract enough new players to maintain the player base and allow it to renew itself or grow.

It's totally normal to see people leave the game. Problem is, not enough new people joining it versus people leaving. So the emphasis should be on how to attrack NEW players.

Returning players are not really your goal there, because they are bound to leave again.

How many people you know in WOW that have just started player this game? I know I don't know any. And apparently the community is attrocious against those players because they tell them to learn to play, etc, and obviously don't remember how they were when they joined the game.

Personally I am part of the loss.. I closed my 2nd account which I had up to do RAF to level a monk..

Early after Cata launch it was talked about in an interview to someone high up in Blizzard that WoW was no longer bringing in as many new players to offset the losses and that going forward that they would need to be focusing more on player retention.

Mike Morhaime just made a statement that the playerbase is more ready to leave and that they have made changes in MoP that are directed in keeping players engaged in the game and faster content patches to keep them occupied. First quarter report after Cata launch the developers did say that their goal was faster content patches and trying to keep players involved and their first large hitter was the daily zone which sadly was as far as they went to follow through with their goals. Going back to the grind model in MoP seems to have been the better way to go in terms of player engagement unlike the gut the grind model that Cata had adopted.

The subscriber loss is small, though it comes close to what Cata left off to show that at the moment MoP is not doing any better in terms of subscriber numbers. The shift to the new VP gear being behind a raid grind instead of a daily grind might be related to the subscriber loss.

Originally Posted by Shaley

I guess I should reword it to "Improbable" to sate the trolls.

What other things from 2004 are you still doing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_in_video_gaming

Are you still playing Doom 3, or Pikmin 2, by chance? Perhaps JFK: Reloaded.

I'm willing to bet that the entire calendar year of 2004's videogame releases, excluding World of Warcraft, has sub 250,000 people playing their games. And WoW still has 9.6 Million.

Blizzard has earned [Doing the Improbable]

Still play Unreal Tournament 2004, Rome: Total War, and Counter-Strike: Source.

But I'd give them Improbable.

Yea I guess that's true. People who are saying, including myself, that it's an "8 yr old game". Well from a business expense perspective, it's requiring just as many resources and capital to keep it updated and release new expansions. It's not like they made vanilla WoW and just maintained 10 million subs for 9 years. They are spending money, updating graphics, etc to keep it up to date. So is it really an '8 year old game'? Yes and no.

Originally Posted by Blapis

It's 3 months old game.

MoP was released on 25. Sep 2012 and Q4 ends on 31. Dec. Half a million loss is A LOT.

mists ISNT a game, its dlc.

I bet half of these are people taking a break before a new patch because they reached their limit for current tier and other half burnt out oldies and qqers mixed

Originally Posted by Duster505

What will really raise eyebrows is that this includes MOP launch in China. WOW has been carried by China (over 60% of playerbase). So this is really more of a shock for me since I was sure we would be seeing an Asian look WOW increase the player numbers. I think the dmg in EU and US is much bigger than what BLizz makes it look like.

That's a valid consideration for sure. It would be nice to see some statistics breaking down account types - those with multiples, banned, etc along with recently canceled subscriptions from region to region, along with new subscriptions since MoP's release.

Originally Posted by Vital

It's happening

this is the beginning of the end for wow

this is what happens when you cater everything to casuals

don't say i didn't warn you

I have been reading posts like these since wrath took a sub hit.

Originally Posted by Jagoex

Neither do the haters.

That said, 9.6 million is likely a statistically significant drop from "over 10 million." Anything amounting to a drop of ~5% will raise investors' eyebrows.

LOL, the "investors" must be raising the brows up and down a whole lot if these numbers move them.

Originally Posted by Assumi

God you fanboys never quit.

Your a cock sucking hater not even 5% of the playerbase wow is still king.

Infracted

It doesn't surprise me