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WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers
Activision Blizzard's press release states that World of Warcraft is down to 9.6 million subscribers as of December 31, 2012. This is lower than the amount of subscribers from the "over 10 million" announced for Q3 2012. A few other interesting points:

  • Mists of Pandaria was the #3 best-selling PC game at retail.
  • Diablo III was the #1 best-selling PC game at retail, breaking PC-game sales records with more than 12 million copies sold worldwide through December 31, 2012.
This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers started by chaud View original post
Comments 954 Comments
  1. FluFF's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Immitis View Post
    heres the opposite of that argument. i enjoy the way dailies tell storylines much better than the way raids or dungeons do. i hope raids and dungeons can go DIAF

    i wonder how much you would enjoy that
    How the hell does that boring hole of Golden Lotus dailies actually tell a story lol , only thing remotely worth doing is Shieldwall.
  1. Afrospinach's Avatar
    I don't get why every single time there is a dip in the subs there has to be this massive "it's all over" discussion. There is is concept in business called the product life cycle, it is damn near universal, and it says that after a time a product will decline and possibly disappear completely. It's not rocket science. WoW has already broken the mould with it's longevity relative to it's competitors an is already exceptional, it is still enjoying a large and stable player base for an 8 year old MMO. One day it is going to decline and disappear, this is not an intelligent or insightful prediction, anyone who is not completely clueless knew this would happen the moment they switched on the servers, however, parroting this while the game is still overtly healthy *is* just stupid. One day you will be right, but you won't get any validation from me or anyone with and common sense what so ever because it is like predicting someone who was born will eventually die, cue fight club esque pseudo intellectualism of "on a long enough time lime the survival rate of everyone is reduced to zero". Oooooh, deep.

    You know, I have tried a bunch of MMOs and none of them did it for me, but I don't go around trolling people that enjoy them about their "bad" decisions because I prefer WoW. It is pathetic, if you are here trying to convince people that like the game that they shouldn't, you should really check yourself. I am interested in sub numbers, but it is not going to stop me playing a game while I enjoy it whatever the outcome.
  1. Coldkil's Avatar
    WoW is old, end of story. Still it's an enjoyable gam and its decline can be slowed but not stopped.

    People simply grow, change, get tired of the game and move somewhere else. Not counting the fact that gaming habits have changed a lot - you don't find anymore people going to play sustained and tight schedules, casual gaming is the new frontier (with all the pro and cons of the case).

    Still playing since FOR ME there are no other good options. Probably i will leave when Titan is announced.
  1. Granyala's Avatar
    How the hell does that boring hole of Golden Lotus dailies actually tell a story lol , only thing remotely worth doing is Shieldwall.
    GL does tell a story More so than Shado pan. Read the quest texts.

    Now August Celestials on the other hand... THAT one was really unnecessary.
  1. Kudos's Avatar
    Most of these losses are likely from the people that were locked in with the Annual pass, who haven't played for a while. In fact, many people in a previous thread suggested there would be large losses, based on the amount of accounts data mined from GuildOx who had Tyrael's Charger, but had not leveled to 90 yet.
  1. mmoc634c6db597's Avatar
    Still impressive numbers. I don't get all the hate comments in this thread. 9.6 million playing a single game, in a subscription based model, it's insane, especially nowadays.
  1. Die Hard's Avatar
    It still has 9 and a half million more subs then any other "wow killer" that's been out in past 7 years...not to mention with monthly sub vs free.
  1. mmoc634c6db597's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Afrospinach View Post
    I don't get why every single time there is a dip in the subs there has to be this massive "it's all over" discussion. There is is concept in business called the product life cycle, it is damn near universal, and it says that after a time a product will decline and possibly disappear completely. It's not rocket science. WoW has already broken the mould with it's longevity relative to it's competitors an is already exceptional, it is still enjoying a large and stable player base for an 8 year old MMO. One day it is going to decline and disappear, this is not an intelligent or insightful prediction, anyone who is not completely clueless knew this would happen the moment they switched on the servers, however, parroting this while the game is still overtly healthy *is* just stupid. One day you will be right, but you won't get any validation from me or anyone with and common sense what so ever because it is like predicting someone who was born will eventually die, cue fight club esque pseudo intellectualism of "on a long enough time lime the survival rate of everyone is reduced to zero". Oooooh, deep.

    You know, I have tried a bunch of MMOs and none of them did it for me, but I don't go around trolling people that enjoy them about their "bad" decisions because I prefer WoW. It is pathetic, if you are here trying to convince people that like the game that they shouldn't, you should really check yourself. I am interested in sub numbers, but it is not going to stop me playing a game while I enjoy it whatever the outcome.
    Exactly my thought. I really don't get how someone can say WoW is dying when it still has 9.6 millions active subscribers. People are indeed pathetic as you've already said. And I'm in any way a fanboy, I play also Guild Wars 2 occasionally, but people who act like that make me laugh. This WoW hate is pointless and stupid.
  1. Chickat's Avatar
    Did no one listen to the thing? Morhaime said that most losses were in the east, meaning the losses hardly even matter.

    In fact he said China which means that wow lost maybe 100k subs in the west, so big deal? To me this just proves that MoP is doing very well, because out of all the people that came back 1m of them like it over cata.
  1. Myzou's Avatar
    It's going to continue dropping so long as they believe "they know best" when it comes to reputation and making it near impossible to play alts.
  1. Darksoldierr's Avatar
    9,6M? This game is dead.
  1. Hakto's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Duster505 View Post
    Pet battles and pandas provide entertainment for some ye.

    But from my point of view. If a 12 million sub based MMO game is not able to keep their game updated with decent content and good progress... Then it shouldn't be a sub based game. Thats how bad Blizzard is doing atm. They have failed alot of their former players with very poor choises in the past 3 years. LFR for example is a total insult for ppl that want to do raiding - but are unable to spend 20-30 hours per week in normal raids. Thats the first thing Blizz needs to fix. PROPER raid progress in normal mode.. Right now less than 3% of the playerbase have done all bosses in normal mode. Reason ? Cause Blizzard made normals harder than what they were before. At the same time many old sub based gamers that want to play meaningfull raid progress and still have real life are focred into LFR... Or like me... just quit. Cause LFR is the lowest of low - almost as low as daily quests. And guess what... thats the two things BLizzard offered for their RPG systems in MOP....
    There are plenty of people that have limited play time yet still manage normal raid progression quite well, stop looking for excuses.
  1. mmoc4cbbce03d2's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Getreuer View Post
    500k is a high number but the game is also getting "old" so it didnt really surprise me.
    You re right. WoW can afford losing another 500k for every single one of the next 15 quarters to reach the sub level of SWTOR at its highest peak! 15 Quarters is almost 4 years...
    Still alarming though, because you cannot guarantee that things will remain at those levels as things are set in motion.
  1. mmoc57cd24d5dc's Avatar
    Not even going to get drawn in to "its a dying game" BS. Simple fact is that`s still, 9,599,999 other people for me to play with.
  1. mmoc634c6db597's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Darksoldierr View Post
    9,6M? This game is dead.
    Ahaha. You know, most people don't want to understand that a game like this (MMORPG) can be profitable with just 500k subscribers (I don't remember where I read this though). They have about 9.6 million of subscribers, sure, it's dying for real. Come on guys, let's stop the hate and enjoy the game(s). Gaming is having fun not insulting each other.
  1. mmoc57cd24d5dc's Avatar
    But I agree about Blizzards stand point these days and there arrogance over dailys and this "we know best, despite outcry" BS.

    Dailys = un-fun

    HC`s = not hard enuff and no reward past jp lvl.

    JP = Useless to pointless to run 5mans

    Charms/Coins = Only from dailys? no from 5 mans aswell please

    No point having x rewards for x gameplay. I should be able to earn the same charms/coins/vp/jp etc no matter what i play be it 5mans/scens/dailys the only factor should be how you obtain them and the rate.

    Likewise if your going to stick us for all these fucking reps, give us the option of tabards, they need to show there able to let us play the way we want and not box us into to these grind fests to artificially lengthen a game that actually now doesnt need it.
  1. Tharkkun's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Myzou View Post
    It's going to continue dropping so long as they believe "they know best" when it comes to reputation and making it near impossible to play alts.
    You mean where you get revered on one character and buy a token which doubles that reputation on your current toon and all future alts? Takes about 1.5-2 weeks to hit revered.
  1. markdall's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dispirit View Post
    i'm more surprised that D3 sales continued to climb so high considering it's reputation.
    Yeah, I won't be buying any of their SC2 or D3 expansions. MOP has nearly managed to lose me from eight years of wow, but not quite.
  1. mmoc634c6db597's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Courierrawr View Post
    So what? A decline is a decline, WoW's "golden age" is long over, the game is going to keep losing players, will you still be using that defense when it's down to 3 million players?
    Hoping that this stupid hate will stop it's asking too much I think.
  1. mmines's Avatar
    I don't know how much of that has any correlation to the state of the game rather than long time players just quitting. Every one of the people I saw quit did so because all their friends were starting to quit and so a domino effect happened, saw an entire guild literally die because of this.

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