Forge Livestream Tomorrow, Fireside Chat #6 - Hunters, Forge, Art Contest

WoW Down to 7.7 Million Subscribers
Activision Blizzard's press release states that World of Warcraft is down to 7.7 million subscribers. This is a loss of 600,000 subscribers, down from 8.3 million last quarter. A call about the shares purchase will take place on July 26 at 8:30 AM ET, so check back then for any more comments on subscriber numbers. The regular earnings call will take place on Thursday, August 2nd.


Activision Blizzard Purchases Shares From Vivendi
Activision Blizzard is purchasing 429 million shares from Vivendi for $5.8 billion. This purchase is financed with $1.2 billion of cash that was on hand and $4.6 billion of debt proceeds, leaving them with a $1.4 billion of net debt at the end of the deal in September 2013.

An investment group that includes Bobby Kotick and Brian Kelly, who put up $100 million together, as well as Tencent and other partners is purchasing 172 million shares for $2.3 billion. This group will own 24.9% of the company and Vivendi will retain ownership of 83 million shares (12%) of the company.
This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW Down to 7.7 Million Subscribers, Activision Blizzard Purchases Vivendi's Shares started by chaud View original post
Comments 445 Comments
  1. LaughterJones's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by rabbimojo View Post
    Free to play isn't the problem. Catering to casuals isn't the problem. Quality of design isn't the problem, talent changes aren't the problem, lack of change or too much change aren't the problem. It's just that Blizz can't innovate away from WoW while trying to court the population that does still enjoy it. It was always going to happen, now it's happening, BFD.

    Bingo. The rest of your post is right on too. I also think it is burnout and two really bad expansions in a row.
  1. Slappyjoe's Avatar
    Well, that and the fact that the game's nearly a decade old. In MMO years, that's ancient. It's impressive they've managed to keep such huge subscriber numbers for this long.
  1. Tails's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by lazzy View Post
    You're missing a major point.

    If the game becomes so easy (which it has) casuals will be able to be done with the content fast.

    Why play after you've cleared all the content?

    I don't consider myself hardcore or casual i'm kind of in between. I can tell you without batting a eye i can come back every patch and can be done with all the new content they put out within 3-5 hours did you see what i said 3-5 hours that's CRAZY. I am excluding that joke patch Isle of thunder, dailys as content that's a laugh on its own. They've just made everything so easy to obtain. There is absolutely no point to keep playing for me after i do this.

    Back in BC the game wasn't super damn hard but it was a lot harder. I enjoyed playing the entire xpac I saw every raid, i did every boss outside Illadin. I was not mad that i didn't see Illadin, i don't know where this "Let people see content" thing came from. If you're just handed the content than there is no sense of accomplishment. The heroics were challenging enough to make the casual players feel like they accomplished something clearing a heroic for a epic off the last boss was very rewarding.

    I hate to break it to you but people are greedy, they want to do things for themselves, that's what the feeling of accomplishment does for people. If you're clearing all this content and don't get the feeling that "I did this I'm a God" than you don't got a very good game anymore.
    Yes but, aren't there actually more stuff that makes people go "I did this I'm a God" in MOP than at any point in the games history? How many rank 10 brawler's are there? How many gold medalists in challenge modes? I'm playing a hunter since vanilla and there hasn't been anything harder officially put in this game for me than the brawler bosses. The exceptions are the solo adventures people invent for themselves, people who are looking for an actual challenge in pve because to them, the game never offered that kind of pressure on personal talent in official raids. I raided TBC, I wiped 600 times on M'uru, but that wasn't hard, only annoying. 25 or 40 man raiding is exactly this = only 1 in every 25 or 40 wipes is on you hence you are basically corpse running due to other people's errors or RNG most of the time (considering the skill of people in the raid is more or less the same).

    I don't think the lack of hard content is the problem with the game nowadays. The game to me lost the social aspect a lot when they introduced LFR, random dungeon queuing etc. Nobody is being forced to make friends anymore unless they want to raid normal or heroic content. That to me is the biggest culprit of the game today. But I won't blame the diminishing sub count to that. I don't think anyone can actually figure out why people are quitting the game, but if I had to guess, I'd say that despite how great it still is, it is a 9 year old game and there's the simple fact of people getting bored already.
  1. HerrDrache's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tenjen View Post
    *scratches chin at Vivendi/blizz deal*

    hmmm will need more time to think on this and research before talking about it
    Said nobody on the forums ever (before)!
  1. Drummerboy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ngc2440 View Post
    Uh huh. Care to take a stab at where the bulk of those losses came from? I will give you a clue, it isn't from America or Europe.
    The sub loss is no illusion and isn't just a regional issue either. People are quitting and from being down 40% from their peak it's definitely felt everywhere.
  1. Drithien's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Drummerboy View Post
    Blizzard is jumping the shark with everything it's added but they've only diluted the game. Things like archaeology, pet battling and brawlers guild are interesting and fun but it's not what WoW was at it's core. WoW was about dungeons and raids and that's it's core.

    Summary: WoW is now like Digg 2.0 - innovated to death.
    I disagree. World of WarCraft was never about group and raid dungeons. It was, as its very name suggests, about the world in which WarCraft took place. Its core is about exploring and questing: interacting with the game's world, while shaping your character; that is what open-world role-playing games are about.

    When not even 4% of the game's player-base raided the game was met with its highest growth in subscritpions percentage-wise; and it was the period of the game with the least complaints of boredom. Most of the complaints about the game came from a tiny minority of high-performance players that could only look at the game as a bunch of numbers.

    Meanwhile the vast majority of its millions of players were not even at level 60; much less cared about raiding. They had fun adventuring in the game's world. It was only when the developers focused on endgame content almost exclusively, and made levelling and exploring merely fillers, that the game started to get boring. The carrot-on-a-stick that was epic gear through PvP in Crusade, and both PvP and PvE in Wrath, as well as some other features (like achievements), and the good will of the players, kept the momentum of the game going... but only that far. Now is the time when the game is at its most dry; what with homogenisation, ridiculous accessiblity, over-rewarding, streamlining, etc. And the shinies don't look that shiny anymore. And the game has a problem. Not because it became less about raiding, but because it became almost exclusively about raiding; leaving questing and exploring, the main attractions for casual players, severely under-developed.
  1. darkestblue's Avatar
    No king rules forever.
  1. ngc2440's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Drummerboy View Post
    The sub loss is no illusion and isn't just a regional issue either. People are quitting and from being down 40% from their peak it's definitely felt everywhere.
    There is no doubt that people are leaving the game regardless of region. It should be kept in mind though where the bulk of those loses are from and why that is. I know people love to jump to conclusions, especially when they have distaste for a game, but to be taken seriously would require people to pay attention to what is going on.
  1. therealslayer's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Yuyn View Post
    Vivendi was a major stockholder in Blizzard since roughly 1998. All of WoW's development, from the very early alphas to current, have had Vivendi involved in some manner. Usually the Activision merger (~2008) is considered the point where things started to go downhill, largely in terms of more and more obvious money grabs.
    I'm so conflicted!

    Like some players that've been playing forever, I'm tired of climbing the same mountain over and over.. XP grind, Gear Grind, Raid Grind, and over again on alts.. BG/Arena/RBG Grind for PvP gear.. I'm tired, I need something new, and I know Blizzard can't do it without destroying the MMO that WOW is.. And that breaks my heart..
  1. Storm301's Avatar
    WoW has always suffered fairly large sub losses in the middle of each expansion, but I think the big difference now is that fewer people are coming back to the game with each new major content patch, or even with each new expansion.

    WoW is pretty much the last stronghold for subscription based MMO's. There is just too much competition from F2P MMO's especially in the Asian market.

    I wish I had access to the data needed to do an in depth analysis of returning players. It would be interesting to make a table of how long players are leaving the game for before returning, and the percentage of players that never returned to the game (or at least have not returned yet). and then also split it up by expansion. So you'd end up with something like

    Vanilla WoW
    x% of unsubscribers returned within 1-6 months
    y% of unsubscribers returned within 6m - 1 year
    z% of unsubscribers returned within 1+ years
    a% of unsubscribers never returned to the game (at least not under the same account)

    Then the same data for each expansion. That would paint a better picture of whether wows problems arise more from people leaving, a lack of people returning to the game after x amount of time, or a lack of brand new subscribers.
  1. zeuseason's Avatar
    The game has just lost it's mindless fun factor. It's too much of a micro-manage now and that's why I'm not playing.
  1. Mongo42's Avatar
    I still think Blizz intentionally made decisions to drive down their own stock value in an effort to buy it back cheaper. Vivendi still holds some stock but doesn't have a Controlling Interest anymore. Now that Blizzard Activision can call their own shots more, the biggest problem is convincing people that WoW or "Titan" won't be more of the same that has disappointed many gamers.

    Also, in the U.S., if I recall correctly, there is a federal law that requires publicly traded companies to make a profit. Otherwise there would be little incentive to invest money into stocks if they don't increase in value. It goes along with Congress voting themselves the right to trade oil stocks. So even though no one has controlling interest, Blizzard Activision still has to worry about angry stockholders. This Kung Fu Panda image won't do much for that.
  1. Antherios's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Feanoro View Post
    The decline began right after 3.2 and the massive design philosophy shift towards "make it easier, more convenient, cater to people who don't care to try". It's funny how people who weren't there try to pontificate how the past was such a bad game... well, then why did that bad game have nothing but growth?

    We've gone from a model where the serious raiders had one mode, 25s, and the more casual, busy, or family/friends types had their mode, 10s, to 5.4's upcoming SEVEN modes (LFR, 10F, 10N, 10H, 25F, 25N, 25H). Unless you think Blizzard doesn't occupy the physical universe, you have to realize that to deliver more modes in the same amount of time means quality has to be cut somewhere. This also, as many have commented before me, completely removed the ability for people to raid with guild and then help friends on the off nights.

    We've gone from a model where being at least polite if not social was encouraged and required at the high end to one in which there's little accountability and the rule is trolling, jerkish behavior. Polite, friendly people are the exception now. This causes a vicious cycle where LFG/LFR have made themselves necessary.

    We've gone from a model where people said "Next time, we'll get a little further. We have something to shoot for. Look at those guys, I want to be like them" to one in which if you don't do absolutely all available in a lockout (be it dailies, valor cap, arena points, whatever content), you're treated with contempt. The very people who used to complain that raiders and grand marshals were "elitists" are now far worse than any of their old accusations. Side note, the "elitists" used to be the trainers for the rest of the population. Believe it or not, most recruitment in vanilla through Ulduar said "Gear is not a problem".

    Frankly, unless Blizzard swallows their traditional pride and actually admits the design philosophy shift has failed, you're going to continue to see subscription drops, especially during the current economic climate where people are seriously evaluating where their entertainment dollars go.
    Exactly what me and my guildies feel ...
  1. mmocced9c7d33d's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nehezbegar View Post
    Well it is normal that Blizz looses subs, nowdays players have a lot of choices which game they want to play. This is not 2004 where there were like 4-5 serious MMOs on the market that WoW had to compete with. The time goes by and every quarter WoW will loose some of the subs, we have couple of big MMOs coming this and next year (Wildstar, TESO, ArchAge) and World of Darkness in 2015. Also ppl are getting used to new payment models, f2p and b2p and they refuse to pay monthly fee AND paying for expansions. I expect that at the end of 2014 WoW subs will lower to like 4-5 milion(firstly it will rise due to expansion if they release it next year, but then it will fall down hard like MoP), it still will be the biggest MMO on the market.
    Talking out of your ass, you have no idea how many subs there will be.

    As for those mmo's you mentioned, MEH! Just like any other "wow-killer" predicted, they look good but fail on characters races that look boring and uninspiring, movements of characters look terrrible as well, too much asian-mmo feel, as in plastic looking shit.
  1. mmocbeba583bd0's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Antherios View Post
    Exactly what me and my guildies feel ...
    Indeed. That was a very well written post that you quoted and I completely agree with that.
  1. Rolly's Avatar
    ...............................................................fix this damn end of page comment bug for fucks sakes
  1. BatteredSausage's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Summerdrake View Post
    Talking out of your ass, you have no idea how many subs there will be.

    As for those mmo's you mentioned, MEH! Just like any other "wow-killer" predicted, they look good but fail on characters races that look boring and uninspiring, movements of characters look terrrible as well, too much asian-mmo feel, as in plastic looking shit.
    Lets just get one thing straight...this is your own opinion yes? .......... ok thought so, just wanted to make it clear for everyone in the thread that your 'own' opinion isnt passed off as general facts.
  1. Tazic's Avatar
    Why can't blizz understand that this game is Waaaaay To easy compared to Vanilla... ye ok sure there is some stuff that is ok but THEIR way To easy to get.
    like pvp in vanilla. you could spend months to get a good set,
    now it only takes a couple of hour for a full "Honor" set....
  1. notorious98's Avatar
    No surprise on the decline in subscribers. And this is just lending more credence to my thoughts that they're making a transition to a F2P model.
  1. Die Hard's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nehezbegar View Post
    This is not 2004 where there were like 4-5 serious MMOs on the market that WoW had to compete with.
    LOL What?! Name ONE....

Site Navigation