WoW Down to 7.7 Million Subscribers, Activision Blizzard Purchases Vivendi's Shares

Originally Posted by buddah13

I am the same way, i dont touch any other of my characters but the monk, and i sit in SW by t he fountain across the AH waiting in 30 minutes ques for Alt Valley, only to lose get 50 honor , and do it again, i cant bring myself to run dungeons anymore or do anymore dailies , and 5.4 is bringing us the "timeless isle" another daily zone so we can daily while they open raid wings, i only purchase time cards now too, i cant bring myself to sub up

the game is very stale now , and the carrot on the stick is shrinking while the pole on which its extended is getting longer, only to be told "there's more to do" , in fact there is not, they just stagger the time it takes to earn things,

anyway, ill get a time card here and there, but , i am rather done playing this game , same grind, same 'meh' reward

This has started to be my enthusiasm for the game as well. I use to only leave the game because of moving, or financial issues. Then it started to be because the game just took too long to catch up, so I felt bored (from lack of other people doing the same things I was) and dissuaded (from the mountain of things i needed to catch up on.

The end of wrath started to alleviate that (giving better ways to catch up, more varied ways to do dailies, etc.), but then it took away from another part of the game, the achievement fun ....earning something and feeling rewarded for it, and community. The end of tbc was the start of the "welfare" spouting crowd, but wrath definitely cemented that into place,....... while cata just kicked it while it was down.

Cata brought with it the tainting of the daily quest system. The dailies were put in place to give players renewable questing at max level, questing at max level was enhanced in vanilla by converting xp to gold so that people had a method to earn money aside from mob grinding. It was never designed or intended to be used as a gating system, it was created so that the players had an enhanced way to earn money, and an avenue to enjoy the game other than farming mobs.

TBC included content specific events into the daily system, but it was cosmetic (Manta ray mount, nether drakes) ...it was never progression except for a small spurt with the isle dalies which included a few rep rewards that could be useful (Gained only from doing the dalies) . Wrath touched on this as well with the crusader dailies , but aside from the sword the rewards were solely focused on cosmetic rewards and bonus rep with major cities. Cata twisted the dailies into an all new avenue for blizzard to control the player base. Much like their golden child of gating raid bosses to extend the life of the content patch, they started to require you to do dailies for months to gain a specific reward. They back-peddled on the rep gaining system in vanilla because of how tedious and unforgiving to players it was, and yet they started the system all back up again with end of wrath and cata content. Doing the Trol dailies for example, for 5 tokens or so each day, and needing close to 200 just to get the mount. All the other items required just as equally inflated numbers to get, thus making a single character grind for months to get everything.

MoP evolved the grind system of old from back in vanilla, full steam ahead and bigger than ever. Simplistic and easygoing rep grinds? HA! Back to gaining it at a snails pace. Those dailies that were optional? Mandatory for progression gearing. We can still do dungeons to help out right? Wrong, get back in line and fight over those daily quest mobs for credit. When a patch comes out, itll make catching up easier right? Sure, if you do the previous content first and/or wait 2 weeks for the LFR to even open. Dont like LFR? You can still do normals on day one / hardmodes a week later, with your guild ....gated of course. Dont forget your dailies, and dont forget to cap your valor and conquests. If you miss a day or two, or forget to cap, its going to hurt you in the long run.

We have so many things to do these days: daily quests, dungeons, arena, rated bgs, long quest chains, 3 forms of raiding difficulties with 2 raid size variants, crafting, achievement hunting, pet battles, rep rewards, rare spawns, outside raids, scenarios, transmog hunting, pet gathering, mount gathering, gathering gathering, tournaments, playing the AH, hanging out with the guild, hanging out with a party, hanging out with strangers, creating fan art, writing fan fiction, creating machinima videos, game blogs, podcasts, con events, conference calls with trusties, sales figures, blizzard store, ....even just sitting next to your mount on a small hill gazing into the sunset as the day turns to night.

How could we not be so excited to log into the game, knowing full well all of the wondrous enjoyable things we have waiting for us to do. Just being able to pick one of those things and go with it.

Oh brave new world, that has such people in it.

I just find it funny that all of the things that blizzard supposedly did to get me out into the world more and enjoy their content more is pretty much a joke in terms of leveling and at end game it's just become a pain in the ass.

Cool I totally asked for crz to be ganked over and over and when I try to retaliate I can't get into the same crz server on my level 90. Cool I totally wanted to go out and find all the flight points in the world all over again even though I've done it 8-10 times now. The combination of the two has led me to level all my alts exclusively through lfd. Real engaging mmo play there Blizz.

And at 90 I understand the concept of wanting us in the world more and all but when I find myself cursing during the day when I'm not even playing wow at the fact that have group will travel is gone or I'd rather quit playing than do another daily and try to screw ppl over of my own faction because the tagging system is old and no one wants to ever group and just wants to troll general I find myself wishing I could just sit in org all day again and that's sad.

Hopefully virtual realms will help some but there's zero sense of community in this game anymore because blizzard gives us no reason to care. Want to be a trolling d bag in lfr/lfd? Go ahead you'll get a 4 hour immunity to being kicked! Want to raid current content with friends cross server? Can't do that have to pay Blizz money on top of subscription fees before you can do that.

I don't even want to get started on the 4 seperate levels of raiding coming in 5.4 when the whole idea of cata was to reduce the amount of burnout because there was 4 levels of raiding. Then again one of those levels I can afk thru and get epics so guess I can't complain to much.

Originally Posted by luciano

This is a huge win for Activision-Blizzard. Vivendi was trying to siphon profits from them to bankroll their losses elsewhere -- AND pay out dividends to Vivendi holders with Act-Bl money. It was pure BS.

Now that this dramabomb is over, they can get back to making good games without some corporate tool over their shoulders.

What is this? I don't even...

Vivendi essentially gave them full autonomy, why wouldn't they with successes like COD, Skylanders, WoW and Diablo 3? Nothing will change, except them pocketing more money for themselves.

most people matured ... I think they were matured enough already. I used to think Blizzard was a good gaming firm. But since lk something happened and the vampires showed their teeth.
People did not mature, they were mature, they just got fed up with blizzard money sucking ideas and left.

In every expansion there is a high peak of players to check out the content and level their toons, noone can deny that. But since panda, there has been only decline. It also tells the game has been going worse ever since and yes it had.

I personally can't wait when the player base is around 1-2mil and then see how blizzard still sucks blood out of their customers. Losing players is for the good of the game. Thank you god!

all the crap blizzard added this xpac honestly just made me like it less

Originally Posted by Frolk

Of these 600.000, how many was in Asia?
If its asia its not as big deal as if it was 600k loss in the west

In the beginning of Mop, my server was a bustling busy town. Now it's a barren wasteland.
So don't give me the excuse that only asians left.

WoW has the same issue Swtor had after launch, there are now too many dead realms & they keep refusing to merge realms giving all sorts of unrelated reasons, these virtual realms way too late but w/e

Originally Posted by nerfmagesffs

Does this affect me?

So what? They shouldn't post news about it cause it doesn't affect you? Take your ego somewhere else.

it's the same formula for the last 8 years ... enough said ;-)

But i do miss the epic music from northland! The music in stormpeaks for instance made the game what it was ... EPIC.

Soooooo... When is MoP going on sale? After Cata (still the worst for most of us former subs), I unsubscribed and decided to sit out this latest expansion. But I wouldn't mind trying it out for a month if I can pick it up for $5.

I am having A BLAST with 1:1 private servers.
classic and tbc.
i would pay for them too.

So MoP just lost wow 2.3 mil subs from when it was released less than year ago. Nice job! Great expansion indeed.

You had to post this >.>

Somehow I cant view any other comments on this post? :S

Or they took the opportunity to move server when transfers were half price? I'm not saying they did, there are just all kinds of possibilities.

No. It was such a creeping gradual process, that I didn't even notice it until I created an alt for testing purposes an one of the "superservers".
But I'll look forward to virtual realms.

A damn shame. MoP is a hugely impressive expansion.

I think the fact they cannot seem to settle on an end game format, and the incentive to actually do the end game is at such an all time low.

I'd also say the predictability of the game really destroys the immersion, but that's a fault on both players and developers.

7.7 million is still a HUGE number, specially for a subscription game.

The game is 8 years+ old.
At some point it will start declining but 7.7 million is FAR...FAR...FAR from dead.

Wow, so now Warcraft is losing 1/2 -1 million sub per quarter. At this rate it will be like most MMOs next year and be ftp + sub.

tobehonest. wow we lost some subs. dodnt care. i know allot will say END of wow. or its because the patch is to hard or to weak raids, or 2 much or 2 little pvp. i think most people leave because its the same stuff it has been for the last years. think wow could gain some subs if they dodnt just add things like pet battles or transmogh but expand on them. they now put those things in and then barely do stuff with them.
pet battles for instance: let it gain you levels, bigger teams with a arena ranking system, make it playable via app on mobile devices.
transmogh: less rules, more options like colouring stuff, and more achievements that give pretty transmogh things. for instance if you have the explorer title you can get a transmogh for a offhand word map.
and much more of this stuff

LOL @ people who think a 600k drop is relevant.

LIKE ALWAYS, this is mainly asians loss NO ONE gives a FUCK about. Let them play their shitty korean F2P games or Starcraft.