WoW Down to 7.1 Million Subscribers

Originally Posted by nexellent

yup, because losing ~1/3rd of the subs in 3 months isn't bad.

It isn't if you look at the bigger picture.

A year and a half ago, they were at 7.6 million subscribers... and so they've really only lost 500,000 subs in a year and a half.

Not a big shocker that. Perhaps it'll be a wake-up call for them to stop mucking about and start letting us see the effect of their much larger team. And MAYBE they and the idiots can stop putting blame on flying as the "big crook of this game" when it's clearly nowhere near the downfall of WoW. It wasn't for the past 8 years (it was here during the games peak) and removing it didn't stop the downward trend. Go figure. It'll take a bit more effort than removing things and putting blame on old features, Blizzard.

MoP, you're still the King of expansions to me.

Originally Posted by Luminoth4

Speaking for me, the expansion is pretty boring outside Raids. I feel compelled to do Garrisons, especially given how much gold I currently get from them. However, my current thoughts:

- LFR feels unrewarding. I don't know why, but it feels worse than MoP LFR
- Dungeons are pointless content. They offer no decent rewards after 630 and are pointless
- There is no Weekly Valor Cap/Reason to log on outside of Raids. Apexis is a useless currency, which Valor gave Raiders upgrades
- Apexis Dailies are boring, uninteresting and dull. They have little lore, and feel to me daft
- Delaying BRF to coincide with 6.1 upset Players, as it was part of the first tier
- 6.1 as a Content Patch added a very small amount of Content with the main features being Twitter and Selfie Cams
- Some classes (Arms Warrior PVE) are pruned too much and are boring
- Many of my own Guild are bored with the Game and only log on for Raids.
- Some are on the verge of quitting as they no longer Raid due to IRL
- PVP Mess that is Ashran
- PVP Class Balance (Hunters/Druid primarily)

This sums it up perfectly for me. There isn't really much to do outside of raiding that offers interesting rewards.

Originally Posted by Multistryke

That's what you get for adding stupid stuff like Garrisons & Selfie's.

You can thank the large portion of the player base that was constantly whining about wanting "Player-Owned Housing" for the introduction of Garrisons.

Originally Posted by Arrclyde-79

And it is bad. People always act like "wow will survive with only a million subs". Will it survive? Maybe. But Blizzard is part of a company that takes part in stock exchange, "just surviving" is not an option.... like AT ALL. Products HAVE to make a gain in profit quarter to quarter. Will it ever hit 1 mio. Subs? NO, definatly not. In fact with such a huge drop in subs and the numbers down to 7.1 mio. subs it is getting pretty close to the number where "subs" are not the most profitable option for the company.

Well the thing is....... they do make profits...

ACTIVISION BLIZZARD ANNOUNCES BETTER THAN EXPECTED FIRST QUARTER 2015 FINANCIAL RESULTS

OMG, preaching to the choir here. I tried archeology in Draenor, hateeed it, and I like archeology. I did all the MoP achievements, all the 20 project ones. But Draenor? Takes forever. Not to mention all the digsites with uneven ground. Like the one outside Khadgar's place. That one took forever to complete. Horrible, horrible experience.

I leveled a Rogue to 100 just for Archaeology because I thought "well maybe if I can stealth, it won't be so bad?"

Well... there's still horrible digsites with uneven ground and there's no way around that. Oh, and the mob density. Yeah, I can stealth... but I can't survey while stealthed and the second you break stealth you have 5+ mobs to fight before you can survey. I do not understand why they have such ridiculously high mob density everywhere, especially in digsites. I don't think fighting 50 mobs per fragment discovery is anywhere near reasonable.

Well, I'm still subbed and play casually. I think this expansion has been the second worst as far as content and the worst as far as my enjoyment. I do not like the theme, the story (except for the Arrakoa), garrisons, the capital cities, the pvp, or much of the pve.

I was really excited for this expansion and I think that the leveling was absolutely amazing.
I wish Highmaul had been more epic. It didn't feel like a city to me, it was too small and uninhabited.
BRF was okay, but I'm still just bored with the entire orcs of draenor story.
I severely miss dailies. I was one of those people who loved the start of MoP with dailies and rep grinding everywhere.
I miss having a timeless isle equivalent.
I think garrisons are trash. I want them gone forever.
I do like no-flying, but that isn't content.
I hate Ashran. It actually wasn't that bad pre-server merging. It was usually 125 Alliance vs 75-100 horde constantly, but now it's 5-10 alliance and 40-60 horde. I can't accomplish anything.
The capital cities are completely uninspired. They are not significant locations or well built at all.
Professions have been marginalized. There's barely a reason to have them.
Gold inflation is out of control.
PvP is plagued by bots and certain OP abilities, more so than any past expansion.
5 mans are once again pointless and will continue to be pointless with Mythic.
I'm really tired of these larger than life/ try hard tier sets. I would much rather them be more reasonable and stylish in their simplicity, but still do enough for it to look class specific.

Just some of my current thoughts. Still hoping for the next expansion. I think something like South Seas would breathe a lot of life into the game.

I do love all the hate for the Garrisons.. I raid, I PvP, I do alts, and I spent a grand total of 15 minutes a day in a Garrison doing things. Know what people did before Garrisons that made the world feel empty? Sit on flying mounts in the sky, which made it feel empty. Remember what they did before that? They sat afk in a capitol city, doing the same thing as adding more NPCs that didn't move would do.

The people saying 10 and 25 man raiding needs to come back? Mythic only, flextek has kept so many more groups together because they can only front 12-18 players and this way no one has to sit out.

Now the whole no outer world content complaint? Valid, we need more of that.

Didn't help that they thought 'Hey, our players have been dealing with orcs as the bad guys for two years after having to deal with an orc being green jesus for two other years.. Know what they'll want? MORE ORCS!

Cata launched in 2010, that means we've had FIVE YEARS of orc-focused story. Enough is enough.

Originally Posted by Multistryke

That's what you get for adding stupid stuff like Garrisons & Selfie's.

I am pretty sure that the garrisons keep millions playing.
If nothing else, they give an excellent revenue source for the player to make gold, and it gears alts up passively.

WoW went downhill after WOTLK, probably second best expansion after TBC. Aint hard to outline the causes, regardless how complex they may be, of that decline, but Blizzard is just a shadow of its former self, they only care about money these days, after Activision merge and that money hungry Kottick got in charge its a disaster. WoW shop must go, 20-30$ for mounts even though you pay monthly sub, obscene prices for changing race, gender, class, server transfers, ridiculous prices of the expansions even though you pay monthly sub regardless if there is no new content for months, sometimes up to a year... What are the justifications for these ridiculous amounts of money? money money money money....

The old Blizzard i knew cared about gamers not about money, the old blizzard made masterpieces like Lost Vikings, Warcraft 1-3, Starcraft, Diablo 1-2 and Vanilla WoW + TBC. No vanity shops, no real money auction houses, no expansion rip offs, no monthly subs, no lame ripoff tokens, nothing.... and all of them are todays classics. Just a memory to keep for good time sake.

Originally Posted by Castle

I could care less, I'm really enjoying this expansion and have so much to do (collecting mounts,pets,xmogs,achievments) that I'll be busy for a long time.

I have more total play time in wod then i had in both mop and cata. You are not alone. Im enjoying wod a ton and i don't do most of what you listed :P

That's what you get for adding stupid stuff like Garrisons & Selfie's.

I love the garrison stuff besides two things. I wasn't to happy losing my bracer enchant (leather working) and mining/herbing is annoying. wtb a follower to just do it for me. I know thats some peoples complaints that followers do to much but in this case....i want them to...lol

Ashran is probably the biggest disappointment for me and im not even a huge pvp fan. It could have been so much more.

Originally Posted by bryroo

Right. It's not like they put $30 mounts in the store or sell gold or level 90s to make up for those people.

Instant 90's and tons of gold flooding the market don't affect the game.

I don't know what you mean by "tons of gold flooding the market".

As for 'instant 90s', I like that change to the game as it has allowed me to play a Warlock at max level for the first time in the ten years that I've been playing WoW. The bad players will be bad whether they level from 90-100 or 1-100; letting them skip old content isn't suddenly going to make them any worse than they would be otherwise.

Originally Posted by Wildtree

Well the thing is....... they do make profits...

ACTIVISION BLIZZARD ANNOUNCES BETTER THAN EXPECTED FIRST QUARTER 2015 FINANCIAL RESULTS

It's because retards continue to pay for the shit content while throwing cash at them for store levelling and mounts. They effectively get huge income with less people on their servers.

It's win win for Blizzard. More money, less strain. Who needs to make content when they can just sell micro transactions on top of a sub?

Originally Posted by Zechs-cenarius

THE SKY IS FALLING!

Guess we won't see a 3rd raid tier now lol......they gotta push the next expansion to regain some of the subs at least temporarily.....incoming next expansion Q1 lol.

There never was going to be a 3rd raid tier though.

Just watch as Blizzard buries their head in the sand.

The devs aren't to blame. It's the damn investors. Hopefully this opens their eyes and they give the devs more room to do their thing.

Before everyone starts screaming "the sky is falling WoW is dead" you need to step back and look at the numbers. Blizzard was sitting at just over 7 million WoW subs before the expansion launch. They publicly stated that they never expected 3 million people to resub for the expansion which is why we had world of server crash for the first few days of the xpac. There were later articles that stated that many people came back to see the game and getting a free 90 boost with the expansion purchase made it a very appealing situation but many of those same folks were saying they had no intention of playing past the new year. Now we have stable servers and a game population around the same as it was in October of last year. My own raid team had at least a dozen people who came back for Highmaul and left before BRF was even announced because they had seen what they wanted and were going back to Diablo or Hearthstone but they still keep in touch with the WoW folks waiting for the new thing. Just remember that over 7 million people still pay in one way or another to play this game and it is not going away any time soon.

I'm not a white knight nor am I fanboy but this data still shows more people like the game than dislike it.

That being said - they really only lost the people who came back for WoD - the base fans will most likely always be there.

There are problems with WoD - it's a flawed expansion - removing the ability to customize gear and upgrade it, removing flying, and the mess that is Ashran are a few points.

I still enjoy raiding with my friends though - nothing about it has gotten stale - BRF was an excellent tier and HFC looks just as good.

I see this loss and am not really concerned - if this trend continues through the end of the 2nd Q though, then it might scare me.

they had them. many of them. and they lost them all. that totally says everything about wod. great

Blizzard,

I have an idea. BRING BACK 10-MAN HARDCORE RAIDING. Both of my raid teams quit because we just could not for the life of us find 5 more awesome people. We had 10 solid raiders, 5 who would show up some times and were okay, then 5 randoms and bads. For the love of god, bring back 10-man hardcore raids.