WoW Loses 600k Subscribers, Diablo 3 Beta Q3 2011, Arena Passe, Blue Posts

[Deleted]

Well im one of the 600k :P and dont plan on going back, become happy for my freedom and not 4 hours planned almost every night.
warrior with 3 legendary and close to 900k gold just thrown in the corner to rott :P

Freedom? It that how you view it when quitting WoW? You could also just play less.

[Cakka]

I bet they are gonna have to shut down servers before summers over. At least it's official now, Rift is the new big dog in town.

[ZyngaFail]

Freedom? It that how you view it when quitting WoW? You could also just play less.

When you are at the point of quitting, you log in only to stare at your toon for 20 seconds and then log out.

[Deleted]

Finally they understand. The rate at which they have been producing content is incredibly lower than what other developers already do with their MMOs, especially when considered how many more resources Blizzard currently has.

WoW is definitely going to slightly lose parts of its populations with the upcoming releases ( Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2 etc.), but if they can drastically improve the content production rate then they can avoid going totally downhill, which wouldn't be insane to think if they kept the old rate with all-new games around.

[ZyngaFail]

I bet they are gonna have to shut down servers before summers over. At least it's official now, Rift is the new big dog in town.

Uh I don't think this drop in subscribers has anything to do with Rift. Pretty sure people are just getting bored of the same old rehashed content + no new game mechanics.

[Oztiks]

That's ok because I think they keep more subscribers by only having legendaries in raids than if they weren't

um you missed the point either way and the sarcasm at the end....for Blizzard to announce 600k loss in subscriptions in less than 6 months but oh HEY! we have legendaries with pets! Come on please....yea by far its not a panick button time, but maybe it should be a wake up call to get back to what made Blizzard so LEGENDARY in LK. If not, and all you WoW lovers can QQ all you want but deep down in the depths of that muttled wow brain, you know those numbers of declind will keep rising even with Firelands coming out....

[Joyride]

The cut-off date for those numbers was the end of March. We are already one month and 10 days passed the cut-off. Not to mention Blizzard probably didn't include people who canceled but still had remaining game time. I would imagine that number is way higher than Blizzard wants to publish.

There have been thread after thread of people saying they quit, along with a ton of people giving their observations on their servers about long time guilds breaking up, people no longer on their friends list, etc etc.

To say this is a lull, or some other anomaly and it has nothing to do with overall player satisfaction is not being logical.

I still play Warcraft, I have seen the same thing happen on my server with the decline of people no longer playing. Frankly it doesn't affect me, I still enjoy the game, though I don't play as much as I did, partly because I thought the zones and raids in Cataclysm were garbage, and I took a break in January, knowing that I would come back and try out Firelands.

I hope all the content in 4.2 will be amazing. If not, I probably will be done for good, or until the next expansion if it looks good.

[xHypnotoad]

So uhm, since they decided they would only release the old subscriber numbers from March 1st, was the drop in subscriber numbers even more appalling in the 2 months following?

Anyway, for the record I've been unsubbed since a few months before Cataclysm.. and I was in the Cataclysm beta, which did not make me want to resub at all.

Basically there is this thing called marketing. It has a special calendar split into 4 - 3 month segments called quarters.


This was just a shareholders meeting reporting what quarter 2 (January 1, 2011 - March 31, 2011) was in terms of profit gain/loss


Simply put, the people who make and lose money based on how this game is doing just dropped their golden tea cups

[ZyngaFail]

Uh I don't think this drop in subscribers has anything to do with Rift. Pretty sure people are just getting bored of the same old rehashed content + no new game mechanics.

QFT, but it's too late now. WoW will not peak again.

But to be honest it still amazes me that a buy-to-play game without subs (Guild Wars) can outproduce WoW in content even after years of no new expansions while the large majority of their developers are focused on the sequel.

[Beasty]

Like I said, I doubt even 50% of these account were anywhere near top level.

[Deleted]

Well spoken mate....the whole point Blizzard made in LK was to separate casuals from hardcore with normal and heroic raids. That was SOOO perfect for my style. I still got to see end game content and it kept me going. But with Cata it's near impossible for me to do this. Even the heroic dungeons are a wipefest (noob tanks and healers now electing the queue made it even harder and longer to complete). With casuals making up over half of the subscriber base I think Ghostcrawler got lost in his world of gaming and lost the focus that made LK so great to all types of players.

Cataclysm heroics are defo not any harder then WotLK heroics (talking about 5 mans here).

Something that should change tough, and i know alot of people will hate me for saying it, is that raiding should go back to how it was in TBC. Attunements for both raids and heroics.
Making an additional level of difficulty on bosses with setting them to Heroic just doesnt do it. Bosses should be hard to begin with. That way, it will trully give you and your team a victorious feeling when slaying a boss. Heroic modes were shit from the start.

And more grinding!

[ZyngaFail]

Cataclysm heroics are defo not any harder then WotLK heroics (talking about 5 mans here).

Something that should change tough, and i know alot of people will hate me for saying it, is that raiding should go back to how it was in TBC.

Yes.

And more grinding!

No.

Any form of grinding puts me off a game, ultimately I'll be playing the game with the least grinding and the most varied and fun content.

[Smilomaniac]

Anyone else but me like to see the statistics on what people voted when they left?

As in "I don't like the way the development has been going" and "I don't like what they've done to my class".

[Beasty]

um you missed the point either way and the sarcasm at the end....for Blizzard to announce 600k loss in subscriptions in less than 6 months but oh HEY! we have legendaries with pets! Come on please....yea by far its not a panick button time, but maybe it should be a wake up call to get back to what made Blizzard so LEGENDARY in LK. If not, and all you WoW lovers can QQ all you want but deep down in the depths of that muttled wow brain, you know those numbers of declind will keep rising even with Firelands coming out....

Haha, right...

[Deleted]

QFT, but it's too late now. WoW will not peak again.

But to be honest it still amazes me that a buy-to-play game without subs (Guild Wars) can outproduce WoW in content even after years of no new expansions while the large majority of their developers are focused on the sequel.

Well said. That's the key point! It is almost unthinkable, yet it's constantly happening since years. They are damn slow, which results in less content produced overall in a given period.

[Joyride]

Like I said, I doubt even 50% of these account were anywhere near top level.

It doesn't matter to Blizzard where they were in terms of level or what ever you mean.

A subscription is a subscription.

[ZyngaFail]

Anyone else listened to the conference call and think it sounded like "Hey we lost 600k subs but don't worry, we are putting new mounts and pets in the store and looking at more premium and value-added services"?

[Siton]

Based on how big this game is, I have never seen a more balanced game.

Starcraft?

Also made by Blizzard.

[Beasty]

It doesn't matter to Blizzard where they were in terms of level or what ever you mean.

A subscription is a subscription.

Yes, my point being though everyone seems to think 600k top level players have quit when I doubt it is even a 5th of that.

[ZyngaFail]

Also Guild Wars was pretty balanced, regardless of what any naysayers may say. And the PvP did actually consist of something more fun than pillar-hopping or standing in a zone to activate it or constantly running flags.

---------- Post added 2011-05-10 at 08:29 AM ----------

Yes, my point being though everyone seems to think 600k top level players have quit when I doubt it is even a 5th of that.

But how can you know that? If the end-game content is stall, then that would hardly be a reason for lowbies to quit.