WoW Stable at 10.2 Million Subscribers

[Venziir]

Only 2 Blizzard games in 2012? I trough 2012 would bring MoP, Diablo 3 and HotS... now its Diablo 3 and either MoP or HotS, most likely MoP.

HoTS won't be until '13. They said in december '11 that they needed about another year for HoTS.

[Deleted]

Anybody know what ''Bungies genre-defining new IP'' is? as there been any announcements or rumours?

[Twiddly]

It's easy to be upfront about these things when you don't know who I am.

never mind not even worth the time.

[crejack]

Blizzard is the greatest game developer ever, and WoW is the best game ever made! Blizz can do no wrong ever. Now MoP will more then double their current player base. 25 million this time next year

[Sargerus]

Blizzard will launch "at least" two titles in 2012, including Diablo 3.

So, they pretty much confirmed that HoS will not launch this year since MoP is already in Beta for some time

[Pasture]

Correction...

Better-than-expected quarter driven by:
-Annual Pass subscribers

You say that like it's a bad thing. Blizzard used an extremely effective strategy to keep players paying. It was an absolutely genius move from them as a company.

[Zatheyll]

Wow sure isn't dead but I think that as the annual pass runs out we'll see a hefty decrease in subscriptions.

I wouldn't be surprised or sad at all to see Blizzard do another Annual Pass again this fall, incorporating more deals. Don't see why they wouldn't.

[Venziir]

League of legends finds it cute that you would cheer over a mere 15 mllion subs

Gotta say this is quite suprising considering how many subs were lost when there was content out, but i guess that a mix of annual pass lock-ins (several friends who got the annual pass have said that they wish they hadn't because they want out of the game but can't), SoR (i got tempted to get a free char, but i did not want to help blizz pretend i was an active subscriber) and MoP hype managed to stabilize it. Although I do find it curious when people cheer over the game being stale and not growing, you must be really confident.

The next big question will be what the numbers will be for Q2, as SoR has come and gone, and the Q1 also counts accounts that were still active january 1st. I would not be suprised if we saw another "please come back to us" promotional july to try and keep Q2 numbers from dropping. And of course numbers will go up with MoP release, they always do, the question is how much they go up, and how many will drop off after the release.

Wotlk launch reduced wow to the lowest point in it's entire history in terms of time being spent playing the game.
Cata cost them 2 million subscribers.
MoP has a lot to live up to if it wants to reverse the trend and the question remains whether pokemon and wotlk content will be enough for that (as heroics in mop will be same diff as wotlk according to blizz earlier this year).


WoW survived round 1, see you in three months for round 2

While also having the highest number of people playing.

[Deleted]

MoP won't take that long. 5 more months would make it the longest WoW beta ever by a month or more. Heck the entire beta for Wrath was only 5 months long. We just got a patch that increased the level cap to 89. At the pace they are on, we will be able to hit 90 by the end of May at the latest. End game testing will be 2 months tops, likely less, and can continue right up until release if needed. Personally I expect a release date announcement and 5.0 PTR somewhere in the early part of June with a release around August.

Yeah, hopefully it won't take that long.We'll see.

[mordale]

Only 2 Blizzard games in 2012? I trough 2012 would bring MoP, Diablo 3 and HotS... now its Diablo 3 and either MoP or HotS, most likely MoP.

D3 and blizzard DOTA are games, MoP and HotS are expacs.

[Shiny212]

Oh, so that is why everyone that raids has heroic madness on farm, and everyone has a 2400+ arena rating (2400 is actually quite high for even the top teams this season, ratings have dropped a lot)

You used to need skill to get gold or levels? good lord. I was not aware taking more time meant skill.

You're playing in Cataclysm, you really SHOULD know that time equals reward, not skill, perhaps you've forgotten the old days, weren't skilled in them or perhaps you weren't there.

[Deleted]

You can't bring down monopoly by copying a success of another company, like BW did. The best way to "break monopoly" and "diversify the market" is to create high quality product targeted at specific audience, instead of mindlessly ripping off WoW.

Indeed, hence why I have never seen the appeal of any other MMO released during WoW's lifetime.

But as you see some of the newer games have not tried to cater to the jack-of-all-trades attitude. Whilst I'm not a fanboy, I'd say design paths such as GW2 which actively steer away from PvE for the most part shows the industry starting to realise this at last.

[mordale]

Yeah, hopefully it won't take that long.We'll see.

were already at lvl88 in the beta.

[Killmaim Deathbringer]

"To launch atleast two titles including diablo 3" so that means 3 games this year or just two? The wording is abit confusing.

If anything though, it will obviously be Diablo 3, Pandaria and Heart of the Swarm.

[Deleted]

Wow... disregard my post on the first page because I seem to have hit a fanboy nerve...

Yes, on one hand, offering DIII along with annual pass sub was a genious ploy, but that might be the only reason some people took up the annual pass.

And some of the annual pass subs might not be even active subs anymore. I'd just like to see the number of active subs. That's all, I'm not trying to hate on anything.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Blizzard is the greatest game developer ever, and WoW is the best game ever made! Blizz can do no wrong ever. Now MoP will more then double their current player base. 25 million this time next year

Let's back up a step. Blizzard can do wrong, Cataclysm had many things done wrong. Vanilla had many things wrong.

But the difference is Blizzard doesn't make games to cater to the special interests. They make games for the masses. And then they make those games

"The most epic gaming experiences... ever."

[DreamCast]

Oh, so that is why everyone that raids has heroic madness on farm, and everyone has a 2400+ arena rating (2400 is actually quite high for even the top teams this season, ratings have dropped a lot)

You used to need skill to get gold or levels? good lord. I was not aware taking more time meant skill.

The difference is that it took skill to clear content in the past, now any monkey can do LFR, which kills the epic feeling of doing the same boss on HC mode.

[Zatheyll]

World of Warcraft is an old game. To the people complaining about marketing gimmicks, Blizzard has every reason to offer incentives for their aging flagship enterprise. I think it's a better idea than lowering the subscription cost. Personally, I'm glad that the game is still going strong so that it might live to see enough expansions to fully develop the Warcraft universe.

What people fail to realize is that even if World of Warcraft dropped to two or three million subscribers it would still be vastly successful and Activision wouldn't even think of closing it down.

To be honest I believe there are so many people that invest their entire lives into World of Warcraft or they just wouldn't leave the game they love so much until the last server closes that it wouldn't even drop beneath four million subscribers. Those numbers alone will still have it be the number one P2P MMO in the market.

Blizzard even said they will continue supporting World of Warcraft even 20 years after Titan releases, have them stay hand in hand.

[MikeyD]

I'm amazed at how a bunch of people at home on their computers care so much about these numbers as if they stand to lose millions of dollars if WoW loses subscribers.

Guys, you are overly passionate about a video game, look at you, sitting around your home, some of you jobless, and excited that your fantasy world still has people that like it. (Not trolling here - just stating the view from the side of reality. I like reading about MMOs but no time to play them.)

This number indicates there has been zero growth despite the hype of a new patch and a new expansion on the horizon. While people may jump for joy going "Yay! No losses!", there's no growth. Blizzard's attempt to stop the bleeding with the annual pass has been applied, but once that bandaid falls off, what next?

[tricdru]

You say that like it's a bad thing. Blizzard used an extremely effective strategy to keep players paying. It was an absolutely genius move from them as a company.

I love it when people make assumptions about what you mean so that they can create an opportunity to inject their opinion in response to something you never actually said.