You believe MoP will return WoW to 12million subs?

[Deleted]

No, With the release of Diablo3 taking away players and GW2 coming sometime soon this will take another chunk out of the playerbase. I've been playing WoW since release and to be honest MoP dosn't look anything to shout about. The whole panda and pet battles thing dosn't appeal to me so I will be cancelling my sub and playing another game.

[iceberg265]

Honestly I will be surprised if they even remain over 10mill. I could see 10mill for the release of mop and then the decline will resume as it turns out to be another disappointment.

[Deleted]

No way! It will maybe go down to 9 million, get back to 10 million with MoP and slowly go down after that

[Ringthane]

Where's the "why does it even matter" choice? As long as the game is running, you can play it. What does it matter if there's one million people playing it, or twelve million people playing it?

[Drakesong]

No, of course the population will grown after relase (and i don't know for how long), but i expect it will keep going down later, for a lot of reasons:

1- WoW is a good game, but it's an old game: Of course pokemon battles, farmville, scenarios, etc etc etc will keep things interesting, but not for so long.

2- More competition: When Wow was released, there weren't many MMO's around, but now, we have a lot of very good Online games, such as SWKOTOR, Diablo 3, and in the future, GW2... Each one promises something that WoW is unable to deliver. So, if Blizzard changes something in the game that a customer doesn't like, he is more tempted to leave WoW to a "better" game.

3- WoW addiction is wearing off: You may not admit yourself, but you are only playing WoW because you are adicted more than you are thrilled by the game. With so many tiers of gear and achievements, you have the NEED to keep playing, in order to keep "strong" and brag about yourself to your online friends. Something that I keep hearing is that WoW is not and addiction anymore, and is very boring. Something that might have to do with the game becoming more casual, so you get your things (either gear, achievements, etc) faster, and you end up with nothing left to do.

---------- Post added 2012-05-22 at 02:37 PM ----------

Where's the "why does it even matter" choice? As long as the game is running, you can play it. What does it matter if there's one million people playing it, or twelve million people playing it?

It REALLY matters:

1- With fewer players, servers populations go down. It means higher AH prices, fewer good guilds and slightly longer queues
2- With fewer players, Blizzard's income is reduced, which directly affects the quality of the game.

[Pipboi]

There is nothing to do in Wow right now and i doubt it will change in Panda becouse Blizz is going in the same direction as in Cata. Recently ive dinged fresh 85, bought some gear from ah, done new 5man hc, done lfr Deathwing and now i got nothing to do here. I dont feel need doing same raid in normal or hc mode. World is empty, no need to leave city. Only 1 aspect of game that is still playable is pvp but with fresh 85 is being ganked all the way so its frustrating a bit. Like i said I doubt Panda will change enything, game still will be casual and boring.

Nothing to do eh? You just hit 85 and have downed deathwing RAID FINDER difficulty? Lol you sir, are a fool. Keep in mind there are two other difficulties to Dragon Soul, there's plenty of PVP, and 9 other classes you can level. This is exactly the problem. Idiots come on here who think they're gods because they downed DW on raid finder, then bash WoW because they think they beat the game.

[Shuttle]

I don't think anything can bring WoW back to 12million. Not enough interest in MMO's anymore. I would suspect 11M at launch and 10.5m stable.

[Drakesong]

Nothing to do eh? You just hit 85 and have downed deathwing RAID FINDER difficulty? Lol you sir, are a fool. Keep in mind there are two other difficulties to Dragon Soul, there's plenty of PVP, and 9 other classes you can level. This is exactly the problem. Idiots come on here who think they're gods because they downed DW on raid finder, then bash WoW because they think they beat the game.

You fail to see that not everybody is like you.

1- "Keep in mind there are two other difficulties to Dragon Soul"
That is basically the same thing from LFR, except it's harder. Some thing think it's fun, some other does not.

2- "there's plenty of PVP"
Not everyone likes PvP, keep that in mind

3- "and 9 other classes you can level"
Level to do what? Repeat the same thing? And not everyone likes to start a new toon, I for one hates leveling up.

There IS nothing to do for our friend right there, and he's no way a fool because of that. You on the other hand is acting like a nerdy douche.

[Judge Malthred]

Most of the lost was from the east, so Blizzard made a xpac aimed at eastern playerbase.

Do you believe MoP will return WoW to the 12million mark, with big named MMO are on their way to the west?

The things you are linking don't actually work that way. It has been reported that Blizz is usually working on the next 2 expos after the current one. So the drop of eastern players during cata is not the reason we have MoP.

As far as going back up to 12 mil who knows. Adding pokemon to the game may turn out to be a savvy move if it is able to attract a large pokemon crowd that would not otherwise be interested in WoW.

People love enslaving little animals and forcing them to fight each other, and afaik there is no MMO pokemon.

[Thelxi]

Maybe they will hit the 12million mark, who knows what goes on in Asia. Will they be making a bigger profit? maybe. Will they then be pushing out more original and risky content? no way. Blizzard has hit a sweet spot since WOTLK as far as how much they spend on the new stuff that keeps people happy enough to continue paying them monthly. We as players will not see any quality improvements unless the game really starts going south and they are forced to rethink their business model.

[Synros]

idk, they might gain some new subs, and resubs from the Asian market. But will more then likely continue to lose people over here in North America. It been 7 years, so I'll probably still play the game consider there is no other MMO I like, or have liked in the past.

[Deleted]

I think the subscriptions will obviously rebound a bit, and if MoP is fun and enjoyable people will obviously stick around and interest will rise again. If they stick with it depends on the quality of the product.

I don't think it'll rebound all the way back to 12 million with this expansion, though. I don't think the appeal is wide enough, and I honestly don't know if any future expansions will have the same universal appeal that Wrath of the Lich King did. Even Azshara or the Emerald Dream aren't as iconic as Northrend and Arthas were.

^ this. I would imagine WoW subs would increase during release and drop and then stabilise a few months after the release. This really all depends on the speed they release new content/balance/how current content is though.

[Pancaspe]

I expect a new high of 15 million subs for MOP

[Lynara]

No, they will lose another 5 mln subs.

Oh trolls -Gently pats-

I do not think 12 Million no. I think a good number will come back, The way every expansion tends to go is the numbers spike up,fall down and then stabilize.

Expansion comes out = Massive Spike
Expansion has been out for a month = Numbers fall down
Expansion has been out for a good amount of time = Numbers stabilize.

[Austilias]

I expect a new high of 15 million subs for MOP

Of course you would.

It'll probably stagnate, rise a little bit or fall a little bit, but I don't see it budging that much; MoP will be about breaching the proverbial Titanic rupture caused by the iceberg that was MoP, and I think they'll succeed, but that sure as hell don't mean that the ship will make it across the gaming Atlantic in one piece in the long run.

[qbanb8582]

I think it will spike up at launch to close to 12 million. Then a month or two will drop.

[Deleted]

I can't see it actually increasing by any amount, the game's old and boring, the concepts are pish poor and the 'queue for gameplay' status of the game is disgraceful.
It's a tragedy to see a once beautiful, immersive and compelling game consigned to the scrapheap of 'crappy MMOs' a long with Aion, Rift and such.

[Finnio]

It all comes down for me personally how the raiding will be like , i quit wow 3 months ago , and if raiding isn't something i like in MOP I will just sell my account eventually . And another thing about subscription they are inflated hugely by the promotion blizzard did these last month with free upgrades to cataclysm/lvl 80 's and free transfers , a good marketing scheme but without it the subs would have dived with the least another half a million loss in the last quarter. The only reason all the huge promotion took place was to keep the stock value from decreasing further , and ofc bad publicity with the incoming diablo , its all down to imagine of the company , in reality the numbers of subs will keep decreasing , and unlike other mmo's on the market i am quite confident that GW2 will be a tremendous success and that will result in many other players leaving wow especially between patches where isnt much to do.

[Klausk]

Not immidiately, but if the gameplay of MoP turns out to be as awesome as it looks like then I think we'll maybe gain max 1 mill subs,

[Vook]

Considering that they're implementing Pokemon to attract the kiddies and Farmville to attract Facebook users...wouldn't doubt it.