February 7: Blizzard Conference Call

[Duster505]

I expect the numbers to say around the same - if not rise abit. MOP launched in China in 4th quarter and that will help the active players (not subs even tho BLizzard talks about it as subs). The first quarter of 2013 will be more interesting. Specially if BLizz fails to get 5.2 out before end of March.

[Pann]

I find it rather hilarious that people are already starting in on the whole "this quarter doesn't matter it is the next one that is important" before the numbers are even out yet. A preemptive strike isn't going to make the nonsense any less idiotic.

You appear to be projecting your own issues on to my post. Nowhere did I say this quarter does not matter, I simply believe that this quarter subs will remain steady, although I maybe being overly optimistic, and that the next quarter will be worse. I maybe be right, I might be wrong, what do you think will happen with the sub numbers or are you just here to insult people as usual? I am not sure why you think this is a preemptive strike or why you even think this is some kind of attack.

[Synstir]

Well I am interested in the numbers..... to me it says a lot; it gives information about how players perceive the game as it stands now. It gives Blizzard reasons to make drastic changes or continue the choosen direction.

As for expectations: I think there is a huge drop, over a million. Just going by the amount of qq and people stating they quit.

[Pann]

That's quite interesting.
Seems to fit with my speculation that the current amount of subs will be around 8.3 million in my previous post earlier in this thread (with a worst case 7.5 mill, best case 9 mill).

They said they sold 1.2 million annual passes. So that is about 10% of the wow population. Of those 1.2 million passes, only 378k are level 90 with the mount. Of course there might be people who have yet to reach level 90, but it still means a potential drop of ~822k+ people from annual passes alone.

I am not sure how much stock we can put into those numbers for the overall sub numbers as they do not include China nor do we know how many AP holders did not buy MOP but they certainly are interesting. We know that there were 1.2 million people who bought the AP and at the the time that accounted for (very) roughly 25% of the Western player base assuming that no AP holders have quit and these figures are correct they now account for roughly a third of all players making a total of roughly 3.5 million Western subs which I would say is not a million miles from the actual figures (2.7 million first week sales plus another million or so over the following quarter seems reasonable).

I am sure I've missed something and someone who is better at math that me will be along shortly to prove me wrong.

Edit I just thought that the AP holders are likely to have more than 1 level 90 character by now which is going to skew the results which will probably make it seem as if AP holders now account for a greater percentage of the population.

Well I am interested in the numbers..... to me it says a lot; it gives information about how players perceive the game as it stands now. It gives Blizzard reasons to make drastic changes or continue the choosen direction.

As for expectations: I think there is a huge drop, over a million. Just going by the amount of qq and people stating they quit.

Most people that tell everyone they are going to quit; don't.

[Deleted]

I find it rather hilarious that people are already starting in on the whole "this quarter doesn't matter it is the next one that is important" before the numbers are even out yet. A preemptive strike isn't going to make the nonsense any less idiotic.

You obviously don't understand the workings of subscription services. With a new xpac many people will be subscribed for 3 months, some for 6, many are still shackled by annual pass, some level slowly and realize only after several weeks they don't like the new offerings.

Even with Cata, which was shit from day one, it took months for the losses to manifest and even longer for Blizzard to react. Devs even did the rehashed troll 5-mans, one of the two dumbest patches in the history of this game - next to voice chat.

This quarter may bring some indications, but the full financial drama or glory of MoP will become obvious three months from now.

[Strafer]

How long left until the conference?

[Deleted]

How long left until the conference?

Enough time to go to the grocery store for popcorn: 8 hrs and 50 min.

[Arbs]

Well I am interested in the numbers..... to me it says a lot; it gives information about how players perceive the game as it stands now. It gives Blizzard reasons to make drastic changes or continue the choosen direction.

As for expectations: I think there is a huge drop, over a million. Just going by the amount of qq and people stating they quit.

Ussually people who say they quit don't, or have actually quit awhile and try to stir up drama here. You can really only take the I quit posts on WoW forums that pop up once a while seriously most of time its someone who is just trying to get attention and they usually keep playing after the post. You just never know if they really quit unless you know them in-game.

Its not a new thing its been happening for years people saying they quit & never do. Ussualy when people quit a game they only tell the people they play with they are quitting and even they usually come back. WoW is a very big social game & for the most part people only come back or begin to play is cause of RL friend.

[Mongoose19]

Ussually people who say they quit don't, or have actually quit awhile and try to stir up drama here. You can really only take the I quit posts on WoW forums that pop up once a while seriously most of time its someone who is just trying to get attention and they usually keep playing after the post. You just never know if they really quit unless you know them in-game.

Its not a new thing its been happening for years people saying they quit & never do. Ussualy when people quit a game they only tell the people they play with they are quitting and even they usually come back. WoW is a very big social game & for the most part people only come back or begin to play is cause of RL friend.

This is true the reason people come back is not that much the game itself but they friends you played with. If they are still playing you are more likely to come back. If they are gone though...well you are as free as a bird now.

[LocNess]

I don't really expect any large drop (100-200k max). With word of the mouth giving MoP success, there has been some new subscribers coming in from the Cata crowd as well.

[Synstir]

You're offending me by thinking you could actually offend me.

So in the end he actually COULD offend you! :-)

[Deleted]

Ussually people who say they quit don't, or have actually quit awhile and try to stir up drama here. You can really only take the I quit posts on WoW forums that pop up once a while seriously most of time its someone who is just trying to get attention and they usually keep playing after the post. You just never know if they really quit unless you know them in-game.

Its not a new thing its been happening for years people saying they quit & never do. Ussualy when people quit a game they only tell the people they play with they are quitting and even they usually come back. WoW is a very big social game & for the most part people only come back or begin to play is cause of RL friend.

I just imagined your post in the context of heroin and it was bloody ironic. Seems to me what you wrote applies to addictions in social context, and long-time social hobbies in general.

Btw "quitting" and "taking a break" is technically the same with the exception that the quitter does not know for sure they'll come back and given they don't use the words "taking a break" they imply forever quitting whereas taking a break implies the person comes back. But due to the addictive nature of the game, once not playing it, perhaps someone taking a break steers away from it for a longer period of time, maybe forever.

[Djuntas]

Wether sub's are down or not, I still find the game dead if they refuse to close down servers. Its pathetic how they dont have this as there main focus. They could close down atleast 70-80% off european servers, and just have good high pop only.

[Synstir]

Ussually people who say they quit don't, or have actually quit awhile and try to stir up drama here. You can really only take the I quit posts on WoW forums that pop up once a while seriously most of time its someone who is just trying to get attention and they usually keep playing after the post. You just never know if they really quit unless you know them in-game.

Its not a new thing its been happening for years people saying they quit & never do. Ussualy when people quit a game they only tell the people they play with they are quitting and even they usually come back. WoW is a very big social game & for the most part people only come back or begin to play is cause of RL friend.

While I agree I have to add that when a lot of complaints are coming in, the trend is that players will quit the game. We saw that in cata.
With the huge amount of subs wow has, and lets be honest, the amount is HUGE really... i won't be suprprised if the losses where also quite huge, like 1 million or even 2 million.

With over 10 million subs, the player base is very divers. Cata was offering a lot of stuff that wow isnot offering anymore.
Where cata was alt-friendly, mop isn't.
Where cata had easy gear-up ways, mop hasn't.
Where there was almost no grind in Cata, mop has gear locked behind rep which are locked behind dailies.

Of the 10 million players, we have no way to estimate how many players where playing this game because of 1 of those reasons.
We have no means of finding out for how many players things are game-breaking or not.

It all depends on how much time one wants to be online... not how much time some has to be online, but wants to spend online. Afterall it still is only a game, nothing more, nothing less.
Then what can a player achieve in that time, that he will spend onlline.

I mean if someone plays like 3 hours a week.... well I don't think he will get something out of this xpac.... what is the use of being able to mount a cloud serpent when the next xpac is coming out? Just saying..... walking behind with everything or achieving things when they are out of date will have some impact on players with very little time.

All of these considered, add to the huge amount of subs, can mean a huge loss.
The swing they took with mop, is imo just too big for players to adjust i think.

[Usagi Senshi]

Wether sub's are down or not, I still find the game dead if they refuse to close down servers. Its pathetic how they dont have this as there main focus. They could close down atleast 70-80% off european servers, and just have good high pop only.

That right there is what has me down atm, we can barely find people to fill our raid on this shit server and we've had 6 (and 1 due to being a crap player) raiders quit since launch. I'm not paying Blizzard to fix problems (moving my guild and my 7 characters) that should have been addressed last expansion. If they let this crap slide another two patches, I'll be quitting for a bit and just be playing TES:O (and no, I'm not quitting for this game, it'll probably suck anyway, who knows) and my 3DS/Steam/Wii U until they decide to pull their heads out of their ass and do something drastically good for a change.

[raqi]

someone make a poll to vote on subs numbers :P

[Crashdummy]

A lot of peolpe quitted over dailies, some quitted over CRZ, some dont like the PVP season and quitted too.

I expect the number to be around 9.5M.

I just hope this makes Blizzard open their eyes at how much they failed with their crappy daily system.

[Deleted]

Wether sub's are down or not, I still find the game dead if they refuse to close down servers. Its pathetic how they dont have this as there main focus. They could close down atleast 70-80% off european servers, and just have good high pop only.

The problem is that they make very good money off of transfers. I know players that have spent thousands on transfers alone (just for perspective, that's what they'd make out of a decade of sub fees). Why close down servers when you can just wait for everyone to transfer off, paying you ~$100 per player or whatever?

They should've made transfers free (but on a long CD) or provided free consolidating transfers from multiple dead servers to a single one, but again, they prefer profits over player enjoyment.

[Djuntas]

That right there is what has me down atm, we can barely find people to fill our raid on this shit server and we've had 6 (and 1 due to being a crap player) raiders quit since launch. I'm not paying Blizzard to fix problems (moving my guild and my 7 characters) that should have been addressed last expansion. If they let this crap slide another two patches, I'll be quitting for a bit and just be playing TES:O (and no, I'm not quitting for this game, it'll probably suck anyway, who knows) and my 3DS/Steam/Wii U until they decide to pull their heads out of their ass and do something drastically good for a change.

Good for you. I migrated myself back 1 year ago else Id just haft to quit completely, and leaving behind alts I had for years, with near all off them with good history, played time and "emotional-affections" to them blows. Blizzard should know better.

I still belive if they fixed the dead server problem, it would bring more new players into the game than what they would earn inn migrate fee's money.

---------- Post added 2013-02-07 at 12:54 PM ----------

The problem is that they make very good money off of transfers. I know players that have spent thousands on transfers alone (just for perspective, that's what they'd make out of a decade of sub fees). Why close down servers when you can just wait for everyone to transfer off, paying you ~$100 per player or whatever?

They should've made transfers free (but on a long CD) or provided free consolidating transfers from multiple dead servers to a single one, but again, they prefer profits over player enjoyment.

Yep, thats the vicious circle. I can't say I hate Blizzard for it, they are just a buisness - But I still can't say I like it, infact its proboaly one off my main reasons to hate Blizzard in general. Especially cause I had to live trough years with a worser and worser server, AND the fact that new modern MMO's offers this service for free and/or have these so called "megaservers" or whatever type of tech.

[Tackhisis]

I predict less than 8,5 millions subscribers.