WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers

[Lunareste]

I wonder what the haters will say if Thunder King turns out to be as epic as Ulduar and people flock back to the game in droves.

[Eliandal]

The numbers people have posted of people playing D3 don't look so hot though.

Actually, in this case the argument isn't good, since Blizzard would prefer you buy the game....and not stress their servers !

[Immitis]

I guess our expectations have been lowered so much that we look upon a loss and can't really call it a loss can we now mmo champion forum?

a small loss, pretty much all from asia making it an even smaller loss. and also making both more money than expected and more money than last year.

so a loss in subs but a rise in profits?

i dont know about you but investors care more about money

[Algearond]

News flash, 8+ year old game has only 9.6 millions subscribers.

On the positive, show me how many active players all other MMO's have combined, and when that's higher we can talk.

[kojinshugi]

Less than 3% of the playerbase have finished NORMAL mode raid content. Thats how badly the game is overtuned and pointless atm.

Normal raids aren't hard. They're easier than half the stuff in BC. They're about Ulduar level of difficulty at the moment.

And when has more than 3% of the playerbase ever finished normal mode raid content? If by playerbase you mean every single subscriber, including people who don't raid at all?

Seriously, in BC most people were herpaderping in Karazhan until the Sunwell patch brought JP loot for all. In Wrath, hardly anyone finished Ulduar until they were decked out in ICC gear. How many people killed normal Ragnaros in Cata?

It's like you've only ever raided during Dragon Soul with a 20% debuff or something. Trust me, in 6 months, current content will be equally faceroll and puggable.

[Tharkkun]

10% of their income comes from Asia. They have a different pay model.

Point to where that information resides in any of the recent Press releases. THANKS!


4:23PM Activision Blizzard beats by $0.06, beats on revs; guides Q1 EPS in-line, revs below consensus; guides FY13 EPS below consensus, revs below consensus; increases cash dividend to $0.19/share (ATVI) 12.06 +0.12 : Reports Q4 (Dec) earnings of $0.78 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.06 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.72; revenues rose 7.8% year/year to $2.6 bln vs the $2.44 bln consensus.

Co issues mixed guidance for Q1, sees EPS of $0.10, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.10 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees Q1 revs of $690 mln vs. $716.16 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
Co issues downside guidance for FY13, sees EPS of $0.80, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.98 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees FY13 revs of $4.175 bln vs. $4.57 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
Additionally, on March 12, 2013, Blizzard Entertainment expects to release StarCraft? II: Heart of the Swarm , the first expansion to Blizzard's award-winning real-time strategy game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty?.

[spoon77]

Got to love these dudes... Who know nothing but love to speak.

What would you classify as the golden age? TBC? You forget WoW was only at 6m then.

Bet he disappeared after this ignorance. Amazing how the ones who talk out their ash seem to have only one comment. Read some replies and learn something.

It's rather ironic how you're talking, considering you're completely wrong. WoW peaked at 11m subscribers during Burning Crusade.

There are plenty of online sources available for you to verify that.

[Poysonivy]

30 hours per week doing normals? Lol?

Are you RP walking backwards from trash pull to trash pull?

Think have a 1 hour funeral service for each trash mob that died..

[Nhugness]

Hmm, well so what? I just keep wondering “What else is there?” Every MMO out there that I have tried simply does not hit the vein. Blizz needs to work on the community~ i.e. dead servers (afterall xfering 9 toons is $$$)… However, I still have to ask “What else is there?”

[Duster505]

I find it hard to believe. People who actually LOVE something , learn to find a way to work the differences or at least try hard to make it work somehow.
Most complaints don't look like love to me. They're infatuation at best. That never lasts.

But then again, these days words are thrown around so easily, feelings, emotions, meanings... they mean nothing.

As far as I'm concerned, its the love for games that define and shape gamers.
Everyone else is just another person playing a game for any other reason but.

Just like all those half-assed "pro-football players" back in school/college. How happy they were to brag with their pro-skills.... None of them became pro...

I guess the moral of this story is..
People have a bigger bark than they have bite. And i find it difficult to take them seriously as they are just setting themselves up for ruin.

The thing is... most players playing WOW are looking for the same thing. Blizzard has just not done good enough job to keep those players.

Let me make one example. There are alot of old WOW players that were raiding but dont have the time anymore. For those players LFR is a total disgrace. Still they dont have the time or the group of players to progress their character through normal raiding modes. Main reason ? Because its overtuned for the normal progression model that players find acceptable. So.. result is that many of those old raiders that knew what raiding was all about ... have LFR or just quit. And the answer is for most... quit.

Thats just example of players that loved the game but now hate what LFR has turned it into. It would have been better to allow guilds to have a good progression based raiding content. Right now under 3% of the playerbase have done latest tier in NORMAL mode. And the nerf ... is coming after 5.2.

RPGs are progression based. Give players good progression with MEANINGFULL content and they will stay. LFR and dailies are not meaningfull content.

[Deleted]

I think this is a pretty good result overall. MoP surprised a lot of people when it was first announced but it proved many people wrong in whatever expectations they had.

I dont think the thunderpatch (yeah thats a thing now) will drive too many people back but not many people will leave because of it either. If blizz keeps producing good content quick enough then I think WoW will stabilize at around 9-10 million until after 5.4.

[kojinshugi]

It's rather ironic how you're talking, considering you're completely wrong. WoW peaked at 11m subscribers during Burning Crusade.

There are plenty of online sources available for you to verify that.

No it didn't. It peaked at 12 in Wrath. It never hit 11 until Wrath.

[Berri]

Not big news, and certainly not worrying news.

[Faroth]

So what? A decline is a decline, WoW's "golden age" is long over, the game is going to keep losing players, will you still be using that defense when it's down to 3 million players?

Though I'm late to the conversation....

Where are these other MMOs that have continued to gain subscribers with new, innovative, mind blowing content after almost a decade? Yes, WoW's golden age is over, the game is nearing the 10 year mark. If WoW was still growing exponentially, I'd be very concerned for the gaming industry in general.

The success of a game isn't wrapped entirely in its number of subscribers, especially since they come and go in MMO genres. Personally I think less subscribers might be good for the health of the game as too many is going to result in what WoW faces on a daily basis: Every decision pisses off a group of players.

All in all, I think WoW's done pretty well balancing the different play styles. I've not been playing MoP as much recently being on a console kick atm, but I wouldn't say the game's dying by a longshot. Really, if WoW drops to 8 million subscribers and it's "dying" then I have to ask...what's the status on every other MMO out there? Are they DoA?

[Exodeus]

Those who left are probably people that havent played prior to WotLK, because they cant handle the grind and effort which the game requires again.
Its nothing to be upset about, wotlk and cata kids...

I'm still subbed but i hate dailies with a passion i'd much rather still be needing to farm 50 soulshards and 20+ essence of air(for the gold for flasks,pots,food,mana oil, scrolls and so on) per day, dailies for silly coins and valour just to give you a edge/boost is beyond boring and you HAVE to do the dailies cause all the valour gear is locked behind it and as soon as you are finally done they release a new faction with yes even more dailies.......
And as for rep farmin i'd rather farm the damn cave in silithus for twilight texts or run with those dusts then the fucking dailies!!!!
Atleast then i could do my farming when i damn well pleased and not have to log in every day otherwise i have fallen behind again FUCK DAILIES!

[Immitis]

It's rather ironic how you're talking, considering you're completely wrong. WoW peaked at 11m subscribers during Burning Crusade.

There are plenty of online sources available for you to verify that.

wow peaked at almost 13 million subscribers at the launch of cata,

[darkpower]

Good, one wotlk kid less. People nowadays expect to get everything for free without putting in any effort.

I'm sorry, but this is something I got to reply to since it delves right into what is so wrong with this mindset right now.

We are willing to work for what we want and will untimely get, but to say that anyone who dares to question the obsession over dailies this xpac is a "whiny wrath/cata baby" (or whatever the term is this time) that just wants rewards handed to them without doing any work. This is a dangerous way of thinking. No sane person is asking for tabards back. They are actually asking for another form of getting rep other than doing dailies every single time. There are several ways to get Valor outside of dungeons and raids, and those don't have "one shot" ways of getting VP capped every week, and no one complains.

So where are you ever getting the notion that hating dailies means that they are wanting tabards and one shot ways? I'm really looking forward to hearing the way you can equate the two, since this issue is a little more complicated than just calling everyone who dares criticize dailies a "whiny, lazy, baddie baby" who just wants the easy way out.

Like dailies? Fine! Do them! No one is stopping you! That doesn't mean that we necessarily want to, but not wanting to do them doesn't mean we're not willing to do things like what they are going to put in patch 5.2 to work on rep grinding. Please get this through your heads, guys. We're getting tired of having to point out the differences between this shit again and again!

[Belize]

A 500k drop in subs is huge. Especially if they are in the U.S. or Europe.

It's a tiny dent really. IT'S NOT A WOW KILLER!!

[spoon77]

No it didn't. It peaked at 12 in Wrath. It never hit 11 until Wrath.

Here is a compilation of Blizzard's publically released subscription volumes.

Note that WotLK was released on November 13th 2008 making Q3 2008 the last model for BC.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/2...d-of-warcraft/

[Jtbrig7390]

wow peaked at almost 13 million subscribers at the launch of cata,

Please show this because the first Report of cata had around a 300k sub lose wow ended WOTLK with 12.5mil subs.

Feel free to provide me the blizzard report showing me wrong but from what I remember the first report came right after ghost crawlers "DUNGEONS ARE 2 HARD" comment and it was a 300k-500k sub drop.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/2...d-of-warcraft/ even shows wow never hit 13mil subs.


Funny thing is i do remember a few tv ad's stating wow had 15mil subs back in WOTLK but it could have been a fuck up.