WoW Down to 8.3 Million Subscribers

[Crookids]

I can't wait until 3-4 years from now when they post something similar while WoW is still going strong and people are regurgitating that the game is dea....

Wait a minute, I can do that now...

WoW is still on top. I knew it!

[Deleted]

8.3 million! and this is all the content we get?

[Osmeric]

And this is BEFORE the big end of expansion content drought (unless the next expansion is coming a lot sooner than we think.)

[Thessik-Irontail]

Seems the idea of an Asia-themed expansion isn't going over well in Asia, which actually makes some sense. How well do we appreciate Eastern interpretations of Western culture? Also, being obviously China-centric, how well does that go over in Korea, where as we know recently a number of servers were merged?

Picture this. A Japanese game company has a worldwide hit MMO, then they release a Western-themed, US-centric expansion called Bald Eagleland. How well would that go over in Mexico, or Canada, or even Europe? Moreover, how would it go over in the US, where players would be treated to a litany of stereotypes purveyed by foreigners who only know of their culture through Clint Eastwood and pro wrestling cliches?

Stop making too much sense.

[Die Hard]

casuals aka scrubs aka whiners aka wrath babies ruined this game and we all know it, hopefully blizzard realized this by now as well and they wont fuck it up in TITAN as they did with WoW. Regardless, its amazing that 8 year old MMO has 8.3 mil subs.

[crakerjack]

Not a chance, Titan is already planned as casual from the start on. The time of vanilla-like stuff is dead and buried.

And what logic/evidence do you have to support that? Just because WoW is that way currently? Did you not read my post... the entire dev team was moved from WoW to titan... meaning what ever game you fell in love with during vanilla/TBC... those same creators are on Titan, attempting to make it just as good as WoW was in its prime or even better.

[Osmeric]

casuals aka scrubs aka whiners aka wrath babies ruined this game and we all know it, hopefully blizzard realized this by now as well and they wont fuck it up in TITAN as they did with WoW. Regardless, its amazing that 8 year old MMO has 8.3 mil subs.

You think Blizzard is aiming Titan at a few hundred thousand hardcore gamers?

[ashblond]

Herein lies the problem. Casual players are not a loyal player base. They move from title to title, they are sporadic in their invested game time and they can move on regardless of the content you provide.

For example - I download an iPad game. I love it at first, I try out stuff, I may play it on and off for weeks. But when something else catches my attention, I forget about it, usually just uninstall it and try something else.

Trying to cater to the casual player since WotLK had only one long term side effect - Blizzard managed to breed a generation of self entitled players who think WoW is another iPad game where 5min investment means access to everything this game has to offer. They will claim they don't have time to play more, they will claim they don't want to do repetitive stuff, they will claim they don't want to hit their heads at hard content, they will claim they don't want to read patch notes to know what's going on, they will also claim they want instant access to FotM classes.

And they got all. Speed leveling, idiot proof content on ALL levels (questing, solo, scenarios, 5man, raiding), access to epics even if you play 1h/week, reputations that take a week to get to exalted. But then it's catch 22 - too easy content means you burn through it fast and are left with nothing to do. Make thing a bit more challenging, and the QQ starts.

And Blizzard keeps tending to the QQs, changing the game from left to right, losing core players who are tired of a game that is no longer made for them as well as the casuals, who have not sentimental attachement to the game anyway.

good point, but you forgot 1 thing: if Blizzard doesn't adapt customers, wow dies faster.

[Koeevu]

LFR ruined the game, so did CATA and MOP.

Maybe for people living in their mom's basement, but I quit when I realized that I couldn't run LFR every week and stay a reasonable distance behind no lifers. Mostly due to the rep grind and rep requirements for gear. Between sports, work, real life and wanting to play at least a few other game I can't commit the minimum time required to see the content.

Infracted

[Tomana]

And what logic/evidence do you have to support that? Just because WoW is that way currently? Did you not read my post... the entire dev team was moved from WoW to titan... meaning what ever game you fell in love with during vanilla/TBC... those same creators are on Titan, attempting to make it just as good as WoW was in its prime or even better.

This was discussed on shareholder calls a while ago. Only in broad strokes but enough to get this.

[ashblond]

Most of the decline in subscribers came from China.this is were the trolls are failing at they have zero to do with me at all back to wow i go!

Good logic! Even all the other EU/US servers die out, as long as my server is fine, it has zero to do with me. And even all the guilds and people on my server quit, it has zero to do with me as long as I am playing.
We need more optimists like you.

[Kenshin]

1.3mill was double of what i expected it would be.
Seems with each new smaller sizes mmos, WOW bleeds. Wonder what will happen when Teso, FFXIV ARR, Wildstar releases. FFXIV looks to become my main go to mmo with all the nice features i have seen it will include. Their housing system looks really cool, and crafters and gathering classes seems to be a big part of the game unlike just pure statbonuses as wows professions.

Its also funny people say most subs lost was china and there still is 8.3. But if chinese subs are so worthless, how many subscribers is there in EU/US then? If its only 1 mill in each, then the other "failed" mmos with 500k - 2mill are not that far behind WOW.

And there seems to be a lot of servers with extremely low pops. I gave wow up due to low pop and friends quitting, and instead of spending 25usd x 4 character to move them to a more high pop server. I spent 19.99usd and bought FFXIV and i loved it despite it own flaws because the server community was amazing and enough fun stuff to keep me happy.

[Taurrus]

I droped it on January, so I guess I'm part of that statistic

[ADman319]

1. Asia is where most of these subscriptions have been lost. They burn threw content at double the rate due to 2 weekly resets. And the MMO market in Asia is HUGE , they have 5-10 mmos that are exactly like World of Warcraft but F2P or a lot cheaper and easier to get a hold of.

2. If you look at there quarterly earnings for WoW they actually went up since Q1 of 2012 so there may be a uptick in US subscriptions and a down tick in Asian.

[Testaxc]

Maybe for people living in their mom's basement, but I quit when I realized that I couldn't run LFR every week and stay a reasonable distance behind no lifers. Mostly due to the rep grind and rep requirements for gear. Between sports, work, real life and wanting to play at least a few other game I can't commit the minimum time required to see the content.

I quit long ago from a mix of reasons from natural boredom to having little time, but its always funny to see that even if they lower the bar so low that you are scraping the scum of the barrel that casuals will still not buy into the model and blame it on having a life. If you want to run a travesty like lfr all you need is a few hours out of the week. This is nothing like old wow.

[Osmeric]

2. If you look at there quarterly earnings for WoW they actually went up since Q1 of 2012 so there may be a uptick in US subscriptions and a down tick in Asian.

You are being fooled by looking at GAAP numbers. This is misleading, because under GAAP the $$$ injection from all the box sales/downloads back at MoP release is taken over several quarters. So Q1 2013 is artificially inflated compared to Q1 2012.

Non-GAAP numbers, which don't do this, show a 22% decline in "Online subscription" revenue from Q1 2012 to Q1 2013.

[crakerjack]

Just tell me how many times you've posted about Death to WoW. Simply.
And how many times people kept whabbering about it in past 8 years.

See... this is the issue with your type of people... you claim that people have been saying WoW is dying since the beginning... maybe... but that group wasn't nearly as big as it is now... and the arguments that they made back then were probably over stupid things... whereas now I could make countless arguments about how the quality in the game has declined.

[Koeevu]

I quit long ago from a mix of reasons from natural boredom to having little time, but its always funny to see that even if they lower the bar so low that you are scraping the scum of the barrel that casuals will still not buy into the model and blame it on having a life. If you want to run a travesty like lfr all you need is a few hours out of the week. This is nothing like old wow.

I did the raider life. A non-hardcore raiding schedule is 7h30pm to 10h30 PM, three nights a week. I have to leave for work at 7h30AM and get back around 6h30pm. That means that for these three days I do nothing except sleep, go to work, play and then go to sleep. And this is just to be in a middle of the pack raiding guild.

That's not a way to live, and god forbid the people that do it six days a week. They're missing out on a lot of great things in life, and a lot of great video games.

[ADman319]

You are being fooled by looking at GAAP numbers.

No i am looking at the actual revenue report
Subscription, licensing and other revenues 2013=334mil 2012=298mil

even with the losses Blizzard has been able to make almost a 100mil increase in net income

[Deleted]

See... this is the issue with your type of people... you claim that people have been saying WoW is dying since the beginning... maybe... but that group wasn't nearly as big as it is now... and the arguments that they made back then were probably over stupid things... whereas now I could make countless arguments about how the quality in the game has declined.

it's not that much bigger as it is louder and your arguments aren't any smarter than they were from other doomsayers back then
but here's an idea, you go play a game that you like, while those of us who still enjoy wow continue to play it, none of us is hating on your games, so why are you so keen on hating on wow, saying it's dying and getting so irritated when someone doesn't share your point of view