WoW Down to 8.3 Million Subscribers

[Crookids]

Oh my, I am speechless at posts like this.
The problem is that this game will die sooner exactly because of players like you. The ones who say "WoW is still clearly the best MMO around", "WoW at Ultra has better graphics than the other MMOs, etc. etc. No matter what.
No, that's not the case. Scream as much as you want, it doesn't make it true. It's just the MMO you still like and play. And by denying every problem and jumping at the throat of those who raise some legitimate criticism you are exactly contributing to its demise. There's ton of other online games around which offer more content, more frequently and for free. Very often they offer high quality content, not rarely better than WoW's. In EU and US WoW is already ahead other MMOs in terms of player base by a very slight margin. And new big competitors are coming soon. What Blizzard should do is to innovate more, release more content, making it cheaper or possibly eliminating the monthly fee altogheter (which almost nobody pays otherwise in 2013, and it's absurd in any case: in 8 months they have been able to release just 2 content patch, that's almost a theft). The problem is that instead by keeping paying every single month and bashing everyone who pressure Blizzard for the better by saying that the game is perfect and will never die, you are exactly killing this game. Good job.

Blizzard knows very well, as they officially stated, that at the end of the year the game will be played by much less people than today.
They know it, we know it. Maybe you should open your eyes and wonder and advocate how this game has to CHANGE if you want it to be successful. Otherwise they will just cash cow it until it's not profitable anymore, and goodbye.

As a matter of fact, screaming that it's perfect and it will never die doesn't make it true. Because it isn't. That's how life goes, pretty much with everything.

I never said anything you posted. Stop putting words in my mouth to support your lackluster responses.

[Tomana]

EverQuest should be evidence enough. WoW doesn't need millions of subscribers to continue on and still be profitable.
If they maintain 3 million active subscribers, they'd still be huge. Think of how massive a drop that it and yet they'd still be profitable.

EQ did finally go free to play, but pretty sure they've been chugging along for years at 1 million or less (pretty sure less) while still subscription based.

WoW can still lose a lot of subscribers and keep plugging along. Every other MMO out there is evidence of it.

Sure, but in the case of a big company like Blizzard, this means they'll need to find a new "cash cow" product to finance their activity.

[Crookids]

Oh my, I am speechless at posts like this.
The problem is that this game will die sooner exactly because of players like you. The ones who say "WoW is still clearly the best MMO around", "WoW at Ultra has better graphics than the other MMOs, etc. etc. No matter what.
No, that's not the case. Scream as much as you want, it doesn't make it true. It's just the MMO you still like and play. And by denying every problem and jumping at the throat of those who raise some legitimate criticism you are exactly contributing to its demise. There's ton of other online games around which offer more content, more frequently and for free. Very often they offer high quality content, not rarely better than WoW's. In EU and US WoW is already ahead other MMOs in terms of player base by a very slight margin. And new big competitors are coming soon. What Blizzard should do is to innovate more, release more content, making it cheaper or possibly eliminating the monthly fee altogheter (which almost nobody pays otherwise in 2013, and it's absurd in any case: in 8 months they have been able to release just 2 content patch, that's almost a theft). The problem is that instead by keeping paying every single month and bashing everyone who pressure Blizzard for the better by saying that the game is perfect and will never die, you are exactly killing this game. Good job.

Blizzard knows very well, as they officially stated, that at the end of the year the game will be played by much less people than today.
They know it, we know it. Maybe you should open your eyes and wonder and advocate how this game has to CHANGE if you want it to be successful. Otherwise they will just cash cow it until it's not profitable anymore, and goodbye.

As a matter of fact, screaming that it's perfect and it will never die doesn't make it true. Because it isn't. That's how life goes, pretty much with everything.

1.) you are obviously not speechless.

2.) stop putting words in my mouth to support your lackluster responses.

3.) name these free games releasing "more" content than WoW more frequently.

4.) if you actually researched the topic you were trying to discuss, you would understand content flow is not the reason for subscription loss.

5.) Ill indulge though and further put the nail in the coffin of your post by saying -- Did you know that less than 1% of the population has finished simply the raid tier, even less are BiS geared and that is just the raiding content. So you complaint about the lack of content since last patch is moot.

6.) The game needs to change to be successful? Sorry to break it to you, but the game IS successful. The most successful in the WORLD... Facts are facts. Also, MOP has been a God send and the best XP yet.

7.) How are people like me ruining the game? Unless studying the industry, knowing facts and building constructive criticism instead of not knowing my ass from my elbow like you and complaining about things already addressed. Or maybe I should posts how the game needs to be like vanilla while saying it lost subs because I didn't get enough LFR loot......

[Belize]

Sure, but in the case of a big company like Blizzard, this means they'll need to find a new "cash cow" product to finance their activity.

Ummm... Titan? Do you think it'll be free 2 play? I don't. If they can still make profits off WoW, and profit from Titan, they can pretty much sit on their comfy asses. Plus they have other games that finances them too.

But they WILL have a cash cow and it will be the cow level of Titan.

[Faroth]

Sure, but in the case of a big company like Blizzard, this means they'll need to find a new "cash cow" product to finance their activity.

A lot of games see profits increase when they go F2P and if WoW dropped low enough, that's possible.

They could also do something similar to what SOE did with their Station Pass and offer a single subscription discounted for access to Titan and WoW, possibly even offering some Blizz Store incentives, etc.

My point is only that 1.3 subscriber drop is huge, but it's not a nail in the coffin and WoW won't simply shut down in the next few years. That's all I meant.

[Amgyn]

People keep bringing up all the things blizzard introduced in MoP... but its clear these things aren't working...

[Crookids]

as one of the ones who quit, it wasn't "consumed content faster" it was took to fracking long to do anything. it was heirlooms were too damn expensive and it took too long to get lesser and greater runes. it was shitty drop rates even with runes of fate and taking too long to gear up because of gate after gate if my playstyle of choice was to roll alts rather than "mains." i was a casual player and i've quit and come back countless times. but i'm also fairly certain I came back for shorter and shorter periods of time before becoming too frustrated. it was also paying 15 bucks a month and having to deal with shit talking assholes. 5.3 for me is too little too late. while I don't have anything to replace wow with i'm done being sucked back in. fuck the game, i look forward to it's fall from grace.

oh yeah and then there's CRZ...in my mind they wanted to force players to play longer to try and get more money and instead people saw though it or just didn't feel like what they did fro recreation should feel so much like work. i know you people don't care about my opinion most likely and that's fine. that's the same attitude the devs had after all. after leaving reasons why i quit ever time before and only ever sometimes seeing responses to those reasons in game I didn't bother leaving any this time. for ever problem in my mind they fix they create a new one. CRZ being a perfect example.

btw I only came back to find a post about this after seeing the news made headlines on yahoo.

If you're right, then good riddance. I'd rather players who expect to be spoon fed and can't grasp the concept of earning and reward leave.

[Faroth]

People keep bringing up all the things blizzard introduced in MoP... but its clear these things aren't working...

Eh, the question is kind of, will anything work? Game's getting old, at its core it's still the same basic game it was 8 years ago with some new shiny paint here and there.

Can Blizzard do anything to keep 8+ million players happy when those 8+ million players all want different things?

There's a reason so many other MMOs have failed after players tried them and said they were "WoW clones" after all. They were the same game at the core with different sparkles. If new MMOs that are built on the same foundation as WoW aren't striking a chord with players, can WoW continue to do so with that same core?

Likely it will indeed lose more, but will stabilize at some point and that core remaining group is the player type Blizzard will design for.

No MMO rules forever.

If you're right, then good riddance. I'd rather players who expect to be spoon fed and can't grasp the concept of earning and reward leave.

I kind of agree with this sentiment.

There's "casual player" and there's "instant gratification player"

Just logging in and doing "stuff" for an hour doesn't mean you should get everything. It just feels like more and more seem to think paying the sub should give them everything with no actual play time required. MoP does need some tweaks for altoholics and catch up, but it's also demonized as worse than it really is imo.

[mikencarly]

I said it once and im going to say it one more time they made a income increase this year regardless if china players are almost all gone a 100 million income net alot of companys would love to hear that stop looking at the subs and look at the big picture they didn't even pay full price for month fees they was on via cafe shops mostly and timed point is they didn't even make a diff at all 1.3 million gone and still gained a net income vs last year = they have won.This also means Mop was a big succes in the west which all that matters that were almost all there income comes from east didn't even matter on profits if you think mop failed think again why would a china person play a china based expansion pretty much and stay i would have left as well plus like blizzard said there alot of new asia mmos which alot of the china player base moved im sure most will be back when they dont have to log in china from china LMFAO! so funny trolls think they have won not even close sir.

[Deleted]

"If I would've asked people what they wanted, they'd say faster horses" - Henry Ford

Blizzard has listened too much to what people want, and they've tried to appease everyone. As a result, the game has turned into a messy middle-ground of every user-type's play-style instead of one clear direction, unlike what it was when they were first building WoW. They need to follow their instinct and just keep building amazing stuff.

[Tomana]

Ummm... Titan? Do you think it'll be free 2 play? I don't. If they can still make profits off WoW, and profit from Titan, they can pretty much sit on their comfy asses. Plus they have other games that finances them too.

I agree, but they need to a) release it (and it's not there yet) b) attract people. In a world of F2P MMOs this is gonna be tough.

My point is only that 1.3 subscriber drop is huge, but it's not a nail in the coffin and WoW won't simply shut down in the next few years. That's all I meant.

Oh, but I totally agree
Hell they didn't shut D2 servers yet.

[Deleted]

"If I would've asked people what they wanted, they'd say faster horses" - Henry Ford

Blizzard has listened too much to what people want, and they've tried to appease everyone. As a result, the game has turned into a messy middle-ground of every user-type's play-style leaving no user-type satisfied. Blizzard are game developers, their users are not, Blizzard knows how to make games, users don't. Blizzard needs to follow their instincts and start building amazing stuff again without listening to crybabies on the forums, just like they used to do when initially developing vanilla and TBC.

[Deleted]

YOU ARE INCORRECT GOOD SIR!!!!

EQ never wanted to take over the world. WoW will never have the chance to turn the profit EQ did because when it's making 10x as much they'll shut it down. MMORPG today are big business and if they're not, it's not worth it. Accountants run the genre, that's why it's suffered so much in the past 10 years.

PLEASE DO NOT POST LIES, IT GOES AGAINST MY BELIEFS!!!

Accountants? Really? The book-keepers at Activision Blizzard are running the MMO genre? Really? You're clearly trying to say that the genre is run by money (which is retarded on it's own) but the fact that you refer to accountants and not the finance divisions/top-level executives just shows that you have no clue what you're talking about.

The level of stupidity never ceases to amaze me of some people on this website.

[Ecwfrk]

They have been focusing on casuals ever since they launched the super easy Wrath dungeons and the super easy Naxx. The game has been in decline since.

They have been focusing on "casuals" since the game was first designed. WoW was designed as a more casual alternative to Everquest. And obviously, they knew their demographic because WoW eclipsed EQ the moment beta signups opened and still has more than 10x as many subs as EQ did at it's peak.

EQ did finally go free to play, but pretty sure they've been chugging along for years at 1 million or less

EQ didn't have anywhere near 1 million at it's peak. EQ peaked at 550k subs. When it went free to play, it was at around 100k.

The only MMORPGs to break 1 million subs are Runescape (2008 peak: ~1.2M, 2012: ~800k), SWTOR (Peak: 1.75M, 2012: 1.4M), Lineage 1 (2003-04 peak: 3.3M, 2009 under 1M), Lineage 2 (Peak 2.1M, 2009 Under 1M), Aion (2009 peak: 4M, 2012: 2.5M) and WoW which has broke 12 million subs twice, once a few months into WotLK and again just after the release of Cata.

FFXI and Dofus (and EVE, depending on how "sub" is defined) are the only other MMOs to hold at over 500k paid subs for more than a few months.

Except WoW won't just fade away. It will stick around for a loooooong time.

Yup. Back in EQ's heyday, Business magazine did an article on the business side of EQ. They found that beyond the point where the dev team and other fixed expenses were covered it had a gross-profit margin of 40% and was bringing in around $2.6 million in profit for Sony every month with (at the time of the article) 425k subs.
Levels like that probably wouldn't keep WoW as the king of Activision's gaming portfolio, but it'd almost certainly keep the game running (even if accountants are running the genre as accountants love no risk, steady income generation).
But they're still a long way from being down at those levels. Unless they decide to do something completely weird, WoW isn't going anywhere for a VERY long time.

[Crookids]

I said it once and im going to say it one more time they made a income increase this year regardless if china players are almost all gone a 100 million income net alot of companys would love to hear that stop looking at the subs and look at the big picture they didn't even pay full price for month fees they was on via cafe shops mostly and timed point is they didn't even make a diff at all 1.3 million gone and still gained a net income vs last year = they have won.This also means Mop was a big succes in the west which all that matters that were almost all there income comes from east didn't even matter on profits if you think mop failed think again why would a china person play a china based expansion pretty much and stay i would have left as well plus like blizzard said there alot of new asia mmos which alot of the china player base moved im sure most will be back when they dont have to log in china from china LMFAO! so funny trolls think they have won not even close sir.

Punctuation is your friend.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 02:54 PM ----------

"If I would've asked people what they wanted, they'd say faster horses" - Henry Ford

Blizzard has listened too much to what people want, and they've tried to appease everyone. As a result, the game has turned into a messy middle-ground of every user-type's play-style instead of one clear direction, unlike what it was when they were first building WoW. They need to follow their instinct and just keep building amazing stuff.

You're asking WoW to become a niche product. Niche does not perform well on a massive scale. I think they are doing a great job at becoming a jack of all trades with content for everyone while (now) delving back to their roots of challenging and rewarding content.

If everyone would just wake up and realize the game is ALWAYS growing and not all things you want wont necessarily work and there are things you thought you might not want, but actually enjoy if you give it a try--there wouldn't be so much hate and pecimism. The problem is everyone wants what they want NOW and then when they get it, complain it was too easy to get stripping the essence of reward and uniqueness. I used to think achievements were a waste of time but now I love them. I find too often people are complaining about things just to do so without having any bases to argue or experience to reference. Such as my earlier post proving there is an immense amount of community content that people simply don't acknowledge.

Get out there, try new things, compete in difficult content, gauge your performance and compare yourself on the plethora of resources which enable you to test your limits.

These argument remind me of the days of addon threads and dmg meter arguments. People just want to point a figure and complain instead of focusing on how to enjoy themselves and get better.

[Deleted]

1.) you are obviously not speechless.

2.) stop putting words in my mouth to support your lackluster responses.

3.) name these free games releasing "more" content than WoW more frequently.

4.) if you actually researched the topic you were trying to discuss, you would understand content flow is not the reason for subscription loss.

5.) Ill indulge though and further put the nail in the coffin of your post by saying -- Did you know that less than 1% of the population has finished simply the raid tier, even less are BiS geared and that is just the raiding content. So you complaint about the lack of content since last patch is moot.

6.) The game needs to change to be successful? Sorry to break it to you, but the game IS successful. The most successful in the WORLD... Facts are facts. Also, MOP has been a God send and the best XP yet.

7.) How are people like me ruining the game? Unless studying the industry, knowing facts and building constructive criticism instead of not knowing my ass from my elbow like you and complaining about things already addressed. Or maybe I should posts how the game needs to be like vanilla while saying it lost subs because I didn't get enough LFR loot......

If you need to ask me which other online games are offering free, quality content at a faster rate than WoW you just really need to stick your head out of WoW and look around at the current online gaming market. It's pretty obvious.

If you claim that the flow of content is not part of the WoW problem, you didn't read Blizzard's official document which is the object of this discussion. The irony is that you are posing like the informed and toughtful one. Ironic, really.

If you don't understand how your attitude is damaging the game, I am afraid there's no alternative to you keep damaging the game.

That said, I am certainly not going to add anything more, because the rest is basically just a sad list of insults you trow at me, and I am far too old and I care far too little about this stuff to put myself on that embarassing level. This is the reason why I instead wish you a nice day. May you enjoy your game that "will never die". Until it dies, obviously.

[Bogrim]

They have been focusing on casuals ever since they launched the super easy Wrath dungeons and the super easy Naxx. The game has been in decline since.

"Casual" doesn't mean "easy". A casual player is a player with limited time span. If a hardcore raider became a father and had to limit his playing time to a few hours a week, would you think trivial content is the target goal to entertain this player?

A design with casual players in mind has affected and benefited you far more than you realize, so don't cry witch because you look for an easy target to blame. The kind of changes a casual player design brought about was the reduced time it takes to run a dungeon (think about the amount of trash mobs you had to go through in Molten Core vs the amount of trash mobs in an instance like MSV), as well as reduced instance and raid sizes for easier to manage raid events (vanilla: 40 man vanilla raids -> tbc: 25 man raids + a few 10 man raids -> wrath: 25 + 10 man raids but 25 man still better -> cata: all raid sizes equal).

Cata's initial raid releases was a great example of this design, instead of having one big-ass dungeon that took forever to get through, you had 3 lesser dungeons you could choose to progress through as you pleased---meaning you could actually clear one raid instance in a night, and then clear another on a different night without asking players to spend +4 hours raiding on a work night or having to remake the raid with different members every week. That's a casual design that doesn't revolve around making every boss a loot pinyata.

It's interesting to notice that WoW reaches its subscription milestone in Wrath, and everything since then has been going downwards---meaning no changes since Wrath has made the WoW player base grow.

[Deleted]

jesus!
i usually stop playing wow due to real life things
such as exams and work
i never fully quit tho

[Bogrim]

Sorry, you're contradicting yourself. If you played for a limited time then the problem is reaching the valor cap [...]

If you really want to have an intelligent argument try and keep the previous post you replied to in mind before adding another reply. I already stated that the problem with the valor cap works the other way around---it makes players feel as if they have to play a certain amount of time to keep up with the game like a job. The cap is the *only* reason you feel loss for not playing enough. A real RPG (like Skyrim) allows you to play the game whenever you want, make whatever progress you want and quit whenever you like. In trying to make the content last longer for hardcore players, Blizzard has made a design that creates walls for progression---but a wall is more than just a stop, it also marks a continuing linear line on your character progression.

Blizzard made this design years ago knowing full well what consequence caps would have on their players, but catering towards high level players who spent lots of time playing the game. Now, statistics show most players who play the game has a max level character and therefore the caps affect most players---including the casual players. They've even introduced changes to help ease how much the cap strains player mentality, like introducing the valor increase on other characters when you have capped one character for the week---for a group of game designer to acknowledge this problem and work on such a code is a statement how how widespread they think the problem is.

Just because you don't personally see the problem with a game that has so many caps built into its design (not just the valor cap bear in mind---I quit when the only thing I really enjoyed was farming older raid instances for transmogrification gear and it felt like I was paying to roll the slot machine once a week) doesn't mean it's not a major reason we're seeing a decline in subscriptions. The game has many problems, but players constantly hitting walls (whether it be gated content, reputation quests, valor caps, weekly lockouts, etc) has become one of the most common reasons players look to games that doesn't focus on *restricting* what they want to do.

As for the rest of your post, it's still irrelevant and besides the point.

[Deleted]

To make sure, most of sub cancels are from Asia, so blizzard just lose alot of gold farmers (there were about 400k gold farmer accounts about year ago). And there has came ALOT new good games, so people has move on.

This ain't end of wow, it's still 8.3 MILLION Subs!

Lemme shw you, if I have 12million euros, and I spend 3,7million, am I poor with only having 8.3million euros?