WoW Down to 7.7 Million Subscribers, Activision Blizzard Purchases Vivendi's Shares

[Tarx]

OK I play wow from when it was 12mil and now it is 7,7 np the game is still the same

[GoldNSilence]

Looks like the blizzard store hats helped Bobby raise enough cash.

[jazzyy]

It really is time to go free to play. Reverse the downward momentum and get an influx of new players and old players returning.

7.7 million players = time to go f2p?

you do realize that 90% of f2p games don't even break 1m right?

This is stupid...

Games can renewal too! "World of Warcraft 2" with frostbite 3 engine, without money eater managers, with thousands of designers, without subscription, one gamebox + 4 months/new content for free, no store, no feast of strengths, dramatic story lines, and developers who can read players posts about the game...

The WoW is not a problem, but the team behind that...

After Wildstar: 'Welcome WoW in the dozens of MMOs with 1-5 million subs" They deserve it!

No subscription, no store? How exactly do you plan on them paying the millions in the frostbite 3 engine, retraining staff to learn the new engine, developing all new assets involving models, textures, sounds, music, voice acting, and so on?

You want PR that is consistently on the forums giving non-transparent answers? How are you going to pay for that staff? And the QA department to make sure the game is in good standing?

Keep riding that Wildstar hype train, we don't even KNOW what payment model they have yet, so how can you think that they would be more successful than WoW? Hell even GC confirmed that a large portion of people who unsub simply do so because of time/money. Why would Wildstar be any different?

Let's be honest people, you guys REALLY take for granted how much the development team is involved at all. They deal with 8 MILLION players on a daily basis, a minority of them consistently posting garbage on the forums that is just rampant bitching, have you seen half the shit that GC gets on his twitter? He probably ignores >30 people a day that are just mad as hell over PTR changes and give no constructive criticism. Honestly, blizz devs may not be as vocal as old school mmo devs use to be, but devs from EQ didn't manage the largest mmo in the history of gaming, so it's a bit of a different story, don't you think?

I'd say all in all compared to a lot of mmos we're pretty damn lucky to have the balance we do as in the past 5 years I don't think a single MMO even comes close to being as well made as WoW has in terms of quest lines, plot, balance, class balance and creation (monks very intuitive imo, dks were amazing on release, etc).

I'm not saying we should feel entitled but to say that the development team is the problem is the most ludicrous thing I've yet to hear and I've heard people quit because "players have too much health now"

[Tails]

Actually we are not.

I'm saying people enjoy hard content because they feel rewarded when they finsh it and get a good item. The reward has to be REWARDING. Brawlers guild doesn't offer anything people care about neither does Challenge modes. Hence why seriously not many people do them, there is no point.

Let's take Xt in Ulduar for example since a lot of people managed to get to this boss. You did him on normal sweet you get some good loot. You figure your guild has the gear to do it on hard mode. Now you find yourself in the same raid doing the same boss but you're now good enough to activate the hard mode and manage to actually pull it off. That's rewarding. Brawlers guild and Challenge modes are not the same thing.

They are not rewarding in a traditional way, but they are harder than things that actually reward gear. But I wouldn't say "Let's make Brawler's give out ilvl 540 loot when you reach rank 10". The best loot should always come from group activities in WOW, not the hardest activity. But Brawler could give out at least some loot even if not BIS. That may be true, but that still doesn't have much to do with game losing subs since in any case the percentage of people doing hard stuff in this game is really low.

[Obsession]

It really is time to go free to play. Reverse the downward momentum and get an influx of new players and old players returning.

Based on the changes to the Blizzard Store that are proposed, I can see it within a year.

[lordzed83]

heh does not look good :/

[lazzy]

They are not rewarding in a traditional way, but they are harder than things that actually reward gear. But I wouldn't say "Let's make Brawler's give out ilvl 540 loot when you reach rank 10". The best loot should always come from group activities in WOW, not the hardest activity. But Brawler could give out at least some loot even if not BIS. That may be true, but that still doesn't have much to do with game losing subs since in any case the percentage of people doing hard stuff in this game is really low.

No shit low percentage of people do hard content. You DON'T have to do it anymore lol.....

I don't even get your argument. I did hard content in Vanilla and BC i stopped in LK because you don't have to anymore. You used to HAVE to do hard content to get through the game now its optional. That's the problem.

People don't care to do Heroic raiding Vs LFR because LFR is easier and you get to see the same shit. The entire point of getting good gear before Cata (LFR) was because you needed it to progresses to see the next tier of bosses. You don't need to do this anymore.

If everyone is doing the "easy" way to see all the content you can seriously be done with every patch in 3-5 hours. That's the problem.

[Synbaby]

Based on the changes to the Blizzard Store that are proposed, I can see it within a year.

I have to lol every time I read people who are calling out for f2p WoW. It is NOT going to happen at this point when they are still making money from subs.

What we will start seeing though, is more and more vanity items(pets, mounts, EXP boosts) in the blizzard store, because those do sell. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually add full armor sets for transmog. If anyone here has played rift lately, and seen their in-game store, you know what I am talking about.

The other thing blizzard really need to do is merge some lower populated servers. Offering free server transfers has never really worked. Why would anyone move to a low pop server, when you can stay on an over-populated server, and have no problems pugging raids or killing world bosses. *I should know, I'm on Illidan server, and no one really transfers off when there are free transfers.

[Aceofblood]

No shit low percentage of people do hard content. You DON'T have to do it anymore lol.....

I don't even get your argument. I did hard content in Vanilla and BC i stopped in LK because you don't have to anymore. You used to HAVE to do hard content to get through the game now its optional. That's the problem.

People don't care to do Heroic raiding Vs LFR because LFR is easier and you get to see the same shit. The entire point of getting good gear before Cata (LFR) was because you needed it to progresses to see the next tier of bosses. You don't need to do this anymore.

If everyone is doing the "easy" way to see all the content you can seriously be done with every patch in 3-5 hours. That's the problem.

I kinda agree with this. Most of the excitement of new bosses and seeing more of a raid is ruined because u just see it in LFR then do harder version later. In Vanilla and BC I'd get soo stoked that we downed a boss and finally can try another whole new one, Getting attuned to Hyjal and BT was one of these huge moments of excitement since it took MONTHS of preparation and gear and finally getting that last boss down to enter there. Every guild kinda progressed at their own lvl too, when u fully cleared a tier there was another tier already waiting! BT patch came out before even a single guild in the world could even do BT! It wasn't til like a week later that a guild could even enter black temple.
Blizzard says people complained they couldn't see all content and such but it kept people pushing and trying to get to the next boss. Besides the original, BC and wrath is where all the Subs capped, before all this LFR and queing for dungeons.

[GhostShaman]

I don't think this will change anything. Now, Blizzard splitting from Activison? That's something I would love to see.

Its just one less parent company breathing down their necks. Honestly without Vivendi looming over, it could give Acti-Blizzard more creative control of how they want to do things. I think its pretty awesome myself that they are slowly buying themselves back.

[Sainur]

Haha. All I can do is laugh and smile.

Blizzard only have themselves to blame. Down to 7.7 million subs... 600.000 people lost. Anyone that's still saying that "it isn't much" is an utter retard. Cause, you know, 600,000 people is a lot of people. When MoP launched, I remember people saying that WoW had 10+ million players and that 10+ million pandas were created on the first day. Bla bla bla. And look at your precious game now. At least 3 million people have stopped playing, a miracle needs to happen if WoW ever manages to get over the magical 10+ million subscribers again.

I've played WoW for a long time, decided to gave it a break in patch 4.3 cause it sucked shit. I re-subbed at the start of MoP, gave it a chance again. Played that for a while, but I can finally say now that my WoW chapter has ended.

[Tails]

No shit low percentage of people do hard content. You DON'T have to do it anymore lol.....

I don't even get your argument. I did hard content in Vanilla and BC i stopped in LK because you don't have to anymore. You used to HAVE to do hard content to get through the game now its optional. That's the problem.

People don't care to do Heroic raiding Vs LFR because LFR is easier and you get to see the same shit. The entire point of getting good gear before Cata (LFR) was because you needed it to progresses to see the next tier of bosses. You don't need to do this anymore.

If everyone is doing the "easy" way to see all the content you can seriously be done with every patch in 3-5 hours. That's the problem.

I disagree. People who used to raid regular/heroic content still do. I don't, but that's not because of LFR. I stopped raiding due to time concerns at the start of Cata and when I do LFR, I don't count that as raiding, since you spend an hour a week and that's it. There's no progress, no wiping, no preparation etc. That's just a long heroic dungeon for me. So right now what you have is more people seeing the raids but around the same people actually doing heroic / normal. If less and less people are raiding the normal and heroic stuff due to LFR, I'd be surprised.

And I don't understand your argument either. What do you mean by "get through the game"? Most people who play wow never raid, not even LFR. They still get through the remaining content just fine. They always could.

[JookyJam]

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

yeah but from the numbers thats 2 mil from 4th qtr 2012 - 2nd qtr 2013 ...Thats a big drop in 6 months my friend

[pfbe]

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

Daaaamn, we're actually under 2006 (Q4) sub numbers, which was still vanilla - BC was released Jan 2007.

[Zaqwert]

The graph

[Deleted]

can't get any lower than that ;P

next expansion will raise the numbers ( if it's the Burning Legion one)

[Deleted]

just wait until blizzard blue tweet "... all LFR and FLEX (RELAX) Raid has been removed from game..." + 1-2 milion subscrips up

[Razorice]

Well... I don't give a rats ass if wow is dying or not.

[pfbe]

Well... I don't give a rats ass if wow is dying or not.

but how could WoW even be dying when they're adding new battle pets every other day? People are obviously quitting because not enough battle pets. I can't wait for 25-man pet-battle raiding.

I'm bitter about the waste of resources over pokemon, and it shows. But this whole debacle started when they got a whiff of those "social networking" dollars.

[Ethas]

The result of 25 man serious raiding death. You have been warned, Blizzard.. =(
Now give those casuals 5-man raids and you will see more people leaving.