Wow sub numbers now below Burning Crusade

[skillym]

I find the insightful and intelligent commentary included with this chart incredibly amusing. "THIS IS NOT NORMAL"...Actually, every product has a life cycle and this is completely normal. Over time, no game is immune from consumers losing interest and spending their money elsewhere.

[Pann]

And in 25 year they'll be just as big as WoW is :')

I will just leave this here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421715/

If WOW continues to lose subs at the current rate it will be smaller than EVE in less than four years.

I know the link to Benjamin Button was supposed to be something clever but I am struggling to see any kind of link to this conversation.

[Xothic]

I really don't give a fuck how many other people play this fucking game as long as; 1, my server continues having a decent, fairly active community (which it will, given its one of the biggest oceanic servers) and 2, that I can find 9 (or 19 I suppose) other people that I can go do sikRaydz with. Thats it. I dont care if there is only 1000 people playing WoW provided that I get those two things.

Why do people get so tied up in the monetary success of this game, it's not like WoW isn't still WILDLY profitable, I mean shit it has dozens of times the subs of the next sub-based game. I feel eventually it will probably stabilise around 5M as the allure of the large amount of good quality F2P MMO's finally stops draining players (IMO this and the need for something new are the main reasons WoW is loosing subs).

[Alienshroom]

There is so much competition right now its amazing WoW is still relevant.

[Xothic]

There is so much competition right now its amazing WoW is still relevant.

That is a testament to both the fact that a lot of that competition is shallow or seemingly pointless (TERA [very grindy] and GW2 [no classic 'endgame' so to speak]) or is too similar to the model used by WoW to attract those looking for something fresh (Rift). I feel that these three are the main competetors to WoW in the 'classic' MMO scene. I don't really consider TOR a threat because its just so awful and underpopulated, nor EVE because I feel as if it would just attract a mostly different crowd then the others.

[Teebone]

I hate it when people quote that thing in these threads.
WoW is still the king, it's still ruling the MMORPG-market.

Hate it all you like. It's the ugly truth: WoW is on the decline.

[Sanguinerd]

Pretty much what Xothic is saying.

Hate it all you like. It's the ugly truth: WoW is on the decline.

Such a constructive post, Bravo!

[But I Hate You All]

If WOW continues to lose subs at the current rate it will be smaller than EVE in less than four years.

I know the link to Benjamin Button was supposed to be something clever but I am struggling to see any kind of link to this conversation.

Yep. than people will say its the only mmo that had X subs

[Antiderivative]

I think it is silly to blame the decline of subs on "product life cycle". Many products have been around for years without showing any signs of decay.

WoW is a very successful game, but it seems to be on the decline. Simply blaming old age and "product life cycle" seems like a cop out.

It is obvious that WoW will be a staple product for years to come, but there is no reason to get so defensive over the decline in subs. If you enjoy it, then keep on playing it.

[Destinas]

old age? So it peaked at the start of cata and omfg old age hit 3 mo in to it.



The old age must be a nice band wagon

Age of the game has a factor in subs. While they improve the graphics a lot, WoW doesn't offer the great graphics of many newer games. The play style of WoW, as well, is a bit outdated - even though other games tend to copy WoW in that regard too. When there are other MMOs out there that offer more unique ways to play the game, more exciting things to do, and much more fun time spent, WoW has to change their game little by little to either make something better or copy the competition. This is the way business works.

As far as Cata, everyone knows it was bad (or, boring) and people didn't like it. No huge secret there at all. The concept of the expansion was far more exciting than the final product. Pretty unanimous there.

[bison91]

Go back and look at trailer for WotLK and Cataclysm and compare it to trailer for MoP and WoD. Which one looks better and makes you want to start playing? They've obviously dropped the ball and regressed instead of moving forward.

man...wow isnt new for us...we grew up..and if comparing trailers then they are much much better then they were

[Danifilth]

The reason is in decline because all the users are getting gaming pc's able to play new games at 2560x1440 and never came back to wow.

[Cobaltius]

Odd sure seems like they have been boasting a 12 million sub base from day one yet only really 8 million at BC.

[Ateista]

why is it that people just can't get through their thick skulls that this game is nearly A DECADE OLD!

hell, i'm surprised the numbers stayed as high as they did for this length of time.

people are just burnt out on wow. that's it. end of story. stop making these asinine posts.

but, honestly, i think people are just tired of mmo's in general.

[Deleted]

Pretty much what Xothic is saying.




Such a constructive post, Bravo!

As is yours, Bravo!



OT - It would be nice to see wrath sub levels again, but I doubt they can do it.

[Deadite]

why is it that people just can't get through their thick skulls that this game is nearly A DECADE OLD!

While that will certainly account for why new players are not joining the game can you blame that on the current subscribers leaving in the millions? If a game is good then who cares about its age? I have never heard anyone say 'This game is great!! Oh but it's old. I quit!' People stop playing when the game is no longer fun.

When you are stuck with a game that is no longer engaging the current subscribers and unable to draw in new players you are pretty much fucked.

[Hb]

Maybe if PvE wasnt such a walkover(In b4 bad PvE players saying PvE is hard), epics are handed out everywhere, PvP wasnt infested with way too much CC, and stupid "CD Stacking" wasnt in the game maybe then the subs would be good.

And if they took any action towards botters too, lmao they are everywhere.

and dont give me the "lol wow is old" yeah so is counter strike and its doing way better than this pile of crap is right now.

[BenBos]

While that will certainly account for why new players are not joining the game can you blame that on the current subscribers leaving in the millions? If a game is good then who cares about its age? I have never heard anyone say 'This game is great!! Oh but it's old. I quit!' People stop playing when the game is no longer fun.

When you are stuck with a game that is no longer engaging the current subscribers and unable to draw in new players you are pretty much fucked.

Because everything else went free to play.

These Fantasy based MMO's had to LEAVE the subscription competition.

It is very difficult to compete with free to p(l)ay, even if these are complete garbage.

In the long run f2p MMORPG's destroy the complete MMO industry, because these world games are EXTREMELY expensive to make and maintain.

Hearthstone will bring in MUCH more money than all these f2p MMO's combined in 2014 with a fraction of the development cost.

----

So Blizzard already has a excellent answer: create f2p games that actually MAKE money and are easy to maintain instead of making free MMORPG's to still have a few players left and bring in peanuts in revenue.

Catch 22 : the shake out of the MMORPG scene is hurting the others far more than Blizzard, since Blizzard combines subscriptions and f2p games around WoW ...

[Deadite]

Hearthstone will bring in MUCH more money than all these f2p MMO's combined in 2014 with a fraction of the development cost.

So not only do you know how much money every F2p mmo makes a year but you can use precognition to tell us Hearthstone will make more than them? Most impressive!

I don't really see how a free to play game can hope to make up the short fall from WoW. Card games are pretty niche. None of my wow playing friends even care about it. They don't like card games. They are not going to play a style of game they don't like just because it has pretty pictures from wow lore on the cards. I guess time will tell but i doubt it will make more than they lose from wow.

And when do games stop being fun?
Hint: When you play them for a few years in a row!

And millions of people in the span of a few months all got sick of the same old same old at the same time? Ok. I guess no one every left wow because they think it is shit now. Makes sense.

[orioxez]

You do know that in the first 5 years almost 25 million people left this game?

Where are you getting this data from? It seems to me it's hard to make any definitive statement about what caused players to leave/join the game unless we can track major spikes in growth and decline and not just net playerbase.