Can you really say WoW is dying?

[mahonisaya]

World of warcraft is coming up on it's 10 year anniversary so it is no surprise that wow has gone down in subs since its peak. However, many people say WoW is dying. Can you really say that? Sure WoW has a lot less subs than it did at it's peak but it still has more subs than most (if not all) games on the market that use require a subscription. 3 million less people may be playing now than when it was at it's peak (around 12 million) but mot games don't even reach 3 million! Wildstar right now has about 1 million subs (active subs) so I wouldn't say WoW is doing a bad job by anybodies standards and there is always a jump in sub numbers when a new Xpac is released. Thoughts?

[Xeraxis]

die
verb (used without object), died, dying.
1. to cease to live; undergo the complete and permanent cessation of all vital functions; become dead.
2. (of something inanimate) to cease to exist:
3. to lose force, strength, or active qualities:
4. to cease to function; stop:
5. to be no longer subject; become indifferent:
6. to pass gradually; fade or subside gradually (usually followed by away, out, or down):
7. Theology. to lose spiritual life.

Looks to me as though it is dying.

[Tomservo]

Looks to me as though it is dying.

That Webster fella is tough to argue with.

[Thirstblood]

Wow is slowly dying yes but it's still active till blizzard decides to pull the plug. Then you can say wow is dead.

[Noctredors]

First off all... WoW has lost 5 million subscribers since the peak back in Wotlk. Not 3 million.

Next Expansion will bring WoW up to 8 million, that's my prediction. But the numbers will continue to fall.

Cataclysm made WoW lose 2 million subscribers. MoP made WoW lose 3 million subscribers. It's just going to keep getting worse. Blizzard has to get their shit together by removing the ingame store, the fucking garrisons, giving people back their capital cities.

And listen to what their customers want.

[WanderingBreezes]

Looks to me as though it is dying.

If we use those definitions then, yes. You are right.

From the moment of its conception, before the first line of code was written, it had already begun to die as all things have and will in the course of time.

[Xeraxis]

If we use those definitions then, yes. You are right.

From the moment of its conception, before the first line of code was written, it had already begun to die as all things have and will in the course of time.

So you agree that it is dying. Thanks for taking the time to prove that.

[blankfaced]

WoW is dying similar to how we start dying the moment we're born.

Darn you, yours sounded better:

From the moment of its conception, before the first line of code was written, it had already begun to die as all things have and will in the course of time.

[Tavin]

Wow is not dying and it wont for a long time. WoD will come out later this year and the numbers will go up once again. Depending on how well they do with that expansion (which seems fairly awful atm, garrison, no flyin mount which seems like a problem for many ppl etc) the numbers will go either up or down half way through that expansion.

[nyc81991]

You might want to check your math there. 12 Million subs - 3 Million would be 9 Million subs..

WoW is at roughly 6.8 Million "subs" right now. WoW has lost about 5.2 Million subs since its peak.

To put that another way, WoW has lost nearly 50% (half) its playerbase.

[Xeraxis]

Wow is not dying and it wont for a long time. WoD will come out later this year and the numbers will go up once again. Depending on how well they do with that expansion (which seems fairly awful atm, garrison, no flyin mount which seems like a problem for many ppl etc) the numbers will go either up or down half way through that expansion.

So you think WoD will cause WoW to gain back 5 million subscriptions?

[Gimlix]

You might want to check your math there. 12 Million subs - 3 Million would be 9 Million subs..

WoW is at roughly 6.8 Million "subs" right now. WoW has lost about 5.2 Million subs since its peak.

To put that another way, WoW has lost nearly 50% (half) its playerbase.

in nearly 4-5 years time.
So that i call frky damn impressive that it is taking so long.
Once the decline started in SWTOR it died in less then 2 months.

Gives you a idea how strong WoW fanbase is.

[WanderingBreezes]

So you think WoD will cause WoW to gain back 5 million subscriptions?

Oh the frailty of five million humans. For what difference is five million or five at all in the grand scheme of things. And those five million will also wither away and die in time and thus will WoW die out in complete disregard for their patronage.

[Kithelle]

WoW may be wounded, but dying no.

It's 10 years old...it still has more subs then almost any if any other mmo out there...if you want dying then lets talk when its down to a few million.

[Deleted]

Wow is dying, yes.

[Prothall]

So you agree that it is dying. Thanks for taking the time to prove that.

And yet you don't have a problem with taking the time to rag on a game you obviously don't like, since you're spending so much time telling us how doomed it is. Must be nice having nothing more important to occupy your life with.

[ksiyas]

What is wrong with the in-game store?

[Jtbrig7390]

in nearly 4-5 years time.
So that i call frky damn impressive that it is taking so long.
Once the decline started in SWTOR it died in less then 2 months.

Gives you a idea how strong WoW fanbase is.

To be fair SWTOR didn't die since its still going. A MMO dose not die because it adopts a f2p model. It dies when the plug is pulled and the servers shutdown. There is many reasons to cause this and the most common is the lack of players/profit.

Ontopic: Yes WoW is dying anyone who thinks different is a fool. Everything that begins will end and in the middle its dying. WoW could shutdown next year or in 10 years but until the plug is pulled it is in fact dying.

Now is WoW bleeding subs.....Yes and I don't think there is anything at this point blizzard can do to stop it. The bleed will run its course and stop at a point. If that point in wich it stops hits a number blizzard dose not like then they mite adopt a f2p model and when that happens WoW will skyrocket in players.

No one will knows when this will happen but blizzard is clearly interested in a f2p setup via there next MMO and there 2 F2p titles. Hearthstone is already pulling in huge amounts of cash for them and Heroes will do the same. The f2p style cash shop in WoW is already pulling in huge amounts of cash.

I will say this I do feel WoW is going to go though some major changes within the next 2-3 years.

[sarecho]

wow peaked at cata's launch in december with 12,000,000 subs

from that point until 5.2, wow lost on average 5000 customers PER DAY. that's 2010-2013, about 3 years, losing 5000 customers per day

wow didn't peak and slowly decline, wow was growing, growing then BOOM the sub decline was like falling off a cliff.
you're damn right that losing about 40% of your customers over 30% of your lifespan is dying. it's one of the largest declines a business will ever see. for comparison, EQ's "epic decline" that took the game from the #1 MMORPG to the #7 MMORPG (when there weren't many MMORPGs) in a year averaged a smaller % of lost customers than did wow over a THREE YEAR PERIOD

people don't realize how much wow is literally bleeding subs. and a lot of the people still logging into wow are just addicts. they do nothing, they afk in a city and argue in trade. turn trade off and i guarantee half the subs would never come back.

wow is in bad shape right now. the december 2010-february 2011 decline was historic.

all that said, wow still has a lot of players and these server merges will fix a lot of future problems, but just not putting out shit will help more than anything. wow's best ideas over the past 10 years have been other peoples ideas. now in wod they're ripping off oqueue as a main upgrade. i just wish they'd simply be creative. they've lacked heavily in creativity. after the LK story arc that felt rushed a little, it's like they just didn't know what to do. i don't feel they had a real plan. i think titan took some of their attention (and now it's 100% dead) and it's been all down here from there. they were spread too thin, they tried to throw some shit together and a lot of people said "fuck it, not worth it"

so yeah, wow is dying and if they don't stop with the bullshit they're pulling, it's going to be dead way earlier than it ever should have. this happens all the time to products though. when you stop doing what got you there (usually for short-term monetary gain) you put out a shit product.

if you love wow, you shouldn't feel like everything is ok. we're now at fewer subs than what vanilla peaked at and vanilla today would bomb like fuck. it wasn't "lazy facebook gaming mom" friendly like today's mmorpgs mostly are (ESO, rift and EVE excluded) and that means "you're not landing millions of subs"

i personally think that in 50 years, this will be one of the worst eras for creativity in gaming. 20 years ago was golden, today is fucking pathetic. it's a lot of people wanting to go a lot of different ways and nobody is doing it right.

[Bigcountry11782]

6 million people still play and the numbers will go back up some when WoD is out.WoW is far from dead or dying.