WoW subscriber data.

[Vorkreist]

your just believing the stats blizzard puts out and assuming in the literal YEARS between thous numbers that they stay the same.

Those are legally binding information put out quarterly for the investors. They used to put out that information because the numbers looked good and it was extra publicity for the game. Wod put the subs below 4 mil hence they changed the tactic since ATVI as whole is still doing better (which is what investors want to know) with wow's dwindling numbers.
Wod and other exp "peaks" are irrelevant. Its the number of people who bought the expansion which says nothing about the actual retention when people play for a few months and see how dog shit it is.

[JohnRoads]

dude you realise it did happen before WOD WOD was just the first time blizzard fucked up and released the data showing how bad the player retention was.

you seriously think that in the middle of WOTLK 10+mil people subbed? you realise if you check cencus data in the middle of expansion only about 1million people show up.

you haven't looked into it go research it and you might be shocked.

WOW subs go up and down ALOT and always have since TBC.

Just so we are clear on the data. Here is the post from mmo-c that showed when the subs fell to 5.5m, https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...er-at-Blizzcon. It clearly shows the official subscription numbers.

Expansion	Start	End	Peak	Low
Vanilla	0m	8m	8m	0m
TBC	8.5m	11m	11m	8.5m
WotLK	11.5m	12m	12m	11.5m
Cata	12m	9.1m	12m	9.1m
MoP	10m	7.4m	10m	6.8m
WoD	10m	5.5m	10m	5.5m

Yes some of these numbers are reported around the launch of the expansions and are therefore influenced by former or next expansion. WotLK was the most steady overall with just a 500,000 between low and peak.

[Phuongvi]

i wonder if classic is a experiment to see if it really does retain more players than their current "approach"

Classic wil be a way to keep the players active and save their asses after the failure of BFA.
Lets just say they are at the end of the road, out of idea and the more it goes the Lore is crap
Like putting a bunch of recolored races and calling it New races cockblock by a gating process.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Your bias shows if you honestly believe that the release of a new expansion, which has kept up with regular content releases, didn't halt the drop and turned it around.

People wanting to read something into Classic servers that ain't there, are in for a rude awakening. Hell, some of them have already woken up seeing as how official focus remains on new content for the game.

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Classic wil be a way to keep the players active and save their asses after the failure of BFA.
Lets just say they are at the end of the road, out of idea and the more it goes the Lore is crap
Like putting a bunch of recolored races and calling it New races cockblock by a gating process.

Ah yes, 13 year old content perpetually stuck in that state, will "save" (kek) Blizzard as opposed to them continuing putting out new content for a game that's 13 years old and still pulls billion-dollar revenue.

Holy fuck you people are delusional to pathetic extent.

[Shibito]

Where are you getting these numbers? 5 million current subs? If this was the case WoW would easily be top streamed and viewed game on twitch. I would estimate WoW currently has less than 1mil prob closer to 500k subs.

Lol are you for real?

[Queen of Hamsters]

Lol are you for real?

They clearly are.

It's downright sad how much their hinge their mental well-being upon the idea of WoW struggling because it's not stuck in 2005 anymore.

[Schmeebs]

Not enough people are streaming Witcher or civ or other games like that so they must be terrible.

Maybe wow just isn't the most fun thing to watch streaming all the time...

[Unholyground]

You will see probably 250k-500k actively playing classic if private servers are any indication.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Classic will have a hype train and then fall back to the community it's there for. Both will add to WoWs numbers though. So good for the whole game over all.

[He-man]

They clearly are.

It's downright sad how much their hinge their mental well-being upon the idea of WoW struggling because it's not stuck in 2005 anymore.

you realise with the current trend wow might be as low as 1-2mil just look at the chart of subs its been decreasing since the start of cata. classic could easily get more subs than that. that's why they are doing it.

[Queen of Hamsters]

you realise with the current trend wow might be as low as 1-2mil just look at the chart of subs its been decreasing since the start of cata. classic could easily get more subs than that. that's why they are doing it.

Show me a factual source that WoW has below 5 million subs right now. Spoiler: You can't.

Like I said, your bias is showing when you believe that the trend was not turned around with the release of a new expansion.

And guess what? We haven't had access to any charts and numbers since the end of WoD, so you're grasping at straws here to support previously mentioned bias.

Classic is being done because WoW is a billion-dollar revenue powerhouse and even if Classic doesn't retain all that many players, they can still keep running. The WoW team is no longer putting out fires like they were at the end of WoD. WoW's next expansion has the interest of millions of people. 10 million views in record time for the announcement cinematic alone.

[Dhrizzle]

the real question is how far did WOD drop and is this drop normal for ALL of the expansions? could it have dropped as low as 3 or 2 million subs? it sure seemed that way how fast it was dropping.

On average WoW has been losing 100k subs per month since the end of WotLK. Sometimes it sees a rise in subs, usually this is due to a new expansion but within a couple of quarters the game drops back to the value you would expect from the 100k/month average.

WoD's massive drop followed an equally unprecedented jump so whilst it seems like the expansion was tanking bad it actually conformed to the 100k/month we saw during to Cata and MoP. The last couple of reports showed a slowing in sub decline, but that isn't unusual when mid/end-expansion content is added (MoP actually showed an increase in subs during either Isle of Thunder or Timeless Isle.)

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Where are you getting these numbers? 5 million current subs? If this was the case WoW would easily be top streamed and viewed game on twitch. I would estimate WoW currently has less than 1mil prob closer to 500k subs.

Maybe WoW appeals more to people who like to play games rather than watch others play them. Either way I wouldn't take Twitch as a solid indicator of WoW's subs.

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Twitch is quite literally the only metric that matters. It is the internet of gaming and will take over the entire industry very soon.

Call me old-fashioned, but I generally rate games on playability over watchability.

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you realize blizzard only releases stats when they are at their peak there is no way that wotlk stayed at 11.5 for its entire life blizzard purposefully only releases data when its at a high point its very likely that as far back as TBC the population peaked at thous numbers then dropped as low as 1-2million. it could have always been this way.

the only reason we know this is with WOD blizzard fucked up and for some reason posted numbers while they where falling and it showed that the game was loosing litearlly 5million subs PER MONTH.

Subscription numbers have been released every 3 months since the beginning of Cataclysm...

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Reading is hard ?

Also, the "drop after release" is a very recent habit - it's just Blizzard damage control "it's cyclical" that was turned into "truth" by the fanboys. But it didn't happen before WoD.

Cata and MoP both started to drop subs after release.

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Those are legally binding information put out quarterly for the investors. They used to put out that information because the numbers looked good and it was extra publicity for the game. Wod put the subs below 4 mil hence they changed the tactic since ATVI as whole is still doing better (which is what investors want to know) with wow's dwindling numbers.
Wod and other exp "peaks" are irrelevant. Its the number of people who bought the expansion which says nothing about the actual retention when people play for a few months and see how dog shit it is.

WoD never dipped below 4m, the last report was 5.5m, down 100k from the previous quarter.

[Soon-TM]

Not enough people are streaming Witcher or civ or other games like that so they must be terrible.

Maybe wow just isn't the most fun thing to watch streaming all the time...

Except that those are (in principle) single player games, you know...

Show me a factual source that WoW has below 5 million subs right now. Spoiler: You can't.

He can't prove his point, and you can't prove the opposite, so you should really jump off your high horse. Unless you want to go through indirect measurings, which do not show healthy numbers certainly, and are thus rejected a priori by the MMOC resident WK squad.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Except that those are (in principle) single player games, you know...


He can't prove his point, and you can't prove the opposite, so you should really jump off your high horse. Unless you want to go through indirect measurings, which do not show healthy numbers certainly, and are thus rejected a priori by the MMOC resident WK squad.

No shit Sherlock, there's no "high horse" since I haven't stated that the game has X amount of subscribers.
I have no idea what a "WK squad" is, but I'd say using indirect measurings (to support an agenda) is just as retarded as trying to build a case based on data from the end of WoD. The expansion that performed so badly not due to "not being Classic anymore", but rather due to a significant lack of content and horrible design decisions that it once and for all managed to attract majority votes in every "worst expansion"-discussion that followed.

[Schmeebs]

Except that those are (in principle) single player games, you know...

So, only games that are streamed that are multiplayer count?

[Soon-TM]

So, only games that are streamed that are multiplayer count?

Single player games are not sub based, which is the main point of the thread.

[RickJamesLich]

This video pretty much sums up why they stopped posting subscription numbers:

[Akka]

I have no idea what a "WK squad" is, but I'd say using indirect measurings (to support an agenda) is just as retarded as trying to build a case based on data from the end of WoD.

Refusing indirect measure out of supporting an agenda is MUCH more retarded than using them. Indirect measures are factual, just not precise. Rejecting a fact because it doesn't conform to an agenda despite being statistically consistent, is the behaviour showing an agenda and stupidity.

[MoanaLisa]

Since Blizzard discontinued reporting subscription information we have generally closed threads like this as being pointless. Which in fact they are as the last few pages show.

No one but Blizzard knows how many subscriptions they have and it's very unlikely that this will be reported for Classic WoW as well.

Since this has degenerated into the usual arguments it will be closed.