BFA subs, and someone's probably getting fired

[hyphnos]

I suppose doesn't count the gold token people and just americans

The system makes zero distinction between buying time with a token, buying a block of game time with battle.net balance, or paying with a cc. It extends your sub and puts an expiration date on it.

[mistmitpandas]

Who says the numbers arent normal or expected? What were the numbers for Legion after 2 months? And the addons before? From these numbers alone, you cant interpret anything.

[oplawlz]

I bought BfA during Pre orders, leveled an allied race to 110, and kinda ended up with burnout so I waited to see how BfA would develop.

I haven't subbed during pre patch or BfA itself.

This is a good point - people had to preorder to get access to content. It's not hard to believe 200k preordered then noped out of a sub when they saw what bfa had to offer. Hell, I know personally a few people who preordered but wont sub until flying is added in.

[Sturmbringe]

Legion was garbage too.. sry... it dropped a crapload of subs as well... albeit not as much/as fast as BfA... but that is because BfA IS Legion 2.0.

Let's be honest though. Blizzard is full aware of how badly the game is tanking... they have known since WoD. But they are trying to hide behind lies they tell themselves "The genre is just stale." "Players have changed."

But Activision jumped the Blizzard people and said "You will release Classic whether you like it or not." And despite the fact they threw a handful of people at the project, it is getting closer to release. When it does and blows away current WoW... heads will roll. We will FINALLY see a return to what made WoW amazing in expansions.

I will giggle like a schoolgirl when I hear of Ion and friends being fired. These people have damaged WoW as much as Jay Wilson destroyed D3.

It is undeniable.

I disagree. The problem isn't Hazzikostas himself just as Greg Street wasn't the problem per se. We are just seeing Ion at the forefront just as we used to see GC at the forefront before, but they are not the people that decide the direction of the game. It's all of them combined. To steer WoW to its present state was a collective decision. Everyone agreed. Hazzikostas, Allen-Brack, Chilton. All of them. Firing Hazzikostas and his afro-haired friend won't change anything. They will just hire others to continue where the previous left off.

[HuxNeva]

the people who does so are idiots because BfA broke financial record of sales of expansion.

You realy have to learn to see through the marketing BS. What they said was that compared to other expansions, it sold more 'by the first release day'. They forgot to mention that 'by the first release day' the game was already purchasable for several months with major content incentives (allied races) available to purchasers only. People that were going to play BfA had 0 reason not to buy it before that day. This time they even allowed upgrading to the Physical Collectors edition at the price of the difference. So they are basically comparing the whole of an expansion's unique subscription sales to what was in the past a one day sale.

[Teri]

Realmpop counts characters, not accounts. There is a small window at the start of an expac where these converge (people leveling and gearing their main while not yet going for alts).

I know that it counts alts, or people are still leveling, but this far into BfA I'd assume most people who played it at least have 1 120.

110 :
US: 4.122.280
EU: 4.058.855

111-119:
US: 923.147
EU: 818.119

Number of 110 of course is still huge, because many people had multiple alts for questlines/artifacts/magetower, and 2 years instead of 2 months of expansion.

[Mardux]

I mean, okay, lets say we can take this report for their word and assume that it's even just one region. That's still *1.5 million subs lost in two months so it doesn't look great even when we look at the ebb and flow of MMO subscription cycles.

But like anything else when it comes to "leaks" he sums it up best:

Where can i find only western region subs on aug 14? Where can i find only western region subs on September 14?

[The Stormbringer]

Didn't Blizzard say 10m at launch, or something like that? Seems pretty off to these numbers.

That said, I wouldn't be too shocked. There's usually a big drop-off within the first couple of months, then things stabilize and fluctuate throughout for patches.

EDIT: He also says that his numbers don't include China, so that's a massive discrepancy.

[Zandalariprelate]

The system makes zero distinction between buying time with a token, buying a block of game time with battle.net balance, or paying with a cc. It extends your sub and puts an expiration date on it.

I see, well to be honest I still believe the subs should be somewhat a bit higher than this, even Pandaria got 6 millions and somwhat keeped the numbers for 6 months

[darklogrus]

Where can i find only western region subs on aug 14? Where can i find only western region subs on September 14?

You wont find a break down of Regions because then Blizzard couldn't use their excuse that of blaming the Asian market..

[hyphnos]

If it's just NA that makes a lot of sense, but there's no possible way this includes all regions given that BfA sold 3.4M units on launch day alone, with lots more sure to come in the days/weeks after.

So yeah, take this with a giant grain of salt. While the game doe not by any means have tons of subs compared to the days of yore, it's not down to 1.7M.

EDIT: also, 50% of players using Weakauras? Yeah, bullshit. 50% of players barely even enter non-LFR raids. If anyone actually believes fulyl half the playerbase uses that addon they are completely delusional. I'm pretty sure even DBM isn't that popular and it by far the most downloaded addon.

How many times do you people need to have it explained to you. BfA didn't fucking sell 3.5M copies around launch day. It sold that many copies EVER up to that point, including the pre-sales that started way back in Legion so people could access the new fucking races.

There is a LOT of data about NA/EU subs that comes from RIGHT HERE ON MMO-C. When they do those data pulls (that they do a LOT less often now), they track data for X character from X accounts active in the last 30 days and quite often the number of active accounts for NA/EU has been below 2 million.

If I were to hazard a guess, the reason those data pulls have stopped is because it does in fact show things Blizzard would rather the public didn't see.

In any case, if 3.5 million people overall have bought BfA and and even say 750k of them bought it way back when then it's not a stretch to think that the dabblers who try out every expac have drifted away and we could be at below 2 millions subs because we see numbers that low frequently, which tells us kind of where the floor is. It's just not normal for it to happen this early in an expac but with this one, I find it totally plausible. I have never felt less like playing than now and my sub is active only because it's prepaid with gold.

[Maudib]

If it's just NA that makes a lot of sense, but there's no possible way this includes all regions given that BfA sold 3.4M units right at launch day, with more sure to come in the days/weeks after.

So yeah, take this with a giant grain of salt. While the game doe not by any means have tons of subs compared to the days of yore, it's not down to 1.7M.

Wait... wut?

3.4 million sold preorder. Sure they sold some after that but not very many. People who play WoW don't wait til after launch to buy it... only a very few.

To think that they lost 1/2 their subs in the first few months? Totally believable... same thing has happened last 2 expansions as well. Only Blizz hasn't released numbers... and there is a reason for that.

I mean.. come on. 12 MILLION players during WotLK TWELVE! And stayed throughout the ENTIRE EXPANSION.

Now people are trying to defend 3.4 million dropping to 1.7?

Part of that drop is people trying FF14... a game that is growing... not dying. A game that is on the exact same business model as WoW... Buy it up from for $60 and $15 a month thereafter.

People... by kissing their butts... you are hurting your own game! Before long WoW will go into maintenance mode... and you won;t get new content to lay.. all because you trusted them to make self-identified changes to make the game good again.

- - - Updated - - -

Naa, Blizzard is going to force Classic players to have a active BFA account so they can tell everyone how awesome BFA is still doing..

No doubt... but WE will know simply by seeing the population in game vs. modern ghosttowns. And Activision will demand numbers internally as to how Classic is doing.

[Sabever]

Bad game is dead. Classic will launch with triple the BFA population.

[Selah]

Sales does not equal players.

No, you're right. It doesn't necessarily equal players, but it's not an unreasonable assumption to say that someone who pre-ordered or bought it day one ended up playing it. I'd be interested to meet the people who did buy it and then never played it. That's a lot of money for a product you'd never use.

[Deleted]

Exactly this. People like to think that every player visits MMO-Champ, or the sub-reddit, which they don't. Blizzard is a business, they want money, they also have metrics that we do not. How do you find out what the average/majority player is? Just look at which systems they focus on and continue to move towards, that is what the majority plays.

Thats worst thing you can do. Most people use LFR but is LFR fun? No it isnt. People use it only becouse it is easy way to get grar and see content. Create content on praticipation numbers is no go. Fun is factor what you should use. Becouse long run nobady will play boring game no matter how accessible game is. I hate LFR yez i still done it back in Legion for free chance of legos but it doesnt mean it is good system what i enjoyed. I joined LFR and watched streams, youtube on my second monitor.

[HuxNeva]

Yes and no.

Same as the past 4 expansions in overall trend, but the 50% drop this quick is new, and the starting number is much lower (so there wasn't as much excitement for BfA even at launch despite the PR Blizz tried pushing).

Also, from an overall trend, the OP is more accurate than you think. Subs were (supposedly) as high as 12.5 million back in Wrath / early Cata (supposedly because if you look at the financials at that time, revenue didn't match the concept of 12.5 million, closer to about 9 million at that time at best). If they really are down below 2 million subs, then Blizz may very well be looking to scrap WoW in the next few years (they may try one last hoorah expansion). They have other properties that likely make a lot more money for them than WoW if the subscriptions are heading to sub-1 million in a few more years (perhaps even before the end of this expansion).

Here's a guesstimate: the average revenue just from the game and ingame services per month for a WoW account is around 20$. Even with 'just' 1M players, that would mean about $240M year. That is not yet adding all revenue from merchandising, events and IP. Do you honestly believe they would just let that go?

[Deleted]

and people say "the mount for the gametime is not there because the subs look bad!" well ... ofc it wasnt made in the last 5mins... its a failsave smart people have failsaves in case something goes bad..

why do you think all of a sudden Ion is reporting new stuff that would probably be better fit for blizzcon panels?
a mount that you get "for free" if you sub...

sure its not a last minute decision to do that stuff... its a failsave.


and the people that say "oh that must be only one region" maybe you should understand that your beloved game isnt so popular anymore? im mean just look at the gaming industry there is plenty of other games out there.. and the kids play stuff like fortnite nowadays..

Literally impossible, because BFA's launch sales were 3.4 mil just on one day, so for the subscriptions at launch to be 3.2mil 200k people who bought the game would have to be sub-less and that's without preorders and so on.

its possible because they count preorders into that number. people preordered while in legion and didnt have a sub active at launch.

(if they wouldnt count these preoders into the release sales they would cuck themselfs because thats why they did the WORLDWIDE release just so the numbers look better. old xpacs werent worldwide releasees and still had better sales numbers but when they say "best selling worldwide release" they are right to say that altho the numbers are far from good if you take the history into account)

[Unholyground]

1) every major cooperation lies about its income, and activision holds the honor of literally the most greedy worst company in entire video game industry, if a single person in entire video games is lying, that person is 100% bobby kodick, that guy hates gaming more than ur 70 year old grandma or any usa senator
2) what at least i want or hope is either wow improve again or we get wc4, i'm 50/50 on either, but not it get ignored, i will NOT and NEVER be happy that wow is in ruins with no future, i fear the worst that blizz treat wow as they treat diablo

1) the collected data doesn't need u use addon, like how old websites were used to, they count ppl online etc so u don't need to have addon to know that u are playing, but that isn't what happened
2) what happened was leak from blizzard themselves, a leak that potentially may had our contact infos, our credit card numbers and so on, everyone here is focusing on sub number while ppl who are still active should be worried about their bank accounts in first place, weak auras posted from a leaked twit info, not using their addon

Sweet, Blizzard is liable regardless if your info is taken, they better pony up some free game time for everyone. Actually this could be our chance to bitch at them to make the game buy to play like Guild Wars 2.

[Raven]

Bad game is dead. Classic will launch with triple the BFA population.

Sure it will, and after a month when most of the i really think i want vanilla but i don´t realise that it will tank even harder.

[Redroniksre]

Thats worst thing you can do. Most people use LFR but is LFR fun? No it isnt. People use it only becouse it is easy way to get grar and see content. Create content on praticipation numbers is no go. Fun is factor what you should use. Becouse long run nobady will play boring game no matter how accessible game is. I hate LFR yez i still done it back in Legion for free chance of legos but it doesnt mean it is good system what i enjoyed. I joined LFR and watched streams, youtube on my second monitor.

Most people have no aspiration to go higher with raiding. They never have and never will. Does LFR have problems? Yeah it does, but it is the only way most people will see that content.