Bellular analyses WoW's health.

[deenman]

all this is is estimations of players at the end game, all with 3rd party data that does not automatically update.

sure,but we compare it with older data,do you actualy think endgame raiders just stoped doing raids and started lvling and doign random pet battles instead?no...its also telling that the numbers are THIS bad with classic around,retail numbers are likely under 500k easily

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>"Estimation"
>based off of addon downloads
lmao

easy on the copium

[Dazmalak]

I suspect his numbers are a rough estimate, but not totally inaccurate. No one I know plays the game anymore. Anectdotal? Sure. How many of you have a lot of gray names in your guild and friend lists?

[deenman]

Games with cyclic content releases have cyclic player activity. News at 11.

correct,exept this time that cyclic player base has gone down by huge ammounts,this makes wod's 4 mil sub low look impresively popular by comparison,and remember we have classic out,this is REALLY bad

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I suspect his numbers are a rough estimate, but not totally inaccurate. No one I know plays the game anymore. Anectdotal? Sure. How many of you have a lot of gray names in your guild and friend lists?

the data is very solid and clear,we see massive drop offs in every form of endgame content,at release of a raid and tbc phase even!...do you think all these players just randomly started doing outdoor petbattles by the milions? lol...

any1 saying this is normal or third party not to be taken seriously are simply deluding themselfes,we are in a VERY bad spot atm

classic is really keeping wow on life support atm,and wotlk will likely help a fair bit....but retail is likely under the 500k mark easily if not 200k

[anon5123]

easy on the copium

"anyone who disagrees with my doomsaying is coping"

I have to wonder why people come to a forum for a game they hate just to whine that it's dying
especially when, according to these whiny doomsayers, WoW has been "dying" for about 11 years now.

[Sting]

Gonna sell my stocks in ATVI and reinvest that money in copium, the sales are WAY up judging by this thread

[Kralljin]

and remember we have classic out,this is REALLY bad

Remember that Classic (TBC) is completely out of the loop here, we don't know how many players from those raised numbers also engage in TBC or how many people play TBC exclusively.

Sure, that plays in Blizzards "favor" purely numerically speaking, however, i think it doesn't need to be spelled out that the more subs come from Classic (TBC), the worse it looks for the Retail team.

[deenman]

"anyone who disagrees with my doomsaying is coping"

I have to wonder why people come to a forum for a game they hate just to whine that it's dying
especially when, according to these whiny doomsayers, WoW has been "dying" for about 11 years now.

oh i agree wow has had silly doomsayers since the literal alpha days,but usualy those doomsayers had no leg to stand on,this time there is actual clear data that shows the player base is gone in scary numbers

[Couchpotato2013]

all this is is estimations of players at the end game, all with 3rd party data that does not automatically update.

Raider io mythic plus data is entirely based upon api created (allowed) by blizzard. The only caveats are Chinese scores need to be input manually, and it obviously only tracks characters who have completed a +2 or higher regardless of how depleted.

So yes that data is based upon an assumption of active characters and as far as I can think is only restricted by needing to be 60. Pretty sure you don’t even need to have picked a covenant or even a soulbind to join into a m+ group (thus much wider scope of characters compared to the narrowing down they did in the beginning).

And for all the defenders of WoW like one youtuber posting an attack on this, bellular did a defense of their numbers on his Friday podcast. Even said that if people say he can’t comment on the numbers because he isn’t a mythic player, one of the chief people making the data was a multi-CE player.

[Axaron]

Oh wow he said in a lot of words and infographics what we all already know: the WoW population is on the decline. Brilliant and so forth.

[Lucetia]

Now before everyone breaks out the pitchforks, it should be noted that though these numbers are indeed pathetic, it does miss a frame of reference as it lacks comparable numbers from previous expansions

No, the only thing that would be "pathetic" here would be that he used a 3rd party site that relies on addon data to even update. That site has always been known to be highly inaccurate even during WoW's high phases. The Raid/M+ data is always going to be low too.

Basically, the video and the pictures just showed a skewed perception to fit the narrative that he is shooting for.

[Axaron]

Gonna sell my stocks in ATVI and reinvest that money in copium, the sales are WAY up judging by this thread

ATVI is going to continue to make money, Warzone D2:R and Vanguard will give them one of their best quarters yet.

[Ivarr]

No, the only thing that would be "pathetic" here would be that he used a 3rd party site that relies on addon data to even update. That site has always been known to be highly inaccurate even during WoW's high phases. The Raid/M+ data is always going to be low too.

By all means provide better data we can work with then. Maybe it will tell us something else.

[deenman]

1) Bellular has no insight into sub numbers, these graphs are one and all "estimations" he pulled out of his ass.

2) Bellular has always made lots of money by joining whichever drama train came through the village. It's his entire shtick. Just look at his video titles and you will realize that he makes money off of repeating the opinions of unhappy people back to them so they feel validated. WoW always had a large unhappy playerbase and Bellular is playing their mouthpiece.

3) He is an arrogant jackass, that pretends to know about game development because he wants to make a game (which he failed to do for now), so he bashes people that have created multi-billion dollar companies and AAA titles, while in truth he has no clue.

4) He was clearly paid off by other companies to do this bashing. Amazon has given millions to streamers to promote their stuff, do you really think they wouldn't give money to someone that has already shown more then willing to bash WoW for some extra bashing?

In short: Bellular is about the least trustworthy source you can possibly have. If you need someone to make your opinion for you, that is fine, but stop pretending like this is the gospel of truth.

1) there is clear data showing that activity at endgame has falled off by the milions,unless you think all those players all of a sudden started to do outdoor pet battles maybe LOL

2) bell has never been THIS angry ever,its not even close,you can tell hes taken all this pretty badly,he likes wow he doesnt want it to be trash

3) maybe idk,different people see different stuff,also you dont need to be a world class chief to tell you are being served literal shit on a plate

4) thats literaly not legal and against youtube terms to not make public

you dont need to trust bell,you need to look at the data

[Lucetia]

By all means provide better data we can work with then. Maybe it will tell us something else.

There is no data that can be used because only Blizzard has access to it all. Which still doesn't change anything. All these "predictions" and "omg this is happening" are nothing but things they do to get views. They have no more of an idea what is happening than your next door neighbor. So they take what little data they can get and run with it and blow the narrative out of proportion. So overall there isn't much to discuss about the actual topic at hand because it's all speculative.

For all we know there could be 10 million playing, 100 people playing, etc. All it is at this point is guesses. Does going around and doomsaying "It's the end of the world" type predictions do anything useful? No, but when people repost things like this then people on Youtube/Twitch/etc see this is what people are talking about and then continue to run with it because it gets them views.

[Lolites]

That said, it's not a hot take to say that WoW expansions don't retain players very well. Everyone knows that, especially Blizzard.

well, sure, and everyone knows they NEVER did...
roughly at begining of pandaria they released info 100m people tried wow yet they never had more than aprox 12m players, so at the time of pandaria roughly 88% of people already left... in the begining it was just ofset with constant influx of new players, which HAD TO end at some point...

[TheFirstOnes]

News flash: 17 Year Old game fails to keep up, and it’s classic variant is now being realized by many to be a big cope.

Glad I quit MMO’s.

[Ivarr]

For all we know there could be 10 million playing, 100 people playing, etc. All it is at this point is guesses. Does going around and doomsaying "It's the end of the world" type predictions do anything useful? No, but when people repost things like this then people on Youtube/Twitch/etc see this is what people are talking about and then continue to run with it because it gets them views.

A large amount of discussion on this form rests on personal assumptions people have on the current state of the playerbase. Even when this isn't immediately discussed, a lot of other topics boil down to what figure for the player population someone holds in their mind.

If there was a way to confirm there are indeed 10 million or even just 100 people playing then that would be swell. It would cut through this fog and a lot of the discussions would be more focused.

Therefore anything that gets us closer to this figure is something I embrace. I rather work with a flawed attempt at approximating this data than no data at all. If Blizzard isn't disclosing this information (suspect in and of itself) then that only leaves us with the next best thing.

News flash: 17 Year Old game fails to keep up, and it’s classic variant is now being realized by many to be a big cope.

What's vexing is that other MMO's hardly innovated anything either. Blizzard has basically been resting on their laurels due to the momentum they enjoyed, which in its turn has throttled other attempts at advancing the genre.

[Lolites]

Comparing to prior expansions where this activity didn't show nearly the same drop...

actualy, back when we had sub numbers we DID see this drop every expansion since cata, and reason why we didnt see it before is bcs of influx of new players was skewering the data (which ofc had to end at some point), and we know people were leaving in droves before as roughly at begining of pandaria 100m people played wow, yet they never had more than cca 12m players... so MASSIVE amounts of people were leaving since begining...
and that - unlike the guesswork done by belular - is coming from OFFICIAL SOURCE, blizzard itself...

[TheWorkingTitle]

Who is this guy anyway?

The graphs pretty much sum up what everyone knows though. We're nearing rock bottom with no light at the end of the tunnel.

[Usernameforforums]

He's not using the data of one patch. He's comparing it to all other patches from 7.1 to now. Did you watch the video you posted?

Furthermore, this is more about analysing trends using datasets from the same source (raider.io). It doesn't have to be a 100% accurate depiction of sub/player numbers or whatever because it is about an overall trend shown by these numbers and this trend is very steeply downward compared to other patches. Now, you could argue that the players that are collected in these datasets somehow behave vastly different than the entirety of the playerbase but I haven't seen any convincing reasoning in support of this view.

There is no data the can be recorded on the entire playerbase via third party. Just based on that, there will never be convincing evidence for the latter unless bliz outright show the data.

We can only go off of what can be trusted and raider.io is fairly popular enough to be a credible source. How its presented can be a different story.