10.3 million subscribers

[Deleted]

They've lost 20% of players in 9 months thats a massive chunk to lose. Other than that Blizzard don't seem to get it they promised investors more games NEXT YEAR, they want solutions now I think a lot of the people who left are ones not coming back ever and Blizzard needs to learn now to keep those 10.3 they tried it with 4.2 as you can see it failed epically introducing new time sink zone only pisses off players and makes them resentful also the fact that Cataclysm has NO EFFING content is a lethal cocktail come on the troll heroics were ready at launch and the Firelands was 50%. In all honesty Blizzard need to stop this whole we are spending 4 years on something approach because it makes their products fall flats. SC2 was just honestly meh nothing really new and diablo3 is still looking the same and plays the same. Its like Blizzard have lost part of their soul

[Deleted]

I think Blizzard should lower the price of previous xpacs. It's insanely expensive to buy all of WoW games. This will help bring new players to WoW.

This!! It is really hard to start playing now because you have to buy so many xpacs to get up to date with cataclysm. This is also the fact why there are more guys who unsubscribe than newly subscribe. Lets face it: Buying WoW from the scretch vs buying like Battlefield 3 or any other xBox game: What would you take?

I for sure an xbox game.

[PACOX]

Subscriptio graphs of all major MMORPGs:

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-3.png
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-4.png

World of Warcraft is no where near dying.

Those graphs are poorly designed and outdated. The data is hardly valid. I know for a fact no one except Trion knows Rift's numbers, one can only guess 500k-1mil.

[Yoyodyne]

So when the subs go back up to 11 or 12 million summer of 2012 -- what will all the "wow is dying" people say?

(MoP will be out by the way...for those that are confused)

[Deleted]

So when the subs go back up to 11 or 12 million summer of 2012 -- what will all the "wow is dying" people say?

That is almost impossible because in Summer 2012 we will be in late patch 4.3. and there would probably be a loss too.

[Deleted]

I think WoW is reaching a certain age point now. MMO-market is getting more and more competitive especially with few big names coming out soon. This means WoW might be losing some more players but it will stabilize eventually and the players who stay in WoW are the ones who like the game as it is and are not actively looking for replacement.

I'd say it's a good thing and hopefully will affect positively to the direction where WoW community is headed. Just my thoughts

[Bytes]

So when the subs go back up to 11 or 12 million summer of 2012 -- what will all the "wow is dying" people say?

Yeah because six months into 4.3 people will be crawling back to WoW.

Righttttt.

[Exoblade]

Its not black and white (Aka "wow is dead" or " this always happens.. its fine") Cata was a failed expansion , they took way to long releasing new content and they didn't give us enough content as well. A mmo with the same content for over 6 months? yeah that's good for subscribers.

Right now is a very important time for wow, they have to do much, much better at making content faster in MoP. If they fail again and the subscribers drop to much then i can see it start to snowball out of control.

[Deleted]

Yeah because six months into 4.3 people will be crawling back to WoW.

Righttttt.

exactly!!! It will be the other way round. The DS raid has like 7 Bosses (DW counted as one) and there will be like 3 HCs do you think that will keep the subs rising after 6 months? Never ever

[tsarbomb]

a game with this many active subscribers is bound to have large losses and gains throughout its life. 10.3 million subscribers is still more than pretty much every mmo in existence right now COMBINED. fluctuations will come and go. the game will never fall below 5 million guaranteed until the story is over entirely. too many warcraft fans loyal to the franchise to even come close to considering that this game is "dying". it will die when it is over.

[spirits330]

Yeah because six months into 4.3 people will be crawling back to WoW.

Righttttt.

Plus summer 2011 saw sub amounts drop, too. Blizzard themselves said that subs normally drop during summer anyway (after their Q2 numbers came out). So why expect them to go up summer 2012? MoP may recoup some of the losses incurred, but if it's like Cataclysm, with poor end game content, bad storyline and internal story logic, then the numbers shall fall once again.

[Deleted]

Don't forget that the economic recession are causing people to cancel subscriptions as well. The recession has been going on as long as subs started to decrease and, when faced with the need to cut costs, wow is the first type of spendage to be cut. Not saying all subscription losses are to be blamed on recession, just saying it may be a big part of it due to people simply unable to afford wow anymore.

[Maggibesti]

Dude if 4.2 didn't help subs, how the hell will 4.3?

Funny you'd say that.

4.2: Z'A/Z'G(worst idea ever), Firelands. Can't even seem to remember more lol.

4.3: 3 NEW Heroics, Raid with 1 more encounter than Firelands, Transmogrification, DMF Isle, Raid Finder etcetc... And its the final patch of Cata. Tbh I didn't even like 4.2 much, but 4.3 will be one of my favorite patches since wow launch.

[Deleted]

Don't forget that the economic recession are causing people to cancel subscriptions as well. The recession has been going on as long as subs started to decrease and, when faced with the need to cut costs, wow is the first type of spendage to be cut. Not saying all subscription losses are to be blamed on recession, just saying it may be a big part of it due to people simply unable to afford wow anymore.

Plus the fact that lots of ppl lost their jobs eventually and the amount you need to afford a life (flat, eat ...) is also horendous in some of the countries like Greece (I know lots of greek guys who play on English EU-realms)

[Deleted]

I *think* (hope) there's been enough of a loss etc to rattle Blizzards cage now. From what's going into 4.3 they DO appear to have been "holding out on us" to a point. The next exp, in my eyes, looks better than cata, too early to call if it will be one of the best. All in all a drop in Asia tells them what they needed to hear as they were getting a little lazy.
I too though know a lot of people who are back for 4.3. Meantime i've levelled up a couple of characters I was being lazy with (were at 74 and 80, now at 80 and 84) ready for LFD. I tend to make sure I can jump straight to current "best" LFG stuff so i'll have em both thru zanda+old tier pretty damn fast.

[spirits330]

Overall, the game is still healthy with that many people playing.

On a server by server basis, however, it means servers are losing people, and that translates to less people to recruit, some of whom could be great players. And for dead or struggling servers, it makes raiding and pvp rather hard to nearly an exercise in futility. If you want to leave the server, you have to pony up the cash to transfer using an automated system that really shouldn't be charged for since there's no active person really doing what the servers do on their own.

[MestHoop]

The DS raid has like 7 Bosses (DW counted as one) and there will be like 3 HCs do you think that will keep the subs rising after 6 months? Never ever

Why do people keep saying this.... T_T They're 2 entirely separate encounters. So 8 bosses, not 7...
Main point still stands though and I have to agree. I don't think we're going to see MORE subs if MoP isn't anywhere near release by the time they bring out the next set of numbers.

But even if they do go down, so many people taking it to seriously T_T
Unless I can see guilds on my server falling apart, I ain't worrying (and even then I wont worry, because what good does that?)

[Asmileyface]

800k subs is more than I expected. It will be interesting to see what happens with 4.3 I imagine at the rate wow is losing subs that it will still be in the negatives but not by much.

[Bytes]

Funny you'd say that.

4.2: Z'A/Z'G(worst idea ever), Firelands. Can't even seem to remember more lol.

4.3: 3 NEW Heroics, Raid with 1 more encounter than Firelands, Transmogrification, DMF Isle, Raid Finder etcetc... And its the final patch of Cata. Tbh I didn't even like 4.2 much, but 4.3 will be one of my favorite patches since wow launch.

1) DMF = 1 week every month, you can do all the new DMF stuff in an hour
2) An 8 boss raid, that so far has received very little praise on the PTR
3) Transmog is fine, but it's not really gonna help subs, people aren't gonna sub to wow to play barbie with orcs
4) 3 new heroics to carry bad players through and wait 40 minutes to get into, hooray!
5) Raid finder is going to be a disaster, no vent, no real raid leader, 5 mans can barely complete dungeons, raids are going to be just impossible

[ShimmerSwirl]

You're right about a few things but wrong about why. WoW's content has been constantly getting better, I dont' see how people fail to see this. Furthermore, I've been noticing a constant trend with Blue posts lately. When they talk about "ideas" and "concepts" they often refer to technical limitations. I don't think the game developers are running out of ideas, I think they merely struggling to adopt them to an old game engine and tech that was never designed for some of the features WoW currently has. I think the game itself has become more fluid and playable over the years, but in order to make a huge jump a total revamp is going to be necessary.

I have noticed these 'technical limitation' posts too. I remember when Disc Priests reflective shield used to reflect damage when it was cast on both the priest, and any other player. Sometime just before the release of Wrath (and just after Activision and Blizzard merged), this functionality went away and it would only work when cast on priest himself. The reason for this basically amounted to blizzard saying "we forgot how to program it to work properly so were just changing the tooltip to match our mistake." Ever sense then I have questioned if these 'technical limitations' are actually:

a) the current developers are not as skilled as the ones that originally developed wow.

b) activision trying to reduce cost by having less programmers and less money budgeted to such things, and hiding behind the excuse of 'technical limitations'