A few possible reasons why WoW has been losing subs

[RWPOPEY]

To start of, I'll say this: I have not looked at any other information other than what I've been hearing through sources such as The Instance or MMO-Champion and using logic to come to my conclusions. I am in no saying that these reasons are the true, exact causes for the recent decline in subscribers. I always welcome new and accurate information. I ask that only that any ensuing discussion remain civil and that no one feeds the trolls.

1. Blizzard, by catering more towards casual gamers, inevitably sealed their own fate. You may be asking "How?" right about now. Casual gamers are looking for fun that doesn't take hours to grind for, a game that can be picked up for 30 minutes to an hour at a time and make significant progress. While you may be able to do that with WoW now, it feels (for me at least) like to succeed big time would take a few hours a day, time that I simply do not have available. I had been running the same content for about a month, with one random dungeon a night, yet I didn't feel like I was progressing at all. And that's when the game gets boring. And when casual gamers are bored, there is no hesitation to stop playing the game and moving on to another one, such as Skyrim (where progression feels faster and more organic). Casual gamers are a fickle crowd, and with the rise of several games that demand more of our time (lookin' at you Skyrim, Minecraft), we will stop putting money into a game we don't play.

2. This next point also is about casual gamers, however in a different context. By serving casual gamers, who feels shafted? The hardcore, nostalgic players who see "their" game falling to pieces around them. And that is a valid feeling. I've been saying that since 3.2, Blizzard seemed to be disregarding those hardcore players who want to have epic, difficult fights. I subscribe to Blizz' idea that as many people as possible should see your content, I also believe, however, that you should be rewarded proportional to the amount of time spent in dungeons and raids. A way Blizz could've done that is by making the 10-man raids the raid finder difficulty, 25-mans the medium difficulty for your generic raid guild and bring back 40-mans for the baddest of the bad-assest guilds. Or the raids of an X.1 patch could've been nerfed in the X.2 patch. But something should have been done for the top 5% of the game.

3. Price. 15$ a month is a lot of money. For that amount I want to be able to play at least 10 hours a month. But a lot of people can't play that much. And with games like CoD/Battlefield and Skyrim, which require only a one-time 60$ fee, provide 100's of hours entertainment. WoW can't compete against that to casual gamers. If Blizz had slowly dropped the price as their subscriber count rose, many people might have started playing (I won't go so far as to say that WoW should've gone free-to-play). I have a lot of friends who would've played WoW, but the price chased them away. Perhaps they would've been willing to play if the price had been 12$, 10$ or even 8$, but something a little lower.

As I said, if you would like to discuss these points, I am open to conversation. Just make sure it remains civil. I am not by any means saying that these points are the truth and need to be accepted by all. I thank you for reading this post.

[shadowmatrix]

A few reasons this will get locked.
1. Its been done already.
2. There are already threads on the same topic.
3. We don't care anymore.

[Underwolf]

I believe Blizzard might just be fine with sub numbers decreasing. Here is the reason:

They are still making great profit with less subs, and it is being possible by reducing the costs. Thus, they are making smaller investments by producing less content (also by recycling content) and making the same money from a smaller group of players. The result is they are making the same money while taking smaller investment risks. They may be just fine with that.

[Trassk]

Once I read 'blizzard are catering to casual gamers' I knew there was nothing constructive to this thread.

Wrath of the lich king had more relaxed leveling and questing and even starting heroics then cata ever did, and wrath got wow up to 12million subs, so whatever you base that assumption on is poor.

[alba007]

Once I read 'blizzard are catering to casual gamers' I knew there was nothing constructive to this thread.

Wrath of the lich king had more relaxed leveling and questing and even starting heroics then cata ever did, and wrath got wow up to 12million subs, so whatever you base that assumption on is poor.

Well Wrath managed to do that because it started with 11 million (8 million from Vanilla plus 3 million from BC) to begin with. During Wrath actually sub gain slowed down (compare 1 million from Wrath to 8 from Vanilla and 3 from BC) and then stopped all together. Then during Cata it started to drop. So, saying Wrath reached to 12 million in that context as if Wrath gained 12 million subs is misleading to say the least.

[Deleted]

Everyone already knows it's not because they changed the game, but because they did not change it enough.

For that amount I want to be able to play at least 10 hours a month. But a lot of people can't play that much

What the hell? If you don't have even 2 hours a week, why would you play MMORPG?

[Tyruin]

During Cata most of the subscribers left when blizzard wasn't 'catering to casuals'. They listened to all the people on the forums wanting a more hardcore game so they complied and the difficulty for most was too extreme hence the large dip in subscribers. It wasnt until they toned it down again that the subscriber base started to stabilize.

[Trassk]

Well Wrath managed to do that because it started with 11 million (8 million from Vanilla plus 3 million from BC) to begin with. During Wrath actually sub gain slowed down (compare 1 million from Wrath to 8 from Vanilla and 3 from BC) and then stopped all together. Then during Cata it started to drop. So, saying Wrath reached to 12 million in that context as if Wrath gained 12 million subs is misleading to say the least.

TBC did bring more in then any other, but whatever happened in wrath not only maintained that growth, but kept it afloat. I believe the mechanics used in tbc, then tying in what they did in wrath made it all flow smoothy. It was only the sudden change of design in cata it began to bleed.

---------- Post added 2012-09-03 at 01:41 AM ----------

During Cata most of the subscribers left when blizzard wasn't 'catering to casuals'. They listened to all the people on the forums wanting a more hardcore game so they complied and the difficulty for most was too extreme hence the large dip in subscribers. It wasnt until they toned it down again that the subscriber base started to stabilize.

Exactly! I said this myself in a guild chat months ago. Hardcore gamers thinking the game has ot be built around there playstyle to make the game good has always been a failed concept, since it doesn't cater to all types of gamers, just there own. For that reason those that found wrath more relaxed an expansion suddenly getting hit with the hard mode cata had lost those subs. Blizzard themselves even admitted it, that they listened to the vocal minority of hardcore players more then the rest of the community and so lost out, that the hardcore community was tiny compared to the rest of the wow subs.

[bot v2.38beta]

COUGHworldwiderecessionCOUGH

[Anonymitylol]

I disagree with every single word you said in your post.

1: Its summer time, subs always drop in summer.
2: Pre expansion boredom, subs always drop before a new expac.
3: No new content for what? 9 months? Of course this is because they are putting final touches ont he expansion, but still a good reason for subs to drop just like they did when ICC was the only thing to do for 6 months.

Your post is completely nullified by both Burning Crusade and Wotlk(Both gained subs at the end). You want to know what they did right? They catered to EVERY crowd, every player had something to progress towards.

COUGHworldwiderecessionCOUGH

$15 a month is nothing, if someone can afford internet they can afford a fee for a game of good quality. The fact Blizzard is releasing content slower than games with <500k subs is just proof they're only worried about profits.

[Pyrolight]

3. Price. 15$ a month is a lot of money. For that amount I want to be able to play at least 10 hours a month. But a lot of people can't play that much. And with games like CoD/Battlefield and Skyrim, which require only a one-time 60$ fee, provide 100's of hours entertainment. WoW can't compete against that to casual gamers. If Blizz had slowly dropped the price as their subscriber count rose, many people might have started playing (I won't go so far as to say that WoW should've gone free-to-play). I have a lot of friends who would've played WoW, but the price chased them away. Perhaps they would've been willing to play if the price had been 12$, 10$ or even 8$, but something a little lower.

1. The more you drop the price the more subs you have to have to make up the difference. Say WoW went to 10 bucks a month. It would take half again as many subs to make the same profits (ignoring additional costs to runs servers and such for them) and being that the market for mmos seems to be capped it is highly unlikely they would make up the shortfall.

2. The design of the game itself would keep the 10 hour a month folks out of the picture for the most part.

3. F2P MMORPG are fairing no better then P2P ones as far as revenue goes.

Who knows exactly how many F2P "subs" you need to represent one P2P sub but I am sure it is significant.


I doubt the sub itself represents more then 5% of all people who have quit/not played.

If say WoW was F2P during Cata I suspect a lot less would have quit but that is more representative of the lack of good content then the sub price itself.

[Cows For Life]

I disagree with every single word you said in your post.

1: Its summer time, subs always drop in summer.
2: Pre expansion boredom, subs always drop before a new expac.
3: No new content for what? 9 months? Of course this is because they are putting final touches ont he expansion, but still a good reason for subs to drop just like they did when ICC was the only thing to do for 6 months.

Repeat threads are fkn annoying BTW. You should have done a search and you would have found a million other threads about exactly this topic to spew your drivel in.

1. False.
2. False.
3. False.

[Cows For Life]

Nice argument kiddo.

I'm right kiddo.

[Destruktion]

2: Pre expansion boredom, subs always drop before a new expac.

This is the only part of your post I have a problem with. No, subs don't always drop before a new expansion. This is totally unprecedented.

[Layuth]

As bad as Cataclysm has been I believe Mists of Pandaria will be much worse. Expect sub counts to drop even more.

[KCguy]

The main reason people are leaving is a few reasons. One, people are burnt out on the game. It's 8 years old. Two, Cataclysm was a complete failure. People left because they're bored. No content for many months. What do you expect? Three, people left because of Diablo. People will be back come Mists.

[Caliph]

THE REASson subs were lost was because the game became boring and dull. cata was epic fail from the start because it kept a lot of people dwindling and dawdling around instead of playing.

- long dps queues
- long cds on mats for professions
- boring and uninspired zones,
- linear progression
- fail pvp
- increased difficulty while good isn't so good if you wait for 45 mins in a que only to have group fall apart because of bads and numbskulls.
- rehashed raids
- portals everywhere
- boring (imo) raids i.e. firelands (imo) DS
- tongue and cheek stories (uldum)
- horde favoritism.

these are reasons i didn't play more than like 6 months of cata in total despite having never lapsed subscription the previous 6 years. I didn't even mention the long delays between patches and low content output. just bad.

anyways, that's my take.

[KCguy]

As bad as Cataclysm has been I believe Mists of Pandaria will be much worse. Expect sub counts to drop even more.

And why do you think this? They're going back to the roots of WoW, bringing back a lot of cool stuff and there is going to be more to do in Mists than every expansion combined.

[Cows For Life]

Another winning argument full of awesome reasoning.

Show me the chart where you draw your claims from. I'll bet there is none.

[Adam Jensen]

Given the fact that there are so many disparate threads about how and why WoW is losing subs, I don't think anyone except Blizzard knows why WoW is losing subs, beyond wild speculation.