Originally Posted by
Callei
Let me put it another way:
If the ingame response is overwhelmingly positive, there's little to no reason to expect large-scale sub drops. If people are happy, why the hell would they quit, barring the usual outliers like financial or time constraints? You can't use the forums to form an opinion on this topic, because by Blizzard's own admission the overwhelming majority of WoW players do not frequent these, or other fan forums, or the official forums. Gambling on listening to forum outcry is what lost them so many subs on Cata release, when they released overtuned 5-mans and normalized 10/25-man difficulty to cater to the people who spent all of Wrath from Ulduar onward demanding less-easy content.
As for my assertions of player burnout in Wrath contributing to the main source of sub loss, it's correlation with the sub drops really getting underway when ICC lasted for a year with no new content. Correlation isn't causation, but it's a strong starting point when looking at how long ICC lasted and when the sub drops really kicked in. The bit about Cata endgame is right out of Blizzard's mouth from Morhaime in interviews during Blizzcon, and Ghostcrawler in his Cata post-mortem--both of them admitted Cataclysm's endgame was too difficult for their target demographic. Ghostcrawler in particular ended up with egg on his face when he spent a month or so talking up Cataclysm's harder endgame on dev blogs only to see the expansion tank in record time.
Now mirror all that, with (personal anecdote incoming) Jade Forest General, Stormwind/Orgrimmar General/Trade, Wandering Isles General, and guild chat on several servers (I mainly play WRA, but also camped out in SW/Org on Boulderfist, Illidan, Medivh, and Moon Guard) have by and large been very positive in regards to MoP, with the usual 'hurr pandas' Trade trolls. I'd say that we'll see very few if any subs lost in the upcoming quarter, and if Blizzard continues delivering quality content like MoP release's, few if any lost all through MoP's life cycle, which would point to stabilization/stagnation instead of decline (meaning WoW has gained all the players it will, and should focus on them as its target demographic instead of potential new players like they did until Cataclysm).