It's startling how fast game activity is falling

[MarizzaDraenor]

People hited exalted and stopped doing dailies. Thats what happened to me at least.

[AeneasBK]

So what are these game breaking, contradicting game decisions they took? Please enlighten me.

They made dungeons hard, then made them easy. Clearly a complete turnaround of the games direction, wouldn't you agree?

[Deleted]

lol gw2 is not even half a year old and is down to 17,855 hours played from 1st week's 92,946.
not to mention the tortanic...

and an 8 years old game should worry about a slight increase in a pattern that exists since TBC? right.

[Gnomeschool]

I sure the hell played a lot more in the first couple of weeks than I do now, but I'm still logging in every day for an hour or so.

[hiragana]

Im still playing, though when my sub runs out i wont be renewing unless they make this expansion more alt friendly.
I dont have a 'main' i like to play many characters, i dont mind it taking a while to gear them up but i do prefer to level them through dungeons (after ive done the quests once). Dungeons give terrible exp this expansion though, so im just dicking around in low level bgs and with the AH till my sub runs out.
Enchanting recipes being behind 2 massive grinds pissed me off too.

[Deleted]

We'll see won't we

the fact thet they shoe horned MoP's release into the absolute last release day they could for the Q3 reporting meant they were always going to report an increase in subs for Q3,(if they didnt it would have been an absolute disaster) They have only recovered the subs if they keep them, Q4 and Q1 will only beable to show that.

And if you correlate the player activity that these 2 sources show, with what the same player activity showed post cata (hence the OP showing that data), then it wont.

It still has nothing to do with the argument that "there is nothing to do in WoW". I don't know why subs are important to some people. Number of subs does not tell you how good a game is. Whether a game is good or not is subjective. Even if they drop to 9 million again, even if they plummet down to somewhere around 100.000 (which will not happen in the next few years), the game is as good as the individual thinks it is. Games with small sub numbers are still loved passionately by the people who play them.

[BeastmasterGuardian]

It didn't for me. I suggest people find it easier and easier to quit over time. And the grind, and the prospect of more grind, I found to be terribly offputting.

The real reason most people quit over time is life and boredom. Either life changes drastically and there is no longer room for such a hobby, or after 8 long years of playing the same old game, you just get bored. Most people hate to admit when they are finally bored with something they love. It usually ends up in divorce, anger, and depression. Much like the "I hate wow" and "I quit threads" of the battlenet forums, most people won't recognize the real reason they are leaving is because they were already bored with the game and are now mad that even more changes have come in and ruined the already boring experience. If more people could realize and just uninstall and walk away, we wouldn't get 90% of the "RAAAAAAAAGE" threads we see every day.

I personally love this game. I've enjoyed it since my first Orc Warrior on Suramar in Nov 2005. Things change, and so do people. Maybe they should understand the game doesn't suck, it's simply evolving in a direction other than what they had hoped. Time to remove the Rose Colored Goggles and find something new to do.

[Synstir]

Maybe that's smart. Since you are stating reasons that are not true at all if you look at the facts. I don't know why, maybe it's better to blame "the direction wow is going" than to admit you lost interest completely to your years long addiction and hobby. It's hard to change.

You understand that gaming and enjoyment, entertainment are very very subjective things, don't you?

[Nights]

one thing m8s, even if all those cry babys are right and wow will loose lets say 1/4 of the whole population, damn even 1/2 its still nr 1 pay to play mmo in the world, they will just reduce numbers of servers, merge some and u will not even feel less ppl playing untill there is like 1 mln + across region servers its just ok.

[Cren]

lol gw2 is not even half a year old and is down to 17,855 hours played from 1st week's 92,946.
not to mention the tortanic...

and an 8 years old game should worry about a slight increase in a pattern that exists since TBC? right.

Yes according to some people in this thread thats horrible for wow! I mean who would have guessed that people would play a game the most at release and then less and less after you have seen and played it alot...

All the people who keep going in this thread with how bad wow is and how its dying, i wonder if you guys/girls play all other games that you like juts as much now and you did when they where releases / an expansion was released....

Clearly its so strange that people are abit less active now 2 months after release off a new expansion.... But still other MMOS have even less activity (GW2 for example), wouldn't that mean that those games would be long since dead then according to your reason?

[Gilian]

They made dungeons hard, then made them easy. Clearly a complete turnaround of the games direction, wouldn't you agree?

No I don't agree at all. The direction the game is/was going was to be more accessible and casual and they kept going in this direction the whole time.
The heroics are now piss easy because they introduced challenge modes. The heroics in Cata were hard because they thought the WotLK heroics were too easy and boring for a lot of people. Well they found a good solution for that. Still same direction. Tweaking.
End of Cataclysm heroics were piss easy also. So what do you want?

[Synstir]

So what are these game breaking, contradicting game decisions they took? Please enlighten me.

First I need to know if you will accept MY point of view on MY gaming experience.

[Up untill now I am enjoying talking to you. It shows how 2 different people can do the same thing, play the same game with completely different point of views]

[probert]

Not sure why people are suggesting WCR data is unreliable. Its the best and most consistent trending tool since WoW's inception.

It only tracks valid reports
It filters duplicate entries
It filters out servers which don't have enough data to establish a baseline point (which is roughly 50 reports/month).
If anything, it *over* reports activity as it only tracks characters -- not accounts.


Boom/Bust is consistent for most warcraft expansiosn. The dropoff is a bit more steep this time, but I wouldn't start panicking unless it hits all-time lows of 400 horde/500alliance during prime time. Cataclysm didn't hit those lows until the 2nd year.

WoW is long since overdue for some realm cosnoldiation, but as long as they're making $ on character transfer fees that's not going to happen.

Keep in mind that WoW has unprecedented competition and the game is very old now -- 8 years, running on a 10+ year old engine. Even though no single MMO can compete with WoW (except, maybe, GW2), all of these titles have bleed small % of the population off.

STO, Tera, SW:TOR, Rift, DCUO, LOTRO, Aion, TSW, GW2 ... they all are surviving (and some thriving). Those players came from somewhere.

Peak WoW is over. Its still the most played MMO on the planet, and will continue to be for some time.

[Pann]

I have a feeling that the sub numbers are declining at an alarming rate. It may just be coincidence that I had an email from Blizzard this week asking me to fill out a survey on the state of the game and whether I would still be playing six months, etc. I've never heard of Blizzard sending out surveys before, has anyone else had this recently or in the past?

Also, one of my in game pass times was playing the auction house, on my main realm a scan would reveal 30-35k auctions posted during WOTLK a scan today only had 17k listed.

[Demetrion]

I play constantly and don't use Xfire nor I use census. There are thousands players doing the same thing as me so the data you got is extremely inaccurate.

Only numbers I'll ever trust are the numbers released by Blizzard. Everything else is irrelevant.

[Gilian]

You understand that gaming and enjoyment, entertainment are very very subjective things, don't you?

Read BeastmasterGuardians comment.

[AeneasBK]

No I don't agree at all. The direction the game is/was going was to be more accessible and casual and they kept going in this direction the whole time.
The heroics are now piss easy because they introduced challenge modes. The heroics in Cata were hard because they thought the WotLK heroics were too easy and boring for a lot of people. Well they found a good solution for that. Still same direction. Tweaking.
End of Cataclysm heroics were piss easy also. So what do you want?

Your sarcasm-o-meter needs new batteries

[Cybran]

The same can be said about the people insisting to make "WoW is dying" threads at every corner. And if that is not enough lets have "Game xx will kill WoW" or "While WoW contues to have unprecedented sub numbers, it still is dead in spirit" topics.

Half or more of these subs come Asia where people pay 10% of what Europe and America pays. Blizzard are really good at doctoring their figures and hiding bad figures just like they did in the last Conference Call.

I still play, my guild is active, my realm is active. Call me shallow, but that is as far as it counts for me.

I will still play as well. I haven't done a single daily quest for the new faction in 5.1. I simply do not need the gear anymore. I used to need it for MSV, but i don't anymore.

Mists is a huge disappointment. I still chuckle when i remember how the same people like you were telling me that "The game is balanced at level 90 just wait 3 more weeks until 25th September and you will see that Mists is the most balanced expansion eva!!!" or the famous "I think Mists will be the new TBC and Bring in 12+ million subs!!!"

So funny

[DeLos]

At best you could call that data suggestive. At best. The problem is not only a great many variables that can change the results, many of which you can not possibly confirm or quantify. There is also the problem of interpretation. For instance I could say that the higher initial number was because of more excitement for the expac.

Every expac I have taken at least a few days off and jumped into it quickly. I actually took MORE time with MoP then I did with Cata. So, maybe, the higher number means more people took more time off at the start. More people jumped in initially. So, now the drop is bigger as people settle into their normal times because they peaked higher.

See, a different, but completely valid interpretation. Who is to say which is right. Maybe mine is, maybe not. Maybe a combination. Or maybe the data is just flawed and neither conclusion is actually correct. A lot is read into a small sample of data.

Edit to add:

I have a feeling that the sub numbers are declining at an alarming rate. It may just be coincidence that I had an email from Blizzard this week asking me to fill out a survey on the state of the game and whether I would still be playing six months, etc. I've never heard of Blizzard sending out surveys before, has anyone else had this recently or in the past?

I got one in vanilla. So, yes they have done that before.

[Deleted]

They made dungeons hard, then made them easy. Clearly a complete turnaround of the games direction, wouldn't you agree?

But they've made them easy because people complained that they were too hard, and, according to Blizzard a lot of people got frustrated and quit over that. If that is the case then making them easier means people will not get frustrated and will not quit.