February 7: Blizzard Conference Call

[Zeek Daniels]

If they close servers then ppl will consider the game dead. But I do agree. They have to do something about all the ghost town servers that are piling up.

No need to close servers, thats what CRZ is for. All they need to do is design and implement new tech that makes it so your seeing ppl from other servers more often and even letting cross realm guilds and cross realm raiding. Then you wont have to close servers and you can mask it behind you wanting to expand on CRZ and not the fact that there is less ppl playing.

[Duster505]

No need to close servers, thats what CRZ is for. All they need to do is design and implement new tech that makes it so your seeing ppl from other servers more often and even letting cross realm guilds and cross realm raiding. Then you wont have to close servers and you can mask it behind you wanting to expand on CRZ and not the fact that there is less ppl playing.

CRZ does not create the community needed to maintain healthy gameplay. In fact... it does exactly the opposite. Antisocial higher lvl ganking behaviour is now the norm in most PVP CRZ. It was not happening as much per server cause ppl cared abit about their rep. Not anymore since you are most likely to never see that person again so you can act like a moron all day.

[Grogo]

I did not care for MOP.

[Seranthor]

No, he's not.

if he wasn't then Blizzard would have terminated him... Thus, according to THEM, he he's doing at least an acceptable job... Regardless of what YOU think...

[Huehuecoyotl]

We have already seen few panic attacks in MOP. Item lvl upgrade one patch - not the next. Daily quests to death one patch - change it all the next. What we do know is that BLizzard is conserned at this stage that they can very well see the same downfall of MOP as in Cata. The main reason it happened in CATA was because acording to them... there were still so many players in first tier of raid that they chanceled the next one and gave us 2X 5man dungeons. And the same is happening now cause ppl will not be waiting more than 1 or 2 more months for fresh raid content. They got till end of March probably but if not we will probably see large drop in subs for 1st quarter report of 2013.

In terms of numbers - China will pull the "sub" numbers up for 4th quarter. I expect at least the same number as last time. If not - I consider MOP launch in Asia to be major failure.

the backtrack on dailies is probably the best indicator of subscription movement; or at the very least they saw a significant fall in playing time for people that were still subscribed, which would be a good indication that sub falls would follow. thats why it is so hard to predict movements in the sub numbers, because the inertia in the player base means that even when people stop playing, they dont immediately stop paying.

[Zeek Daniels]

CRZ does not create the community needed to maintain healthy gameplay. In fact... it does exactly the opposite. Antisocial higher lvl ganking behaviour is now the norm in most PVP CRZ. It was not happening as much per server cause ppl cared abit about their rep. Not anymore since you are most likely to never see that person again so you can act like a moron all day.

Thats why you make CRZ perminate between certain servers so it feels like everyone is on the same server and you always meet the same ppl from the different servers in your CRZ. Dont get me started on pvp in CRZ, u signed up for a pvp server there are pros and cons.

[Crashdummy]

People keep thinking loss like its cata its not i'ts mop and it's alot more well liked then cata bigtime so atleast for me the subs will be the same or higher around 10.5 million tops or 10million.

A lot of people dont think MoP is that better than Cata.

First, it has the same problem, Cataclysm forced you to chain run dungeons to get excesive rewards, MoP forces you to chain daily quests to get excesive rewards.

Second, many people hate CRZ, and CRZ actually ruined their experience in their low population servers where they could peacefully do things.

Other people hate the PVP scene (cant comment much here, im no expert).

Finally, a lot of annual passes ended (and some are still ending this days).

There is no way there isnt a loss, specially considering that Blizzard is changing several things into 5.2 (although is nowhere near enough).

A lot of people is trying to convince others about MoP sucess, but i think MoP started like Cata, with some serious losses in subs.

And Blizzard is too slow to react to problems, just like it was a mistake to mock people with the "WoW, dungeons are hard" L2P blog at the start of Cata, it was also a mistake to ignore and mock people having valid concerns about dailies, CRZ and such things.

We will see soon.

[RoKPaNda]

I want to predict a small dip, just because the game is aging and getting into WoW at this point is rather difficult. If they make it easier to get into the game for newer players it would be nice. I think at this point any losses will be greater than the number of incoming players just due to the game's age and inaccessibility for new players. Consolidating the first expansion pack (and I think second?) into Vanilla is a nice start, as are the leveling tweaks, but for a new player WoW is very daunting. So if there is a dip it isn't indicative of any real failure on MoP's part. I think MoP is awesome, but the game is just getting old. Eventually WoW will be like EverQuest 1 with just a very small dedicated player base.

The population dips don't have nearly as much of an impact on the people on this forum as one would be lead to believe just by reading this forum as the vast majority of the previous population losses (as noted by Blizzard at the time of one of the last conference calls) were from the Asia regions. Which is kind of odd IMO because the NA/EU regions are the ones doing a lot of complaining about the game.

[Deleted]

No need to close servers, thats what CRZ is for. All they need to do is design and implement new tech that makes it so your seeing ppl from other servers more often and even letting cross realm guilds and cross realm raiding. Then you wont have to close servers and you can mask it behind you wanting to expand on CRZ and not the fact that there is less ppl playing.

CRZ only works (1) in open world, BG, RBG, LFD, LFR. It doesn't work with arena and raid both integral parts of the PvP/PvE end-game experience. So once you are at end-game you leveled up on a trojan horse (if you wanted to play that content). It also doesn't help with economy on low pop realms at all; on the contrary, it makes these economies worse due to more scarcity of the materials.

(1) Or "works".

---------- Post added 2013-02-07 at 06:29 PM ----------

if he wasn't then Blizzard would have terminated him... Thus, according to THEM, he he's doing at least an acceptable job... Regardless of what YOU think...

Nice try, doesn't hold up. There's always a grace period where someone in a position where they're failing is still on board of the ship. This fellow is still CEO, for example.

[Osmeric]

IWe have already seen few panic attacks in MOP. Item lvl upgrade one patch - not the next. Daily quests to death one patch - change it all the next.

I see no evidence those were "panic attacks". As for the upgrade change, I don't even think that was a change of plans. Item upgrading was introduced in 5.1, so having it be absent in 5.2 is consistent with what they did in T14.

[Zeek Daniels]

CRZ only works (1) in open world, BG, RBG, LFD, LFR. It doesn't work with arena and raid both integral parts of the PvP/PvE end-game experience. So once you are at end-game you leveled up on a trojan horse (if you wanted to play that content). It also doesn't help with economy on low pop realms at all; on the contrary, it makes these economies worse due to more scarcity of the materials.

Did you even read what you quoted? I said design and implement new tech so that you could do those things. Reading comprehension man.

[Narshe]

I love MoP, so much more than Cata, and I know the numbers are likely to dip, but I hope its not by much. I like dailies, whats not to like about gold, rep VP and rewards. Alts are so easy to get caught up with too, I'm so puzzled that so many players claim MoP isn't alt friendly. My fresh 90 hit exalted with Order of the Cloud Serpents in 2 hours, 36% revered with Klaxxi in maybe 3 hours, and half way through honored with Golden Lotus in 2 days. I didn't realize how much those commendations for rep really helped until I took the time to try it out on an alt. Already running the 470 LFRs after 2 days of being 90, that was WAY quicker than on my main.

[Duster505]

I see no evidence those were "panic attacks". As for the upgrade change, I don't even think that was a change of plans. Item upgrading was introduced in 5.1, so having it be absent in 5.2 is consistent with what they did in T14.

They have not said if ilvl upgrade will be coming back. We know its not coming back in PVP cause of the new gear system there. So what is left is Raiding content and they are already struggling now cause best guilds start this raid tier with 8 extra ilvls on their heroic gear - making it almost impossible to allow normal players to catch up without major ilvl inflation or huge nerfs after first few weeks.

Not to mention all the damage already done for those players playing multiroles. Most of them have already quit cause they are always doomed to be 20 ilvls behind in every spec.

[Hb]

No, he's not.

yep he is. now back to ur cave troll

[MoanaLisa]

We have already seen few panic attacks in MOP. Item lvl upgrade one patch - not the next. Daily quests to death one patch - change it all the next.

Item level upgrades were always something that Blizzard was ambivalent about to some degree. First they were announced for 5.0, then they were off, then back on again in 5.1 with a warning that they might not become permanent. Now off again in 5.2. That's seems more to me like something they've tried and didn't work out in the way they imagined or wanted. And with that, they haven't said that they positively wouldn't be back in 5.3. My take on that is having the feature available off and on like that is a little bizarre, probably not worth the trouble and the whole notion needs to be scrapped. At some meta level they need to rethink gear and ilevels completely but that's unlikely to see daylight during MoP. Either way, experiments, scrapped or otherwise, don't rise to the level of anything like panic in my view.

And about dailies, they've admitted they overdid it in 5.0. They made adjustments in 5.1 which have been better received. And are providing more in 5.2.

None of those things read 'panic response' to me. They change things as they go according to what they are hearing. A 'panic' response on dailies would have been to pull them altogether for 5.2 which clearly they're not going to do.

Others may disagree and that's fine. It's all simply opinion.

[Sam the Wiser]

This thread going to blow up when reports come in. I kinda excited to see the results.

[Exroyal]

So according to this anecdotal evidence the subscription base would be around 100K then. Also a 800 member guild ?

Woah, do you even read?

I said that i have no apparent proof, i just used what happend with my guild as an indication that subs have gone down and not risen. Look at the first thing i wrote Ben, i never said that the subs would be around 9-9.5m.

Why do people get so personally offended whenever someone mentions that WoW may have lost subs? It's an old game. Subs declining is a given thing at this point.

[azurrei]

I love MoP, so much more than Cata, and I know the numbers are likely to dip, but I hope its not by much. I like dailies, whats not to like about gold, rep VP and rewards. Alts are so easy to get caught up with too, I'm so puzzled that so many players claim MoP isn't alt friendly. My fresh 90 hit exalted with Order of the Cloud Serpents in 2 hours, 36% revered with Klaxxi in maybe 3 hours, and half way through honored with Golden Lotus in 2 days. I didn't realize how much those commendations for rep really helped until I took the time to try it out on an alt. Already running the 470 LFRs after 2 days of being 90, that was WAY quicker than on my main.

how many hours a day do you have to play WoW?

how many hours a day do you want to waste playing WoW?

These are questions that have the answers as to why people have issues with dailies and the amount of time needed to catch up alts. It's NOT that any of it is hard...it's how much time you have or want to dedicate.

[Duster505]

I love MoP, so much more than Cata, and I know the numbers are likely to dip, but I hope its not by much. I like dailies, whats not to like about gold, rep VP and rewards. Alts are so easy to get caught up with too, I'm so puzzled that so many players claim MoP isn't alt friendly. My fresh 90 hit exalted with Order of the Cloud Serpents in 2 hours, 36% revered with Klaxxi in maybe 3 hours, and half way through honored with Golden Lotus in 2 days. I didn't realize how much those commendations for rep really helped until I took the time to try it out on an alt. Already running the 470 LFRs after 2 days of being 90, that was WAY quicker than on my main.

Most players have real life work - not just WOW as their main work. Thats the thing. When playing a game becomes a chore - then something is wrong. Many of the reverted systems have forced ppl into playing every day if they want to progress (example the extra Valor from dungeons). Playing a game every day for months becomes boring - but if you dont - you feel like you loose out of progress (like not being able to fill Valor cap).

Cata had a happy medium. What failed in CATA was the content. It simply wasn't there. And BLizz doesn't have many more months in MOP for next patch. EVEN with their reverted more hardcore grind all over the place.

[ShimmerSwirl]

Blizz has done a good job with releasing a steady flow of new information about things to keep people interested, and feeling like the game is still alive and active. I have never seen so much promotion of PTR builds in the past as they do now.

The bad news is that Blizz might now be paying the piper for there temporary sub-boosting ploy from a year ago, annual pass.