February 7: Blizzard Conference Call

[Deleted]

Why are people so surprised at Sub numbers?

The barrier of entry for new players is now so high (and grows higher with each expansion) that we will not see a major influx of new people.

Each expansion exists just to slow the decline.

My own feelings are that the biggest problem facing the game is the dead realms. We have far too many of them and there are many people who are quitting rather than transferring.

[Ryme]

Bear in mind, this is Q4 which ends in December, I fear we have many more losses on the horizon. Honestly, I would trace nearly all of this decline back to Wrath, where the disconnect between developers and players began and where the constant shift in design philosophy began. We are only just now getting back to a stable point where people understand the role of heroics/normals/lfr.

The dailies system put this in jeopardy again! Having dailies reward raid gear and rolls on further raid gear emphasises the disparity in design goals, if you think the real reason was anything other than to keep you grinding, you're wrong. There's nothing wrong with this, but the way they implemented it was awful.

Alienation and convincing the player base to turn on each other (heroics v normal; casual v hardcore) is what has caused this in my opinion.

[Deleted]

I think part of the problem is how hideously out of date the models look now.

That has nothing to do with it. The problem is that people are voting with their wallets on the daily quest game model and they are voting: no!

[Schaapa]

Cataclysm lost 600 000 subs in its first 4 months.

http://www.vg247.com/2011/05/10/bliz...pdates-faster/

Mists of Pandaria lost around 500 000 (they said over 10 mil a few times)

So far the pattern is repeating. This means a few months without decent content and the numbers could start free falling again. Funniest part is they "promised to deliver content faster" just before FL and DS that lasted 8 and 11 months and had only 7 and 8 bosses.

MoP lost around 500 000 in three months including December which is an important month for game sales. 150k per month in Cata vs 166k per month in MoP. Around 11% difference, unless the internet calc was wrong.

[Hakto]

That has nothing to do with it. The problem is that people are voting with their wallets on the daily quest game model and they are voting: no!

highest ever earnings is going to disagree with you on that one.

[Haadesda]

wouldnt worry to much titan will save em lol

[Arbs]

Dailies have been in WoW since TBC the "presumed golden age", The whole daily system isn't the problem.

http://www.wowpedia.org/Burning_Crus...tation_rewards.

Its the fact that Blizzard spoon feed people in Wrath & Cataclysm & its there fault they did that, As no one wants to put in effort to for stuff. The sad truth is that people would rather be handed stuff they don't wanna work for there stuff, They will take any route that takes minimal effort. People who quit cause of dailies prbly started in Wrath or Cata cause Vanilla & TBC had dailies that had mounts / Enchants & some loot pieces at the end. But whenever a game makes you work for stuff people whine but thats Not only just in WoW, but any/every game, If you pay a sub people expect to be handed everything on silver platter. 5+ Years ago you would be laughed at but times have changed & people would rather not work for anything even if it isn't mandatory they see purple they expect they need them.

Like I have said I don't give a diddly about subs, I will continue to play as it was anyday & I bet 9.6 will still continue to play aswell.

Also as I said back in like the 25 or so page of this thread, These numbers are already outta date they could be less (9.2) or more (9.8) we wont know until May & by than those numbers will be outta date once again.

I honestly wish Blizzard would return to the TBC style with Wrath raid lockouts. But that is nostalgia talking an I have learned to move on & continue to enjoy the game after 8 years of playing.

[Deleted]

Lost 400k subs in a three month period (Sept 25th - Dec 31st) and everyone thinks the game is doing OK?

Yeah, an MMO with 9.6 active subscriptions is doing bad!...oh, right.

Seriously though, I expected the drop in subscribers to be bigger. MoP was just released when the last update on subscriptions came out and going by the logic that the pre-patch and an expansion release are ussualy when subscriptions are at a peak, the drop could have been a lot bigger. Not to bad, I guess.

[Armourboy]

Its an 8 year old game, if its not slowly losing subs then something is wrong. Sure there will be spikes back up, but common sense tells you that from here on out it will probably make slow decline til it reaches its hardcore players who won't quit until they pull the plug.

[Deleted]

Its an 8 year old game, if its not slowly losing subs then something is wrong.

Do people ever stop to think before making this idiotic statement? Has it been 8 years since you last bought a box from Blizzard? No, you bought MoP very recently AND you pay a monthly fee. It's very much a current release, you're not playing the game you bought 8 years ago. And EVE has been around longer than WoW and is not slowly losing subs, so it's definitely possible to do.

[Crashdummy]

And yet Cataclysm was between the two which pretty much caused a permanent decrease in subs.

And MoP so far follows the same trend than cataclysm.

It lost about the same amount of subs that the first quarter of Cataclysm, and the data was looked at 6 days after the biggest gifting giving day in the world.

You may blind yourself to the truth, but the fact that MoP have lost about the same amount of subs than cata so far is not a good news.

---------- Post added 2013-02-08 at 09:28 AM ----------

Re: Results

So, that happened. Apparently dailies, CRZ and the other things that people have brought up as good reasons to quit didn't have as much impact as was imagined.

Carry on. See you in 3 months!

Aroung 500k loss after christmas (western's biggest holiday where you give gifts away) even when they are mostly in China is a big impact. The only expansion that lost so many subs on their launch quarter was Cata, and we know how that ended.

[Deleted]

I didn't expect any drop, seems the MoP hype died faster then I thought. Pity, but good for competition, since other games might reach WoW if it keeps falling and then competition will make all of them work harder.

---------- Post added 2013-02-08 at 02:57 PM ----------

When i recieved the email last night i was wondering how the figures would show.

9.6 million is a considerable drop for them after their release date of September. What people are forgetting here is that it is shortly after their release, these figures show from Q4 ending 31st December 2012. So this incorporates Christmas sales, one month game play with new xpack purchases in some countries and so on.

You will see a more realistic drop in Q1 reports.

Blizzard is fare from failing WoW but they need to reign in their own arrogance a little and engage a better understanding of what their customer base is saying.

Fully agreed with this. They seem to have distanced themselves from the people, now they listen only to some of the few that whine on forums and they're picking wrong ones.

A good idea is doing what ArenaNet did with Guild Wars 2. For those that don't know, when they implemented a patch with a new island, it was a horrible event, laggy, buggy, etc, you name it. And people complained. So ArenaNet sent a survey to everyone to complete on the mail. And now with the new patch coming there are a lot of changes being made, many about which we were asked in the survey. So they listened. Blizzard should do something like this too, for now you have a small minority talking on their forums and on twitter with ghostcrawler, but they don't know what the majority of people want. They know X wants easier raids and Y wants less dailies but they don't really know why very good and sometimes, here also because of how people express their opinion on the game (example : "fuck you blizz, enough dalies"), they dismiss criticism off the bat.
This is bad and if they continue like this they will keep losing people.

[Osmeric]

Very good point.

Cata was still rising 3 months into expansion, and Wrath rose for a full year to the peak of all-time Wow subs around 12mill.

MoP is the very first time an expansion has been released near-simultaneously in all markets. If there are lots of "level to cap then unsub" types, you'd expect this to have made the Q4 decline worse.

In Cataclysm, there was a 600K loss in Q1 2011... and then about 500K were lost in China in Q3 2011, when they got Cataclysm. So the post release decline for Cataclysm should really be about 1.1M, if you add it all up.

[Wildmoon]

Wouldn't care about it too much. Sub will rise again in 5.2 and it will fall again and one day WoW will die no matter how long that takes. This game is freaking old. It's almost a miracle how long it could hold more than 2 million subs. My enjoyment doesn't base on sub. I enjoy MoP a lot but I hated WotLK back then although it held the most subs.

[Osmeric]

Didn't Osmeric keep bumping his thread about how the rate of decline in MoP was looking to be steeper than in Cata?

I started that thread, and continued to post in it. Is that "bumping" or "participating"?

The rapid activity decline after the MoP release plateaued in a way that it didn't for Cataclysm.

I was projecting a 500K loss for Q4. I was very close.

[wariofan1]

My enjoyment doesn't base on sub. I enjoy MoP a lot but I hated WotLK back then although it held the most subs.

This is exactly how I feel. I don't get why people care that much about subs, and I especially don't get how they freak out over a 400k subs loss when it's obviously still the greatest MMO atm the moment BY FAR.

[Deleted]

It's so weird. This and Wrath were easily the best expansion packs. Although, PvP is a bit haywire this expansion.

[mosely]

Mists of Pandaria Sold 9 / 10 Million copies.
/clap /clap /clap

Huh?

If I understand the press release correctly, MoP was the #3 selling PC game of 2012. That means it sold less copies than D3 (of course), and also less copies than the #2 selling PC game, which I speculate is Guild Wars 2, based on this (admittedly incomplete) list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...PC_video_games

So. Mope may have sold less than Guild Wars 2. How do you feel about that? Of those 9.6 million subscribers, most aren't even playing the same expansion as you.

[Osmeric]

It's so weird. This and Wrath were easily the best expansion packs. Although, PvP is a bit haywire this expansion.

Yes, PvP has been my biggest complaint, primarily the gear gap between casual PvP and those who churn out CP in rated PvP. I think 5.2 is going to address that problem a bit, and I expect a flood of casual PvPers back into the BGs.

[Deleted]

you guys need some education on how product life cycle works, after reaching peak it will always decline, all they can do is to slow down the process ,and Blizzard is doing a miracle job with it.
8 years in the market, new products coming left and right, most of them are F2P, and WoW is still sitting on comfortable 10 milions. and you bitch about 400k losss like it was end of the world. pathetic.