WoW Down to 9.6 Million Subscribers

[skitzy129]

5.2 Gains 500k and more back.

5.3 People drop out for awhile again.

5.4 Brings them all back.


This has been what has happened for several years now.

There is nothing wrong here.

[Beefhammer]

I remember World of Warcraft as it used to be, not the casual abomination it has become.

Always been casual my friend. That's why it got so big. Remember most accounts do not and have never gotten a toon to max level. Its all about the casuals while offering stuff for the hardcore players as well.

[Vargas]

Ok, if you want to cling the your "its numbers" fallacy, can you explain how the game grew by 6 millions in vanilla, then by 4 millions in TBC and only to grew by 2 millions in WolTK and stagnate there until its started degrading in Cataclysm?

If WolTK was so great, it would had grown more than during Vanilla and TBC no?

No, not necessarily.

TBC and Wrath was when WoW was at the height of its popularity, however by the time TBC was ending most people who were interested in WoW had joined it. Which is why you didn't see such a huge growth with WotLK (still, 2 million is nothing to sneeze at).

It doesn't really have much to do with the quality of the expansion (unless you can read the future and know beforehand if its bad or not, in which case I have to ask you why did you keep quiet on Cata! ) but more to do with the hype and popularity surrounding the game at the time. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with the difficulty level of heroics or raids at the time either.

[Jtbrig7390]

But hes right....

A 500k sub loss is nothing for WoW to cry over.

its a 5% drop wow has only got back 600k from the 3mil it lost in cata and this is the start of MOP. therefor if this keeps up at this rate wow will be around 7 million subs before MOP ends.

so yes it is something to cry over

[OscaR]

Ok, if you want to cling the your "its numbers" fallacy, can you explain how the game grew by 6 millions in vanilla, then by 4 millions in TBC and only to grew by 2 millions in WolTK only to stagnate there until its started degrading in Cataclysm?

If WolTK was so great, it would had grown more than during Vanilla and TBC no?

No because that's not how growth works.

[Jtbrig7390]

5.2 Gains 500k and more back.

5.3 People drop out for awhile again.

5.4 Brings them all back.


This has been what has happened for several years now.

There is nothing wrong here.

wrong there was no gain in cata and only gain MOP has done was at release due to it being new. therefor this has not been happening for several years now. Kinda why wow is at 9.6mil subs and not 12.5mil

[Beefhammer]

The game is freaking 8 years old. rather ask yourself why it STILL has 9.5 million whily all the shiny new games like Rift, GW2 and SW dwindle around 500 000 to 2 mill. I mean..here they have all the info on the MMO C forum why WoW sucks and is dying to make awesome games that drag the players in by the million.

Ofc WoW will dwindle and eventually fade out. How many people still play other games from 8 years ago.

Then again, I am sure ppl here will find "lol" and flaws with D3 being the best selling game. If you wanna hate, you find a reason.

Maybe the reasons people on here hate WoW are the reasons its a good and popular game. So lets say they read these forums and take Ideas of what WoW haters want and implement them and that has lead to people not wanting to play their games.

[Blur4stuff]

who expects WoW to have the same number of subs forever? no one i would think

of course it will eventually decline

[Elyara]

The fact that there are still 9.6 mill subs is quite impressive. Goes to show how great the game is...
Tho them daily quests made me go on a break... going back for new patch tho

[RoKPaNda]

Ofc western markets were "stable" over Xmas and new year with BLizz offering 50% off MOP in middle of December. We all know these are not the current numbers. And we also know China dont have Xmas.

We also know that the previous losses were mostly in the Asian regions as well. NA/EU has always been mostly stable. The holiday season has little to do with it.

[skitzy129]

It's honestly fucking retarded that this thread even exists and that people think anything of it.

This game fluctuates subs like this month in and month out and it has since it became popular.

Not everyone plays the entire tier, that's just how it is. I can't believe how many horribly retarded and ignorant people are in this thread thinking this means anything at all. It only makes those same people look dumber for thinking so after it's meant nothing at all the last 15 times this has happened and yet the subs were regained again.

Give me a fucking break.

Infracted

[Pacster]

5.2 Gains 500k and more back.

5.3 People drop out for awhile again.

5.4 Brings them all back.


This has been what has happened for several years now.

There is nothing wrong here.

I don't think that many will come back for 5.2.. Most that are gone, left cause there was nothing new in the game or cause their friends left and/or their server is dead. 5.2. as currently announced is not changing any of that. An entire addon may bring people back for a while....but not a patch. I actually expect that a lot of people(500k to 1 million) will leave around 1-2months after 5.2....unless Blizz will do anything big which they didn't announce yet. Many are just waiting to check out 5.2.....nothing else is keeping them right now.

[skitzy129]

who expects WoW to have the same number of subs forever? no one i would think

of course it will eventually decline

And in 5.2 it will rise back over 10 million.

Pretty damn simple really.

---------- Post added 2013-02-07 at 07:42 PM ----------

I don't think that many will come back for 5.2.. Most that are gone, left cause there was nothing new in the game or cause their friends left and/or their server is dead. 5.2. as currently announced is not changing any of that. An entire addon may bring people back for a while....but not a patch. I actually expect that a lot of people(500k to 1 million) will leave around 1-2months after 5.2....unless Blizz will do anything big which they didn't announce yet. Many are just waiting to check out 5.2.....nothing else is keeping them right now.

This same exact situation has happened during every single tier this game has had since gaining a large subscriber base.

There is nothing different about this time.

[Idletime]

9.6 million is still respectable, and well above Wrath's initial numbers. The only thing I would like to see out of them is better management of player populations on servers, because the non-large server populations are waning and paying the price right now. Sure people can vote with their wallets and move, but it would be nice to see them do something to assist their communities today rather than put their hands out.

[Shaede]

Blizz isn't going anywhere. What's the number 2 mmo? Star Wars with 500k? hahaha

[Aquamonkey]

No, not necessarily.

TBC and Wrath was when WoW was at the height of its popularity, however by the time TBC was ending most people who were interested in WoW had joined it. Which is why you didn't see such a huge growth with WotLK (still, 2 million is nothing to sneeze at).

This is wrong. Sub numbers aren't a static like that. Sub numbers are just the macro picture. Throughout WoW's lifetime, there has been a constant influx and outflow of players to the game. When "subs go up", it just means more people are joining than leaving. When "subs go down", more people are leaving than joining.

"I don't know what the exact number is off-hand, but the total number of subscribers we've had is easily more than double - maybe closer to triple - the current subscriber base." -Pardo in 2009

[Beefhammer]

Because they have a very loose definition of a sub. Asia pays by the hour. If they log in for 1 hour in that 3 month period, they get counted as a full $15/mo Western sub. Asia has 50% of the subs, but only 10% of Blizzard's income comes from there.

Western region is essentially paying for Asia to play the game.

They have a rock solid definition of a sub. It is anyone who pays a monthy sub, has a prepaid time card with time left on it or anyone within their first free 30 day period. This has never changed.

[Deleted]

I left, but not after 90% of all my friends who i got after playing mop already had left, My raiding guild who did 15/16 and had progressed on sha for 2 weeks all left except me and 2 more There was so much people playing at start of mop then everyone left and when i was alone i left too....

[Aquamonkey]

They have a rock solid definition of a sub. It is anyone who pays a monthy sub, has a prepaid time card with time left on it or anyone within their first free 30 day period. This has never changed.

Even if that prepaid time is 1hr for the 3 month quarter.

[Deleted]

Considering its age WoW is doing fine, It really is.
BUT considering it's Blizzard were talking about, it isn't doing all that great.

If you take a deep look at the big Blizzard releases over the last decade you'll see a difference.
They could/should have done much better, but they didn't and the reason can be found in the last ~5 years. Look at all the titles, not just wow.
Blizzard at some point switched their design process from "what would be fun" to "what should be fun" and that's where a break happened. Just look at Bnet 2.0, like chat in Diablo 3 or even Starcraft 2. Blizzard changed their whole design from offering choices to telling you what to do.