1.3 million sub drop

[Vankrys]

8+ mill subs is still a huge number, but 1.3 million is also a very large percentage of their overall player base to lose. You have to wonder at what point they start to hold people accountable. If the company i work for lost roughly 14% of our sales contracts, you can be sure heads would start rolling..

amazing how sometimes a decision or 2 can cost several hundreds millions dollars at the end of the years.
Lots of pressure on that job i tell you. You may agree of disagree with greg street, but i don't envy his job.

[bohapjut]

best news all week

[Tomana]

I'm well aware. They can pay me if they really want to know.

/facedesk10chars

[hyphnos]

In pay-per-hour markets, a grindier game is a more expensive game. Not surprised some people said no thanks.

Even if it's not more expensive (flat fee model) - the tuning seems more concerned with constraining people who will play 20, 30, 40 hrs per week or whatever it takes to max their progression and ignores the time-friendly, QoL improvements that were among the best parts of Cataclysm. (ie 7 dungeons per week to cap valor, not having vendors scattered all over the world, rapid corpse runs, guild summons, practical levelling in BGs and dungeons)

So much of MoP seems designed to generate more time needed and probably was designed that way to milk a minute here and minute there in Asia and it apparently didn't fly there and isn't going over so well among monthly payers.

If they don't drop the time inputs needed drastically this will just continue as people who cannot progress in the time they have to play will quit and most of us don't have 20 hrs a week to play WoW.

[Brakthir]

How can people still claim that MoP is the best expansion ever, when this is by far the largest quarterly sub loss that WoW has ever seen?

And this is just after a new raid dropped!

Because quality has nothing to do with quantity.

[Deleted]

A lot more than I expected. This is without the effect of the recently released Age of Wushu right? We wont see the effect of the 20mill subs that has gained until next quarter's report?

Anyway... MoP is a fantastic expansion, not sure why people in this thread are claiming otherwise... The reason I quit is that I can't actually *play* said expansion when I'm sat on a dead realm. I simply refuse to pay Blizzard another £60 to get my chars off it.

[RoKPaNda]

I am still playing the game however, I avoid looking for raid whenever possible and I stay far away from scenarios. Instead, I do normal mode raiding(when I can), pet battles, achievements, and old content for fun. I think LFR, scenarios, and dailies suck in this expansion and I think it is the reason why subs were lost. I will continue playing WOW until it has only me left as a sub. But what if WOW stayed a pay-to-play model yet added an optional free-to-play model with restrictions and a cash shop? Would that not be a good idea?

Would probably be a fantastic idea for Blizzard. Not so great for the players however.

[Deleted]

The next big hit will be when a Western company nails down the F2P MMO genre, like Blizz did with the P2P MMO with WoW. I'm already expecting Titan to be a F2P.

[bowchikabow]

Lets clear some shit up. MOST of the people who played in TBC or vanilla have quit, or just casual through. I would not implore blizzard to look back that far.

They need to look at wrath. Great story (the lich kings presence was pervasive, yet relevant), some of the most revolutionary fight mechanics (not counting NAXX), they did well with bringing crafting into each teir, and allowing them to be relevant but not all out better (in most cases) than drops/tier.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

A lot more than I expected. This is without the effect of the recently released Age of Wushu right? We wont see the effect of the 20mill subs that has gained until next quarter's report?

Anyway... MoP is a fantastic expansion, not sure why people in this thread are claiming otherwise... The reason I quit is that I can't actually *play* said expansion when I'm sat on a dead realm. I simply refuse to pay Blizzard another £60 to get my chars off it.

You claim MoP was a great expansion, and yet 1.3 million people said "screw that" last quarter. If the subs go down by that much, MoP has bigger problems than Cata did.

[Pr0ev0lution]

big drop yes, but the end of the day wow is in what its 9th year now, people grow up and move on, yet 8.6 million is still a hell of a lot more subscribers than any other subscription based MMO. was also said majority of the loss was in asian countries where there is a fair few top quality F2P mmos

[Deleted]

You claim MoP was a great expansion, and yet 1.3 million people said "screw that" last quarter. If the subs go down by that much, MoP has bigger problems than Cata did.

Or the playerbase is way more volatile than ever before. There is a reason why the casuals are the one that left AND China taking the biggest hit, the F2P MMOs are rising fast there.

All we can take from this is that the P2P MMO market is gone, being WoW the last man standing.

[Samurai]

A lot more than I expected. This is without the effect of the recently released Age of Wushu right? We wont see the effect of the 20mill subs that has gained until next quarter's report?

Anyway... MoP is a fantastic expansion, not sure why people in this thread are claiming otherwise... The reason I quit is that I can't actually *play* said expansion when I'm sat on a dead realm. I simply refuse to pay Blizzard another £60 to get my chars off it.

So you quit cause you don't like the game anymore cause there are no players around...
Yet you claim its fantastic...

hmmmm

[Xl House lX]

It's simple really, as to why this is happening. The MMO genre is just not as popular as it once were. Is it still popular? Yes. Are things like consoles/AAA titles (CoD/Halo/etc.) diminishing the popularity of MMOs? Yes.

Has nothing to do with anything in game.

[Osmeric]

A lot more than I expected. This is without the effect of the recently released Age of Wushu right?

I think AoW had already released in Asia.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

big drop yes, but the end of the day wow is in what its 9th year now, people grow up and move on, yet 8.6 million is still a hell of a lot more subscribers than any other subscription based MMO. was also said majority of the loss was in asian countries where there is a fair few top quality F2P mmos

Sure the vanilla players grew up. But where's the people that were 8 when WoW came out? Why are they not playing the game?

Saying "we had a good run but it's time to give up" is just trying to shrug off numbers that if we were discussing xBox Live would get someone fired.

[Tauren]

rip in peace wow

[Vankrys]

A lot more than I expected. This is without the effect of the recently released Age of Wushu right? We wont see the effect of the 20mill subs that has gained until next quarter's report?

Anyway... MoP is a fantastic expansion, not sure why people in this thread are claiming otherwise... The reason I quit is that I can't actually *play* said expansion when I'm sat on a dead realm. I simply refuse to pay Blizzard another £60 to get my chars off it.

thing is, dead server is part of blizzard "involontary" design, given the fact they have taken no steps to fixing it. And it certainly one of the reason of this huge drop. For many people, they will remember MoP as the "dead server expansion"

how easy would it have been to drop the transfer fee by at least 75%, or even better free with a cooldown? how many line of code are we talking about? how much time? Dead server are not a bug, they are consequence to game design.

[Marfrilau]

You claim MoP was a great expansion, and yet 1.3 million people said "screw that" last quarter. If the subs go down by that much, MoP has bigger problems than Cata did.

I'm sure it is a great expansion. For him. Just like it is for me. It just doesn't appeal to the casual playerbase which is the majority of their players.

[Deleted]

Sure the vanilla players grew up. But where's the people that were 8 when WoW came out? Why are they not playing the game?

Why there is an explosion of P2P MMOs in Asia?