1.3 million sub drop

[HeedmySpeed]

No, but it's ok to blame the game that didn't retain them.

Understand that the casuals are not an optional component of the player population. Without them, the game is toast.

Understand that "casual" is a broad as fuck term and most players are often mislabeling themselves as "casual" even though they put in raid hours into collecting pets, achievements, alts or RP.

[Osmeric]

8300000 x $14.99 = $124 417 000 per month.

This is a bogus calculation. I'll let you identify the incorrect assumption.

[But I Hate You All]

Didn't AoW release earlier in Asia?

Everything I read said apirl


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Wulin

[Vulcanasm]

Actually, the biggest problem with World of Warcraft is that Blizzard has no idea whatsoever about what made the game popular to begin with.

Hint: It's not emphasizing world-class raiding. It's not about giving them everything and tossing a bone to the remaining 99.9% of the game population. It's not about destroying class abilities just because Blizzard is still under the belief that they can turn WoW into an "esport" via its shitty PVP system. In fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with any of that whatsoever.

It certainly doesn't help that they have systematically turned the game into a boring day job since the Burning Crusade, either. Or the fact that they claim to know what the players really want without ever having once taken any kind of accurate (or even inaccurate) poll on the subject. Hell, the outright faux-intellectual arrogance the developers have, and the snide animosity they constantly show to the playerbase, isn't helping either.

Even worse, they keep making changes to the game to make things easier for them. "Ooh, it's ever so hard to balance things, so, uhm, you only get a couple talents now cause that's easier for us! Teehee!" And the fact that they don't see that as a problem is just embarrassing for them. Hint: We pay them to make the game fun and interesting for us. We don't pay them to make their job easy and cushy.

They deserve to lose every subscription they've lost, and they'll continue to do so until they get their collective head out of their ass.

Fundamentally, I think this is it, but the problem is you haven't explained what you think made the game fun to begin with.

[Tomana]

8300000 x $14.99 = $124 417 000 per month.

No, China players pay much less.

[Glorious Leader]

It would matter, to a degree. There are a lot of casuals that look up to the hardcore and admire them. There are also a lot of casuals that hate hardcores. It helps drive the playerbase. Basically it equates to progression in the community.

But then again, there are lots of people that simply don't care.

Really? People still look up to hardcores? You've got to be kidding me. I can't imagine they've got a legion of tottering fans or haters just paying 15 bucks a month to blow them or villify them. In fact the only minority smaller than the hardcores is probably the people who actually care about them.

[Fagatronics]

I just saw this on the front page and thought it was funny. Yesterday Blizz re-launched a collectors edition of MoP. I guess there's no good promotion like announcing the next day 1.3 million people left your game.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...ity-available/

I feel like Blizz is trolling us here :P

[Osmeric]

Everything I read said apirl


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Wulin

From that page:

"It was released on April 10, 2013 in North America."

Not worldwide.

[MoanaLisa]

There are a lot of casuals that look up to the hardcore and admire them.

Hero worship among players in World of Warcraft is greatly overstated. Look at guilds as an example: top-of-the-line guilds come and go and get replaced with other guilds. It's been going on forever. In any case, it's hard to make a case that people would abandon the game because their 'hero' decided to quit playing. I'm not saying it's impossible but it's so far out of my mental construct that I can't imagine it's a common thing. In years of playing this I have yet to read much of anything in any chat channel that is like this. If it was so common, I imagine I'd have seen it a few times.

[Glorious Leader]

Because in a rational world, it's more options to get to more or less the same place. A lot of people who play World of Warcraft believe they're missing something if they don't do everything possible in PVE. I hear this sort of chatter all the time in my guild chat and the post I just made speaks to it a little bit. There's a lot to do and a lot that I would like to do; far more than I'll ever get around to actually doing. This doesn't overly bother me but I can imagine that it would be frustrating for someone who thinks they have to do it all. Is it easier to just say 'screw it' and not do any of it? Maybe.

Yea it really is easier to screw it. They also generally say screw it to the sub because when they say screw it to the content they aren't getting any entertainment or reward out of the game and that 15 bucks a month starts to become real expensive. it's not so much that people think they have to do it all, i don't think by and large people are fretting and worrying by their keyboards about getting x y and z done in their limted time. It's more so that they just aren't getting that crack hit they got from before when they could easily farm crap without having to run across the entire world or spend hours and hours doing it. You can't take that away from players. I'm sorry. Their going to keep chasing it, get frustrated and bitch and quit. Assuming they have the time in the first place.

[StaeleAilar]

There are a number of posters who insist that because Cata Heroics were difficult at launch, Cata was exactly like BC.

Those people being the ones who for whatever reason did not know how to play or use their class, and were all too happy to blame everyone else because they died while standing in front of a cleaving boss and in fire with adds that should have been CC'd but "LOL WOTLK WE NO HAD TO DO THAT!@".

I loved the early dungeons in Cataclysm and it gave me hope that the game would finally bring back some level of difficulty, but alas,.... nope... it's all about people who don't care to learn how to play or do well anymore...

[Vankrys]

one thing i don't understand though, i view MoP the most casual time ever of wow, think about it

heroic dungeon - faceroll easy, 15 minutes bite size, screeming casual
LFR - design for casual raiding, include every raid of mop
daily - time consuming but casual, you do them at your own pace and on your schedule, this is casual
scenario - strike me as casual
pet battle - i see them as casual mini games
the farming activity - seems also quite casual.
challenge mode dungeon - i would consider as semi casual. they need skill and practice, but i never considered casual player as unskill. They are shortpiece of content that can be done anythime, so casual, but are best done with the same team everytime, so a need for organisation (so not so casual)
PVP can be done casually too

so i viewed that extention as the most casual friendly wow has ever been.
Heroic raid have never been casual content, that's why they introduce LFR. Even normal raid on some level aren't for casual, at least on a weelky basis, even more so with LFR.

What am i missing?

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Everything I read said apirl


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Wulin

Specifically says North American. So China must have been earlier.

[Tuor]

My 2 cents about this:
- Finantial crises in Europe and North-America, which is generating a lot of unemployment;
- Casual gameplay in Asia, most chineses play on cyber-cafes not at home, this means its very hard to mantain subs up;
- And off course, a very few minority of MoP dislikers.

[Verain]

One thing I'm liking is this:

Throughout the entire history of the game, Blizzard has obfuscated or not released NA/Euro/Aus numbers. Personally, this is all I really care about. In other markets there are different subscription models (specifically pay-per-hour). A pph model will give you funny results- you'll get WAY more people who count than you should, and the moment those people go from being log-on-once-a-month to log-on-once-every-two-months, you lose half of their accounting. But really, people who play so infrequently shouldn't honestly be counted in the first place.

Blizzard should have always delivered two numbers. Then we could see if the SUBSCRIPTION numbers- you know, people who SUBSCRIBE LIKE ME instead of play a whole different model- would show us what's actually going on AS RELATES TO US.

So at least it's biting them in the ass there. Just as when they claimed huge numbers in the past, I have no idea whether those numbers are really players or just people who are like Azerothian tourists.

[But I Hate You All]

From that page:

"It was released on April 10, 2013 in North America."

Not worldwide.

Well sir

http://9yin.woniu.com/web3/home/index.asp


The answer is there but I don't speak Chinese

[Tomana]

What am i missing?

Casual activity 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + N = a lot of stuff to do, and people run out of time rather than out of things to do (like in Cata).

[Deleted]

Ouch that's bad. 1.3 million in a single quarter is a huge loss.
I'm curios to see what they will do to stop this.

[Deleted]

What am i missing?

It's not free.

[yetgdhfgh]

WoW will still be blizzards number 1 cash cow for at least another 5 years maybe more

I guess the real problem is that people are moving on with there lives and dont want invest the time and the young blood aint staying

Ive seen a huge dramatic fall in activity on my server in the past 6 months