1.3 million sub drop

[majesta]

I think part of the problem and no offense to this site, is that everything is known about the next patch before it lands. It is expected you know everything before it lands too. Boss strategies, where or what quests you need to continue your legendary quest line etc... I feel the biggest thing hurting Warcraft besides Blizzard's blatant inaction with low population realms is the PTR. The PTR makes new content old even before it lands.

I also feel Blizzard's concept of content patches is a total joke. I would love to see smaller patches like 5.3.1, 5.3.2 that do fast quick changes. Like take for example Stormwind. We all know it was ravaged by Deathwing. So why not engage the player in rebuilding the damn thing? How hard is it to create a quest chain that sends the players out into the world to collect resources to help with the rebuilding process? Over the period of a few months we see slowly parts of the city build back up and things fixed and the quests change every few weeks according to what materials are needed. Lumber, stone, sand etc... I don't buy the whole "It takes a lot of time and effort to add things like this to the game" You are adding nothing but a few NPCs, some Quest Text and everything else is existing art assets. It would bring some level of immersion back to the game.

Instead Blizzard builds up to these so called huge patches that have a few days of content at best with a bunch of repeatable quests. Maybe we get a new raid instance where the bosses have a lot of mechanics we have seen, specially if you have been raiding since vanilla, and now we are approaching Miller's Magic Number which is why raiding I expect will only get worse as trying to find players who can deal with more becomes increasingly rarer. It's why lower population realms are such an issue for guilds who are trying to raid.

In the end, full circle, all the issues with Warcraft Blizzard I feel has brought on themselves because of their disregard for the player-base as a whole, insurmountable greed, and lack of an ego check. It is sad there still isn't a set of strong competitors to Warcraft. Competitions drives innovation. Want proof check out wrestling. Ever since WWE bought out WCW and ECW I feel the product has become somewhat stale and dumbed down. No reason to be innovative. Every now and then you see them become concerned with TNA and they will make a change here or there, but they have no real competition. Prior to WWE owning everyone you never knew what was going to happen because everyone was vying for Number 1.

[Deleted]

I think part of the problem and no offense to this site, is that everything is known about the next patch before it lands. It is expected you know everything before it lands too. Boss strategies, where or what quests you need to continue your legendary quest line etc... I feel the biggest thing hurting Warcraft besides Blizzard's blatant inaction with low population realms is the PTR. The PTR makes new content old even before it lands.

I also feel Blizzard's concept of content patches is a total joke. I would love to see smaller patches like 5.3.1, 5.3.2 that do fast quick changes. Like take for example Stormwind. We all know it was ravaged by Deathwing. So why not engage the player in rebuilding the damn thing? How hard is it to create a quest chain that sends the players out into the world to collect resources to help with the rebuilding process? Over the period of a few months we see slowly parts of the city build back up and things fixed and the quests change every few weeks according to what materials are needed. Lumber, stone, sand etc... I don't buy the whole "It takes a lot of time and effort to add things like this to the game" You are adding nothing but a few NPCs, some Quest Text and everything else is existing art assets. It would bring some level of immersion back to the game.

Instead Blizzard builds up to these so called huge patches that have a few days of content at best with a bunch of repeatable quests. Maybe we get a new raid instance where the bosses have a lot of mechanics we have seen, specially if you have been raiding since vanilla, and now we are approaching Miller's Magic Number which is why raiding I expect will only get worse as trying to find players who can deal with more becomes increasingly rarer. It's why lower population realms are such an issue for guilds who are trying to raid.

In the end, full circle, all the issues with Warcraft Blizzard I feel has brought on themselves because of their disregard for the player-base as a whole, insurmountable greed, and lack of an ego check. It is sad there still isn't a set of strong competitors to Warcraft. Competitions drives innovation. Want proof check out wrestling. Ever since WWE bought out WCW and ECW I feel the product has become somewhat stale and dumbed down. No reason to be innovative. Every now and then you see them become concerned with TNA and they will make a change here or there, but they have no real competition. Prior to WWE owning everyone you never knew what was going to happen because everyone was vying for Number 1.

This is a great post.

You know what happened to me with this? I went back a week before MOP hit and all the old guildies, my friends were there! 30 of them, right there. I couldn't believe it, I had unsubbed for a year after not liking Cata and there they were, my old buddies from vanilla.
They were very happy to see me, but unfortunately, they weren't staying. They had the beta for a year and the idea of MOP bored them silly.
They will probably never come back, I pretty much played Mop alone. Lasted a month, dead realm (zenedar) and well blizz what is the point?
So the beta was showing everything to everyone that was supposed to play it before it was out. And we read about every detail about every patch before it happens?

Blizz, how about stopping beta testing outside of your internal team? The whole sense of adventure - that doesn't exist any more AT ALL, even with a new expansion pack - is your fault. We know you are paying MMO champ and other places but please stop excreting all info, it's detrimental to the whole experience.

Why wait 2-3 years for an expansion pack and once it hits you know everything that will happen, quests are explained and details on numerous sites and loot tables as well. Loot tables have been awful since TBC, please address this too.

BTW Did you all realise that the lockboxes in MOP all contained greens? Just lazy development. I say this compared to previous, when the game was actually good and worth playing.

I quit a while back anyway. Nothing pulling me back, the company is not caring or listening and now has ppl on other things. They have a threshold which is probably 5 million and until that is breached, they will carry on with the new project. I think the real numbers are probably scarily close to 5 mil.

Let's see what happens, they have a tough 6 months ahead. Hoping for a nice expansion and not some filler BS like MOP.

[Baine]

Dying? It was pretty much limping and crawling 1 month after release from what I remember. :P

When that first patch hit, whooo nelly was it "abandon ship!"[COLOR="red"]

I really don't get all the crap on D3 except the servers problems at launch. I played the game and it looked ok. Not a shattering title but not as bad as I can read.

[isadorr]

This is a great post.

You know what happened to me with this? I went back a week before MOP hit and all the old guildies, my friends were there! 30 of them, right there. I couldn't believe it, I had unsubbed for a year after not liking Cata and there they were, my old buddies from vanilla.
They were very happy to see me, but unfortunately, they weren't staying. They had the beta for a year and the idea of MOP bored them silly.
They will probably never come back, I pretty much played Mop alone. Lasted a month, dead realm (zenedar) and well blizz what is the point?
So the beta was showing everything to everyone that was supposed to play it before it was out. And we read about every detail about every patch before it happens?

Blizz, how about stopping beta testing outside of your internal team? The whole sense of adventure - that doesn't exist any more AT ALL, even with a new expansion pack - is your fault. We know you are paying MMO champ and other places but please stop excreting all info, it's detrimental to the whole experience.

Why wait 2-3 years for an expansion pack and once it hits you know everything that will happen, quests are explained and details on numerous sites and loot tables as well. Loot tables have been awful since TBC, please address this too.

BTW Did you all realise that the lockboxes in MOP all contained greens? Just lazy development. I say this compared to previous, when the game was actually good and worth playing.

I quit a while back anyway. Nothing pulling me back, the company is not caring or listening and now has ppl on other things. They have a threshold which is probably 5 million and until that is breached, they will carry on with the new project. I think the real numbers are probably scarily close to 5 mil.

Let's see what happens, they have a tough 6 months ahead. Hoping for a nice expansion and not some filler BS like MOP.

The people on the PTR are testing the fights. Progression guilds are testing class changes and boss fights for them. The best players in the world are given some of the first chances at a boss because they arent going to whine and just say oh this is too hard,unsub. PTR is a great tool and has helped the people who choose to use it.

FYI, Lore matters? Not so much. Blizzard did a survey and also checked on the amount of people who actually read the text or cinematic or the ones that simply accepted and closed, or skipped the cinetmatics. The majority skipped all of the texts in the quest and skipped through anything else that they could which is why blizzard offered the option of skipping lore/quests.

Dead Realm=server transfer,hard.

[Pann]

The people on the PTR are testing the fights. Progression guilds are testing class changes and boss fights for them. The best players in the world are given some of the first chances at a boss because they arent going to whine and just say oh this is too hard,unsub. PTR is a great tool and has helped the people who choose to use it.

FYI, Lore matters? Not so much. Blizzard did a survey and also checked on the amount of people who actually read the text or cinematic or the ones that simply accepted and closed, or skipped the cinetmatics. The majority skipped all of the texts in the quest and skipped through anything else that they could which is why blizzard offered the option of skipping lore/quests.

Dead Realm=server transfer,hard.

The people on the PTR prior to MOP were for the most part the ones that signed up to the Annual Pass. Who cares if the best players quit? They account for such a small percentage of the player base, even today less than 5.5k guilds have killed Jin'rohk on heroic and only a third of them have got Horridon down.

This is the first I have heard of this survey can you link the results?

Dead realm = buh bye WOW, unfortunate but understandable.

[Galaddriel]

I think the real numbers are probably scarily close to 5 mil.

I think you're right.

According to GuildOx there are 1,067,857 active lvl 90 TOONs in the US
http://www.guildox.com/go/g.aspx?a=11&w=US&l=EN

And 1,164,790 in EU
http://www.guildox.com/go/g.aspx?a=11&w=EU


Remember, that's Characters, not accounts and then think about how many people you know that have more than one 90.

[dualsaw]

I know patch 5.3 will hurt subs I quit over it, it's a bunch of crap letting people who farm raiding gear to go into a bg and hang with people who grind out pvp gear becuse they hate the pve experience of game. I also feel it's very 1 sided this whole let the pve peolpe into the pvp world while not allowing the pvp people into the newer raids, most groups won't take you if your in pvp gear. I guess this really got to me because I liked to do casual pvp I would grind regular BG's only I wasn't doing RBG's or arena I knew I would get out geared by those who did, but wasn't worried about them cause they got best pvp gear the right way. I've been reading and seeing I'm not alone with the disgust over PVE in PVP, and rest assured it will find it's way into arena and rbg's the PVE side, but PVP geared players are just stuck with PVPing with no choice to raid the higher end content with their gear, unlike the PVE side now has they do anything in game, while the PVP community can't how is that for fair, or balanced gameplay?

[majesta]

Dead Realm=server transfer,hard.

I love how this is the go to quote for people. Why should I pay a company more money to deliver on the MM part of MMO? That is them just trying to milk money out of an SQL Query and Script. Yes, it is that simple. When I pay a monthly fee, that fee shouldn't be there. At the minimum if there is a fee there should be a bulk discount for someone like me who has played on the same server since vanilla and has 11 character slots with all level 85-90 toons. In addition I played on an old PvP server so I have, well had, a second account for the other faction and all toons on it are in the same boat. The coast to transfer becomes unjustified at this point and they have lost a customer.

This has been echoed repeatedly on these and other including the Warcraft forums. Now some may say the forums contain a small minority of players, however, I would postulate that this minority is a reflection of the majority that is willing to take one more step to actually voice a concern or issue. The path of least resistance here is to just quit and as we see people are quitting. There are those of us who have a lot invested in this game over time, or simply grew up playing in the Warcraft universe (WC1 Orcs and Humans baby!) and hate seeing what is happening so we are taking the extra step or effort to let our voice be known. This requires effort or work, which is not part of the path of least resistance.

[Deleted]

The people on the PTR are testing the fights. Progression guilds are testing class changes and boss fights for them. The best players in the world are given some of the first chances at a boss because they arent going to whine and just say oh this is too hard,unsub. PTR is a great tool and has helped the people who choose to use it.

FYI, Lore matters? Not so much. Blizzard did a survey and also checked on the amount of people who actually read the text or cinematic or the ones that simply accepted and closed, or skipped the cinetmatics. The majority skipped all of the texts in the quest and skipped through anything else that they could which is why blizzard offered the option of skipping lore/quests.

Dead Realm=server transfer,hard.

to be blatantly honest. I stopped reading the quest text the minute they implemented you get an arrow on your minimap showing you where stuff is and we get a nice area pointed out within where we can find the stuff.
Before that change well I would skim the text in order to pick up the clues to where I had to go next.

---------- Post added 2013-05-26 at 09:17 AM ----------

I think you're right.

According to GuildOx there are 1,067,857 active lvl 90 TOONs in the US
http://www.guildox.com/go/g.aspx?a=11&w=US&l=EN

And 1,164,790 in EU
http://www.guildox.com/go/g.aspx?a=11&w=EU


Remember, that's Characters, not accounts and then think about how many people you know that have more than one 90.

Maybe just all the china gold farmers left because there isn't a market for them anymore where they can sell their gold^^

[BenBos]

There are at least 5 Million Chinese World of Warcraft players ... and I personally don't give a damn about how many people in China or on Mars are playing the game. Neither does Blizzard, they know that their 5 million chinese subscribers aren't going to pay for their bills, they're just used as a convenient tool to bloat the report numbers. Making it appear as if their game is much more popular than it really is compared to other MMOs.

There are approximately less than 3,5 million players in the EU + US combined which makes it small fish compared to other MMOs such as League of Legends (Free2Play) or Minecraft. (Buy2Play). Even SimCity (also an MMO game according to Maxis) sold more copies than this.

The reality of things is that World of Warcraft isn't doing as great as most people think. They're in a bit of a pickle, with a bit of a black cloud hanging above their heads if they don't manage to figure out soon how to get the subscriber numbers in the west back up again ...

You are uninformed.

WoW makes MUCH more money than all those games you cited COMBINED.

In the last quarter alone WoW made 275 million dollars, that's easely 10 times more than all those games you cited.

Those games are free to play garbage in view of the actual money they bring in.

And ... Just do the count 3.5 million subs are not enough to justify 275 million revenue in 3 months time.

That's the reality of a PAID subscription based game against free to play garbage games where EVERY trial download over the last 5 years ...is counted as a player.

8.3 million active paying subscriptions beat free to play 75 zillion player games in revenue with ease

Always: just look at the income of games like Farmville: hardly 3% of their players actually pay some money to play it.

So before posting: learn the dollar game first.

[Kickbuttmario]

They lost some players. Now lets see where I actually care..

[MrHappy]

You can paint the shit out of an old car, and guess what it's still an OLD car!

there is quite a lot of time and money put in annually to restoration of old cars. You want new and shiny go Play SWTOR or RIFT i hear they are doing really well....

[Huehuecoyotl]

You are uninformed.

WoW makes MUCH more money than all those games you cited COMBINED.

In the last quarter alone WoW made 275 million dollars, that's easely 10 times more than all those games you cited.

Those games are free to play garbage in view of the actual money they bring in.

And ... Just do the count 3.5 million subs are not enough to justify 275 million revenue in 3 months time.

That's the reality of a PAID subscription based game against free to play garbage games where EVERY trial download over the last 5 years ...is counted as a player.

8.3 million active paying subscriptions beat free to play 75 zillion player games in revenue with ease

Always: just look at the income of games like Farmville: hardly 3% of their players actually pay some money to play it.

So before posting: learn the dollar game first.

its interesting that this is your approach to defending Blizzard these days "look at how much money they are making!". and your defence of the quality of the game? oh, its "WoW must be better than the F2P rubbish, because look at how much money it makes".

leaving aside the fact that it still makes a crap-ton of money, is there any comment you want to make about the fact they are leaking subs faster than a sandwich shop in a riot? or are you so wrapped up in the notion that Blizzard make money, that the quality of the game that makes that money is irrelevent?

[Conscious]

there is quite a lot of time and money put in annually to restoration of old cars. You want new and shiny go Play SWTOR or RIFT i hear they are doing really well....

Who cares about those other games? Last time I checked it was this one that lost a huge chunk of it's subscribers, and is expected by it's own developers to keep losing subscribers until further notice.

Old, is old, is old. If it's even a part of the overall problem, you're not going to get rid of it.

[Zoneseek]

there is quite a lot of time and money put in annually to restoration of old cars. You want new and shiny go Play SWTOR or RIFT i hear they are doing really well....

Both are doing fine as far as I know. What's wrong with playing those games if they are what you prefer?

[malbojia]

its interesting that this is your approach to defending Blizzard these days "look at how much money they are making!". and your defence of the quality of the game? oh, its "WoW must be better than the F2P rubbish, because look at how much money it makes".

leaving aside the fact that it still makes a crap-ton of money, is there any comment you want to make about the fact they are leaking subs faster than a sandwich shop in a riot? or are you so wrapped up in the notion that Blizzard make money, that the quality of the game that makes that money is irrelevent?

LOL has 6 to 7 million people playing it and it is balanced a skill based game not gear based...2 million dollar tournament over the last few days, when was the last time blizzard hosted a 2 million dollar tournament.

[BenBos]

LOL has 6 to 7 million people playing it and it is balanced a skill based game not gear based...2 million dollar tournament over the last few days, when was the last time blizzard hosted a 2 million dollar tournament.

Shrug. Those 6 million don't pay a fixed monthly subscription in LOL. And IF there was a fixed monthly subscription in LOL that number of "active" players would crumble to 300K in no time (like ALL "competitors" did in the last 7 years).

People Always vote with their wallets when quality is concerned.

Here I give you the figures of Farmville with its 75 million (ex) players: 82% pay ZERO $, 15% pay 1-10 dollars for the duration they played and ... 3% pay 20 dollars or more ...

In viewing these figures WOW would need around 150 million "active players" to even come close to their current revenue streams.

So I say: shrug: compare subscription (apples) to subscription (apples) and not to the free (thin) air you have.

The fact WOW has all these millions of active subscriptions while the rest had to resort to F2P in order to even survive is telling everything really.

Nothing changed: every single subscription based game crashed in head to head competition with a subscription based WOW.

The subscription market is even MORE dominated now by Blizzard than ever before.

And those thinking that Blizzard will just give up on this market have no clue what's ahead in possibilites (far superior know how and technology and 3 billion dollars reserve).

[Pann]

Shrug. Those 6 million don't pay a fixed monthly subscription in LOL. And IF there was a fixed monthly subscription in LOL that number of "active" players would crumble to 300K in no time (like ALL "competitors" did in the last 7 years).

People Always vote with their wallets when quality is concerned.

Here I give you the figures of Farmville with its 75 million (ex) players: 82% pay ZERO $, 15% pay 1-10 dollars for the duration they played and ... 3% pay 20 dollars or more ...

In viewing these figures WOW would need around 150 million "active players" to even come close to their current revenue streams.

So I say: shrug: compare subscription (apples) to subscription (apples) and not to the free (thin) air you have.

The fact WOW has all these millions of active subscriptions while the rest had to resort to F2P in order to even survive is telling everything really.

Nothing changed: every single subscription based game crashed in head to head competition with a subscription based WOW.

The subscription market is even MORE dominated now by Blizzard than ever before.

And those thinking that Blizzard will just give up on this market have no clue what's ahead in possibilites (far superior know how and technology and 3 billion dollars reserve).

Your post does not answer the person you are quoting, if WOW is that much more successful than LOL then why is LOL getting $2 million competitions and we some scenarios, a weekly quest to gather four lots of 200 meat and variouls other crap.

I take it you have actual figures for Farmville and are not just making them up.

[Strakha]

Your post does not answer the person you are quoting, if WOW is that much more successful than LOL then why is LOL getting $2 million competitions and we some scenarios, a weekly quest to gather four lots of 200 meat and variouls other crap.

I take it you have actual figures for Farmville and are not just making them up.

That is a really stupid argument. They are not the same product at all. LoL is based on E-sports, WoW is based on subscriptions. I play both, but still, awful and stupid argument.

[Deleted]

There are at least 5 Million Chinese World of Warcraft players ... and I personally don't give a damn about how many people in China or on Mars are playing the game. Neither does Blizzard, they know that their 5 million chinese subscribers aren't going to pay for their bills, they're just used as a convenient tool to bloat the report numbers. Making it appear as if their game is much more popular than it really is compared to other MMOs.

There are approximately less than 3,5 million players in the EU + US combined which makes it small fish compared to other MMOs such as League of Legends (Free2Play) or Minecraft. (Buy2Play). Even SimCity (also an MMO game according to Maxis) sold more copies than this.

The reality of things is that World of Warcraft isn't doing as great as most people think. They're in a bit of a pickle, with a bit of a black cloud hanging above their heads if they don't manage to figure out soon how to get the subscriber numbers in the west back up again ...

Good to see you back form yet another ban, I wonder how long you will last this time

I really love how you just make up numbers and present them as fact.

And in reality if WoW does have 3.5 million west players that is approx 700% more than any other sub based MMO.

I don't care about how many Chinese players there are, but you really need to stop bringing it up in EVERY SINGLE THREAD you post to try and get a reaction can't you just put down the stick for 5 minutes?

Do I think WoW is in decline, yes I 100% do, it is coming up to 10 years old and the competition especialy in the F2P and B2P market is getting stronger.

Do I think WoW will go F2P yes I 100% do, the second they think they can make more money from being F2P than being sub based.

Do I think WoW is in the best state ever, yes I 100% do, MoP is my favorite expansion by far.

Is it perfect, no of course it is not, I would like some more 5 mans ofc I would, who would not?

You can't have everything right?

But to offset that I think raiding is in the best place it has ever been, and I really liked the introduction of scenarios (in fact I prefer them to 5 mans).