WoW Down to 8.3 Million Subscribers

[Shrouded]

-snipped from Joystiq-

"Though the majority of our subscriber decline occurred mainly in the east, where we have more subscribers and lower revenue per subscriber," Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said in a financials call, "We saw declines in the west as well."

"While we do believe further declines are likely and we expect to have fewer subscribers at year-end than we do today, World of Warcraft remains one of the most successful franchises in the history of entertainment," he added.

-snip-

I think that pretty much sums it up. Activision Blizzard themselves know the game is old, and that subs are going to keep declining. Why anyone here would argue against that, I don't know.

[Celista]

I love MoP. Really, I think this is one of the game's best expansions by far.

That being said....(in my opinion):

1. Aging game in a competitive F2P mmo atmosphere in NA, EUR and Asia
2. Dated graphics engine, questing style, etc (as other games are turning to dynamic questing and other gameplay features)
3. Lack of balance making the game undesirable as an e-sport
4. PvP changes and removal of a sense of gearing/progression in pvp with ilvl caps, etc

There have been some odd changes this expansion/last expansion, I see a lot of odd decisions being made by the development teams and reading GC try to justify some of these changes just makes them even more odd-seeming...more so in Cata than perhaps this expansion, although pvp changes have been just strange.

WoW needs a fresh development/management team, the game is losing SOME subs due to it being in a natural state of decline for any product (google product life cycle if you don't know what I am talking about), but the game needs a fresh approach if it doesn't want to hasten the decline.

It could bounce back, but not without fresh ideas/perspective.

[Baerong]

Blizzard can be proud of themselves for keeping such an old game still intresting for a such a huge player base. Nothing to be ashamed of imo.

[Awe]

out of curiosity, what are GW2 number of players? i know SWTOR have over 2 million

You will never know for sure becouse Arena is not obliged to publish such statistics as Blizzard is. The only hint you may get are game tracking applications like Xfire, Raptr etc. And there GW2 seems to be at around half of WoW's numbers. As for SWTOR, yes, it fell below 1 million before F2P. After F2P they noted an increase and are now at around 1/3 of WoW's numbers (again, its about Xfire, Raptr etc.)

[Sanguinerd]

It stays enjoyable to read the "THIS IS THE REAL REASON WOW IS DYING" posts, great stuff!

[Bahska]

Who cares if there's 8 million people left?

TBC had about that amount, and the community was much better than it has been for the last 4 or so years. More players = more douchebags.

^^ Only one who cares are trolls and butthurt people. I will likely play WoW till i either cant cause of work (Army) or the servers shutdown. Others not playing will not stop my enjoyment of the game. (Like you said it may make me enjoy it more)
Plus the game is almost 9 years old, its had a pretty good run imo. When the game hits 1 million players it will still have more players then a lot of other newer MMO's so meh.

Blizzard can be proud of themselves for keeping such an old game still intresting for a such a huge player base. Nothing to be ashamed of imo.

My thoughts exactly.

[crakerjack]

Maybe when WoW is down to 1-2 million subs Blizzard can finally stop with the "must please all" attitude and develop WoW in the way that made it great once more. Rewarding every little action, caps, and queues weren't what made it great.

It won't ever go back to original, that changed right before wotlk... when activison and blizzard merged. They took the entire dev team off of WoW and put them on Titan. That hard, challenging, fun experience we all went through when playing wow in vanilla/TBC will likely be the same in Titan which is why I'm really excited for it.

[Nerraw]

Time merge servers yes. Its redicously stupid Blizzard dosen't do it yet. Close down realms now...

And they have done so in the East where the majority of subs were lost. The West is mostly untouched by it, so comparatively there isn't a need yet.

[Rekuja]

Call of Duty Online.... oh dear god.

[Isheria]

More news at 11 people quit an 8 year old game totally unheard of never happened before.

[Sky High]

Gotta love how people drag their opinions across each others faces like they are actual facts that should be considered.

[Deleted]

If you think this game is "improving" you are completely delusional

Please elaborate on that statement, what is it that hasn't improved/gotten worse?

[crakerjack]

^^ Only one who cares are trolls and butthurt people. I will likely play WoW till i either cant cause of work (Army) or the servers shutdown. Others not playing will not stop my enjoyment of the game. (Like you said it may make me enjoy it more)
Plus the game is almost 9 years old, its had a pretty good run imo. When the game hits 1 million players it will still have more players then a lot of other newer MMO's so meh.

Had about 8 million??? HAHAHA... yea give or take a couple million, more like give a couple mil... WoW had over 9, close to 10 mil in TBC and jumped around 11-12 mil in wotlk.

[Rekuja]

If you think this game is "improving" you are completely delusional

I would say WoW has improved tenfold since Cata.... MoP at first wasn't so great, but I think these days it's a huge improvement and quite enjoyable if you ask me.

[Destruktion]

It won't ever go back to original, that changed right before wotlk... when activison and blizzard merged. They took the entire dev team off of WoW and put them on Titan. That hard, challenging, fun experience we all went through when playing wow in vanilla/TBC will likely be the same in Titan which is why I'm really excited for it.

I sure hope you're right.

[Tomana]

It won't ever go back to original, that changed right before wotlk... when activison and blizzard merged. They took the entire dev team off of WoW and put them on Titan. That hard, challenging, fun experience we all went through when playing wow in vanilla/TBC will likely be the same in Titan which is why I'm really excited for it.

Not a chance, Titan is already planned as casual from the start on. The time of vanilla-like stuff is dead and buried.

[Fenixhart]

1.4 Million people I don't know or played with unsubbed.

...why should I worry again?

[Tomana]

That being said....(in my opinion):

1. Aging game in a competitive F2P mmo atmosphere in NA, EUR and Asia
2. Dated graphics engine, questing style, etc (as other games are turning to dynamic questing and other gameplay features)
3. Lack of balance making the game undesirable as an e-sport
4. PvP changes and removal of a sense of gearing/progression in pvp with ilvl caps, etc

You forgot the main reason: people no longer willing to commit themselve to an MMO time-wise, they would rather play a shooter or a mobile game.

[absurdgamertag]

Altalysm er I mean Cataclysm was a reason for a lot of people going fuck this. granted I will say the amount of dallies you had to do to get gear this Expac was awful, it's better then what was handed out to people at the tail ends of Warth and even MORE so in Cata, i literally had 8 toons that were geared enough to run regular DS. Dallies are not the way to go, but unless they come up with a new way to take up peoples time they aren't going to go away.

Exactly, you had 8 toons and that kept your attention on the game. As I said, Replay Value matters when you're taking into consideration monthly fees. Being alt friendly doesn't mean that it should be easy to gear up. Time is not the only thing to take into consideration when gearing a character. How about a system that lets you gear a little slower than on Wrath but with the same difficulty as TBC heroics? A system that takes into consideration gearing choices instead of the actual "LOL STR" micromanaging? That's what I meant.

[McNeil]

Annual Pass 2, new RaF, new Scroll and new Blizzard Store pets incoming