wow subs at 7.7m

[But I Hate You All]

Wrong. They buy game time just like us, only in shorter sessions. Also Blizzard only sees like 10% of the money from there because NetEase takes most of it.

they have a model where they pay for hours instead of months, since most people in China, Korea, etc, play at internet cafes

[Deleted]

Those are characters, not players. I can promise you Shattered Hand horde doesn't have 36,000 level 90 horde players.

Yeah you are right, already edited it

[Chickat]

I have always suspected that was epic bullshit. I only have a story of my own here, but on Wrath of the Lich King Launch night, I lined up at the Gamestop near the University of Pittsburgh (I went to CMU). There were so many people, the line wrapped around the block twice. Cops in patrol cars stopped by and asked whats up. People not in the know stopped by and asked if there was concert tickets going on sale or something.

Fast forward to Cataclysm launch night... same place, same time, and there was a 20 person line. The contrast was striking.

In Wrath I had just my one main account. Since then... with all the Recruit a Friend, Scroll of Reactivation, Super Cheap-through-Cata/MoP sales, I've accumulated 4 more accounts for a total of 5. I always keep 2 active, but sometimes I activate a third for a month (won't discuss why).

I always thought that the sales and RaF stuff hilariously inflated the playerbase in the West, generally home to people with more disposable income. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the game had about 1.5 million actual human beings playing the game between the US and Europe with half a million total playing with any kind of regularity.

Cata sold more then Wrath did fyi and the launch of cata was wows biggest period ever. Wrack up the lines to your local area losing interest or online sales becoming available. A lot of people buy games online now days.

[Deleted]

They have lost approximately 36% of the playerbase in just under 3 years. I don't know how anyone can claim this is normal or expected.

[Polarthief]

Wow has lost about 1m subs per year if you average it out since the sub drops started. Wow will prob last 3-4 more years as a sub based game and then move onto ftp or btp. We have 2 xpacs left until then.

But I don't see this as a "WoW is declining because it's old" type of problem. I see it as a "the game has degraded from its design in previous expansions to the point where $15 isn't worth it anymore".

WoW in Vanilla was a whole new experience as MMORPGs were just kicking off, and WoW's was, well, fun. There's no way to criticize it based on technology limitations and peoples' expectations (you can easily compare it to today and realize it sucks now, but that's like saying an NES game sucks when compared to the Wii U only because the graphics suck and there's a lack of things in NES games, which would be a retarded thing to think).

Burning Crusade expanded upon these ideas and made the game better. As did Wrath, but there was a point where Wrath started to show some flaws.

Now we went through Cataclysm, and are in the MoP days. There are tons of MMOs nowadays that are FREE, and some of them are even better than WoW (and brand new), while Blizzard sticks to either outdated designs or horribly flawed mechanics as means of "fun gameplay" (such as forcing dailies, having to do old raids to get gear with NO level of catch-up except LFR, no catch-up on legendaries, no other means of end game besides raiding or PvP ladders). They've either gone TOO out-of-the-box, or stuck inside the box for specific things, and it shows. Both Cataclysm and MoP have been in decline, and that's in no way because of how old the game is.

Hell, I've been playing since early Vanilla, and I'll admit there are some good things in MoP. I loved Brawler's Guild, and the raiding experience is phenomenal this expansion, but that's all there's been for me personally, while Cataclysm, there was little to nothing I enjoyed about it (except for the first tier of the expansion, which was a nice breath of fresh air after being stuck in ICC for over a year).

WoW isn't dying, nor will it ever die just because it's old; Blizzard is the only one who will kill WoW because they continue to either show how old it is to everyone, or change a specific thing too much to where people dislike it/it's no longer recognizable. They can easily turn this around for 6.0, but after two poor expansions in a row, they only have one more chance before they see a serious drop.

[spirits330]

It's because the amount of realms there are and Blizzard refusing to lower the amount. This amount of realms was once there for almost 15 million players, theres half of that now and still the same amount of realms. That means on average each realm has had it's population halved. Then add the fact that most of the players flocked to a handful of big realms and you get why there are so many absolutely dead realms around.

On US servers there are 12 realms with more than 150k characters on (the realms where everyone flocked to) and 215 realms with less than 100k characters (the realms where everyone flocked from). The lowest populated realm has 16k characters, the highest populated one has 232k, enfin you get the problem.


http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html

The EU realms show exactly the same pattern, highest pop 220k, lowest pop 12k. 6 realms over 150k, 242 realms under 100k.....

http://wow.realmpop.com/eu.html

My server is now one of those sub 100k people, and it's Alliance sided. So I can't imagine how poor it is on Horde side.

[But I Hate You All]

Because MoP's theme was horrible for the masses, and because a lot of players lost faith in Blizzard after Cata. The theme of MoP is still bad for a lot of people, but MoP is mechanically much better then Cata and has at least double the end game content. If the next xpac has a well received theme subs may go up some in anticipation for it. Think Burning Legion.

Eh....its not fair to say that MoP's theme was horrible for the masses. Some people liked it.

[tempis]

Wrong. They buy game time just like us, only in shorter sessions. Also Blizzard only sees like 10% of the money from there because NetEase takes most of it.

yep, infact they have more control, they buy like 2500 mins and that may last them 2 months (depending on play time and the likes) where as we with the $15 pay even when we are asleep, at work, Ect.

[Chickat]

It's because the amount of realms there are and Blizzard refusing to lower the amount. This amount of realms was once there for almost 15 million players, theres half of that now and still the same amount of realms. That means on average each realm has had it's population halved. Then add the fact that most of the players flocked to a handful of big realms and you get why there are so many absolutely dead realms around.

On US servers there are 12 realms with more than 150k characters on (the realms where everyone flocked to) and 215 realms with less than 100k characters (the realms where everyone flocked from). The lowest populated realm has 16k characters, the highest populated one has 232k, enfin you get the problem.


http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html

The EU realms show exactly the same pattern, highest pop 220k, lowest pop 12k. 6 realms over 150k, 242 realms under 100k.....

http://wow.realmpop.com/eu.html

Wows peak was 12m players. Virtual realms will solve every problem you mentioned, so your point is moot.

[Deleted]

They have lost approximately 36% of the playerbase in just under 3 years. I don't know how anyone can claim this is normal or expected.

Anyone with a functioning brain could have expected this, it is a normal online game pattern.
The playerbase will probably stabilize a bit around 4-5 million players some time in the future, then gradually lose more over time. It'll take like another 8-10 years before WoW drops under 1 million really.

[But I Hate You All]

They have lost approximately 36% of the playerbase in just under 3 years. I don't know how anyone can claim this is normal or expected.

cause people like to deny it. I am sure when Blizzard decides switch to a F2p model would be better from profits people will be blindsided.

[chipwood]

They have lost approximately 36% of the playerbase in just under 3 years. I don't know how anyone can claim this is normal or expected.

Yeah, at that rate the game could be dead less tan a decade from now.

[Vensu24]

They've stated that they will. Release cycles have been faster.
New expansion will be announced in Blizcon, I wouldn't be surprised if it was out Q1-Q2 2014.

Q2 2014 release date would be a disaster. If 5.4 comes out in August and the next expansion comes out in May, that would be a gap of more than nine months. Way to long for the current atmosphere.

[Skroe]

They've stated that they will. Release cycles have been faster.
New expansion will be announced in Blizcon, I wouldn't be surprised if it was out Q1-Q2 2014.

Yeah. Not gonna happen.

Are you seriously suggesting a new expac in 6-7 months in the future, an expac that doesn't even have a name or a screenshot associated with it yet? That hasn't gone through a day of QA? That's had no advertisement as this point? Ridiculous. Not even Call of Duty does that for their annual releases, and WoW doesn't have two teams churning out content. It has one.

The next Expac is a year away, easily. It's going to be a long 2014.

[Polarthief]

Because MoP's theme was horrible for the masses, and because a lot of players lost faith in Blizzard after Cata. The theme of MoP is still bad for a lot of people, but MoP is mechanically much better then Cata and has at least double the end game content. If the next xpac has a well received theme subs may go up some in anticipation for it. Think Burning Legion.

It's not just that the theme was bad, but that, Cataclysm was a filler expansion (with at least a good theme), and guess what MoP is? ANOTHER FILLER EXPANSION (with a BAD theme).

You can only have so much filler content before people realize how shit it is. I don't feel like I'm contributing to anything, nor did I feel like I was last expansion either.

[Pancaspe]

WOW has at least 20 years left, so Quarter to Quarter Sub numbers are meaningless.

[Chickat]

From another thread

they have a model where they pay for hours instead of months, since most people in China, Korea, etc, play at internet cafes

Thats exactly what i said. They buy game time in shorter sessions.

[Slant]

They have lost approximately 36% of the playerbase in just under 3 years. I don't know how anyone can claim this is normal or expected.

Delusional thinking and the wish to protect Blizzard from us evil flamers. Of course, we all like the game. But hey, it's blasphemy to even think Blizzard does something wrong in all their divine wisdom.

Btw, to all the people saying WoW is 9 years old... um, the graphics were not really up to par even back in 2005, so that has never been the issue, still isn't. WoW has always lagged behind other games in these categories. It's not about graphcis, it's about the idea and philosophy having been destroyed by Ghostcrawler and his gang.

[Scummer]

The cynical side of me wants them to lose more. I want Blizzard to get a massive kick the arse with WoW and tbh in general and turn it up a notch to remind us why they got so big in the first place.

Atm I'm seeing them make some blunders in all three of their franchises and it has me concerned.

[But I Hate You All]

WOW has at least 20 years left, so Quarter to Quarter Sub numbers are meaningless.

Do you have anything to support that claim?