WoW Down to 7.7 Million Subscribers, Activision Blizzard Purchases Vivendi's Shares

[Deleted]

oh noes! : /

[Sevyvia]

The game is old, and I had been subscribed for almost 8 years. Financial times were tough, I unsubbed. I don't see myself coming back. Most friends are gone, the game has lost its luster. The game grew too big, and too many of the people who saw it when it was small abandoned it. I genuinely think so. Now, many of the devs don't understand the underpinnings of the game that kept its players going and attracted more than it pushed away. So we're here. People leave, more people leave because their friends leave, and so on.

But I can at least say that the first few years of WoW, I genuinely enjoyed the game. Just a shame it has turned into a boring timesink, now.

[Drithien]

I don't know if that is good or bad news. I just wish Blizzard could buy themselves out of the merger with Activision. But seeing as World of WarCraft, their most profitable product, is steadily declining on profitability, I can't see that happenening. Then again, maybe Kotick will think that WoW's fad is over, and try to get rid of the "dead weight of the company that does not make Call of Duties," and Blizzard can get themselves free once more after decades, to produce their games without "guidance and suggestions from above." And that way all the silliness of trying to milk customers, with subpar products even can stop. And we can get some good old genuine Blizzard games once again. One can still hope at least

As for WoW's decline, as I have said before: they doomed themselves the moment they decided to develop new content only for those interested in instanced content (group/raid dungeons, battlegrounds, arenas, scenarios); because it is easier, and cheaper, to develop for. Yet that way they left the vast majority of the players with no content. An open-world role-playing game with very little actual open-world role-playing content: from six main campaigns in vanilla to only two in the expansions, from almost fourty zones in vanilla to only 8(!) in the expansions, and so on. They tried to cheat their way forward, and bribe casual players with shiny rewards instead of content. It workd for some years, but even the rewards started to lose their appeal; and the players just leave. If only they kept producing as much content for each expansion as vanilla had... but "ifs" don't have much practical application.

[Grevie]

Well, this is natural, Wow is on decline, it doesn't mean the game is going to die anytime soon, but all that you can see now is less people is playing
the game every quarter, so, probably with a new expansion will gain some subs but, will decline more over time, the game is old, but blizzard know
this cow has alot of milk, so in my thoughts game industry will have to deal with WoW for at least 3-4 more years, enough for 2 more expansions.

But Blizzard will have to show their quality soon enough with good games, Titan as wow successor, will need to be a amazing game, but honestly
even blizzard will get the hit on another games because wow is and eventually was so succesful.

[quras]

Can't say I'm really shocked that subs are still declining. Still a high number of players but a leak in any bucket needs to be fixed.

I give it less than a year and this game will adopt something similar to Free 2 Play with a flourishing cash shop. Hell, the base for F2P shop is there now, less than a year and it will be a full cash shop. Blizzard is always slow to the table but they do iron out most of the kinks others games stumble with.

[Csnyder]

as soon as the next patch most will be back, just like each patch or expansion

[Deleted]

Tbh I'm surprised its not more than that....
Actuall subs are prolly even less concidering stolen/hacked accounts

[Caerule]

Blargh, cue the shitstorm of "WoW is dying!" posts. I really wish MMO-Champion would stop posting these numbers.

[Dawon]

Tbh I'm surprised its not more than that....
Actuall subs are prolly even less concidering stolen/hacked accounts

Not to mention all the people paying but not playing anymore... I would be surprised if there's even 4 million active players.

In my last year of WoW (2011:ish), I probably logged in 5 times but didn't want to shut the payment for nostalgic reasons... I mean, it's "always been there to play when I wanted" so was hard to cope with the idea to NOT have it around... However, I eventually cancelled and never looked back!

Loved the game from Vanilla to Wrath, hate what it became after that... RIP best-game-ever-created!

[quras]

Not to mention all the people paying but not playing anymore... I would be surprised if there's even 4 million active players.

SNIP...

I wonder just how many are in that same boat? Still paying but not actually logging in for any amount of real play time but paying cause it gives them options should they become board.

The ole stand-by game of sorts. Not that blizzard would care of course as long as you were still paying.

[MaccaBird]

Blargh, cue the shitstorm of "WoW is dying!" posts. I really wish MMO-Champion would stop posting these numbers.

Why should they stop posting the numbers? I'm not one to say WoW is dying, but if it was dying, it shouldn't be covered up and hidden.

[Deleted]

Why do you even care? Play if you want to, don't play if you don't want to. It's not that hard..

[Strychnine]

Blargh, cue the shitstorm of "WoW is dying!" posts. I really wish MMO-Champion would stop posting these numbers.

Me too, it flares panic because we love to live off disaster.

[Deleted]

Not to mention all the people paying but not playing anymore... I would be surprised if there's even 4 million active players.

In my last year of WoW (2011:ish), I probably logged in 5 times but didn't want to shut the payment for nostalgic reasons... I mean, it's "always been there to play when I wanted" so was hard to cope with the idea to NOT have it around... However, I eventually cancelled and never looked back!

Loved the game from Vanilla to Wrath, hate what it became after that... RIP best-game-ever-created!

Indeed Ive been like that for preaty much most of mop
Both me and my wife still pay subs but log on maybe once or twice a month to do something relaxed

[Salech]

Still about 6 million more subs then any other mmo. And i still enjoy raiding, which is my only reason for playing wow.

guild wars 2 have 2-3 million logging in every day to play, yeah it's not subscriptions but it is quite abit, and sub based MMO's are far and few between now really.

[waddlez]

guild wars 2 have 2-3 million logging in every day to play, yeah it's not subscriptions but it is quite abit, and sub based MMO's are far and few between now really.

^I'd like to see a concurrent active user peak for WoW (NA & EU & OC) because I have a feeling it is closer to that number than 7.7 million.

[Drithien]

guild wars 2 have 2-3 million logging in every day to play, yeah it's not subscriptions but it is quite abit, and sub based MMO's are far and few between now really.

Personally I don't mind the subscription. I actually prefer it over (kind of) free-to-play and buy-to-play, because it arms the developers with more money... in theory. What I do mind is most of that money going into the pockets of the owners of the company, not even that much into the developers' pockets; and the game left to fend on its own against all reason. The main reason WoW was so frantically successful, was its casual approach to online open-world role-playing games. When all other mmorpgs concentrated on raiding, WoW concentrated on providing a living world for players to adventure in. But with the first expansion the world got unbelievably smaller, and the focus was once more on end-game; when it was the mid-game that attracted and kept most players. Shinies instead of content worked to distract casuals for a couple of expansions, but the novelty wore off eventually, and now even more boredom has ensued. I wish they had kept putting out as much content as vanilla had with each expansion, or at least half as much. Even half would be better than what we actually got.

[moremana]

Blargh, cue the shitstorm of "WoW is dying!" posts. I really wish MMO-Champion would stop posting these numbers.

The majority of people here arent saying wow is dying, read the posts before "inb4 wow is dying remarks", there is some actual good points in here, go read them.

[Crookids]

To be fair people mostly said its activations fault, and now when they say that it could be true. I dont know whether Blizzard will still be independent in development, but hopefully this doesn't turn into another ea bioware.

People say this like BioWare was ever a good developer. All their games were sub-par with an emphasis on cliche story. Any BioWare game was renown for this garbage story I found mediocre and NEVER for it's combat. You can't expect a developer to make compelling combat, which is everything an MMO is about, when they have absolutely no track record of doing so.

SWTOR failed because of BioWare.

[Deleted]

guild wars 2 have 2-3 million logging in every day to play, yeah it's not subscriptions but it is quite abit, and sub based MMO's are far and few between now really.
---------------
^I'd like to see a concurrent active user peak for WoW (NA & EU & OC) because I have a feeling it is closer to that number than 7.7 million.

Could be interesting, but we are hardly seeing those numbers anytime soon...

What we know is that GW2 sold something more than 3 million copies and MoP sold something more than 4 million copies (the difference to the sub number is, again, due to China, were people do not buy expansions like in EU + US). Since GW2 still didn't launch in China, the numbers are comparable.
Despite what people generally think on these forums, GW2 is going quite strong, with most servers at full or high population and enough revenue coming from micro-transactions to cover for a new free content update released every 2 weeks.

To be clear, I can't care less about the whole GW2 sucks / WoW sucks controversy, which is quite silly. I am just pointing to the fact that while WoW is certainly the n. 1 subcription based MMO and most likely the n. 1 overall MMO when it comes to population, when you look at the Western market, US + EU, its leadership in terms of active players at this point, in 2013, is likely to be much thinner than most people think. This basically means that in the country where you live WoW is probably still the most played MMO, but not "by far".

Again, this doesn't mean that one or the other games suck. They are clearly both very strong games, if you look at them without bias or fanboysm. I am just suggesting that people here make evaluations about the numbers of WoW while looking too much at WoW alone (its mechanics, its content, etc.). But now the market is much wider and stronger than it was: if you want to understand what's going on, you should adapt to look around widely, in a less WoW-centric way.