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

[Tripwire]

These sub losses are the very reason we're seeing more cash shop items, to make up for lost monthly revenue! TBC2 wont come soon enough!

[Linkhyrule]

And the vultures come a pecking.

[Lolsteak]

As much as I hate to get into these debates, I have to agree. 5 years ago the number of F2P games was fairly small and nothing with serious quality behind it. Now, thats changed quite a bit, there are dozens of MMOs that can be played without ever spending a dime and the quality has come up quite a bit as well. Times are changing in the MMO world.

Sub prices have an opportunity to fluctuate as well, FFXIV is running as low as £7.69 a month compared to WoW's £8.99 (Yeah i know wow drops to £7.69 when buying 6 months at a time) and to be honest Sony need the money FAR more than Blizzard does at this point in time... with that in mind i expect to see some changes to their subscription model if they dip below 7mil.

[Leothas]

I agree with everything you said.

Honestly, should of stayed at 10 and 25 only. They had a AMAZING design for Ulduar. If you was good enough you could engage in a hard mode within normal this is how it should still be. I have absolutely no clue why they scrapped this concept.

Never understood why it was scrapped either. Ulduar is by most people described as one of the best raids ever made in wow, if not the best.
Make more raids like Ulduar and you will make sure that raiders stay in the game atleast.

[Synstir]

7,7 after all these years what mmo can say that to? 0

Indeed it is a great achievement, no one can deny that!

But, still a steady decline in subs is also a fact. With this decline income is decreasing also.
Think about the growth till 12.000.000 and with it all that had to be increased to keep everything running for those players.
Building a infra that supports 12.000.000 players has it own costs and now the subs are declining, from 12.000.000 to 7.7 mill (almost half of what it was).
The impact must be huge as the infra is there for twice the amount of players, while income (almost) half the size.
This is bad news.

[Zokten]

Nothing ever grows forever. Everything has it's own rise and fall. Not sure why people are surprised.

Oh, ps, stop saying the game is dying. The game will only die when Blizzard pulls the plug. You will STILL have people playing to the very end. Take a look at Everquest.

dying =/= die

[mikencarly]

Lol at the people saying wow is dying or dead like subs dont go up and down in pay to play mmos this is nothing of a drop as well what jokers the haters are!

[Banzhe]

Lol at the people saying wow is dying or dead like subs dont go up and down in pay to play mmos this is nothing of a drop as well what jokers the haters are!

The game hitting the lowest number of active accounts since it's release, I think that says it all with the direction taken by the lead designers! It's not 5 million players suddenly having children, moving on to other games and what ever other ridiculous spins that can be attempted, it's the fact that they are delivering far less then what should be expected from a subscription based game!

Different difficulties isn't more content, it's the same content!- not to mention that the whole concept is beyond ridiculous in an online mmorpg, you'd have to be a proper sheep to actually buy into the bullshit delivered from blizzard over the past 2 years! (Yes, I was a sheep until patch 5.1 when even online / rl friends and the misses wasn't enough to keep me paying for that junk)

[lockdwn]

My biggest issue as a GM of my little guild is when I started back in the days.. we virtually had to sit outside of AQ and pray that someone mess up or D/C to get your shot at coming in and raiding. Because of this, you HAD to max your dps..study fights and ensure you don't mess up and get replaced. Now most of these players are leaders in their own guilds but there is no line outside waiting to get in anymore. The last two or expansions are were kinda face-roll that the new guys don't get the concept of raiding and team work (depending on you to show). You get about 60-70% of good raiders and 30-40% trash who did not pay their dues or even understand what it means to raid.

All of us are now older and have other responsibilities so it is very frustrating to watch these new guys come into raids not prepared in any way expecting to "wing it", asking for pots or not even gemmed.. and we HAVE to use them or the raid won't even start. These guys are the same idiots who say something ignorant and bounce after a few wipes because it was too hard.

Most of us don't have time to sit and walk them through (pugs). There is a HUGE difference in progressing for the kill and wiping because we do not realized these derps don't even know the basic mechanics of fights. As a GM, I actually look for older players that raided back in the day but lining up times are impossible. When we say that the old days are way better.. I don't think its the encounters..it was the quality of players... that talked about the raid encounters and how your peers maximized dps not just about how they drink or some other crap that don't matter. Sure there was that talk..but during trash. I still don't know the direction WoW wants but it is clearly broken.

I think they need to do a few things.

• Merge the servers to increase the pool of quality players.
• Seperate PvP and Pve into two different servers - Attempting to tune them as one is impossible.
• Name Servers for what they are.. Hardcore PvP, Casual PvP, Hardcore PvE, Casual Pve - so you know what you'r getting into
• Free up the locks on 10 and 25 so you can play for your guild and your friends.
• Not try to limit players who want to play allot by putting a max on the amount of stuff they can do. If they want to play all night..well damn.. reward them.

I understand this is a business so WOW has to make their money but if you separate the categorizes by server then they can add content to that topic rather then trying to apply it to all of us.. If PvP is dying then, make changes to PvP and not break all of it. Then only PvP servers (hardcore or causal) will be effected and not touch PvE. I understand there are PvP servers but that only means you can be attacked during questing.. but changing a spell because of PvP and now PvE raiding is suffering is a pointless loop that is easily fixed by separating them all together. When you que for BG's (because people like to do both) then the PvP changes are now into in play so you have to adjust)

Just my 2 cents.

[LaReine]

Yep, I'm one of those who left. I'll be back for patch, and then I know I'll leave again. That's just the way of WoW life. Some are waiting for WoW to quit recycling, others are waiting for something new and different. I am neither of these. . .I quit the day I found out about how fun it is with the new content =(
I'll be back for you, WoW! Just don't patch before I'm back.

[Deleted]

I would have quited much earlier if it wasnt for the people.
In the end i quited due to personal life at a point that i dont think wow was at its worse, mid June that is.
Flexy raids were anounced, 25s were once again doable at least normal modes without feeling that you re sacrificing too much in combarison to 10 man (that was always at a highest average skill level).
Still i had to quit.
Now i see this 7,7 and my mind goes to the past, where i would take part in a furious debate about it. I don't feel like it, and from what i see in this thread, not many people are feeling like it either!
I remember a 600k decline on Cata, the debates where ENDLESS! Now there is a 2,5 million drop in subs since the begining of expansion and things are stale in combarison.
People accepted that wow cannot last for ever and learn to enjoy the moments playing for "as much as it can last"?
I wish!
I might be coming for next XPac, if some things change especially. But it will never be the same again. Enjoy your time in there people!

[Slant]

Never understood why it was scrapped either. Ulduar is by most people described as one of the best raids ever made in wow, if not the best.
Make more raids like Ulduar and you will make sure that raiders stay in the game atleast.

The Ulduar concept of Hardmodes was scrapped, because it was too difficult to design boss fights like that. I assume cost plays an indirect role in that as well.