How can Blizz increase the number of the WoW players ?!

[Azrile]

Because the market dynamics have changed. Subscription based gaming is going the way of the dodo and micro-transaction funded games are the most profitable.

But really to go back to the original question here the answer is simple:

They can't. Less and less people look upon each new expansion as "Something new and exciting" and instead see "more of the same". The majority of the gaming community looks at the Warcraft franchise and sees a franchise where nothing new has been offered in almost a decade.

Bad games are bad games with or without subscriptions. AOC and SWTOR went F2P and still have nobody playing them. If they had launched F2P, they still would have nobody playing them. Elder Scrolls is launching with a subscription, but will likely fail and go F2P.

Also, you are CRAZY if you think any F2P game is more profitable than WOW. SWTOR and AOC may possibly be more profitable as F2P games than they were as subscription games, but even that is doubtful. But no way do they even get close to WOW. WOW literally has revenues of almost a billion dollars every year, every other game is probably making less than a few million per year... you are talking 50 times as much money!

There is a reason Elder Scrolls is starting out with a subscription because they know it is much more profitable that way. Of course when they can´t keep subscribers they will fall back to a free2play model, but that is their backup plan.

Free2Play is not some new, incredible invention.. it is just a last grasp of breath for dying MMO games. Dungeon and Dragons Online had success with it about 5 years ago because they were the first AAA MMO that switched over. There is no indication financially that any other MMO has had great luck with it. Less people are playing some of those games now as F2P than played it when it was sub based.

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Indeed.



As for what they can do, I'm not truly sure it matters, and I certainly don't buy the 'it's just old' excuse. I'd say that in very general terms, trying to be the mmo that represents all things to all players has, so far, not worked out for them. Pick your target audience and stick with them completely.

Yeah, it certainly hsn´t worked for WOW. You know, having 7 million subscribers who pay almost a billion dollars a year to play your game.. that certainly is a sign that the game sucks.

Do people not realize that games like SWTOR, AOC, SW, Warhammer and all the rest of them had less than 100k players? But you think WOW is doing something wrong and failing? And yes, next year at this time Elder Scrolls will be on that list too.

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So if we continue the 4 year trend of loosing a millions of players every year, the game will dip into the red within 2 expacs

WOW gained subscribers last quarter... the trend is up.

Blizzard is doing the right thing to get back subscribers, and that is the boost to 90. If you go to non-wow gaming sites, there are tons of people talking about coming back who haven´t played since vanilla and BC because they don´t have to lvl to the new content and won´t be behind everyone else when the expansion comes.

I also think they need to widen the game. A new raid tier isn´t enough every 6 months. Garrisons and Pet battles are a step in the right direction, but they need to turn their focus more to that type of thing rather than raids. The number of people who do pet battles every week dwarfs the numbers who do normal raiding. I think Blizzard saw that and it is the reason Garrisons are the big feature of the next expansion. Widen the game and do updates more frequently.

Also, as someone else mentioned... they need to stop front-ending all the content for an expansion. Like the 5.0 dailies and some of that content could have easily been delayed 2 months and it would have felt more fun. You get all this stuff you can do, you burn out in 2 months, then you starve for the next year. Timeless island was cool.. but it took 2 weeks until it felt done for most players.

[Pancaspe]

The movie will introduce WOW to an entire new generation of player.

[BenBos]

Bad games are bad games with or without subscriptions. AOC and SWTOR went F2P and still have nobody playing them. If they had launched F2P, they still would have nobody playing them. Elder Scrolls is launching with a subscription, but will likely fail and go F2P.

Also, you are CRAZY if you think any F2P game is more profitable than WOW. SWTOR and AOC may possibly be more profitable as F2P games than they were as subscription games, but even that is doubtful. But no way do they even get close to WOW. WOW literally has revenues of almost a billion dollars every year, every other game is probably making less than a few million per year... you are talking 50 times as much money!

There is a reason Elder Scrolls is starting out with a subscription because they know it is much more profitable that way. Of course when they can´t keep subscribers they will fall back to a free2play model, but that is their backup plan.

Free2Play is not some new, incredible invention.. it is just a last grasp of breath for dying MMO games. Dungeon and Dragons Online had success with it about 5 years ago because they were the first AAA MMO that switched over. There is no indication financially that any other MMO has had great luck with it. Less people are playing some of those games now as F2P than played it when it was sub based.

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Yeah, it certainly hsn´t worked for WOW. You know, having 7 million subscribers who pay almost a billion dollars a year to play your game.. that certainly is a sign that the game sucks.

Do people not realize that games like SWTOR, AOC, SW, Warhammer and all the rest of them had less than 100k players? But you think WOW is doing something wrong and failing? And yes, next year at this time Elder Scrolls will be on that list too.

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WOW gained subscribers last quarter... the trend is up.

Blizzard is doing the right thing to get back subscribers, and that is the boost to 90. If you go to non-wow gaming sites, there are tons of people talking about coming back who haven´t played since vanilla and BC because they don´t have to lvl to the new content and won´t be behind everyone else when the expansion comes.

I also think they need to widen the game. A new raid tier isn´t enough every 6 months. Garrisons and Pet battles are a step in the right direction, but they need to turn their focus more to that type of thing rather than raids. The number of people who do pet battles every week dwarfs the numbers who do normal raiding. I think Blizzard saw that and it is the reason Garrisons are the big feature of the next expansion. Widen the game and do updates more frequently.

Also, as someone else mentioned... they need to stop front-ending all the content for an expansion. Like the 5.0 dailies and some of that content could have easily been delayed 2 months and it would have felt more fun. You get all this stuff you can do, you burn out in 2 months, then you starve for the next year. Timeless island was cool.. but it took 2 weeks until it felt done for most players.

Just a few points to support this post.

LOL, remember ... is supposed to be the most popular on line PC game ever. Well after several years of hiding their revenue (they are not a stock rated company, so they don't even need to give that info ...).

Well after YEARS of waiting for their revenue and now we see that LoL with their incredible 70+ million accounts and ... 40 million active players made ... 625 million dollars NON GaaP revenue in 2013...

WoW with its 7.8 million subscribers made ... over 900 million dollars non Gaap revenue in that same year.

Makes you wonder what those other free to play MMO's make ... with ... 200K players ....

FREE to Play for MMORPG's are a nightmare in revenue compared to the steady stream of a subscription based game. Other games florish, like (yep) CCG's etc because everyone wants to have the better cards, but MMORPG's ... no ... too costly to maintain.

In the example of LOL,.... a free to play ... WOW would need around 60.000.000 ACTIVE players to have the same WoW revenue... as they had in 2013.... as a subscription based game....Not going to happen.

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I actually believe ESO will become heavy competition for WoW. It's the first MMO game in a decade from a AAA quality developer that is -not- trying to be a WoW clone. It will have a much larger potential market than WoW because it'll be the first next-gen console MMO and a worthy sequel of Skyrim, the most sold console game. The Elder Scrolls fanbase is very very big and much more 'PC active' than even the Star Wars fanbase was. Along with all the positive coverage the game is getting on popular media outlets over the past few weeks (while games like Wildstar seem almost ignored), ESO might very well become the reason why WoW might consider going F2P instead.

Look at the character customisation in WoD, there is none. Then take a quick look at the endless character customisation options in ESO.
Look at how 25m raids cause performance issues due to the old engine in MoP. Then take a look at the smooth 300v300v300 territorial battles in ESO that run smoothly and with better graphics on low to midrange computers.
Look at how they're offering L90s in MoP for a payment to get a questing and leveling experience that stretches out for at most 15 hours of play. Compare this with the 200-300 hours of leveling content in ESO, with everything voice-acted, cutscenes, dynamic and branching storylines. Oh and then let's also laugh with the brawler's guild which does nothing in WoW, and compare it with the Fighter's, Mage, Undaunted and soon to be added Thieves Guild and Black Brotherhood which add roleplay and character customisation.
The 7 or so dungeons in MoP compared with the 50+ public (solo) dungeons and 15+ group dungeons in ESO.
How crafting is a boring grind in MoP compared with the exploration and research based crafting system in ESO which according to calculations would take 2000 days for someone to learn every last useful type of trait and improvement.
The measily Garrison system promised in WoD, compared to the expansive sandbox systems in pvp, economy and justice (karma) system that will be in ESO...

ESO is going to be widely popular in a few months once people start realizing how WoW is a tiny and old game compared to what Bethesda and Zenimax have been cooking up, and honestly at this point in time... WoW is more of a F2P and itemshop game than ESO is too. It makes quite a bit of difference in how the quality of a game is perceived by it's playerbase.


Blizzard have been sitting on their ass for way too long and have not put enough of the money back into the game to keep it up-to-date. Not properly developping a successor next-gen MMO is going to hurt them now too. Well it's too late now... they fucked up and a behemot of competition is right around the corner waiting to kick their lazy ass.

The word is already out on ESO and it is NOT good at all. See MMORPG's forums all over the place tx to the beta currently available.. In fact in pre orders it is doing terrible at the moment on amazon.co.uk and amazon.de

The D3 expansion is doing better than ESO in EU and everybody knows that D3 expansion will sell peanuts in relation to its first D3 launch.

As a matter of fact, the signs are already clear: on Twitch the streamers are hardly watching it, the forums are ALL about complaints, the pre orders are not running like previous "WoW killers" as was the case with Age of Conan, Warhammer On Line, Rift, Aion, Star Wars etc ...

So my prediction: 1 M at launch, 200 K left after 6 months. The usual stats...

The main reasons are 2 fold/ Apparently ESO is not very good and ... people are fed up with the always returning "the next one will be it" thingie.

In fact games like Warhammer, Age of Conan, SW TOR, Aion etc... were really a free publicity to return to WOW ... IF the people were still interested in playing MMO's,... let alone pay monthly for them.

[Deleted]

Offer what other MMOs or similar games offer without straying too far from it's core values.

Which is what it is already trying to do.

Blizzard can't really do much more than it is already doing.

[ComputerNerd]

As said before.

If they just make everything in the game relevant instead of the 10% that exist at max level, the game would become more interesting.

Content was designed with certain player skills in mind, those available at a certain level.
Scaling everything would simply break most of the encounters.

Also that is a personal opinion,and given the rush to max level with heirlooms a lot of players disagree with you, and think that the level cap is where the game begins.

[Deleted]

The word is already out on ESO and it is NOT good at all. See MMORPG's forums all over the place tx to the beta currently available.. In fact in pre orders it is doing terrible at the moment on amazon.co.uk and amazon.de

The D3 expansion is doing better than ESO in EU and everybody knows that D3 expansion will sell peanuts in relation to its first D3 launch.

As a matter of fact, the signs are already clear: on Twitch the streamers are hardly watching it, the forums are ALL about complaints, the pre orders are not running like previous "WoW killers" as was the case Age of Conan, Warhammer On Line, Rift, Aion, Star Wars etc ...

So my prediction: 1 M at launch, 200 K left after 6 months. The usual stats...

One thing about ESO aswell, is that it pulls a lot of it's potential players from an established Elder Scrolls fanbase - and a lot of those are used to modding their games. Now, I don't have facts here but I doubt that ESO will be modable.

Don't get me wrong, I ain't saying 99% of all ES players mod their games and a lack of that would lose customers, not at all. Im saying a lot of people who are looking for the Elder Scrolls feel in an MMO will miss the ability to mod their game to their liking.

[Master Guns]

Remove the subscription.

...no. Dear God no.

Removing the subs from WoW - mediocre game with awful support and no expansions/content updates like we see now.

[Deleted]

About the whole subscription thing - Activision Blizzard may have a lot of damn money but just outright removing what is likely their number one souce of income, in favor of a micro-transaction formula is a huge risk that might not pay off at all. Add in the fact that without guaranteed income, they'd likely have to cut down on their development staff, we'd have less content, perhaps more gated content, perhaps even behind paywalls, that could run the risk of being just outright worse.

There is a lot of risks with a subscription free model. A lot of risks that Blizzard does not need to take right now. They're the big dog on the market. The game is in decline, yeah but it's almost 10 years old and there's a lot more competition out there today.

When we're seeing subs in the low millions and income might not be as hot as it used to, then we might see a day where Blizzard will favor a sub free model for sustainability. Right now, the game doesn't NEED to resort to desperation for sustainability. Because given the choices, sub free is desperation. SWTOR didn't go free to play because BioWare wanted it to.

[Hubbl3]

I actually believe ESO will become heavy competition for WoW. It's the first MMO game in a decade from a AAA quality developer that is -not- trying to be a WoW clone. It will have a much larger potential market than WoW because it'll be the first next-gen console MMO and a worthy sequel of Skyrim, the most sold console game. The Elder Scrolls fanbase is very very big and much more 'PC active' than even the Star Wars fanbase was. Along with all the positive coverage the game is getting on popular media outlets over the past few weeks (while games like Wildstar seem almost ignored), ESO might very well become the reason why WoW might consider going F2P instead.

Look at the character customisation in WoD, there is none. Then take a quick look at the endless character customisation options in ESO.
Look at how 25m raids cause performance issues due to the old engine in MoP. Then take a look at the smooth 300v300v300 territorial battles in ESO that run smoothly and with better graphics on low to midrange computers.
Look at how they're offering L90s in MoP for a payment to get a questing and leveling experience that stretches out for at most 15 hours of play. Compare this with the 200-300 hours of leveling content in ESO, with everything voice-acted, cutscenes, dynamic and branching storylines. Oh and then let's also laugh with the brawler's guild which does nothing in WoW, and compare it with the Fighter's, Mage, Undaunted and soon to be added Thieves Guild and Black Brotherhood which add roleplay and character customisation.
The 7 or so dungeons in MoP compared with the 50+ public (solo) dungeons and 15+ group dungeons in ESO.
How crafting is a boring grind in MoP compared with the exploration and research based crafting system in ESO which according to calculations would take 2000 days for someone to learn every last useful type of trait and improvement.
The measily Garrison system promised in WoD, compared to the expansive sandbox systems in pvp, economy and justice (karma) system that will be in ESO...

ESO is going to be widely popular in a few months once people start realizing how WoW is a tiny and old game compared to what Bethesda and Zenimax have been cooking up, and honestly at this point in time... WoW is more of a F2P and itemshop game than ESO is too. It makes quite a bit of difference in how the quality of a game is perceived by it's playerbase.


Blizzard have been sitting on their ass for way too long and have not put enough of the money back into the game to keep it up-to-date. Not properly developping a successor next-gen MMO is going to hurt them now too. Well it's too late now... they fucked up and a behemot of competition is right around the corner waiting to kick their lazy ass.

Things like voice acted everything, character customizing are nice but they will not keep people in playing the game and the RPG community is not that big in any game. I'm having more fun in EVE Online where everything is made out of text and statistics than in my beta weekends at ESO... :S

[Hubbl3]

Not at all mate. The reviews are extremely positive, it even got a highly positive review on Angry Joe after an initial negative first impression.



Bookmarking this, because I'm certain you're wrong and going to have to pull your foot from your mouth in about half a year.

Joe rated GW2 10/10 - is he still playing that one? I'm not saying that Joe is a bad reviewer or anything, but he is clearly not the MMO-type of player.

[BenBos]

Not at all mate. The reviews are extremely positive, it even got a highly positive review on Angry Joe after an initial negative first impression.



Bookmarking this, because I'm certain you're wrong and going to have to pull your foot from your mouth in about half a year.

Just repost this on April 2015. If ESO will have over 300K subscriptions by then you may have my left foot.

Signs are simply showing the usual stuff we have seen over the past 8 year. Remember LOTRO, Vanguard, AOC, Tabula Rasa, WAR, Hellgate London, Rift, AION, SWTOR and a zillion others.

NONE of these games have 200K+ subscribers at the moment. In fact several have NO servers running at all...(WAR, TR, HL and on June 2014 VG, all dead, ... really dead)... The rest is on life support with doubtful and shaky/uncertain free to play mechanics. As a simple example: Rift had ... 99 servers in a sub based game at launch. They now have ... 15 servers worldwide in a free to play setting....

Go figure.

[shadowmouse]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the obsession with subscription numbers is counter productive. Larger numbers leave the devs trying to please everyone some, and pleasing few as much as they want to be pleased. People can't even agree on what makes a good pizza, I gather we can ask certain Supreme Court Justices to verify that point. Studies are showing that marriages are now running into trouble after three years rather than the old seven year itch. How the heck is Blizzard going to consistently please millions of players across multiple continents as well as a mix of high and low context cultures?

[Deleted]

Make a new MMO. Sorry but no matter what you think about the current state of WoW, its too old now to ever be able to regain its old player numbers. New expansions can only go so far in changing up the game.

I thought Project Titan was going to be Blizzard's big new thing, but that fizzled out so now it genuinely looks like they expect WoW to remaing their 'premium' product despite being nearly a decade old.

[sungrassTV]

The simplest answer is often the best one: Give players a reason to stick around. One of the pitfalls of letting everyone and anyone see all of the game's content within a 1-2 week period of time is that there is little reason to keep playing the game after a month or two of doing the same thing over and over again. There is nothing in the game pushing you towards doing normal modes or heroic modes nor is the game even trying to properly teach you how to play at that level or prepare you for content of that level.

The reason TBC and WOTLK had such high sub numbers was besides the amazing raid content there was always something to do outside of raiding, something to work on in terms of character progression and if you were in that small category of players who didn't have anything to work on those expansions were VERY alt friendly so the journey could easily start over again for you.

Compare that kind of game to what we have now, leveling and gearing alts now is a chore, and beyond raiding there really isn't much to do outside of the game that won't get tiresome after a few weeks.

100% agree. In addition to that, leveling alts nowadays sucks as hell because you can steamroll without even thinking through dungeons and quests etc. You need no cc no skill at all. It gets boring really quickly. A tank (and healer) actually can solo every 5 man.

[Marxman]

Because the market dynamics have changed. Subscription based gaming is going the way of the dodo and micro-transaction funded games are the most profitable.

Do you know why games have to go F2P now? Because WoW exists. You can't directly compete against WoW while demanding a sub fee, because WoW is simply put better than whatever your game is. It has more content, better quality content, and a vastly larger playerbase (larger playerbase = better for MMOs). Many games that switch from Sub fee to F2P see revenues increase not because the sub fee model is worse, but because the amount of subs they had just didn't cut it. WoW has more than enough subs to make it worthwhile, plus they're taking the F2P approach with mounts and junk as well.

[MoanaLisa]

Do you know why games have to go F2P now? Because WoW exists. You can't directly compete against WoW while demanding a sub fee, because WoW is simply put better than whatever your game is. It has more content, better quality content, and a vastly larger playerbase (larger playerbase = better for MMOs).

In addition to this we should not underestimate the importance of player investment in their characters and the world. It's an important thing and apparently difficult to impossible to replicate as it requires a lot of time for it to happen and player willingness to stay with the same game--and pay for it every month--is in short supply. More than anything I believe that to be Blizzard's unspoken-but-not-quite-secret weapon in World of Warcraft.

[Deleted]

Do you know why games have to go F2P now? Because WoW exists. You can't directly compete against WoW while demanding a sub fee, because WoW is simply put better than whatever your game is. It has more content, better quality content, and a vastly larger playerbase (larger playerbase = better for MMOs). Many games that switch from Sub fee to F2P see revenues increase not because the sub fee model is worse, but because the amount of subs they had just didn't cut it. WoW has more than enough subs to make it worthwhile, plus they're taking the F2P approach with mounts and junk as well.

If SWTOR and Rift never had to go F2P to sustain a playerbase, they wouldn't have.

[Barnabas]

The only way to increase number of players dramatically is to go free to play. I'm sure someone will respond with something stupid like reasons why Blizzard shouldn't but I'm just answering the question in the thread title with the best possible answer.

[Deleted]

Obviously I'm not saying WoW is dead and buried, its probably going to keep going for years yet while its still making money. But I do think that Blizzard should start considering what they're going to follow WoW with if they want to remain dominate in the MMO market.

[Razorice]

Why does WoW need more players anyway? What is the playerbase these days, 8M? I think we're fine...