Hi there folks,
I've noticed that in these forums a lot of people are discussing older expansions vs. newer expansions and "how to save the game". Now before I start I want to point out that I personally believe in the product life cycle and I believe that WoW is ever so slowly dying, and at the end of the day nothing can be done about i inevitably ending at some point.
But what can be done to stave off death?
Well, in part Blizzard actually know this themselves, they have just failed miserably to adher to it, more frequent expansions, their numbers show a spike every time an expansion is released and since they do sell the expansion at almost full game price that is an excellent way of staying profitable. The downside to this in my personal opinion is that with WoD we saw the most expensive expansion to date sporting the fewest patches and least content to date. So I'd say this tactic might work, if they stick to the plan AND lower the price of the expansions which seems unlikely. So at the end of the day I am not a fan of that tactic.
Here we have a graph of the subscription numbers through the ages of WoW. At first glance the obvious answer would be "Just go back to Vanilla / TBC" at even though the numbers are definitely rising this is mostly due to the game still being new and fresh and MMOs being the hottest game out there, neither of these things can be said anymore. Before we start on the post TBC expansions I want to look at some other numbers, according to an advertisement by Blizzard 100 million accounts had been through WoW by the time of their 10 year anniversary, this number is most likely inflated BUT it is the only solid number we have. Given the game is now 11 years old at 12 months per year that equals roughly 75k subscribers quitting every month, the number right now is 100k, so that's definitely a decrease in retention.
Wrath of the Lich king
Wrath of the Lich King is a bit more interesting, but I recon the influx of new players at this time is still very high, and the graphics still weren't super dated, although it was at this stage already pretty bad.
Cataclysm
Next up is Cata, Cata is the first expansion we see with a constant net loss of subscribers and also the largest net loss of subscribers, of any expansion (Although WoD could be a contender there). There are most likely several reasons for this drop, one of the biggest ones (I recon) is a lack of new players, the game is now 6 years old and it's beginning to show, attracting new players to a game that no longer is able to deliver proper MMO content below level cap is very hard. The leveling content itself there is nothing wrong with, this is obviously subjective, but even if it was poorly designed it doesn't address the core issue, leveling is at this point and time is a very lonely experience and forming lasting bonds while leveling is night impossible simply due to the lack of people actually doing it. A solution to this could be "megaservers" where all servers are merged in one region.
Mist of Pandaria
MoP was the next release (Full disclosure, this was my favorite expansion, having played since 2004, so there will be some bias here), this is the first time we see the subscriber jump in relation to a new expansion, after which we have the numbers slowly dropping off, but this is where MoP becomes a bit of an anomaly. In mid MoP there seem to be a period of time of 9-10 months where subscriber numbers are stable, bearing in mind the average of 75k subscribers leaving per month all of a sudden there is a time period where they don't lose subscribers for a long period of time. With Vanilla/TBC/Wotlk I "Blame" the stable numbers on MMOs still being the hot shit (Very soon to be displaced by Mobas) and therefore a high influx of new players. However, in the middle of Mists of Pandaria there seem to be no logical reason for a spike of new players coming in? It's mid expansion, the game is old and MMOs are no longer the hot stuff they used to be with Mobas invading the Video game industry.
Later came the curse of Blizzard with a year of Patch 5.4 which is ofc never going to help any subscriber based game, I think it's safe to say that not releasing content for a year isn't a good idea.
Warlods of Draenor
Biggest sub jump yet!
Now as this Expansion is still active and Blizzard have stopped releasing sub numbers it becomes increasingly hard to look at numbers (what little we had to work with anyway). But safe to say that it crashed pretty hard after the spike becoming the expansion to hemorrhage the most player to date, in terms of player retention Warlords is by far the worst, as a short term business Warlords was scary profitable, being the most expensive expansion to date delivering the highest sub jump to date is no small feat.