WoW subscriber data.

[He-man]

vanilla peaked at 7
tbc peaked at 8
wotlk peaked at 10
cata peaked at 12
mop peaked at 8
wod peaked at 10
Legion peaked at ?? (they stopped releasing this data)

this was because WOD dropped to 5million after 1-2months and continued dropping making bad headlines so they no longer release this data.

the real question is how far did WOD drop and is this drop normal for ALL of the expansions? could it have dropped as low as 3 or 2 million subs? it sure seemed that way how fast it was dropping.

what does this mean for Classic? what happens if in-between expansions the most played version of wow is the classic version and then on expansions people play them for 2-3months and then quit? could this make blizzard make different kinds of expansions in the future that cater to the classic gameplay style that lasts years not months?

i wonder if classic is a experiment to see if it really does retain more players than their current "approach"

[aarro]

Classic will be popular for a few of months then start to decline rapidly as people will realise that nostalgia got the better of them.

[Evangeliste]

Some of your data is a little wrong... For example both Wrath and Cataclysm peaks at 12million and such.

Either way, they stopped releasing information because of other games. The fact they have used MAU data for 3 years with 13 sequential terms is because things like Overwatch and Heroes being made as well as Hearthstone gaining momentum on more platforms, to which they came out respectively in 2016 and 2015 yours of the classic opinion they stopped with WoD. Sorry but no. Out of all the games detailed in the quarterly terms, only 1 has a subscription whilst every other has a different business model, that's now 7 for Blizzard alone which 2 new games and 2 expansions with MAU numbers given, Activision 21 games (which the majority feature online multiplayer too) in total just released from 2014 which is when MAU came into play in the calls and then King which god knows what on there.
You also have to factor in that China don't do monthly subs but hourly too. These calls features 2 companies and a sub company all making and producing games... with details to everything they make.

People will comment on the game is dying but never realise they are very ignorant to a lot of external factors. I could waffle a long post but generally people come in with this massive sweeping statement that the game is dying but completely ignore that at one point the game had a subscription base that was double the population of Norway. And that subbed playerbase is probably still near 5million. Norway only have 5.2million as a population - can't be bad to earn a massive profit ever month from millions playing. It's a game that will celebrate 15 years as an MMO with a sub when several have tried and failed, even with franchises like Star Wars bombing out.
A failing game changes their model as soon as it goes bad to keep profit... WoW hasn't for 15 years. To investors/shareholders, that's fucking immense.

Either way, I think the Legacy will have a core player base but it will influx for sure. Like every expansion, there has been a constant surge and then it dissipates.

[Rogalicus]

And that subbed playerbase is probably still near 5million.

It's evident by any activity metric (raider population on Wowprogress, Warcraftrealms, etc.) that there are 3 million subscribers at most, probably less. It's still big, but subscriber bleed will never end and things like excessive focus on infinite grinds in Legion will cause even more extreme burn out in the long term.

[Torkkil]

i wonder if classic is a experiment to see if it really does retain more players than their current "approach"

If that's their intention, it's a flawed premise, there are too many variables muddying the water. Players going to classic now will be faced with a game that's aged, almost certainly finite (and possible static), and also in direct competition with a version of itself from the future!

To see which approach works best, they only need to look at the subscriber numbers you mentioned.

At this point I suspect they know they've developed too far in a direction they can't come back from, so rather than try and U-turn the main game, they're aiming to recapture at least some of the market they lost in the process.

[zoned]

Where are you getting these numbers? 5 million current subs? If this was the case WoW would easily be top streamed and viewed game on twitch. I would estimate WoW currently has less than 1mil prob closer to 500k subs.

[Evangeliste]

It's evident by any activity metric (raider population on Wowprogress, Warcraftrealms, etc.) that there are 3 million subscribers at most, probably less. It's still big, but subscriber bleed will never end and things like excessive focus on infinite grinds in Legion will cause even more extreme burn out in the long term.

You can't use third party websites as an official means to collect data. You can pretend all you like but I bet if you looked at that same data back for other expansions it wouldn't show the correct data either... Because it's third party and requires that playerbase to fill in those third party websites.

That's like asking a random on the street to tell you legit how much money is in your country's treasury. Simply, it's gonna be guess work.

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Where are you getting these numbers? 5 million current subs? If this was the case WoW would easily be top streamed and viewed game on twitch. I would estimate WoW currently less than 1mil prob closer to 500k subs.

You know that WoD, the worse expansion ever by most ended with 5.6million subs right? Legion has been received a lot better than WoD by far.

[XDurionX]

It's evident by any activity metric (raider population on Wowprogress, Warcraftrealms, etc.) that there are 3 million subscribers at most, probably less. It's still big, but subscriber bleed will never end and things like excessive focus on infinite grinds in Legion will cause even more extreme burn out in the long term.

Lel. Raiders are only a small fraction of WoW's population, and warcraft realms has always been a shitty source. All it does is guessing based on the five people that use their addon, and it sucks at that.

[Kolvarg]

this was because WOD dropped to 5million after 1-2months and continued dropping making bad headlines so they no longer release this data.

Well, kind of. Partially because gaming news websites love being dramatic - there's only so much they can report on and throughout the year there are numerous periods of time with no particularly exciting things to talk about. Any particular thing they can grasp to get those juicy clicks, they will.

Also, among fans/players it feeds the "WoW is dying narrative" that ultimately leads nowhere and is essentially nonsense, but isn't great for the game either way.

In complete truth, as the game became more cyclical (and I'm not arguing here wether that's natural or the devs' fault, not the point), sub numbers at a given time became even less relevant.

the real question is how far did WOD drop and is this drop normal for ALL of the expansions? could it have dropped as low as 3 or 2 million subs? it sure seemed that way how fast it was dropping.

We don't know, and we will never know.

It "could have dropped" as low as 3 or 2. It "could" have dropped as low as 1. It "might" have stayed above 5. Every evidence we might conjure is, in essence, anecdotal, and there really isn't any way to get anywhere to an objective truthful number as far as I'm aware.

Going by how fast it was dropping is also anecdotal. If anything, the game has been following a specific trend since Cataclysm: Most subscribers at expansion launch, followed by a quick decrease in the first months, and then a much smaller decrease in the 2nd half or so, with the overall average of the expansion decreasing a bit each time.

Personally, I'd be surprised if WoD went much under 5M, and I would think Legion is still around those numbers, or at least above 4M. But that's just my "perception" or expectation, could be much worse or much better.

what does this mean for Classic? what happens if in-between expansions the most played version of wow is the classic version and then on expansions people play them for 2-3months and then quit? could this make blizzard make different kinds of expansions in the future that cater to the classic gameplay style that lasts years not months?

Absolutely nothing. There's virtually no correlation.

WoW has had well over 100M cumulative created accounts, while the top concurrent subscriber number was 12M. And that number is from 2014. There always was an outflow of players, the big difference is that in the growth phase there was a much greater inflow that nullified the ones going out.

Sure, some (which, of course, even if only a small percentage of those players, is still a reasonable amount of people) of those people who left don't like the game now, and would rather play Classic. But that's only a small, unknown part of all who left, there's a multitude of reasons and variables, and many won't ever even look back at WoW, most likely.

My subjective expectation is that a big portion of the people that will play Classic, perhaps even the majority, are actually people who are still playing (either actively subscribing, or subscribing ocasionally to experience new content) and will most likely play both versions of the game (either concurrently or alternate between the two over time).

i wonder if classic is a experiment to see if it really does retain more players than their current "approach"

I don't think so. It will definitely be something they will gather data from and perhaps take some conclusions that might or might not end up influencing some design decisions in future content (depending on who actually ends up playing Classic for longer periods of time). But I don't think that is anywhere close to their actual "purpose" with the thing.

If anything, they're doing it for 2 very basic reasons: They want to, and they are confident they can profit from it.

[Rogalicus]

You can't use third party websites as an official means to collect data. You can pretend all you like but I bet if you looked at that same data back for other expansions it wouldn't show the correct data either... Because it's third party and requires that playerbase to fill in those third party websites

Other than your valuable insight on how shitty these sites are, there's no real argument against them. Wowprogress uses armory data, it may not track every single player, but data is consistent enough to see downward trend. Please educate yourself on what is represantative sample.

You know that WoD, the worse expansion ever by most ended with 5.6million subs right?

And MoP, that is considered one of the best expansions, lost 3 million. Personal feelings of engaged players don't correlate with statistics.

[Rogalicus]

Lel. Raiders are only a small fraction of WoW's population, and warcraft realms has always been a shitty source. All it does is guessing based on the five people that use their addon, and it sucks at that.

Not that I'd expect anything relevant from a person who uses word 'lel', but anyway: it doesn't matter how big or small is raider's population, it's about how consistent it is compared to overall population.

[voidillusion]

vanilla peaked at 7
tbc peaked at 8
wotlk peaked at 10
cata peaked at 12
mop peaked at 8
wod peaked at 10
Legion peaked at ?? (they stopped releasing this data)

this was because WOD dropped to 5million after 1-2months and continued dropping making bad headlines so they no longer release this data.

the real question is how far did WOD drop and is this drop normal for ALL of the expansions? could it have dropped as low as 3 or 2 million subs? it sure seemed that way how fast it was dropping.

what does this mean for Classic? what happens if in-between expansions the most played version of wow is the classic version and then on expansions people play them for 2-3months and then quit? could this make blizzard make different kinds of expansions in the future that cater to the classic gameplay style that lasts years not months?

i wonder if classic is a experiment to see if it really does retain more players than their current "approach"

I would just like to point out that your numbers are wrong, because of that i stopped paying attention

[Cempa]

Classic will be popular for a few of months then start to decline rapidly as people will realise that nostalgia got the better of them.

Go play WoW classic now! It may not be for every one, but the game is really fun!

[Varolyn]

Well since blizz has been following the same pattern for literally every expansion with the final raid tier lasting forever while they put their efforts to the new expansion, wow still has enough subs to remain profitable, however many subs that even is. In regards to raiding, their are more guilds raiding Antorus than guilds raiding HFC when you compare time periods, so the game is still doing "well-enough."

[agentsi]

vanilla peaked at 7
tbc peaked at 8
wotlk peaked at 10
cata peaked at 12
mop peaked at 8
wod peaked at 10
Legion peaked at ?? (they stopped releasing this data)

this was because WOD dropped to 5million after 1-2months and continued dropping making bad headlines so they no longer release this data.

the real question is how far did WOD drop and is this drop normal for ALL of the expansions? could it have dropped as low as 3 or 2 million subs? it sure seemed that way how fast it was dropping.

what does this mean for Classic? what happens if in-between expansions the most played version of wow is the classic version and then on expansions people play them for 2-3months and then quit? could this make blizzard make different kinds of expansions in the future that cater to the classic gameplay style that lasts years not months?

i wonder if classic is a experiment to see if it really does retain more players than their current "approach"

Evangeliste already said it, but all of your data is wrong. WoW's peak was between tbc and wotlk, and then its been up and down ever since but never that high.

[XDurionX]

There is no way to tell how legion worked out. However I think it did extremely well considering the quality is very high. My guess would be between 9-12 million peak.

with maybe 6 to 7 million subscribers currently.

But as I said, there is no way to pinpoint the exact number.

I think it's pretty reasonable to mirror WoDs development with a much better customer retention. So maybe 10M peak and 5-6M now, which will probably drop to 3-4 until BfA releases.

[zoned]

Some could argue that Legion is worst expansion ever, regardless WoW numbers have been declining drastically every expansion. If you had 5 million paid subscribers, you would surely see more activity on twitch. Legion typically sits at 5-10k viewers on twtich. People don't stream it because there's no audience, it's simply not profitable for streamers. This suggests a very low subscription count, my best guess is less than 1 million.

[Rukario]

There is no way to tell how legion worked out. However I think it did extremely well considering the quality is very high. My guess would be between 9-12 million peak.

with maybe 6 to 7 million subscribers currently.

But as I said, there is no way to pinpoint the exact number.

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This reasoning is BS. I don't think this is why they stopped releasing subscriber numbers. I think it was because of legal issue with stock market.

6 to 7 currently, no way imho...ofc that's just me, i have no proof to back that up.
I just feel like that isn't the case.

[potis]

If only people could read the earning calls

Despite OP having completely wrong numbers, the rest arguing about active playerbase is rather silly too.

Latest earning calls indicated "same as previous earning calls", previous earnings calls were "averagely same as WoD at the same period".

WoD reports 7mil averagely at the period they are talking about, Legion was around 7mil in May 2017, around 7m in August 2017.

Of course by now it probably dropped quite a lot since the expansion is over and by the next earning calls, easy below 6mil but their revenue didnt, so they will report an "increase if money from WoW", that doesnt mean subs, its just the pre-orders.

Mentioning Warcraft realms and similat sites is also silly, firstly it covers only EU/US, we know that averagely, EU/US combined has 5-6mil subs at their peak, rest is Asian countries.

Its the same now, EU/US hovers around 3-4mil (a loss from 5-6 obviously) but its Asia that skewers the numbers a lot.

You havent played dead games if you think logging on at 4am on an non-weekend day, and having 200 raid groups to choose from is a "dead game".

[Eon Drache]

There is no way to tell how legion worked out. However I think it did extremely well considering the quality is very high. My guess would be between 9-12 million peak.

with maybe 6 to 7 million subscribers currently.

But as I said, there is no way to pinpoint the exact number.

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This reasoning is BS. I don't think this is why they stopped releasing subscriber numbers. I think it was because of legal issue with stock market.

Not legal issues. The number of subs was never for players. It was for investors. The number of subs no longer reflects how well the game is doing from a business pov as a lot of money now comes from in-game goods. Saying "Oh, we made more this year but we lost 2 million players" scared investors and gave the wrong image of how the game was doing financially.