A subscription should mean that the gaming experience is top-notch in all aspects.

[VinceVega]

The game has its flaws. But i DO NOT want wow to go F2P. If that happens the playerbase would propably double at least. But the stuff that comes with it will destroy it for me.

Ingame shop with waaaay more stuff than just mounts. Which i dislike but is still not nearly as much as other MMORPGs have.

[Lolites]

We don't know how many subs there are. But the data from WoW Realm Population is that there are 794,343 active characters total in the last 2 weeks in the US, EU, Korean and Taiwan regions. Active characters for their purposes means above level 10 and have "gained levels, looted something notable, made a honorable kill, boss kill, changed or transmogged gear or placed something in the Auction House."

Consider that number is characters not accounts. I'm going to assume most people have alts, so even if you were to add 20% to that figure to cover characters that haven't met the requirements, you're still below a million characters, which would mean there are well below a million subs active in the last two weeks, not including China.

yeah they have less than 800k active ...from roughly 2.3m in their databse
given we know at WOTLK there was 100m accounts, 12m active, seems their database is HARDLY accurate...

and btw 1,202,426 characters run m+ in season4, and not all people run m+, it proves further that without data from blizz we know a jack shit about how many players actualy play...

btw, both are WITHOUT china, and unless corona wipes the whole country i doubt china itself would go under 500k subs

[Azerate]

I agree, and for me personally WoW delivers a top notch experience.

Also, just a kind reminder that we have no data on subscriber counts or any kind of player count. The only thing we know is that BfA was the best selling wow expansion ever.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Umm its 2020.. subscription means what's the absolute lowest amount of effort can we put into this while keeping subs at the target level the longest. Once upon a time it ment these people are important, let's put in effort for them, we need to innovate to grow this.

But now all they have to do is release a new store mount and half a million resub for 15 bucks and then drop 25 bucks every four months when they need a boost for a quarterly report. Or give people a mount if they sub for 6 months when thier is zero new content coming out.

To be fair to them why try when all you got to do is a reskin and it does what a new patch or expansion can do for a days work by one dude instead of an army's worth of work for a couple years. Whales ruined this game and the sub model.

[FelPlague]

It's funny how ESO can provide a decent experience without charging for a mandatory subscription. They do have a sub but it's optional, and yet WoW can't make things work with a sub +expac + cash shop.

"Optional" yeah that sub sure is optional...
it also has an INSAENLY huge cash shop, locking tons of expansions, quest lines, skills, races, classes, and all mounts that arnt just horses.

- - - Updated - - -

Right now, after the 6 month mount scam and the new patch? Yeah, probably ~500k. Give it a few months though and that number will halve.

"6 month mount scam"
uhh what?
how is getting a mount for free a scam?

[Kharill]

The game has its flaws. But i DO NOT want wow to go F2P. If that happens the playerbase would propably double at least. But the stuff that comes with it will destroy it for me.

Ingame shop with waaaay more stuff than just mounts. Which i dislike but is still not nearly as much as other MMORPGs have.

I mean WoW is already P2W with the token among overpriced services so y'know......

[Phantombeard]

Buying the expansions + paying the subscription is already very expensive for a game. A game this expensive should be quite excellent in all conceivable aspects. The fact that they also have various paid services + cash shop cosmetics like a f2p game is a huge revenue boost for them.

And yet, I the quality of this game surely does not justify the subscription.

EVEN IF you enjoy the game in the appalling state it's been in for years, there are some universally unacceptable issues.

The lag, the disconnections, server crashes and restarts, the AH being incredibly slow, there's a default delay of 130+ ms on all outdoor zones etc... they've been going on for weeks. Blizzard blames the customers instead of trying to fix the problem, and anyone who loses anything because of the disconnects is shit out of luck.

Another glaring issue are the bugs. This latest patch still has a myriad of bugs week after release. How is this acceptable?

Combine all these with a major patch that has barely enough content to last a month, much less the many months that it will be till Shadowlands, I can honestly say there are F2P games out there who put out better content, more content, less buggy content, and with servers that actually allow you to play that content.

Not to mention if you do experience this and end up needing customer service or "GOD FORBID" a GM, you end up getting a automated response or nothing at all.

[FelPlague]

It's not really thinking though. There's been a huge decline with BFA and other games like ESO, GW2 and FF14 have seen huge player increases.

It's objective that WoW is defo at 500k subs or less now.

1. no they havent, i would love to see proof of that
2. no, it is defo not, unless you think every single perosn who plays has done normal and heroic nyalotha to full completion, cause thats how many people have fully completed normal or heroic nyalotha.

- - - Updated - - -

Not to mention if you do experience this and end up needing customer service or "GOD FORBID" a GM, you end up getting a automated response or nothing at all.

"nothing at all" no ticket ever gets no response, dont make up BS.
you may get automated the first time. but you never get literally no response.

[Eurhetemec]

The OP illustrates perfectly why no matter how good of a job you do, there will be people shrieking about how it's totally unacceptable.

In doing so he destroys his own argument. There is no MP game on remotely this scale which has ever met his criteria. So essentially he's just low key begging for F2P, the cheap so and so. His claims that there are better F2P MMOs are obviously nonsense, or we'd all be playing them.

The claim that it's totally unfair to "blame the customers" or others for lag and magical thinking belief that Blizzard can just fix every internet issue for you is really clear as an example of unreasonable demands. When I played on the EU during late Vanilla and part of TBC, there were huge, ongoing ping and packet loss issues impacting vast numbers of players for months. People blamed Blizzard, shrieked, stomped their feet and so on.

But it wasn't caused by Blizzard, it was caused by Telia, and the way traffic was routed. Telia did not work for or with Blizzard. They were an incompetent bunch of idiots and Blizzard and other companies impacted by their incompetence tried to convince them to fix it.

In the meantime we got 2000+ ping spikes, disconnects, massive packet loss and so on. People who didn't get routed via the Telia stuff were fine, but for whatever reason the UK and much of Europe was hit. And again, people blamed Blizzard. Didn't stop them when they found out it was, genuinely, outside their control, because they, like the OP here, had already decided who the bad guy was. Blizzard did try workarounds but the level of terribleness of what Telia was doing meant that they didn't really work. Then Telia fixed their shit and boom, it's all fine. And what are people saying in chat "Lazy Blizz finally fixed it I guess...". Arrrgghh.

[Sughs]

Do it like me, only sub for 4-6 months a year. 2 months every expansion or major patch lets you see pretty much all the content.

[dope_danny]

Yeah you are about 12 years too late on that with Blizzard. They have learnt through trial and error many times that their brand loyalty drones are so sunk cost down with the ship that a significant number of at least over a million schlubs accept anything no matter how low the standards drop because they have to feed an addiction or they fell for the brand loyalty meme that Blizzard doesn't have to try anymore, people will give them money anyway.

[Raisei]

Yeah you are about 12 years too late on that with Blizzard. They have learnt through trial and error many times that their brand loyalty drones are so sunk cost down with the ship that a significant number of at least over a million schlubs accept anything no matter how low the standards drop because they have to feed an addiction or they fell for the brand loyalty meme that Blizzard doesn't have to try anymore, people will give them money anyway.

Not to mention that the game also has a magical pull on complainers and whiners, that keep on trashing it even if they stopped playing for years

[glowpipe]

If this is what you think of a subscription based game, then why are you paying a sub for a lesser one ? Cancel your sub and vote with your wallet. Blizzard doesn't have a reason to improve the game when people still pay. Altho, i don't think we wil lever reach a point where blizzard will see the loss of subs as a sign to improve their game, at one point its more profitable for them to simply can the game

[Mouri Kogorou]

my issue with the game is that the designer is building it around extending how many days you have to log in instead of providing fun content, imagine... essences account wide.. there is no real reason for it to not be account wide.

[glowpipe]

https://www.wowprogress.com/ - 10700 guilds (69%) at least 1/12 HM Ny'alotha, the Waking City - means 17 000 guilds raid HM. Average raidsize at 20 and you get already around 340 000 HM raiders.

The game "objectively" has more than 500k subs - but like OP, I know you are not here for an actual discussion.

in eternal palace some extensive math were done based on how many people blizzard said raided mythic, and that was around 2% of the playerbase, and with the amount of guilds at 4 or more mythic bosses in EP, it was estimated to be well over a million, even 2 irc

[justandulas]

You aren’t entirely wrong, it’s the only pay sub mmo that has a cash shop. The others are f2p or b2p, and this justify the cash shops existence.

The thing that irks me about wow performance is that it gets worse, not better, with age. Sure it looks prettier and the raids are flashy, but it can’t hold 500 people in the same city like it could be in the earlier days of wow (sure it would lag but I mean, come on)

I don’t know why the games performance more rivals swtor than vanilla wow, I really don’t. We should be able to hold more people in 2020, not less than ever cuz if graphical increases holding the game experience back

[LanToaster]

No, you see, we should shut up and pay Blizzard their money or leave the game altogether (which, luckily, millions of people have over the years).

How about, you let people Enjoy what they want to enjoy?

Here is how it should work:
People who Enjoy wow -> They Pay for WoW
People who dont Enjoy wow -> They cancel their Subscription and move on. Maybe they even put in why they Left in the Appropriate Box when Cancelling their Sub.

But here is how it appears to actually be:
A few people who Enjoy WoW -> They Pay for WoW and are fine.
Other people who at least according to their Playtime Enjoy WoW -> They Pay for WoW, and constantly Bitch and Whine how Horrible and unfun everything is.
People who dont Enjoy WoW -> They still pay their Sub, and Bitch about how Blizzard takes away their Money
Few People who dont Enjoy WoW (anymore) -> Stopped their Sub, and actually moved on.

(This is how it feels to me)

[Kharill]

https://www.wowprogress.com/ - 10700 guilds (69%) at least 1/12 HM Ny'alotha, the Waking City - means 17 000 guilds raid HM. Average raidsize at 20 and you get already around 340 000 HM raiders.

The game "objectively" has more than 500k subs - but like OP, I know you are not here for an actual discussion.

Seriously are these defenders crawling out the woodwork or something. Blocked.

[Garymorilix]

Its so funny when people have such high expectations for WoW. Even when the game itself is more diverse now than ever. You can literally play infinite difficulties to suit yourself.

Nobody seems to come up with this bullshit argument with other subs.
For example I havent seen ppl saying Netflix should kill itself cuz it makes horrible movies and shows. Somehow people are able to disregard things they dont like there and only focus on the things they do.

If you wanna watch the Witcher watch it. You are not obliged to watch 13 reasons why or whatever else Just cause its on the same platform.

Same goes for wow. You wanna raid, then raid. If you dont then do m+ or whatever. Its not hard to NOT DO things you dont like.

[BigToast]

Buying the expansions + paying the subscription is already very expensive for a game. A game this expensive should be quite excellent in all conceivable aspects. The fact that they..blah blah blah

Then unsub and STFU.