Blizzard created the perfect storm

[lolmmofuture]

riot is the only one that will dethrone wow properly lol

[Raven]

Unlike those titles, they aren't coming out with WoW at it's peak... more like WoW at it's lowest moments. Without Classic, we'd be talking both ESO and FF14 having more players instead of just FF14.

they don't have to compete with 2008-2012 WOW. They are competing with WoW in the 2020's and... well, the results speak for themselves

I take it your one of those that trust mmo populations numbers.

[Mojo03]

I don't know. I think they legit effed up this time.

A LOT of people are playing FF14 now, including most of the top WoW content creators, and it's overwhelmingly positive. People seem to genuinely see it as a breath of fresh air.

I switched a couple months ago and I have to say after playing it for a couple months, its just so much more clear how shallow WoW is and how predatory, out of touch, and neglectful Blizzard is.

I'm cancelling after I do the new stuff in 9.1. So two days after 9.1 and I beat the dungeon and raid thereby finishing all the new stuff there is to do in 9.1 that isn't shallow retention content or time wasting/gated BS. If 9.2 is just a new raid and a new quest hub, I'm not coming back.

10.0 really needs to deliver more than a half assed, predatory, lobby dungeon/raid simulator or this game is not going to hold up with Endwalker, AOC and Riot's MMO in the next year or 2.

[Yriel]

I remember some ESO video recently stating they had 18 million players, which Google backs up.

Idk how many subs WoW has atm, but I think everyone can agree it's not 18 million.

I mean, ESO is BTP so you can't really compare Numbers of a sub-based game to a non sub-based game. I guess everyone who ever bought ESO is still a player since he can log in and play anytime he likes.
That being said, the servers (or at least EU, don't play anywhere else) are quite packed in ESO so there definitvely is a strong concurrent playerbase.

[Mysterymask]

I mean, ESO is BTP so you can't really compare Numbers of a sub-based game to a non sub-based game. I guess everyone who ever bought ESO is still a player since he can log in and play anytime he likes.
That being said, the servers (or at least EU, don't play anywhere else) are quite packed in ESO so there definitvely is a strong concurrent playerbase.

even then ESO was given away in a Humble Bundle and on the XBOX game pass

so a lot of people got it for free

[Ausr]

I mean, ESO is BTP so you can't really compare Numbers of a sub-based game to a non sub-based game. I guess everyone who ever bought ESO is still a player since he can log in and play anytime he likes.
That being said, the servers (or at least EU, don't play anywhere else) are quite packed in ESO so there definitvely is a strong concurrent playerbase.

Usually when you see those numbers being boasted about, it's registered users and not always actual players. I'm sure if WoW did that, they could boast (dunno, pulling this number out of my ass) 80 million players.

[Mojo03]

I mean, ESO is BTP so you can't really compare Numbers of a sub-based game to a non sub-based game. I guess everyone who ever bought ESO is still a player since he can log in and play anytime he likes.
That being said, the servers (or at least EU, don't play anywhere else) are quite packed in ESO so there definitvely is a strong concurrent playerbase.

ESO is also on Xbox Game Pass.

So a lot of people probably made a character to try the game out and they’re including all those accounts.

I can’t see it being active players. The combat is awful and all I hear about it is how underwhelming the new content always is.

[bledgor]

Good riddance, would love the whiny manchild that seem to stick around like battered wives to finally leave for another game and take there toxic negativity to another game.

I think wow will shrink a bit, but as has been the case since WoD it will have a smaller dedicated player base that enjoy the game with higher upswings during patches and a large upswing at every expansion launch.

[Ausr]

They did do this.

Back in MoP, they had officially registered over 100 million accounts.

So by now we would assume that number has gone up, not down. You can't un-register an account, after all.

Well, they still had to state the amount of activate subscriptions so you could still actually track sub numbers. I wanna say it was still possible during MoP but I could be wrong when they stopped.

Other companies wouldn't. They just did that "Over 50 million players!" like that shit mobile games and mmos do.

[Acidbaron]

My impression is just that WOW has still a rock solid raiding scene, and M+ conveys to the more "casual" playerbase (i mean the ones who don't care about guilds or schedules, M+ is a way to play whenever you can and get good rewards out of it).

However these two categories are dwindling because you either are in the ones that rush everything in a short time then stop playing, or you're stuck in the puddle of mud that's made to keep people log in continuosly - while it doesn't give you anything of value out of it. The game is literally designed to make you log in, and if you miss days/weeks you just feel lagging behind.

It's a sad way to keep people hooked to a game they don'tr eally like anymore but feel they're "losing something" if they don't do it. I actually like SL, the zones, the raid so far etc but i'm baffled about how many systems have simply no reason to exist other that causing inconvenience to players or in reality have no effect whatsoever ( so asking myself why they're even there).

There's plenty of games that are equally engaging BUT don't pretend to keep you online every single day. Even mobile games with their daily login bonuses are less obnoxious since you can literally do three taps on your phone and be done if you want.

The focus on "keeping people online" is "killing" WoW. It should be "keeping people returning, because it's well done". It's not 2004 anymore where people had few options and committed to one or two games max for years.

Well said, i liked it but the chores upon chores that were highly repetitive and knowing the age of the game and how many people have alts they still make it frustrating to play more than one character is just irritating your player base. And sure the grinds are optional to a point but they are still gradually being made worse every implementation.

If you are not part of the initial rush you struggle to get just about anything done, while ratings have their purpose it does have a negative element to it especially with the type of mindset present in the game, where everything has to be optimized and a single error is good enough reason to cancel a run completely, this type of behavior is also something they claim to want to do something about but never do.

Why would you pay and play for this when others give you better alternatives not on the front of raids and dungeons but all other systems. The lore is also all over the place so cannot really say you get strong story elements out of it.

[justandulas]

I have no problem being wrong I actually prefer it as it lets me update my positions to be more factual, all I want is the truth but as the 9.1 thread showed you couldn’t provide.

Hell I can even give an example from today, I hadn’t thought ff14 gave statements on sub growth because my searches only brought up total accounts again and again, but some one managed to find a link where they did report sub growth so I’ve now updated my position on that.



So what do you base your view on then? Is it actual belief, ie faith in the absence of evidence?

Well I admit I don’t trust the website in question, they even have wildstar having players still which... well, we both know that’s not true

That said, some of their metrics such as activity outside of the game does point in the direction of ff14, and every WoW player I know except 1 has left SL and my guild has literally raided since vanilla without a break... until SL

SL has basically turned my circle of WoW friends into ghosts, or playing classic tbc, or ff14 and patch 9.1 won’t be bringing most of them back

Ff14 and ESO both are gaining clear momentum, and outside of tbc, SL is not and it’s clear it’s lost any momentum it’s had

Plus, even if you like it, bfa was the most negatively received WoW expac ever. To follow bfa up with SL is the death of WoW to many

[sam86]

the 'wow killer' idea was try to fight wow during its peak (wrath), when wow profit was the highest in video game industry ever, rivaling entire countries income (my shithole of country literally posted that on one of biggest national newspaper, a game has bigger economy than my entire fucked up shithole of country)
no one trying to kill wow now, it has less subs than tbc era (no idea if lower than classic too or not), the 'whale' economy that activision abuse now has no longevity and can collapse any sec, not to mention LoL easily outprofit wow by miles, same for dota2, heck hearthstone is serious competitor to wow and it costs a fraction of its budget to produce (of course hearthstone is living on warcraft IP, so if u think kill wow and focus on hearthstone to increase profit, that will kill both)
We now live more in battle royal killer era, and seems battle royal is dying so who knows which game will top all and others will try to kill and dethrone

[Doffen]

Wildstar will kill WoW.

No, Blizzards mistake is that they take every kind of garbage feedback on their design from the people that shout loudest and stopped relying on the metrics they have. People shouted in Legion that it was too much to do, tried to tone it down in start of BfA, failed miserably, lost a lot of players, had to introduce more systems and then went overboard with it.

Then they remove 90% of it coming in SL, people stopped having things to do, then people wonder why that is.

SLs problem is that people dont have anything to do to upgrade their character outside gear. Its no power grind, there are no "chores" and we have had 4 months passed now since the renown was done for most people. Thats the issue. There is no doubt a lot of players on break will be back with 9.1. Luckily they added stuff that hopefully will take some time to consume. If not its going to be the same thing again before 9.2.

Blizzard need to make content that is worth doing. Only transmogs wont cut it for many.

[sam86]

My impression is just that WOW has still a rock solid raiding scene, and M+ conveys to the more "casual" playerbase (i mean the ones who don't care about guilds or schedules, M+ is a way to play whenever you can and get good rewards out of it).

No, wow doesn't sadly
It is official stated in last blizzcon (they are just 4 videos, search in them if u want, it was about faction balance topic) that the overwhelming majority of wow players are the most casual u can imagine, most wow players play single player content without interact with even a single word, and while end-game is obviously dominated by horde both pve and pvp, alliance actually outnumber horde slightly
That's one of many problems of wow now, in classic era (vanilla/tbc/wrath), if u don't raid or pvp, nothing else left, few mounts to collect (and most from raids, back then solo raiding was impossible for most classes), gold was meaningless, etc
now most wow players play the solo content (again officially stated), if blizz wants to return to the best days they risk losing most of current sub for chance of gaining a LOT of new subs, if it was up to me i'd do that no doubt but Bobby kodick prefer to fire 10% of his work staff and increase his bonus salary than to actually care about the thing he hates most: video games

[Cæli]

to compete blizzard will have to release wow 2, at some point the more content they pump into wow 1, the more players will lose interest, and the more money they'll waste on dev. you can already see it with shadowlands patches. why releasing more content when you have a core of players that just keeps playing regardless, especially with classic?people would have played legion 6 years no issues, blizzard realized it

[Deneios]

Wow dies by its devs. Two trainwreck expansions after WoW is bleeding and devs have no idea how to stabilize. Chains is not enough, its a band aid on a severed artery.
Wow is a creature stranded in a desert. The other MMOs are buzzards circling above the dying body. They dont need to kill wow, they are doing fine and when WoW is bleeding players they are happy to get their share. WoW needs to find an oasis of competent devs and leaders who have the balls to say how things are and not follow mirages of Ions hubris.

[Saltysquidoon]

No, wow doesn't sadly
It is official stated in last blizzcon (they are just 4 videos, search in them if u want, it was about faction balance topic) that the overwhelming majority of wow players are the most casual u can imagine, most wow players play single player content without interact with even a single word, and while end-game is obviously dominated by horde both pve and pvp, alliance actually outnumber horde slightly

Why should blizard care about this though? I'm serious as someone who was a prog raider basically the entire time they played wow it makes sense to go after the casual dollar, 16.99 (or w/e the sub is now) is 16.99 if you play one hour a month or 100.
Further, maybe I'm stereotyping here but a mount collecter or pet battler seems more likely to buy the barded nightmare than a raid logger.

Active subs don't even really matter at this point either because blizzard has shown repeated they can hype up box sales every two years to more than cover the short fall from sub drop.

[minteK917]

Blizzard are lucky they started as strong as they did, otherwise by now with the terrible quality of the end game, it would be long dead. Addicted people are still playing this corpse, where blizzard are totally out of touch with anything that should be fun. They are all about extending the players time in game as much as possible with the least content possible. They even put as much possible stick in your wheels every expansion and like fucking clown have to walk it back every time (its almost like its intentional!) Cant enjoy more then one class, have to grind stuff again. Community warns them about shit every alpha and beta, they never read any of that feedback anyway. "Players dont know what they want" No, but you can tell what they dont want. Bunch of pointless incremental grinds to waste their time when content doesent exist.

[shise]

First time seeing multiple mmos coming out? It was the same thing with rift,swtor,dcu, terra,gw2, ect all coming out around the same time.

It was not the same thing at all, not even close.

Simply because WoW was at its absolute peak in quality of content and it was still a rather fresh and growing game back in the 2006 / 2010 era.

Today it is not "fresh" anymore and that is a big weight to carry. Then you have all the original Blizzard people, who used to care about the game and its players, leaving. We are left with a bunch of people whose goal is to please shareholders.

We are in a very different situation and OP is pretty accurate.

Imagine if you have 3 more games with just half of the popularity of FF14 and WoW out there... that is 4 alternative MMOs which look decent. At the current state of huge decline wow is experiencing, that would only hit it harder than ever.

Worse part is that it is not the other games being good what damages wow.. it is it´s very own developers.


Now, there´s still time enough to save it. Question is, will they? Even if they do, never expect WoW to be king again, odds are that the MMO player base will even splitting around all those new MMOs and WoW.

This is good news: competition will raise quality. Then we will see who comes up on top.

[Afrospinach]

and other game developers are taking advantage of it.

It just dawned on me while I was sat here, there doesn't have to be a singular WoW killer, with companies like Amazon, Riot, and Singularity 6 (and more) coming out with their own MMO's. All that has to happen is these developers individually absorb a chunk of the current WoW base. Blizzard essentially will compete with several major viable companies, instead of just 1 at a time when they are failing miserably. its just a matter of time.

Does competition breed excellence?

WoW killer post?

WoW being a phenomenon was, is and most likely always will be a game that does not play by conventional logic. It is done when Blizzard says it is done, they have a very loyal fanbase.

Like I have said in the past, looking at MMOs that have come and gone it will be very hard to shrink the wow player base below 2 million as long as it is available to play. There tends to be somewhere between 10-20% of your peak subscribers that will simply never leave until the doors are closed. The real big difference for WoW is it is taking a very long time to reach that point if indeed it ever will as per above.