Bellular analyses WoW's health.

[Gaidax]

1) Bellular has no insight into sub numbers, these graphs are one and all "estimations" he pulled out of his ass.

2) Bellular has always made lots of money by joining whichever drama train came through the village. It's his entire shtick. Just look at his video titles and you will realize that he makes money off of repeating the opinions of unhappy people back to them so they feel validated. WoW always had a large unhappy playerbase and Bellular is playing their mouthpiece.

3) He is an arrogant jackass, that pretends to know about game development because he wants to make a game (which he failed to do for now), so he bashes people that have created multi-billion dollar companies and AAA titles, while in truth he has no clue.

4) He was clearly paid off by other companies to do this bashing. Amazon has given millions to streamers to promote their stuff, do you really think they wouldn't give money to someone that has already shown more then willing to bash WoW for some extra bashing?

In short: Bellular is about the least trustworthy source you can possibly have. If you need someone to make your opinion for you, that is fine, but stop pretending like this is the gospel of truth.

While I do think he's fishing in murky waters with this video, it's kind of silly thinking he's some sort of double agent when WoW is his bread and butter.

That said despite the numbers he relies on are extremely rough and in no way or shape one can deduce number of subscribers from that, the % drop in activity he presented seems to be on point.

But in the end, if OP is such a big streamer follower, he surely also heard what another big streamer said that WoW is 2 minutes trailer away from rebounding. This practically held true forever and will keep holding true for the foreseeable future.

And as I said in previous post, let Bobby take care of $$ and financial model - the guy knows what he's doing on that front.

[OokOok]

all this is is estimations of players at the end game, all with 3rd party data that does not automatically update.

This is someone who didn't even watch the video just instantly got defensive and game to the aid of his lord Blizzard. If you watched it you'd know it's not based off the "End game", as he took this data from Normal kills not Mythic. Every scrub and his mother does Normal in some form.

Fact is, WoW is the only MMO that went down in numbers during a pandemic when everyone was at home playing games LUL, WoW is gaming what Game of thrones is to TV, where everyone should be at home rewatching but it ended so bad that no one is even pirating it. Nah you right, shadowlands is SO AMAZING, so good, much content so wow

[Ivarr]

But in the end, if OP is such a big streamer follower, he surely also heard what another big streamer said that WoW is 2 minutes trailer away from rebounding. This practically held true forever and will keep holding true for the foreseeable future.

I don't know which streamer you're referring to but I fully agree. The next expansion will be another big hit. Maybe that's the business model after all, most of WoW's development team is purely devoted to creating new expansions with a skeleton crew tasked with maintaining subscribers after the first month.

This is someone who didn't even watch the video just instantly got defensive and game to the aid of his lord Blizzard. If you watched it you'd know it's not based off the "End game", as he took this data from Normal kills not Mythic. Every scrub and his mother does Normal in some form.

I think it's fair to say that a game designed around raid content that is unable to get players in at baseline raiding has failed in what it set out to do.

However, there may be better indicators than Bellular is using, something like campaign achievements would tell us how many started the campaign and how many finished it. But I guess these achievements apply to every alt individually so that's a problem.

[Doffen]

All im seeing in this thread are insults and no counter arguments with factual data. He’s right about one thing, since blizzard has the real statistics and never releases them then they can control the narrative.

Thats the thing, what data? (and I guess I have to specify, what real official data can anyone counter unreliable data with.)

WoW has exactly 1.988.536 subs atm.

Disprove it.

And what I am reading is that people actually comment on how he succeeds with earning money from just switching opinions and tone almost over night 2-3 years ago.

He is a genious, while being cynical. And thats how you survive.

[Trumpcat]

Oh, my. Should I stop logging in and running M+ and raids with my guild now?

[potis]

2021, almost 9 years into the new business model and people still argue about sub numbers xD

The guy said it correctly, the thread and this whole argument about WoW needs to stop there.

"Games with cyclic content releases have cyclic player activity. News at 11."

[Sondrelk]

This is someone who didn't even watch the video just instantly got defensive and game to the aid of his lord Blizzard. If you watched it you'd know it's not based off the "End game", as he took this data from Normal kills not Mythic. Every scrub and his mother does Normal in some form.

And raid kill patterns change over time.

Are the numbers for instance comparing late patch 9.0 against last week NM kills?

If he did then it should be said that not just is the playerbase higher in the first patch, but as a patch progresses players might start doing NM on several alts. Progress guilds might get done with whatever and start alt runs.

9.1 doesn't even have the full LFR rotation yet, we are far from being able to compare and contrast to 9.0, though even then a better comparison would be against 8.1.

[Gaidax]

I don't know which streamer you're referring to but I fully agree. The next expansion will be another big hit. Maybe that's the business model after all, most of WoW's development team is purely devoted to creating new expansions with a skeleton crew tasked with maintaining subscribers after the first month.

Well, it's practically what Ion said - he's saying that WoW is a cyclical game in nature, as in subs drop until content patch is released then they are up and drop again. Rinse and repeat.

All in all Blizzard is fine with that one, after all they get to practically sell expansion at AAA game price every ~2 years and beat many AAA titles in sales (let alone sub/micros) that took much more time and effort to produce.

Now, in the long term, at some point the well will run dry, but that's years if not decades away and by that time who knows what happens. Maybe WoW will stumble on that new game mode that will suddenly blast off (and if you notice they try to fish for one every expansion) or maybe they will just roll out WoW2 in the end, maybe akin to their Overwatch 2 thing, where it's practically heavily upgraded Overwatch 1 with progression retained but internals being reworked a lot.

[Nzx]

Oh, my. Should I stop logging in and running M+ and raids with my guild now?

I think we all should. Our opinion-providers have decreed that the game is bad and therefore we're no longer allowed to enjoy it.

The funniest part about all of this is that it's the same people who constantly bitch about Blizzard chasing MAUs and engagement, that watch and parrot the opinions of people who post the most outrage-baiting content possible in order to generate clicks and, you guessed it, engagement.

[BossManRoth]

This is someone who didn't even watch the video just instantly got defensive and game to the aid of his lord Blizzard. If you watched it you'd know it's not based off the "End game", as he took this data from Normal kills not Mythic. Every scrub and his mother does Normal in some form.

end game is any max level activity, not just mythic raiding. i watched the video, he took his data from API sites that dont automatically fetch data. not everyone raids. not everyone even does dungeons.

Fact is, WoW is the only MMO that went down in numbers during a pandemic when everyone was at home playing games LUL, WoW is gaming what Game of thrones is to TV, where everyone should be at home rewatching but it ended so bad that no one is even pirating it. Nah you right, shadowlands is SO AMAZING, so good, much content so wow

I never said this. try another strawman. im saying belullar is a grifter. his clickbait is worse than wowhead's.

[Gaidax]

I think we all should. Our opinion-providers have decreed that the game is bad and therefore we're no longer allowed to enjoy it.

The funniest part about all of this is that it's the same people who constantly bitch about Blizzard chasing MAUs and engagement, that watch and parrot the opinions of people who post the most outrage-baiting content possible in order to generate clicks and, you guessed it, engagement.

I really think people need to be much less binary, it's not all black and white.

It's completely ok to play the game for 16 years, raid mythic and have WoW as your "main" game like I do, while still acknowledging that it's in a slump and bleeding due to various reasons and things need to be improved.

That's why the said video does not make me foam at mouth and screech about how Bellular is some foreign agent sent by them to destroy WoW with his insidious lies and propaganda.

Despite being WoW player and a fan of Blizzard games, I can take a step back and acknowledge that there is a point there. Now this also means I should not go full doomsday cultist and spread ash over my head screaming "it's all over!!". It's ok to take things in moderation either way.

[Akka]

And somehow they managed last 16 years. This may be news for some people, but during early WoW people often quit to next patch as well.

Yeah, no, bullshit. The very concept of "next patch" was basically unknown for most people up to TBC.

[Ivarr]

Well, it's practically what Ion said - he's saying that WoW is a cyclical game in nature, as in subs drop until content patch is released then they are up and drop again. Rinse and repeat.

All in all Blizzard is fine with that one, after all they get to practically sell expansion at AAA game price every ~2 years and beat many AAA titles in sales (let alone sub/micros) that took much more time and effort to produce.

From Bellular's data it looks like these are expansion cycles rather than patch cycles. But granted, with one patch to go by this isn't robust data. Maybe other patches were more successful at enticing players to come back.

Yeah, no, bullshit. The very concept of "next patch" was basically unknown for most people up to TBC.

They were drowning in content without patches. People levelled slow, the top instances were a tough nut to crack, the battlegrounds were inexhaustible and remained relevant throughout the duration of vanilla.

[Ausr]

I think we all should. Our opinion-providers have decreed that the game is bad and therefore we're no longer allowed to enjoy it.

The funniest part about all of this is that it's the same people who constantly bitch about Blizzard chasing MAUs and engagement, that watch and parrot the opinions of people who post the most outrage-baiting content possible in order to generate clicks and, you guessed it, engagement.

These people pay more attention to WoW more than they did when they play it because when they quit, the game didn't fucking explode at the loss of their holiness. The ex players of Blizzard (in general) are the most fanatical fanbase to Blizzard and the most toxic.

Like... move on with your lives. I quit WoW for 2 years, didn't pay attention to it although maybe granted I left on good terms and didn't say a bad word about it even with faults I found.

[azka]

Well. Izen had something to say about that video.

[Nerovar]

From Bellular's data it looks like these are expansion cycles rather than patch cycles. But granted, with one patch to go by this isn't robust data. Maybe other patches were more successful at enticing players to come back.

He's not using the data of one patch. He's comparing it to all other patches from 7.1 to now. Did you watch the video you posted?

Furthermore, this is more about analysing trends using datasets from the same source (raider.io). It doesn't have to be a 100% accurate depiction of sub/player numbers or whatever because it is about an overall trend shown by these numbers and this trend is very steeply downward compared to other patches. Now, you could argue that the players that are collected in these datasets somehow behave vastly different than the entirety of the playerbase but I haven't seen any convincing reasoning in support of this view.

[SunspotAnims]

At this point trying to determine the number of people actively playing during an arbitrary time period is a massive non-starter, and has been for a long time. I just don't think it contributes much to a constructive discourse about what's best for the game, and it's weird when it's talked about so much in the same forum that's turned "MAU" into an evil phrase.

Frankly, I want both the players and the developers to get on the same page about how they want to measure success for WoW. Personally, I'd rather see success measured in the community and player feedback. Maybe it's wishful thinking that there'd ever be a point where the community is majorly positive, just given its nature; still, I think in general people will react positively to something they like and negatively to something they don't, even if they can't coherently articulate why. There's no point in trying to fight someone over their feelings, so just try to figure out the actual roots of their reaction and try again.

[Mokuna]

All this data shows is less people are running normal mode and mythic plus than at the start of an expansion where literally everyone comes back and tries the game, including the usual suspects that stop playing after a month no matter what.

Those returning/quitting people are running trivial content like low M+ keys and normal mode raids, then they quit so you get less runs overall, but if you take the number of mythic kills it's been quite consistent which leads to think the players that actually play this game don't quit that much.

The game has a lot of issues but this endless cycle of "wow bad ff good" from content creators is getting stupid, and it will be fun to look at when a lot of "wow refugees" and content creators realise ff doesn't have everything they lik, the novelty of it fades away, and they shamelessly come back to wow acting like nothing happened

[Ivarr]

Well. Izen had something to say about that video.

He's accusing Bellular of cherry-picking and motivates that with even worse cherry-picking by moving from normal to mythic numbers. What Izen is saying that WoW is fine because the mythic guilds haven't dropped and those, despite being completely dwarved by normal players, are somehow the numbers that matter.

All this data shows is less people are running normal mode and mythic plus than at the start of an expansion where literally everyone comes back and tries the game, including the usual suspects that stop playing after a month no matter what.

It shows that normal numbers have dropped far harder than mythic numbers. It fully validates the claim that WoW is still a hardcore game.

[MrLachyG]

oh look. another "wow is dead" thread badly disguised as something else. how novel. /s