If the buck is passed to FFXIV...

[Polybius]

The numbers are stupidly high and says something about how big Blizzard is. Millions upon millions have bought wow or other Blizzard games, thats not "normal". Its quite a feat. Now - most people treat games like this: Buy game, plays it. When bored, stop playing it. Its not 2008 anymore, people can pick and choose from a pletoria of good games that you can get hold of in no time. Heck, many of them are even free!

Back in the "old days" people had wow as the MMORPG to play(think wotlk days). There was no other MMORPG that could compete at all. It was a different time and the options wasnt that big, especially when it came to an online game of this magnitude. To keep hold of 10+ million subs for over 16+ years is impossible.

What im trying to say is: People shift and move around with games all the time. People dont stay subbed throughout a xpac anymore, cause why would they? New wow xpac/patch comes, people sub and play for a while. Then stop and move on to other things. As it should be. You dont have to stay subbed all the time to wow to get fun out of it, and I doubt even Blizzard wants you to sub and play all the time. Theres even a ingame tip were it says you should take breaks lol.

Could wow do better right now? Sure, it always can. Is it dead, buried and forgotten? Not by a long shot and when 10.0 comes around people will return, play it for a while and have fun with it, and unsub again. Nothing wrong with that.

Phone games are pretty popular these days. I don't think their numbers help since WoW is not big compared to Hearthstone or other games.

[crusadernero]

Phone games are pretty popular these days.

They sure are, for some reason. I dont play them, so I dont care about them. Im probably not the target audience.

What do you mean "wow is not big"? SL had record sales. The boxsales+subs+services(mounts, token, etc) makes enough money for ActiBlizz to call it a success.

[ati87]

Well, Blizzard at large had 46M monthly active users in Q2 2017, and 26M in their latest update. It's not specifically for WoW, but I think losing 20M monthly active users in 4 years, around 40-45% of your base, is exactly what I'd call a mass player exodus.

Most developers only wish that the had so many active players across multiply games when the most recent games they released is at this point 5 years old.

[Bloomer]

Buck Status: Broken

[Gimlix]

Wow merges every server in shards. FF only does in instances with servers from the same data center (think battlegroup). It is possible to visit other servers in the same data center.

Maybe i should note that when i say 50 it's just the ones i see in one given point. Of course it depends on where i am, but FF cities are very large. So, yes, there are way more than 100 people in the big cities in each given server. Probably more. Also that many on the gold saucer and Bozja/zednos. Heck even dozens of people just hanging out in the Gangos hub. These are basically the end game zone.

When you offer numbers, you have to offer the source. Guess i will go look.

So, mmo population tells a different story.
https://mmo-population.com/activity

FFXIV 2.8m
Wow retail 1.1m
WoW classic 730k

This for active players. Maybe you have a different source for your numbers? That is what i'm seeing.

Honestly, that makes sense with what i see in the games when playing them. But, there are no official numbers. Probably never will.

IT really depends where u look at, which source. also these sites are 0% reliable info u know that right?
https://mmo-population.com/top/2021

- - - Updated - - -

Well, Blizzard at large had 46M monthly active users in Q2 2017, and 26M in their latest update. It's not specifically for WoW, but I think losing 20M monthly active users in 4 years, around 40-45% of your base, is exactly what I'd call a mass player exodus.

We must remember that so far in each expansion WoW numbers even tho if they are low as 2-3M, they were pulled back to 10M at launch of each expansion.
(Confirmed by Blizzard that Shadowlands had more players then 10 years time, WoD had over 10M active people)

That shit, cant even FF pull off.

- - - Updated - - -

Look... wow can't even pull off 12m active subs with a modern day xpac launch. I don't know what world you live in to think this is possible.

This just proves to me that you have 0 clue what you are talking about and just makes me think you are a moron. (yes ban me for it idc)

Let me rephrase you, "World of Warcraft manages to stay as #1 active MMORPG for nearly 17 years now after release, hitting quarters of 10M active subscribers like at start of Shadowlands while other games struggle to keep the game alive after 2 months of launch"

Let us wait and see how long FF14 can hold their active players, i wanna bet after 1 year, 80% of those people are gone.
While WoW will have a grown again and will be back at 4-6M active people (Because let us be honest here, this is the case each fucking expansion)

let us not be delusional shall we? What is next? WoW is dead? because it has only a few million active users? (More then 99% of all MMORPGS out there)

[Cosmic Janitor]

They sure are, for some reason. I dont play them, so I dont care about them. Im probably not the target audience.

What do you mean "wow is not big"? SL had record sales. The boxsales+subs+services(mounts, token, etc) makes enough money for ActiBlizz to call it a success.

They had record day one sales, after it was available for preorder for almost a year and had a rather distinctive pet, mount and transmog set tied to the premium versions. They also missed their original release window, which lead to a ton of people that usally buy once it's out having time off and being bored, so they even got some of the after launch sales mixed in with the new release date. They chose exactly what to report on, same with their quarterly earning reports which also cherry pick the right metrics to report something positive, even if it's "we had more engagement - in a month where we released a new expansion - duh".

But yes, WoW is a rather stable income for AB, though I have to wonder about AB being happy with that. This industry is all about baindead growth, and if you aren't growing exponentially you are already considered dead. I'm sure some penny pinchers have toyed with the idea of having Blizzard make another CoD instead.

[crusadernero]

They had record day one sales, after it was available for preorder for almost a year and had a rather distinctive pet, mount and transmog set tied to the premium versions. They also missed their original release window, which lead to a ton of people that usally buy once it's out having time off and being bored, so they even got some of the after launch sales mixed in with the new release date. They chose exactly what to report on, same with their quarterly earning reports which also cherry pick the right metrics to report something positive, even if it's "we had more engagement - in a month where we released a new expansion - duh".

But yes, WoW is a rather stable income for AB, though I have to wonder about AB being happy with that. This industry is all about baindead growth, and if you aren't growing exponentially you are already considered dead. I'm sure some penny pinchers have toyed with the idea of having Blizzard make another CoD instead.

It would be a waste of time to have Blizzard make CoD. At this point, making CoD games gotta be rather straightforward. Make a decent campaign connected to WW1/WW2, the cold war or some future soldier action stuff. Slap cool weapons, skins and so forth into the multiplayer and its GG for another year. CoD now is like FIFA. Its the same thing every year with little tweaks. People dont notice big changes year after year, but you see a difference between 10 year old versions and current.

In a way CoD creates itself, like FIFA does.

Also - As you said, wow generates money. Its a stable income on a two year cycle(should be), with services being sold inbetween. Since its also sub fee, thats even better.

I think Activision rather want Blizzard to open up the warcraft universe to more venues. To mobile & consoles. It could be "new" games within the same universe, or even wow on console(but thats not likely). I would bet that a wow pet mobile game would be very popular. They could be cynical about it and have it so the only way to get pets is to play wow on PC, and you can play with the collected pets on your phone. Meaning you gotta sub up and play wow to get pets = more subs.

[ati87]

It would be a waste of time to have Blizzard make CoD. At this point, making CoD games gotta be rather straightforward. Make a decent campaign connected to WW1/WW2, the cold war or some future soldier action stuff. Slap cool weapons, skins and so forth into the multiplayer and its GG for another year. CoD now is like FIFA. Its the same thing every year with little tweaks. People dont notice big changes year after year, but you see a difference between 10 year old versions and current.

In a way CoD creates itself, like FIFA does.

Also - As you said, wow generates money. Its a stable income on a two year cycle(should be), with services being sold inbetween. Since its also sub fee, thats even better.

I think Activision rather want Blizzard to open up the warcraft universe to more venues. To mobile & consoles. It could be "new" games within the same universe, or even wow on console(but thats not likely). I would bet that a wow pet mobile game would be very popular. They could be cynical about it and have it so the only way to get pets is to play wow on PC, and you can play with the collected pets on your phone. Meaning you gotta sub up and play wow to get pets = more subs.

Honestly I could see this happening and opening up Warcraft to more platforms then just the MMO would definitely be logical.
Developing a game has become much more of a risk then when Blizzard decided to drop Titan, it takes allot longer and allot more expensive today then 10-20 years ago.

And honestly same of these expansions to broaden the horizon is kind of logical. Make a tamagotchi / pokemon go like app for the phones and chances are it will be highly populaire if you can get some rewards with other Blizzard games and if it's actually good (looking at Valve now).

Sure the hardcore fans will hate this shit (like the Diablo on consoles and cellphones) and will shout things like "Activision is ruining Blizzard" (clearly Blizzard is more then capable of creating a culture of destroying itself) but having more revenue flows is really important for gaming development companies.

[crusadernero]

Honestly I could see this happening and opening up Warcraft to more platforms then just the MMO would definitely be logical.
Developing a game has become much more of a risk then when Blizzard decided to drop Titan, it takes allot longer and allot more expensive today then 10-20 years ago.

And honestly same of these expansions to broaden the horizon is kind of logical. Make a tamagotchi / pokemon go like app for the phones and chances are it will be highly populaire if you can get some rewards with other Blizzard games and if it's actually good (looking at Valve now).

Sure the hardcore fans will hate this shit (like the Diablo on consoles and cellphones) and will shout things like "Activision is ruining Blizzard" (clearly Blizzard is more then capable of creating a culture of destroying itself) but having more revenue flows is really important for gaming development companies.

Indeed. Making new games is a high risk, especially a MMORPG. ActiBlizz already got a VERY good MMORPG IP with wow. We have classic era, BC classic & retail atm. Soon enough we have WotLK classic too.

Project Titan failed horribly for Blizzard and if I remember correctly it really set them back quite a bit. It was probably a huge letdown that it failed. It costed them more than just money and time.

Also - I dont think Blizzard have it in them to create a whole new universe & game for PC anymore. They have the IPs they have, now they only need to reach out to most people. Whats missing is console & mobile stuff. For both of these they dont need to create new universes, classes and all that. They can take the concepts they have on PC and adapt it to mobile and/or console. And yes, it sucks for us PC players that the attention is being shifted to console & especially mobile. Though I can understand it, cause kids these days play games differently than we did and does now.

Besides - theres nothing in the way for them to actually "make wow great again". For all we know 10.0 might be a baller of a xpac. Nevertheless, it will sell alot and generate money. Like FIFA & CoD, wow is a huge name that will sell no matter what. Theres been numerous shit FIFAs & CoDs that sell good.

[ati87]

Indeed. Making new games is a high risk, especially a MMORPG. ActiBlizz already got a VERY good MMORPG IP with wow. We have classic era, BC classic & retail atm. Soon enough we have WotLK classic too.

Project Titan failed horribly for Blizzard and if I remember correctly it really set them back quite a bit. It was probably a huge letdown that it failed. It costed them more than just money and time.

Also - I dont think Blizzard have it in them to create a whole new universe & game for PC anymore. They have the IPs they have, now they only need to reach out to most people. Whats missing is console & mobile stuff. For both of these they dont need to create new universes, classes and all that. They can take the concepts they have on PC and adapt it to mobile and/or console. And yes, it sucks for us PC players that the attention is being shifted to console & especially mobile. Though I can understand it, cause kids these days play games differently than we did and does now.

Besides - theres nothing in the way for them to actually "make wow great again". For all we know 10.0 might be a baller of a xpac. Nevertheless, it will sell alot and generate money. Like FIFA & CoD, wow is a huge name that will sell no matter what. Theres been numerous shit FIFAs & CoDs that sell good.

WoW will never be "great" because lets be honest, behind the change A or change B the game is more or less the same it has ever been for the past 15 years. Some things got easier over time (raiding itself) but not in such a way that the game feels so much different during cap level. It's more or less the same game it has ever been which isn't really a critique but just the way it is.

And a new Blizzard IP you never know, every company/developer will always think of "what can we do to make more money" and a new IP while risky is the best way to achieve this because it opens op new businesses.

[crusadernero]

WoW will never be "great" because lets be honest, behind the change A or change B the game is more or less the same it has ever been for the past 15 years. Some things got easier over time (raiding itself) but not in such a way that the game feels so much different during cap level. It's more or less the same game it has ever been which isn't really a critique but just the way it is.

And a new Blizzard IP you never know, every company/developer will always think of "what can we do to make more money" and a new IP while risky is the best way to achieve this because it opens op new businesses.

Yeah I agree with that. Theres only so much Blizzard can do with wow and the formula has been and always will be the same. New zones, quests and all that but its the same: Level up, get gear, get stronger. Do pvp or pve. Thats probably one of the reasons why we have seen Blizzard do various new stuff at max level, to break the mold.

I would have loved if Blizzard launched a new IP, but I have my doubts. Maybe in 10 years.