World of Warcraft Subscriber Trends Revealed at GDC 2024

[Lumy]

World of Warcraft Subscriber Trends Revealed at GDC 2024
John Hight, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Warcraft Franchise, lead a presentation at the Game Developers Conference to reflect on 30 years of Warcraft. Specifically focusing on World of Warcraft, John Hight shared the successes and failures of Warcraft, and subscriber trends from Legion to Dragonflight.

Below, we've summarized highlights from John Hight's presentation. For a deeper dive into Warcraft's history and upcoming plans, check the Inven blog post.

Things that lead to WoW's success, and things that went wrong in Shadowlands




Expected subscriber trends from Shadowlands to Dragonflight, and actual subscriber churn




Dragonflight to Season of Discovery subscriber trends, thanks to developer efforts and feedback from the community




Bellular's estimated subscriber numbers assuming the graph's y-axis begins at zero

[ryjkur]

I think Cata classic announcement had bigger impact for subscription increase than DF. Vanilla, TBC and Wotlk was just cata waiting room for many.

[Mekkle]

Doomers in shambles, cant wait for them to comment here like in the previous threads

[FelPlague]

Lmao even Blizzard won't say the actual sub numbers and post "trends"... They're so obsessed with engagement and trend metrics over actual numbers at this point it's just sad.

But if Bellular speculates it must be true...

Are you not the guy who says if asmongold says something it must be true?
And also that FF14 had 30 million subs?
Like literally said this only like an hour ago.

[Xilurm]

Are you not the guy who says if asmongold says something it must be true?
And also that FF14 had 30 million subs?
Like literally said this only like an hour ago.

This guy has been doing this shit for ages, there's no point in talking sense to him.

[Varodoc]

People always say that the average player doesn't care about the Story, but the Executives recognized the Story and Setting as a major turn-off of Shadowlands.

Story does matter.

The travesty that happened to Teldrassil/the Alliance tanked BfA's sub numbers. We have the data, we see it first-hand.

BfA was a failure because people care about the Story and people left after Teldrassil/the Alliance were humiliated and turned into a joke. The data is laid bare for all to see.

You see now how important Night Elf fans are and how important it is to appease them?

[Xilurm]

People always say that the average player doesn't care about the Story, but the Executives recognized the Story and Setting as a major turn-off of Shadowlands.

Story does matter.

The travesty that happened to Teldrassil/the Alliance tanked BfA's sub numbers. We have the data, we see it first-hand.

BfA was a failure because people care about the Story and people left after Teldrassil/the Alliance were humiliated and turned into a joke. The data is laid bare for all to see.

I wonder how many people that started WoW due to WC3 still play the game.

[Syegfryed]

They are HIGHLY diminishing the "what went wrong" to save face. In what was right, those topics where separated, and now they where put in the same topic.


It had nothing to do with the afterlife not being accessible, it was about the afterlife being dogshit written, it didn't make sense. Too much ambitious, too litle to deliver, and you get nonsense stuff about how kyrians didn't knew how the maw was getting stronger, but kept pumping souls there.

After mop there was no global appeal, since the world didn't matter anymore, the world was not the star, but some characters doing some shit. We were just heroes, not savers of the world.

If before we got simple conflicts and epic battles, Now we have "epic" conflicts, with trash battles. BfA tried to make the faction conflict epic, Legion tried to make the fight against the legion epic, but it all lies down to one island and meh story.

then you have stuff like questionable lore choices and decisions that hinder players/fans experience, less worldbuilding, less focus on the races and more on characters as the entire race became a hivemind that act and think the same as the leader, etc etc

Story/lore is as much of a factor about playing the game as gameplay in my opinion.

[WeWillOnlyBeSlower]

Those numbers need to be divided by x, maybe then real ones... lmao.

[Wha]

guilds are dead nothing to even make them appealing no community content infat latest thing is bots that allow solo rather than team.This is why my friend and i unsubbed

[McNeil]

This is the closest we got of Blizzard admitting how shit SL was.

[Syegfryed]

They should never have used the afterlife as a setting. WoD has proven they can write alternate world/otherworldly stories for shit.

It could have worked, if they had a competente team of writers, and if that shit felt like "wow afterlife"


Cause honestly, from what we knew since early days of warcraft till BFA, What was the concept and what feel like afterlife? did any race had an afterlife about turning into blue humans and getting mind wiped? did any race had an afterlife about going into a vampire den that they suck your sins to power themselves?

Anything "close" to one of the afterlives was the Maw, and that was shit/not explored. maybe the night elf afterlive, but just a bit. The other races afterlife get shit upon, where is the afterlife of the "tribal" races? that turn into the ancestors? the earth mother? Hell, to where the fuck Durotar went and why Drakka didn't went to the same place, instead they got separated and she is in the scorge-wannabe hell? What about the Realm of shadows where Death knights travel back in wtlk?

It was definetly possible to do an afterlife expansion, if they borrowed stuff like greek/norse afterlife, like they were used to grab their stuff all time, or dunno borrow some dnd concepts. But the result was just "blergh"

[Kellorion]

Ion still the public face of WoW ............why?

[Statius]

I wonder how some of those people who blindly defended Shadowlands on the belief that their beloved Blizzard couldn't possibly do anything wrong, feels now that Blizzard have downright admitted to doing a lot of things wrong. Contrary to their belief, at least some of us who criticized that expansion (as well as BFA and Dragonflight) aren't just doomers who love to hate on WoW for no reason, but are actually people who want the game to be as good as it can be, remembering how it was back in the day. Either way, stuff like this gives me hope. After all, as the saying goes, the first step of improvement is admitting that there is a problem.

[doledippers]

I wonder how some of those people who blindly defended Shadowlands on the belief that their beloved Blizzard couldn't possibly do anything wrong, feels now that Blizzard have downright admitted to doing a lot of things wrong. Contrary to their belief, at least some of us who criticized that expansion (as well as BFA and Dragonflight) aren't just doomers who love to hate on WoW for no reason, but are actually people who want the game to be as good as it can be, remembering how it was back in the day. Either way, stuff like this gives me hope. After all, as the saying goes, the first step of improvement is admitting that there is a problem.

i wasnt under the impression that anybody liked shadowlands, i certainly didnt

[FelPlague]

Ion still the public face of WoW ............why?

???
Ion is not in this article at all, what are you talking about?
John Hight is the one who gave the presentation.

[Big Thanks]

Blaming the "Afterlife" setting for the reason why story was bad...Blizzard...come on...thats my favorite setting of all time and is mega epic.
It was not the setting.

[Vonazak]

Blaming the "Afterlife" setting for the reason why story was bad...Blizzard...come on...thats my favorite setting of all time and is mega epic.
It was not the setting.

It was the setting.

Their take on it was absolutely boring

[Relapses]

I think Cata classic announcement had bigger impact for subscription increase than DF. Vanilla, TBC and Wotlk was just cata waiting room for many.

Man, I like Cataclsym and even I'm not gonna throw out a suggestion this cooked. The upswing is almost assuredly from SoD, though DF's Season 3 not being terrible certainly helps as well.

[Big Thanks]

It was the setting.

Their take on it was absolutely boring

No? Their take was awesome? The afterlife setting is awesome!
Ok, lets just agree to disagree...
We are gonna stay here all day spaming "no u"...i really love the afterlife theme