2011 Subscribers Predictions & Trends

[invader]

ive unsubscribed (quit rather) since a few weeks ago as has my missus and my nephew (so thats 3 accounts i had cancelled) and quite a few people i knew in-game (inc. a couple of guildies) have disappeared too... wow has had its time in the limelight for me now and i dont miss it at all.. waiting for swtor instead.. .

[Kaayah]

I cancelled my subscription for the 2nd time after Cataclysm yesterday.

I played for a week or so Cataclysm (did got my 2 85s and played quite alot of heroics/BGs) and I just... didn't feel the magic anymore. In fact, I was getting more and more pissed at the game seeing how they (the developers) were screwing stuff over and over again.
With the changes, I got completely uninterested in playing my Warlock or my Priest, and when I noticed I was spending 90% of my time online leveling new characters (when I just wanted 1), I decided I should quit.

Coming back after a month to see if anything has changed (some friends are still playing) and well, although I was hoping they would've "fixed" the lack of fun, I only got even more disappointed seeing on how players were now abusing of bugs and broken mechanics.

Unhappy, I looked for similar topics of disappointment with the game and I was surprised to find alot more than I was expecting, meaning I just didn't got fed up with the game, but the game got boring instead.
I also read somewhere that the original development team isn't working on WoW anymore, they're on that next gen MMO Blizz said to be producing.

And it's to them that I'm pointing my frustration to, I can't imagine how they could fuck up a game I really liked and spent years playing.

Now I'm looking at the good side of this, my week suddenly got bigger and the days seem longer than ever!

[ju2au]

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weekly...hp?serverid=-1

Wow, the decline in player activity is still quite sharp since two months after I started this thread.

[Mezzolith]

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weekly...hp?serverid=-1

Wow, the decline in player activity is still quite sharp since two months after I started this thread.

You also have to consider that the graph only shows data of those that have the CensusPlus UI mod installed. I'd imagine the vast majority of players don't even know about this mod. Hell, I used to have tons of mods and I've never heard of it.

[Karak]

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weekly...hp?serverid=-1

Wow, the decline in player activity is still quite sharp since two months after I started this thread.

As someone said earlier, this is hardly sufficient data. Less then 200 players on every class during primetime? Yea ok.

[Deleted]

You also have to consider that the graph only shows data of those that have the CensusPlus UI mod installed. I'd imagine the vast majority of players don't even know about this mod. Hell, I used to have tons of mods and I've never heard of it.

While true, it's all about relative numbers. As long as we have enough people running the mod, they'll give us an idea of how the game is developing.

And the data clearly indicates a harsh decline in population. This is partially due to Rift for sure and will last for a few months at least. However, at that point The old Republic should be close to launch, so WoW might not be able to recover. Summer always sees a drop in subscribers so it might take until BlizzCon 2011, when they announce their next expansion, for the numbers to recover.

As someone said earlier, this is hardly sufficient data. Less then 200 players on every class during primetime? Yea ok.

What's so unlikely about less than 200 players of each class being online during peak hours? If I type /who now, 8 PM I get less than 40 Druids on Horde.

[Karak]

Maybe I'm used to a populated server, but I've never seen numbers that low.

[Mezzolith]

While true, it's all about relative numbers. As long as we have enough people running the mod, they'll give us an idea of how the game is developing.

And the data clearly indicates a harsh decline in population. This is partially due to Rift for sure and will last for a few months at least. However, at that point The old Republic should be close to launch, so WoW might not be able to recover. Summer always sees a drop in subscribers so it might take until BlizzCon 2011, when they announce their next expansion, for the numbers to recover.



What's so unlikely about less than 200 players of each class being online during peak hours? If I type /who now, 8 PM I get less than 40 Druids on Horde.

~1800 people is no where near a good representation of the whole of the 12 million players.

[ZeroWashu]

yea it is happening slowly I think a lot of people are quitting slowly. I know a lot of my friends left early january.

We had many who were on three month plans or 60 day cards received for Christmas who didn't resub. The day before I left my guild managed to crack 30 online because they inherited a large portion of a guild I had many friends in which imploded as the GL quit and two smaller guilds integrated the month before.

The numbers can't look good. There is little to keep the hard cores in till 4.2 and Cata drove off a large number of "casuals" and very good people who just wanted to have fun. Blizzard was so hell bent on making Arena's succeed I truly don't think they cared how many they lost. I should clarify that, I don't think the developer teams who chose this direction cared but their higher ups certainly will.

[Brett Skullcrack]

For a new expansion, this decline is very unusual. At this point in time, you would be expecting people to have already reached the level cap (level 85) and be working on the end game (i.e. heroics & raids). A declining trend probably indicates that people reached level 85 then stop playing; they are simply not doing heroics, raiding or end-game pvp.

You would have to compare this spike to the spike during the launch of TBC and the launch of WotLK. You simply cannot say anything useful based on the data you posted. If anything, based on the data you posted I would expect the activity to keep falling to the pre-Cata level, so there's nothing unusual in the graphs at all.

[Vashdakari]

~1800 people is no where near a good representation of the whole of the 12 million players.

That is the average of all realms though. It's taking each realms numbers, and then averaging them to one graph. If you really want to know what your realms population is like, i bet you can find it. It's not an average of just 1800 people, its the average of every servers ~1800 people.

Warcraftrealms has been running since Classic, and it was a great way to track peoples guild history on your server (before transfers and name changes) to see if they were a guild hopper or potential pain in the arse. Go ahead and surf the website, not only will you find your realm, but also Census data about class, race, and the total percentage of each within the realms population. It also tracks Horde:Alliance ratio (good if you're interested in transferring).

I mean, if you really doubt how accurate it is, go here and type in your main character, or any alt, and then find the one on your server, and it will show you what guilds you've been in, at what levels, and when. My first recorded entry in their database is all the way back in November of '05 as a level 5 unguilded; and is current up to my current guild and server.

Big Brother has always been watching.

[James240]

I would wager they have lost a ton of subs the exact figure is of course unknown, but giving that rift already at release had over 1 million accounts you would say a large majority of those came from WoW.

[Deleted]

I would wager they have lost a ton of subs the exact figure is of course unknown, but giving that rift already at release had over 1 million accounts you would say a large majority of those came from WoW.

Accounts, not subscribers. It's amazing how many people get fooled by that. All it means is that 1 million people were "interested" in rift beta, that doesn't mean 1 million will buy it. If mmo champion starts selling garfield t-shirts tomorrow and they have 500,000 registered members, does that mean they will sell 500,000 t-shirts? Of course not.

~1800 people is no where near a good representation of the whole of the 12 million players.

You do realise that not all 12 million players play at the same time, right?
And that the 12 million players are split between probably 400 servers, right?

And that data is from /who'ing servers at peak times. It doesn't matter if just ONE person on each server uses the addon, the point is the addon itself looks at how many people are online on the servers faction. You don't need the majority of players to have the addon for it to work.

In relation to the topic, a drop in player activity doesn't necessarily mean that subs have dropped. All it means is that there is less for people to do, and so they are playing less. If they are still subscribing then it makes no difference to sub numbers. If I go from playing 10 hours a day to playing 5 hours a week then I am still paying the same. Since this data is from peak times though it could signify that less people are raiding or doing rated bgs, which could imply that guilds are dying due to lack of players, or people aren't raiding due to boredom, etc.

[Deleted]

Just searched for me on there. Nothing, and my character was rolled 2 months into WOTLK. So it certainly isn't playing on my realm. I wager that they might have lost some, but it's a drop in the ocean. You know, just to be different about the doomsaying . And without an accurate source, we only have anecdotes to go by.

Peace.

[Deleted]

If you notice it's always going up with the release of a new patch or expansion. After that, slow decline all the way and so on.

[Osmeric]

You also have to consider that the graph only shows data of those that have the CensusPlus UI mod installed. I'd imagine the vast majority of players don't even know about this mod. Hell, I used to have tons of mods and I've never heard of it.

The mod goes out and looks who ELSE is playing, and records their character names. It only needs a few players of each faction on a server (in prime time, which is where they count the data) having the mod to mine the data.

---------- Post added 2011-03-16 at 12:15 PM ----------

If you notice it's always going up with the release of a new patch or expansion. After that, slow decline all the way and so on.

The decline this time is exceptionally rapid.

These graphs only go back 12 months, but the site used to periodically display faction-independent activity numbers in a bar graph form. The last such graph posted can be found in the news archives, or just look at

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/articl...+Numbers&fid=4

I think current activity numbers are close to the lowest seen in WotLK (during summer 2010; the spike down in winter 2010 was a data collection artifact), and the rapid decline shows no sign of leveling off.

[Shadowgale]

This is pretty interesting.

What is really going to be interesting, is how Blizzard will react to this, or rather how the people in charge will react. Cataclysm was a pretty big gamble for them; going back and revamping/recycling old content to attract new players and consequently dedicating less time, money, and work into the endgame and higher level is pretty risky from a business perspective. And now, according to this info, the whole experiment seems to have failed.

The new players doesn't seem to be sticking around, while the veterans, unhappy with the obvious lack of content at lvl 85 are leaving the game simply because they're bored and tired of recycled content.

One can only hope Blizzard will panic a bit and hopefully try and outdo themselves with the next expansion to get the veterans back, with new content (as in new systems) instead of more of the same, as is the case in Cata.

[seam]

1) There could be more reasons for seeing a decline than the population going down. Such as the people who take the census deciding to stop playing. 1 less person using it means a lot lower of a result. Not to mention people may be playing at different times now, or the people taking the census might not be always hitting peak time.

2) WCR isn't exactly known for being accurate. My server has 303 alliance on it, apparently, but my guild with 250ish members doesn't exist.

[thedankson]

I agree that people are leaving but I didn't read the thread. As soon as I saw warcraftrealms.com mentioned I tuned out. That site hasn't been even remotely accurate in ~5 years.

Edit: The only accurate info on BDF was 'There are too few Alliance entries for this realm to give reliable results!'.

[Osmeric]

I agree that people are leaving but I didn't read the thread. As soon as I saw warcraftrealms.com mentioned I tuned out. That site hasn't been even remotely accurate in ~5 years.

Edit: The only accurate info on BDF was 'There are too few Alliance entries for this realm to give reliable results!'.

Morhaime just said (in Q1 earnings telecon) they lost 600K subscribers in Q1, and subs are now back to pre-Cata levels.

Looks like those activity numbers were right on the ball!