600k Sub Loss EXPLAINED

[vesseblah]

So you are saying that the steady increase from January to October was a lie? That people started activating their subscirptions for CAT in January? or are you saying that since October was the end of the previous expac, the 12 million is actually to low point and should have gone up drastically since then?

You have contradicted yourelf in the same sentence. Either they have been increasing since january (as the data points, not declining as you suggest) or that Oct was the low point in subscriptsion because of the expac release even at 12mil. Cant be both ways.

Lowest point when the last raid tier is finished (ICC) at the beginning of the year at 11.4M, highest point just before expansion is coming out (Oct) in anticipation.

Was that so hard concept to understand?

[Senicide]

you don't count perceived losses from subs you "might" have gained the next quarter... they had 600k less subs then they expected to have and that's what they reported.

[Frinata]

I'm going to go ahead and derail this thread into a person QQ:

Why does no one ever see my post? QQ

[mindbomb]

OK. I see.... "ignorant fanboy" explains it all. Ooooo, maybe it becomes 15% loss or 20%.... /shudder.... hopefully this won't affect my enjoyment of playing a few times a week. Carry on.

[woxingma]

At another poster: truth is absolute. Anything less than truth is a lie. Find a scenario where I am wrong about that.

You are right. But can you name some truth we comprehend wholy? Every physical theory out there has assumptions built in a questions we have yet to answer.

For instance you figure out how to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics and you might be getting closer, and those are some of the closest scientific theories to approach "the truth" out there.

fact is, what you call the truth, I call your perception based on incomplete data.

[anyaka21]

Lowest point when the last raid tier is finished (ICC) at the beginning of the year at 11.4M, highest point just before expansion is coming out (Oct) in anticipation.

Was that so hard concept to understand?

I truly don't understand your logic. When do you consider ICC finished? It was the last raid tier, the last before the expansion. Thus, it was finished when Cata came out. So by this logic, their lowest point in subs is at the end of expansion, which is the high point right before the beginning of the next expansion?

Again, I just don't understand.

[conscript]

OP is delusional and has no real explanation other than "this is why I think it happened"

This thread is SO original, try the search feature before stepping up to the soap box buddy

Huh? The OP's post is simply a math post about the approximate number of subscriptions lost, not the reasons why. You can't account for the reasons people no longer play unless you poll a massive portion of them. The OP simply made an estimate of the number of people who actually quit based on projected growth rates of the population from prior data. I would even hazard a guess that he is far, far off on his projection. A new expansion should in theory result in a massive bubble of returned players and new accounts which should create a fairly substantial increase in population. The OP is wrong in that he only assumes a constant increase in subscribers which is always present rather than the expansion driven rapid acceleration experienced for Wrath. The "number" lost is 600,000 if you ignore the inevitable increase in subscribers from the expansion and only go off the last number they released. The true number lost far exceeds that amount.

Look at the changes in population for previous expansions. For Wrath, the population had grown by a million players between 2008 and 2009. There was then a rapid uptick of subscribers of about another million over just a two month period coinciding with the release of Wrath. Obviously those numbers dipped afterwards, but if they are any indication, the number of players that actually quit early in Cata is far more than 600k or the estimated 933k. If WoW did experience a similar injection of returned players and new players with the release of Cata, their subscription total at one time more than likely surpassed 12.5 million and may have peaked near 13 million. Again this is an estimate based on the prior expansion uptick of ~1 million. For the subscriber base to be at the 11.4 million mark right now, an estimated 1.1-1.6 million players actually quit playing the game according to my estimation based on the usual expansion driven subscriber bubble.

[ptwonline]

you don't count perceived losses from subs you "might" have gained the next quarter... they had 600k less subs then they expected to have and that's what they reported.

They didn't have 600K fewer "than expected". They had 600K fewer.

People joined in that time period too, so the actual number that quit was obviously higher than 600K. The net loss was 600K.

[woxingma]

I'm going to go ahead and derail this thread into a person QQ:

Why does no one ever see my post? QQ

Did anyone else notice this post was blank? Weird.

[Dashield28]

Blizzard didn't lie: They never said they LOST 600,000 subscribers. They said their current subscription level is 600,000 less than it was at the previous count, against 12,000,000. It is no different than our job market in the United States. One month the total employed increases by 150,000 but the next month decreases by 300,000. Then the market re-increases by 100,000 the following month. That's a NET loss of 50,000 jobs over those 3 months. It's not a loss of 300,000 and it's not a gain of 150,000, but a simple loss of 50k. That doesn't mean that new people aren't finding work. It just means the overall pace of job shedding was greater than the pace of job gains. Fluctuations are normal, and the historical trend of World of Warcraft is that the total subscriptions goes up - currently to 11,400,000 from 0. The same allegory again: our stock market performs the same way. There are dips, depressions, and recessions, but historically the end result is the market climbs higher and higher. Blizzard could easily have lost 2 million subs, gained 1.4 million new subs, and ended up with...you guessed it...a net loss of 600,000.

A net loss of 600,000 subscribers isn't a huge deal - WoW sheds subscribers every day. Some people move on to other games. Others can't afford it any more. Some go back to school and it's just not worth the time. Even more are "lost" because Blizzard banhammers famers, botters, and sellers. It's not a sign of the "exodus". It's been pointed out numerous times on many of these threads the trend expansions take. As content is released, a portion of those people will return.

Firstly, they didnt say they lost 600k subscribers. They announced their subscibtions numbers were 11.4mil. (people wrongfully inferred the 600 loss).

Also Net gains and losses work well with money, not fluid numbers/population.

Let me ask you this as an example. You have a country where your birthrate is roughly 667 thousand people per year gathered over the last lets say 2 years (i know short time, but before that you had the plague and half the people died). If you start with 12 million people and over the curse of 6 months assuming avg birth rate, your population decreases to 11.4 mil, how many people died? 933k. Because as children were born, people were dieing. Your net might be 600k from the last census.. but the current numbers indicate you lost a lot more.

[Deleted]

Even if blizz had 14mill now, who cares besides their investors? I still decide by if its fun or not and not by where the herd is moving to.

And tbh i decided to quit until next addon. Grinding dailys to progress slowly is boring.

[Deleted]

Those that enjoy WoW do not care, and those that do not enjoy WoW will probably not return either way... so what's the point? If WoW only had 2 million subscribers it would still be a money maker. Blizzard has pretty much reached the end of what their severely outdated graphics engine can offer, so they just keep on adding / reskinning content. Enjoy it or move on... I moved on.

[Dominian]

They've actually lost more because that is old quarterly research.

[dan828]

waaaaaaaait a second. Does 'we lost 600k subscribers' implies that they've only lost 600k, and there were no new subscribers?? No, it implies that the TOTAL of subscribers went down with 600k. That is also + the new ones. So, it is not a lie from blizzard. They just said they've lost 600k in total of subscribers. Don't blame the boss when the slaves are stupid.

It was carefully worded. They said they had returned to pre-launch levels, and gave a number-- this number was 600k less than the last time the gave a number, many months before. IOW, they ended up back to where they were at after ICC had been out for 9 months or so, down significantly from the peak sub numbers in wrath. And those numbers were for the end of march. I'd think that the trend has continued. No solid numbers, but the activity graphs from wow census would suggest it.

[ptwonline]

OK. I see.... "ignorant fanboy" explains it all. Ooooo, maybe it becomes 15% loss or 20%.... /shudder.... hopefully this won't affect my enjoyment of playing twice a week. Carry on.

NA/EU subs are already down around 11% (I estimated 12% earlier but now 11% looks more likely). I estimate roughly 17% of all NA/EU subs that have been active since Cata launched have unsubbed.

[Zero infiniti]

loss not explained, i'm dissapointed with this thread

and who cares, how do we know that it wasn't 600k gold sellers that they kicked off? perma bans do count as lost subscriptions.

and yes people come and go all the time, i'm sure they'll be back when deathwing raid comes round and they'll be in their 346s getting carried through deathwing kills claiming "oh i'm the shiz because i beat deathwing in 333 gear"

old news is nobody cares news

[Puremallace]

It will take me about 3 lines to debunk the 30 lines of garbage of the OP.

What you failed to count in along with the prediction of growth was the release of expansion. Subscriptions are always at lowest point at the end of expansion, and highest point just before and just after it comes out (October). The end of 2010 numbers were massively inflated by the Cataclysm release, therefore the rest of the post is just inane drivel that can be summarized as "Lies, damn lies and statistics".

Lowest right before an expansion? Guild Wars fans would beg to differ.

[Ionite]

but the current numbers indicate you lost a lot more.

You still don't get it, do you? They never said how many subs they -lost-. Of course that number will be bigger. The thing is they never tried to hide it, they were talking about the general number of subscriptions. Which is your point - "BLATANT LIES".

Don't embarass yourself even further.

[Dinnerbandit]

Unfortunately, there are too many variables left unaccounted for in Dashields hypotheses so be considered correct. Its a good start on creating a hypotheses, but much more research is needed on the subject before we can make a statement as to how many subscription were actually lost, and why.

[anyaka21]

But less people joined then before!
Do you know why?




Because it's 7 years old!



Got real proof?

The simple proof is that Cata hasn't been released in China. Thus instead of 5% decrease, it's closer to that 10-12% mark because China has half of WoW's numbers.