A few possible reasons why WoW has been losing subs

[Destruktion]

Totally unprecedented? Really? So every single guild on your server was able to keep up a perfect raid schedule in the last 6 months of every expansion? Sorry, no.

Every expansions end, on all 3 servers I am active on, more guilds than usual are pugging in trade chat to fill out raids in the last 2-3 months of an expansion. This was true from Classic to BC, BC to Wrath, Wrath to Cata, and now Cata to MoP. Common sense can easily deduce with a high degree of accuracy that while not "all" of these missing people cancelled subs, a reasonable percentage probably did.

You have anecdotes, I have actual subscription numbers that point to steady growth in between expansions. Remember that raiders make up only ~20% of the entire WoW population today; that percentage was lower during WotLK and way lower during TBC.

[MatadorMedia]

No updates for a year now? Obviously.

This really shouldn't be debated until after the expansion drops. If MoP comes out and the subscriptions are still where they are now, then I'd see the purpose in discussing what's going on. But I fully expect the subscriptions to jump back up in the next month and mute all of your points.

[Conscious]

And why do you think this? They're going back to the roots of WoW, bringing back a lot of cool stuff and there is going to be more to do in Mists than every expansion combined.

Mists of Pandaria, is far, far, far from the 'roots' of WoW.

It's catering to an entirely different audience, and game direction.

No updates for a year now? Obviously.

This really shouldn't be debated until after the expansion drops. If MoP comes out and the subscriptions are still where they are now, then I'd see the purpose in discussing what's going on. But I fully expect the subscriptions to jump back up in the next month and mute all of your points.

This was basically the same argument last year, when Cataclysm had just started to eat shit in it's first quarter.

[Cows For Life]

Lets see your numbers. And not quarterly numbers, I want to see month to month numbers for the previous 6 months of each expansion. You find those and you will see I am right.

Oh my god, a few people in my guild didn't log on! Those numbers aren't fine grained enough to disprove my anecdote! They're probably made up too! As you can see they dropped in the summer too! Or not.

[Cwimge]

Once I read 'blizzard are catering to casual gamers' I knew there was nothing constructive to this thread.

Wrath of the lich king had more relaxed leveling and questing and even starting heroics then cata ever did, and wrath got wow up to 12million subs, so whatever you base that assumption on is poor.

This, a thousand million times this, if the word casual shows up at all I tend to zone out and make one of these posts

[Beefhammer]

The main reason people are leaving is a few reasons. One, people are burnt out on the game. It's 8 years old. Two, Cataclysm was a complete failure. People left because they're bored. No content for many months. What do you expect? Three, people left because of Diablo. People will be back come Mists.

Almost 800k of those lost subs were banned Eastern market subs in the first couple of quarters when losses were big. Many of the early ones due to the 180 Blizzard made from a design standpoint from WotLK. Subs stabilized with 4.3 and stayed flat until last quarter when Blizzard has ample evidence to say may will be bak since many of those accounts are logging onto D3 instead of WoW for the moment. And I am also certain that they know which top end raiding guilds have unsubbed who will be back when there is new content and such. They cannot make claims like they did in their last shareholder meeting if they were making stuff up.

[Cows For Life]

Hello Mr.IntelligentArgument.

Since you are obviously not capable of understanding the words I am typing lets try this.

Those charts are not showing much if any detail in the flow of subscriptions. They are showing quarter jumps, quarterly meaning 3 months, and even then most of the peaking covers 6months+. I think the charts are 100% accurate in what they show though. But it is what they do not show that is the essence of the conversation and I cannot prove myself right, and you cannot prove me wrong either unless someone manages to find a listing of month to month sub numbers.

As to my info being anecdotal, if it was just me on my one server I would agree. But it is 3 separate servers which I talk to many guild officers on each of them and keep alts on them to play with friends. Even beyond that I have former guild mates on yet more servers all of which I still talk to quite a bit. End of expansion blues is something we talk about quite a bit.

IMO you simply want reasons to hate on the game and my opinions on the matter, which I have only stated as opinion not as facts, don't make WoW look bad. Unfortunately for you I make a living assessing business profitability. One part of that is assessing when businesses go into a low point and when they go into their peak. Trying to say WoW doesn't lose subs during the summer is an idea that is borderline retarded. Trying to say Subs don't drop when the game lacks new content for 9+ months is beyond borderline retarded. The only thing I said that can be up for even the slightest debate is sub drops prior to new expansions. But I think if someone can find sub number on a month to month basis 6 months prior to an expansion release people may be surprised.

I can't really dumb it down any further than that, so if you still don't understand what I am saying then to bad.

Edit: spelling

Your anecdotes are even more worthless than the numbers that you poo poo.

[Anevers]

I would like to point out that #3 is really silly.

The price of a month of the game has not gone up, but inflation has, meaning that 15 dollars you spent for a month in 2005 is not worth the same it is now in 2012. I'm quite happy that subscription price has not gone up. If your unhappy about there has been little content for so long you can unsub until new content is available. If you want to go play a F2P Game, DC Universe is that way, don't expect Blizzard anytime in the near future to go F2P when they are already milking a Micro Transaction store in addition to subs.

before you pull the "I bought the AP, I was tricked by Blizzard to keep paying through a dry season." No one trucked you, you didn't think things through, very rarely has Blizzard ever released any new content at the end of an expansion, and when they did Ruby Sanctum, it was poorly revived by people. The time and effort spent creating new content could have been used elsewhere like making sure Cata itself had more endgame content.

[Hanto]

Because it's the end of an expansion. It'll pick up when the new one hits. Always does.
That was sure as hell easier than coming up with a bunch of nonsense, wasn't it?

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Early Cata - Too Hard, the majority of the playerbase got frustrated and left. Especially after the debacle that was firelands.

Late Cata - DS had been out long enough, and tuned so easy, that most players had finished it already. So they decided to quit until MoP came out.

[speedymonkey]

cross server dungeon queues and sit in city and port to dungeons ruined the server communities and the need to be out in the 'world' imo. (sure it made it easier though)

[Brewski]

IMO its simple, the game is boring now. I have zero interest in the game & zero interest in MoP... do not plan on returning anytime soon.

[Lunchz]

Lack of updates imo, going 8 months with the same patch

[Trepic]

One thing that I think has taken away from subs with WoW was the introduction of the guild level system. Having played this game since right before the release of Burning Crusade I have been in a series of different guilds over the years but one thing that they all had in common back in BC was that there was a lot more loyalty for your guild. To be part of a established guild was something that you worked for and there was a lot more teamwork. Now with the guild leveling system all it is about is, "Is your guild level 25?". All they want is the perks and there is very little community left in guilds.

[speedymonkey]

Because the 5 minutes people took to use a flight path to go from the major city to a dungeon makes all the difference amiright? Because besides that time everyone has always sat in cities spamming trade looking for a group.

Of course, You would run into other people, Get in fights with the opposite faction. Only being people from your own server you got to know other people outside of your guild and make connections etcetera. Travelling with people and getting into skirmishes along the way was a good part of the game imo.

[bethofwow]

4. Upping the graphics requirements each expansion

[Kiry]

Lack of updates imo, going 8 months with the same patch

If people get bored, they will find other things to do. Particularly if there is plenty of things out there from console games, to other MMOs. People are more transient now. While they may enjoy a specific game, they dont need to be locked down to it...if it costs them money.
In this recession, people are making choices instead of just leaving it alone because it only costs 15 bucks.

Also, Blizzard really does need to kick it up in the content updates. Gesh.

[Destruktion]

Lets see your numbers. And not quarterly numbers, I want to see month to month numbers for the previous 6 months of each expansion. You find those and you will see I am right.

It doesn't matter whether or not you are right about monthly fluctuations (not that we'd ever know; Blizzard only releases subscription numbers on a quarterly basis). Nevertheless, here is a very recent article that includes a more thorough graphical representation of the past 22 quarters. The data points speak for themselves. You cannot make blanket statements under pretense of data that may or may not exist, especially when data that actually exists, that we have, disproves your statements. Three months of ambiguous data points is not enough wiggle room for your argument to hold.

[endersblade]

Let's see:

Game's been out for almost 8 years now (or is it more? Lost track lol). Naturally, people are going to lose interest. This does not merit a 'sky is falling' complaint though.

Expansion ended, new one is on the way. THIS HAPPENS EVERY SINGLE FUCKING EXPANSION. I wish you ADD, long-term memory loss rejects would get that through your thick skulls. Once MoP releases, numbers will go back up.

The game changes so drastically with each new expansion, it's bound to piss SOMEONE off. I can't think of a single game company that has ever been able to say, "we please every single person in the world! Everyone will always love our product, no matter what!" I'm pretty sure there are blue posts on the forums stating this exact thing: "We can't please everybody."

WoW is STILL sitting at more subs than all of the other P2P MMOs COMBINED. That's no small feat. Hell, cut their numbers in half, and they'd still be sitting pretty.

[DreamCast]

I disagree with every single word you said in your post.

1: Its summer time, subs always drop in summer.
2: Pre expansion boredom, subs always drop before a new expac.
3: No new content for what? 9 months? Of course this is because they are putting final touches ont he expansion, but still a good reason for subs to drop just like they did when ICC was the only thing to do for 6 months.

Burning crusade says hi, WOLTK only gained around 800 000.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/wo...1-million-mark

Best Panda model in this article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19110144

---------- Post added 2012-09-03 at 03:48 AM ----------

Let's see:

Game's been out for almost 8 years now (or is it more? Lost track lol). Naturally, people are going to lose interest. This does not merit a 'sky is falling' complaint though.

Expansion ended, new one is on the way. THIS HAPPENS EVERY SINGLE FUCKING EXPANSION. I wish you ADD, long-term memory loss rejects would get that through your thick skulls. Once MoP releases, numbers will go back up.

The game changes so drastically with each new expansion, it's bound to piss SOMEONE off. I can't think of a single game company that has ever been able to say, "we please every single person in the world! Everyone will always love our product, no matter what!" I'm pretty sure there are blue posts on the forums stating this exact thing: "We can't please everybody."

WoW is STILL sitting at more subs than all of the other P2P MMOs COMBINED. That's no small feat. Hell, cut their numbers in half, and they'd still be sitting pretty.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/wo...1-million-mark

The game was already old when BC was out.

Don't be so sure about sub numbers going up that much for MoP, in my countries one gaming store franchise(biggest) there was over 40 000 pre orders for cata, there is currently only +- 3000 for MoP, yes that is a small % of the playerbase but it is a indication of how much people have given up on the direction blizzard has gone in.

I don't expect MoP to sell well at all.