A few possible reasons why WoW has been losing subs

[Song]

Lol,, so much doom and gloom. It will go back up with MoP. And even if it didn't, 6-9m people is more then most MMO's could ever even say in their existence. o.0 (and that's WITHOUT a sub)

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!"

Not even just a game company. EVERYTHING on earth. literally not one product or service everyone likes. Even water.

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

You don't think MoP will sell well? Lets just go ahead and say subs stay at around 9m. 90% of those players are going to buy MoP. so lets just say around 8m people buy MoP in some form. =320,000,000. 8m copies sold all together.

And that's not being realistic, that's basically what the sales numbers would be if NO one came back, no new players ever join again, and only 90% of the subs now bought it.

So.....how exactly do you not expect it to sell well again? o.o

[Conscious]

So.....how exactly do you not expect it to sell well again? o.o

Because the sales will be compared to that of Cataclysm's, as it holds the record.

And I think my sig quote is worth taking a look at OP, in reference as to why the game is losing people.

They can't figure out what the playerbase wants.

[artemishunter1]

TBC did bring more in then any other, but whatever happened in wrath not only maintained that growth, but kept it afloat. I believe the mechanics used in tbc, then tying in what they did in wrath made it all flow smoothy. It was only the sudden change of design in cata it began to bleed.

---------- Post added 2012-09-03 at 01:41 AM ----------



Exactly! I said this myself in a guild chat months ago. Hardcore gamers thinking the game has ot be built around there playstyle to make the game good has always been a failed concept, since it doesn't cater to all types of gamers, just there own. For that reason those that found wrath more relaxed an expansion suddenly getting hit with the hard mode cata had lost those subs. Blizzard themselves even admitted it, that they listened to the vocal minority of hardcore players more then the rest of the community and so lost out, that the hardcore community was tiny compared to the rest of the wow subs.

After Ulduar, sub was declining, but it saw a sudden Jump during ICC, but then kept decling all before cataclysm.

[Song]

Because the sales will be compared to that of Cataclysm's, as it holds the record.

You're right. In comparison to Cataclysm, (IF numbers don't go back up) then yeah, it wouldn't have done as well as that. But even if it sold less, it still sold well with solid numbers.

I personally think numbers will go back up anyways.

[wvx]

TBC did bring more in then any other, but whatever happened in wrath not only maintained that growth, but kept it afloat. I believe the mechanics used in tbc, then tying in what they did in wrath made it all flow smoothy. It was only the sudden change of design in cata it began to bleed.[COLOR="red"].

..... WHAT GAME have you been playing , if you look at the playerbase chart of WotLK you will see that the subs spiked for about 3-4 months then dropped , that is the time it took to get sick of the same content , it happened to my guild also , a lot of the good players abandoned wow after we finished everything that was at launch .

[Grumar]

the game has been out a LONG time...people are getting bored even with the expansions and major changes in patches it's still the same game, therefore people will get bored of it, nothing wrong with that. Why do we care if WoW is losing subs anyway? we aren't seeing any of that money nor is it going to cause WoW to close servers anytime soon. If YOU enjoy the game continue to play if you don't, don't play more power to you, don't come back and tell everyone how bad the game they play is, well goo thing you don't play it then huh?

[Kiry]

I will play WoW for as long as it's fun. I gotta tell you it's getting less and less fun each time. There are so many interesting mechanics and games out there now. And for the 15 bucks, there are choices. I'm sure I'm not the only player that sees this. choices.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy MoP launch and hope that the momentum keeps going. blizzard says each xpac, "we'll get content out faster". I can only hope that's true, but I dont believe it.

[Tzalix]

The subscriptions exploded back then because the game was new. It's now old, and has been redone by a number of other companies. It's no longer new and exciting. That's why subs are dropping.

[Karizee]

You don't think MoP will sell well? Lets just go ahead and say subs stay at around 9m. 90% of those players are going to buy MoP. so lets just say around 8m people buy MoP in some form. =320,000,000. 8m copies sold all together.

I think 8 million copies is extremely optimistic for MoP considering these first day sales:

Vanilla 100k
Burning Crusade 2.4 million
WotLK 2.8 million
Cataclysm 3.3 million

and the fact that there are 3 million less subs now than at the beginning of Cata.



You have to remember, the people in China that buy the game cards (and get counted as subs) do not buy the game.

[untouched]

To start of, I'll say this: I have not looked at any other information other than what I've been hearing through sources such as The Instance or MMO-Champion and using logic to come to my conclusions. I am in no saying that these reasons are the true, exact causes for the recent decline in subscribers. I always welcome new and accurate information. I ask that only that any ensuing discussion remain civil and that no one feeds the trolls.

1.) You can't speak for all casual gamers. I am casual and I don't want what you described
2.) 40 man raids were a pain in the ass to organize and recruit. 25 seems a little large even now
3.) If you can't afford .50 cents a day, choose to walk away. Plus, I don't enjoy Battlefield and CoD at all...not even a little. Skyrim was well worth the money, but I was finished with it in a month. I've been playing WoW since June 2005. Nothing else has come close to providing that entertainment for the money.

[Seranthor]

To start of, I'll say this: I have not looked at any other information other than what I've been hearing through sources such as The Instance or MMO-Champion and using logic to come to my conclusions. I am in no saying that these reasons are the true, exact causes for the recent decline in subscribers. I always welcome new and accurate information. I ask that only that any ensuing discussion remain civil and that no one feeds the trolls.

1. Blizzard, by catering more towards casual gamers, inevitably sealed their own fate. You may be asking "How?" right about now. Casual gamers are looking for fun that doesn't take hours to grind for, a game that can be picked up for 30 minutes to an hour at a time and make significant progress. While you may be able to do that with WoW now, it feels (for me at least) like to succeed big time would take a few hours a day, time that I simply do not have available. I had been running the same content for about a month, with one random dungeon a night, yet I didn't feel like I was progressing at all. And that's when the game gets boring. And when casual gamers are bored, there is no hesitation to stop playing the game and moving on to another one, such as Skyrim (where progression feels faster and more organic). Casual gamers are a fickle crowd, and with the rise of several games that demand more of our time (lookin' at you Skyrim, Minecraft), we will stop putting money into a game we don't play.

2. This next point also is about casual gamers, however in a different context. By serving casual gamers, who feels shafted? The hardcore, nostalgic players who see "their" game falling to pieces around them. And that is a valid feeling. I've been saying that since 3.2, Blizzard seemed to be disregarding those hardcore players who want to have epic, difficult fights. I subscribe to Blizz' idea that as many people as possible should see your content, I also believe, however, that you should be rewarded proportional to the amount of time spent in dungeons and raids. A way Blizz could've done that is by making the 10-man raids the raid finder difficulty, 25-mans the medium difficulty for your generic raid guild and bring back 40-mans for the baddest of the bad-assest guilds. Or the raids of an X.1 patch could've been nerfed in the X.2 patch. But something should have been done for the top 5% of the game.

3. Price. 15$ a month is a lot of money. For that amount I want to be able to play at least 10 hours a month. But a lot of people can't play that much. And with games like CoD/Battlefield and Skyrim, which require only a one-time 60$ fee, provide 100's of hours entertainment. WoW can't compete against that to casual gamers. If Blizz had slowly dropped the price as their subscriber count rose, many people might have started playing (I won't go so far as to say that WoW should've gone free-to-play). I have a lot of friends who would've played WoW, but the price chased them away. Perhaps they would've been willing to play if the price had been 12$, 10$ or even 8$, but something a little lower.

As I said, if you would like to discuss these points, I am open to conversation. Just make sure it remains civil. I am not by any means saying that these points are the truth and need to be accepted by all. I thank you for reading this post.

1. This isn't beating a dead horse... its already glue... you dont need your own personal thread to bash Blizzard's business decisions.. there are already a dozen or more, pick one and dive in.

3. Seriously? you are going to complain about $15? thats 2hrs work at minimum wage... $15 equals $0.50 a day... or... about .021 per hour... Honestly... if you are having a problem covering $15/month then you probably should be investing your time elsewhere instead of here complaining. Wow has been going strong against all the Wow Killers over the last 8 years, and continues to make the upstarts look silly... What happened to the vaunted SWTOR that was gonna kill Wow?.. isn't it F2P? Go there and then try and get some help from a GM or something... Gooooood Luck.

Truthfully, your 'suggestions' would drive away even MORE subscribers... not increase them...

/thread

[Deleted]

NOT ALL CASUAL GAMERS ARE IN JUST FOR ONE HOUR FUN.

some play for hours at a time, just they aren't so hung up on getting things done, they socialize and play around.

[Cows For Life]

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.

That guy is hilarious. Your hard numbers aren't specific and fine-grained enough to prove anything! But I have magic anecdotes! From 3 guilds on 3 out of the 250 US servers! These are the hard numbers that you can't deny! You can't prove me wrong kiddo! I do this for a living! I mean really... as you pointed out, demanding something that Blizzard keeps secret to disprove something that he pulled out of thin air and he thinks we're the ones that are making things up.

[Steelangel]

How can a topic this boring, trite, jejune and repetitive have 4 pages of replies?

[Conscious]

You're right. In comparison to Cataclysm, (IF numbers don't go back up) then yeah, it wouldn't have done as well as that. But even if it sold less, it still sold well with solid numbers.

I personally think numbers will go back up anyways.

I'm not faulting your optimism, however the sad truth is that if ever to be considered a success, Mists must essentially outsell Cataclysm, and bring back all of it's lost subs.

It's not so much the fact that people won't view it that way unless it does the aforementioned things, it's more or less that Cataclysm, and to some extent Wrath, set the bar that high. Anything below that is never going to be considered a success comparatively.

[Marooned]

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.

The second 12 million pick was the time WotlK released in china and asia. As you see everyone had very high hopes but game got very very boring right after that stupid naxx. At least for me and milions this was the case as you can see here: