wow subs at 7.7m

[Deleted]

But I'm not, so why not spend my time criticizing it? If a guy dares to say anything bad about WoW on these forums, the smallest thing, he will get flamed. This only encourages me in keeping my opinion as it is.

Sure. But then why not criticize the game instead of criticizing the people who post here, like you did here:

Man, I love you guys. The game is at almost half of the subs it once had, so 50% of the players quit WoW. Yet every single person here finds excuses for Blizzard. I don't know..

Opinions and discussion is fine, but starting your post by insulting everyone on the other side doesn't tend to lead into anything constructive.

[Mormolyce]

All I have seen is a continued decline since 2010. The new xpac will make the numbers inflate some but thats it.

Well who knows? But I expect subs would probably go up when a new expansion is announced and slump in the middle like they typically do. Overall obviously you'd expect the subs to decline because WoW is 8 years old. Then again, a reasonable person would've expected WoW to be dead by now, and it still has 7.7 million subs. The fact of the matter is, WoW is unprecedented.

[Chickat]

Other way around. Most of the older/non asshole players are gone.

Community is declining if you didn't notice, which means we're mostly keeping these bads/douches.


Anyways, I'm kinda shocked that after two expansions, we've dropped, what, almost 5 million subs? I could have sworn at some point in Lich King, we were at 12m.

Wow has lost about 1m subs per year if you average it out since the sub drops started. Wow will prob last 3-4 more years as a sub based game and then move onto ftp or btp. We have 2 xpacs left until then.

[KrazyK923]

ITS THE END.

THE ENDDDD.

Is this^ what people are complaining about that they can't complain about? That they are getting bashed when they stay useless comments like this?

[Polarthief]

Going to drop even further, even if 5.4 comes out and expansion is announced.

They are being EXTREMELY casual unfriendly in 5.4. If you played TOO MUCH, you have no new gear you can work for in 5.4, because the upgraded Shado-Pan gear you have now will be better than the gear from SoO LFR.

It's funny how MoP was aimed at casuals and not only failed that so poorly (what with the no-catch up system for gear, stupid lesser charms, dailies, legendary questline, yadda yadda), but because they were aiming at casuals for this expansion, they completely ignored the hardcore side, leaving both sides fairly unhappy.

One thing I can say is MoP is definitely doing better than Cataclysm, but that's not saying much :\

All I can say is hopefully they'll get their shit straight by 6.0 and drop dailies, drop lesser charms (why farm for them? The coins should just be handed to you), find a better way to get players to want to raid (hopefully Flex and Virtual Realms will fix that) or PvP (no clue how you can do this), or the casuals and/or bads (two mutually exclusive groups of people) who do nothing but LFR will be gone for good. I know that if I hit max level to do nothing but LFR and 1-2 normal bosses, I'd have quit a LONG time ago.

[Chickat]

My point is wow is in its 4th stage of its product lifecycle. Oh you would be wrong the product is in fact in decline. The decline stage is where most of the product class usually dies due to low growth rate in sales. A number of companies share the same market, making it difficult for all entrants to maintain sustainable sales levels. Not only is the efficiency of the company an important factor in the decline, but also the product category itself becomes a factor, as the market may perceive the product as "old" and may not be in demand. It is not always necessary that a product should go through these stages. it depends on the type of product, its competitors, scope of the product, etc.

Wow has more subs than XXXX mmo is not relevant to what I said.

Also AOW and LOL has more players

Again, subs doesnt mean players. Wow could have more payers if it was ftp.

[But I Hate You All]

Well who knows? But I expect subs would probably go up when a new expansion is announced and slump in the middle like they typically do. Overall obviously you'd expect the subs to decline because WoW is 8 years old. Then again, a reasonable person would've expected WoW to be dead by now, and it still has 7.7 million subs. The fact of the matter is, WoW is unprecedented.

During cata the announcement of mop did not make the subs go back up.

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[/B]

Again, subs doesnt mean players. Wow could have more payers if it was ftp.

Correct me if I am wrong but in Asia wow is play by the min with micro transactions ? Infact in Asia it is game cafes not people paying a monthly sub.

[Duronos]

I was expecting it to drop more to be honest, with the summer and all. I imagine it will go back up a little bit with patch 5.4, or stay around the same.

I'd expect the opposite considering more people can play in the summer.

To be honest, Blizzard is just adding things in the game just too add them. I don't understand why people like LFR... It provides no longevity for players who never raided before or didn't raid much in the first place. You never worked hard to to get to LFR so it's just like "meh" when you start it. Hardcore players work their asses off to get to the place they are at and that's why the don't unsub, they live for that reason regarding WoW. A casual doesn't need to raid or raid the same raids with a lower difficulty level, it doesn't provide them with any actual sense of progression and that honestly is why I believe WoW is losing subs.

The leveling is a joke and it shouldn't be and the way they are dealing with end game is atrocious.

[Skroe]

Wow has always had players leaving but they had new players to balance it. There was a quote somewhere that said like 55 million players have come and gone throughout Wow's career.

I wish Blizzard would state sub numbers based on region so we can really see whether the US/Europe is having issues or if it's truly only APAC. Revenue doesn't tell us much because of different sub models.

I have always suspected that was epic bullshit. I only have a story of my own here, but on Wrath of the Lich King Launch night, I lined up at the Gamestop near the University of Pittsburgh (I went to CMU). There were so many people, the line wrapped around the block twice. Cops in patrol cars stopped by and asked whats up. People not in the know stopped by and asked if there was concert tickets going on sale or something.

Fast forward to Cataclysm launch night... same place, same time, and there was a 20 person line. The contrast was striking.

In Wrath I had just my one main account. Since then... with all the Recruit a Friend, Scroll of Reactivation, Super Cheap-through-Cata/MoP sales, I've accumulated 4 more accounts for a total of 5. I always keep 2 active, but sometimes I activate a third for a month (won't discuss why).

I always thought that the sales and RaF stuff hilariously inflated the playerbase in the West, generally home to people with more disposable income. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the game had about 1.5 million actual human beings playing the game between the US and Europe with half a million total playing with any kind of regularity.

[Mormolyce]

Wow has always had players leaving but they had new players to balance it. There was a quote somewhere that said like 55 million players have come and gone throughout Wow's career.

Players or accounts? How would they even tell the difference?

But it wouldn't surprise me. Obviously there are new accounts coming in and old accounts closing, like with any business. And WoW is extremely old in game terms so undoubtedly the old now outweigh the new.

I wish Blizzard would state sub numbers based on region so we can really see whether the US/Europe is having issues or if it's truly only APAC. Revenue doesn't tell us much because of different sub models.

It's irrelevant whether the players are Asian or not. And these numbers are for shareholders, not for pissing contests on internet forums. If Blizzard didn't have investors they wouldn't reveal sub numbers at all.

[Vensu24]

If SoO lasts anywhere near as long as ICC did, the subs will plummet. Blizz needs to get the expansion out a lot sooner or the bleeding will turn in to hemorrhaging.

[Deleted]

Ahh that's what I thought, 600k. That's not as bad as I thought it would be, it being so late in the expansion. It'll likely hover near there (probably losing more but not much) until the next expansion.

It does make you wonder where Blizzard gets their numbers from though. Most of the US servers feel pretty dead minus a hand full where the majority of the player base seems to congregate. Dunno how it is on the EU side. Are there really that many Chinese players?

It's because the amount of realms there are and Blizzard refusing to lower the amount. This amount of realms was once there for almost 15 million players, theres half of that now and still the same amount of realms. That means on average each realm has had it's population halved. Then add the fact that most of the players flocked to a handful of big realms and you get why there are so many absolutely dead realms around.

On US servers there are 12 realms with more than 150k characters on (the realms where everyone flocked to) and 215 realms with less than 100k characters (the realms where everyone flocked from). The lowest populated realm has 16k characters, the highest populated one has 232k, enfin you get the problem.


http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html

The EU realms show exactly the same pattern, highest pop 220k, lowest pop 12k. 6 realms over 150k, 242 realms under 100k.....

http://wow.realmpop.com/eu.html

[Chickat]

During cata the announcement of mop did not make the subs go back up.

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Correct me if I am wrong but in Asia wow is play by the min with micro transactions ?

Wrong. They buy game time just like us, only in shorter sessions. Also Blizzard only sees like 10% of the money from there because NetEase takes most of it.

[Slant]

O
Anyways, I'm kinda shocked that after two expansions, we've dropped, what, almost 5 million subs? I could have sworn at some point in Lich King, we were at 12m.

Really? But they made the game so accessible, casual friendly, noobtastic and above all "fun" to play. I know why you're shocked, I totally understand you. I have no idea either why the continued strategy of dumbing the game down into utter brainlessness is costing subs. Hey, I know, I'll just say it's 9 years old, that's a great excuse that covers any problems with idiocy on the developer's side. And if someone else calls me an apologist, I'll just ignore him or tell him that the subs have in fact stabilised. That'll work...

[Elexo]

During cata the announcement of mop did not make the subs go back up.

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Correct me if I am wrong but in Asia wow is play by the min with micro transactions ?

To be fair though, a lot of people were very pessimistic about a panda based expac.

[Chickat]

During cata the announcement of mop did not make the subs go back up.

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Correct me if I am wrong but in Asia wow is play by the min with micro transactions ? Infact in Asia it is game cafes not people paying a monthly sub.

Because MoP's theme was horrible for the masses, and because a lot of players lost faith in Blizzard after Cata. The theme of MoP is still bad for a lot of people, but MoP is mechanically much better then Cata and has at least double the end game content. If the next xpac has a well received theme subs may go up some in anticipation for it. Think Burning Legion.

[Skroe]

It's because the amount of realms there are and Blizzard refusing to lower the amount. This amount of realms was once there for almost 15 million players, theres half of that now and still the same amount of realms. That means on average each realm has had it's population halved. Then add the fact that most of the players flocked to a handful of big realms and you get why there are so many absolutely dead realms around.

On US servers there are 12 realms with more than 150k players on (the realms where everyone flocked to) and 215 realms with less than 100k players (the realms where everyone flocked from). The lowest populated relam has 16k players, the highest populated one has 232k, enfin you get the problem.


http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html

The EU realms show exactly the same pattern, highest pop 220k, lowest pop 12k. 6 realms over 150k, 242 realms under 100k.....

http://wow.realmpop.com/eu.html

Those are characters, not players. I can promise you Shattered Hand horde doesn't have 36,000 level 90 horde players.

[Deleted]

If SoO lasts anywhere near as long as ICC did, the subs will plummet. Blizz needs to get the expansion out a lot sooner or the bleeding will turn in to hemorrhaging.

They've stated that they will. Release cycles have been faster.
New expansion will be announced in Blizcon, I wouldn't be surprised if it was out Q1-Q2 2014.

[Deleted]

Opinions and discussion is fine, but starting your post by insulting everyone on the other side doesn't tend to lead into anything constructive.

It wasn't my intention to do insult anyone and it's not my fault that you are so easily offendable. I'm just saying what I noticed looking over the 'WoW has lost subscribers' threads. Again, for the last time, you cannot deny that WoW is in decline. You can enjoy the game, but don't find excuses for an old game that is losing its appeal for more and more people. The next expansion will probably bring back 1M, 2M max, then after a few months it will start declining again.

[Deleted]

Going to drop even further, even if 5.4 comes out and expansion is announced.

They are being EXTREMELY casual unfriendly in 5.4. If you played TOO MUCH, you have no new gear you can work for in 5.4, because the upgraded Shado-Pan gear you have now will be better than the gear from SoO LFR.

You'll be able to pug flex as an LFR hero though. If you play LFR due to having no time and not being a bad player, I'm sure you could pug Flex very very easily. There will likely be pugs only doing one part of it (since it's a queue system) so you don't have to do all of the parts.

Flex difficulty with the selection of the 50% best people from LFR will likely be easier than a regular LFR since you won't have the people that cheat their item levels and similar.

I also think that this'll help Blizzard keep quite a lot of players in the game.