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World of Warcraft: Down to Eight Million Subscribers

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  • TalonsinTalonsin Member EpicPosts: 3,619
    At 8 million subbers that is still $120 million a month and that doesnt count the cash shop which i would guess puts in another $25 million.  You guys can all be hating on WoW but the truth is, most of us played it for some time and it is STILL making a boatload of money.  It was due to WoW's success that so many investers were willing to fund new MMO's. 
    "Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game."  - SEANMCAD

  • pmilespmiles Member Posts: 383

    What I find funny is that they are always losing subs in the east... 

     

    Could it be, that the pay per hour model shows actual in-game activity better than the monthly sub model does?  I mean, you pay $15 you're committed to 30 days whether you actually log in or not.  They count you as a happy playing customer because you paid for 30 days.  In the east, you play for one day, that's all they get to count you for.  You were a happy playing customer for 1 day.

     

    I think the east is a better spokesman for the true numbers than the west is... but of course, those who've actually played the game know the actual player base is no where near 8.3 million... we don't need a conference call to tell us what we already see.

  • strangiato2112strangiato2112 Member CommonPosts: 1,538
    Originally posted by Icewhite
    Guess the whole panda thing didn't work.

    really is funny how delusional people are

     

    That would be like SoE saying when their big sub drop happened during the DoN expansion 'well, I guess the dragon thing didnt work'

     

    The Panda thing is a talking point for people who are bitter about WoW's success.  Its not like asian pandas dont fit in a world with jamaican trolls, native american indians and jewish new yorker goblins.

     

    The lack of talent trees is the only thing related to MoP that would cause a sub drop.  Most of it is due to game's age.

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403
    Originally posted by netosampaio
    its totally normal, the game is almost 10 years old, but its still rocking because of the lack of end game content of other games.

    Yep.

    But the defensiveness is pretty amazing. We've seen ... how many games go pass the peak and begin the drop-off?

    Why does this one even rate a comment?

    :shrug:

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • NadiaNadia Member UncommonPosts: 11,798
    Originally posted by Mothanos

    Thing with WoW is, they will never let us know how big the EU/USA market is, or how big their 5 cent per hour asia market is.

    Blizzard used to give breakdowns each year -- but stopped doing that in 2008

     

    all we know is the figure Blizzard gave 5 years ago,  Asia is 55% of their sub base

  • mizrolistmizrolist Member UncommonPosts: 40


    Originally posted by Icewhite
    Guess the whole panda thing didn't work.

    I don't think you are right. Mists of Pandaria and the pandaren are just as serious as the tauren, the goblins or the draenei were. Their story is equal with the other races' story. Of course you won't see that if you don't read the text of the quests, or don't watch to the cutscenes.


    Originally posted by Nadia

    Originally posted by sanicek
    I'm curious that no one mentioned (at least I didn't notice) the free D3 deal with 1 year WOW sub. I'm pretty sure a lot of people that took it and were on the verge of quitting or decided to quit some time during the year they needed to keep subbed ended their subs once it was through. Timing wise it would fall into that quarter.
    Annual Pass w D3 was first offered October 2011

    http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3767193/Sign_Up_for_the_World_of_Warcraft_Annual_Pass_and_Get_Diablo_III_Free-10_21_2011

    for many who took advantage of it - annual pass expired the previous quarter


    You could buy an Annual Pass until 30 April 2012 - so there were active subs with Annual Pass for only one month in that 8.3 million. The last ones expired 10 days ago.

    Signatures are boring things.

  • NadiaNadia Member UncommonPosts: 11,798
    Originally posted by mizrolist

    You could buy an Annual Pass until 30 April 2012 - so there were active subs with Annual Pass for only one month in that 8.3 million. The last ones expired 10 days ago.

    I agree and that still makes a difference

    but i think the majority of annual pass subs signed up within the first 2 months of the offer  (Oct and Nov)

  • mizrolistmizrolist Member UncommonPosts: 40


    Originally posted by Nadia

    Originally posted by mizrolist
    You could buy an Annual Pass until 30 April 2012 - so there were active subs with Annual Pass for only one month in that 8.3 million. The last ones expired 10 days ago.
    I agree and that still makes a difference

    but i think the majority of annual pass subs signed up within the first 2 months of the offer  (Oct and Nov)


    I'm not so sure. There were people who wanted to see what is D3 and they subscribed to the Annual Pass only after the D3 open beta.

    Signatures are boring things.

  • DracondisDracondis Member UncommonPosts: 177

    [quote]There has been less engagement by casual players.[/quote]  Interesting tidbit.  Seems they know what the problem is, they just don't care.  Grindy-samey content over and over and over and over, and yet they were caught unawares by the drop in subs and the latent unused subs that got canceled but haven't run out.  Hmm...  How about you STOP MAKING DAILIES!  Why don't you put some REAL CONTENT IN THAT ISN'T RAID-RELATED?  End game is all well and good, but a lot of players aren't into raiding.  We dabbled in it back in Wrath when it was fun, but then they shifted it back to hardcore and it just wasn't engaging anymore.  So if raiding isn't interesting, dailies make us want to gouge our eyes out with ice picks, and alt leveling has been shot in the gut and left to be bleed out on the carpet, what is there for the casuals who have had their reasons to play removed one by one?

    As was said back in TBC, there aren't enough raiders to support the game.  Guess Blizzard is going to have to find that out the hard way.

    Oh, and don't bring up the factional quests in Pandaria.  Those are both dailies and a way to gear up for the raiding that we're not interested in.  Yes, the quests are nice, when we're not doing the daily quests, but they're few and far between, and you have to grind dailies until you get tot he next ONE.

    WoW has just become this massive grinding borefest.  The fun is gone.  Wrath was fun.  There were twice to three times as many quests as you needed to level so you could do them instead of dailies between dungeon heroic runs.  But now Heroics are nothing more than a prequel to raiding, instead of something to do in and of themselves.  Why?  More 5-mans.  Scenarios aren't bad either, but I hear you now have to bring your own pair of partners with you.  WTH? 

    And make alt-leveling interesting and/or rewarding.  God, it's just not worth playing more than one character anymore, and what happens when you get bored with Capt. Main?  You quit playing.  Fix alt leveling.

    Hmmm...  One more suggestion:  QUIT BALANCING THE CLASSES SO OFTEN.  As was said in a certain movie once with regards to flogging, "Let the sting of the first strike die down before you strike again.  Otherwise the lashes blur into one and the body blocks out the pain."  You're not seeing the effect of the changes before you go and make another change.  Then you have to change something else to balance that, and it's too soon.  All we see are lists and lists of nerfs, changes, alterations, manipulations, and we're just becoming numb to it.  You're focused on the minutia.  Players don't care about minutia.  Developers do.  Theorycrafters do (but who cares about them?  Not Blizzard).  Balancing isn't something that requires you to make so many changes so often.  Otherwise you're doing it wrong.

    Not that anyone here probably cares.

  • deniterdeniter Member RarePosts: 1,429

    How to make subs going up for a change:

    1) Get rid of GC.

    2) Make sure you have gotten rid of GC.

    3) Merge low pop servers.

    4) Roll everything back to late WotLK just before LFD and ToC.

    5) Retune Cata and MoP to resemble WotLK-like dungeons and questing (don't apply cataclysmic change to Azeroth).

    6) Get rid of all x-realm stuff.

    7) Let returning people to re-roll on those servers that were left empty after server merge.

    OR

    7) Make these servers something with a bit different rules settings, like a little easier / harder variation of WoW or servers where you still can queue for dungeons and raids.

    Ofc, i'm not dead serious with this, but not really trolling either :/

  • VolgoreVolgore Member EpicPosts: 3,872
    Originally posted by deniter

    How to make subs going up for a change:

    1) Get rid of GC.

    2) Make sure you have gotten rid of GC.

    3) Merge low pop servers.

    4) Roll everything back to late WotLK just before LFD and ToC.

    5) Retune Cata and MoP to resemble WotLK-like dungeons and questing (don't apply cataclysmic change to Azeroth).

    6) Get rid of all x-realm stuff.

    7) Let returning people to re-roll on those servers that were left empty after server merge.

    OR

    7) Make these servers something with a bit different rules settings, like a little easier / harder variation of WoW or servers where you still can queue for dungeons and raids.

    Ofc, i'm not dead serious with this, but not really trolling either :/

    I'm shure alot of people may agree to be dead serious with 1, 2 and 3, as these points are not that far fetched.

    image
  • expressoexpresso Member UncommonPosts: 2,218
    Originally posted by deniter

    How to make subs going up for a change:

    1) Get rid of GC.

    2) Make sure you have gotten rid of GC.

    3) Merge low pop servers.

    4) Roll everything back to late WotLK just before LFD and ToC.

    5) Retune Cata and MoP to resemble WotLK-like dungeons and questing (don't apply cataclysmic change to Azeroth).

    6) Get rid of all x-realm stuff.

    7) Let returning people to re-roll on those servers that were left empty after server merge.

    OR

    7) Make these servers something with a bit different rules settings, like a little easier / harder variation of WoW or servers where you still can queue for dungeons and raids.

    Ofc, i'm not dead serious with this, but not really trolling either :/

    Lets hope blizzard or any other company don't hire you.

    The only real change I'd like to see is the removal of flying mounts, I think that's done the most harm, makse the world feel empty and small cus every ones flying around at super sonic speed, means blizzard cannot put in gated outside content without disabling flying like that had to in 5.3, PvP and general player interaction would come back.  Seems like a no-brainer to me.

  • strangiato2112strangiato2112 Member CommonPosts: 1,538
    Originally posted by deniter

     

    5) Retune Cata and MoP to resemble WotLK-like dungeons and questing (don't apply cataclysmic change to Azeroth).

     

    The dungeons already are Wotlk-like.  Thats when the easy heroics started.  They cant go back to difficult heroics, they tried that for cata and it was a disaster.  What they could do is epic dungeons that are tuned to how places like Magister's terrace were.

     

    And the 1-60 revamp was fine for Cata.  It was everything else that was the issue.

     

  • ZadawnZadawn Member UncommonPosts: 670
    A number that every other mmo would wish to pride itself with.


  • mizrolistmizrolist Member UncommonPosts: 40


    Originally posted by Dracondis
    There has been less engagement by casual players.
      Interesting tidbit.  Seems they know what the problem is, they just don't care.  Grindy-samey content over and over and over and over, and yet they were caught unawares by the drop in subs and the latent unused subs that got canceled but haven't run out.  Hmm...  How about you STOP MAKING DAILIES!  Why don't you put some REAL CONTENT IN THAT ISN'T RAID-RELATED?  End game is all well and good, but a lot of players aren't into raiding.  We dabbled in it back in Wrath when it was fun, but then they shifted it back to hardcore and it just wasn't engaging anymore.  So if raiding isn't interesting, dailies make us want to gouge our eyes out with ice picks, and alt leveling has been shot in the gut and left to be bleed out on the carpet, what is there for the casuals who have had their reasons to play removed one by one?

    As was said back in TBC, there aren't enough raiders to support the game.  Guess Blizzard is going to have to find that out the hard way.

    Oh, and don't bring up the factional quests in Pandaria.  Those are both dailies and a way to gear up for the raiding that we're not interested in.  Yes, the quests are nice, when we're not doing the daily quests, but they're few and far between, and you have to grind dailies until you get tot he next ONE.

    WoW has just become this massive grinding borefest.  The fun is gone.  Wrath was fun.  There were twice to three times as many quests as you needed to level so you could do them instead of dailies between dungeon heroic runs.  But now Heroics are nothing more than a prequel to raiding, instead of something to do in and of themselves.  Why?  More 5-mans.  Scenarios aren't bad either, but I hear you now have to bring your own pair of partners with you.  WTH? 

    And make alt-leveling interesting and/or rewarding.  God, it's just not worth playing more than one character anymore, and what happens when you get bored with Capt. Main?  You quit playing.  Fix alt leveling.

    Hmmm...  One more suggestion:  QUIT BALANCING THE CLASSES SO OFTEN.  As was said in a certain movie once with regards to flogging, "Let the sting of the first strike die down before you strike again.  Otherwise the lashes blur into one and the body blocks out the pain."  You're not seeing the effect of the changes before you go and make another change.  Then you have to change something else to balance that, and it's too soon.  All we see are lists and lists of nerfs, changes, alterations, manipulations, and we're just becoming numb to it.  You're focused on the minutia.  Players don't care about minutia.  Developers do.  Theorycrafters do (but who cares about them?  Not Blizzard).  Balancing isn't something that requires you to make so many changes so often.  Otherwise you're doing it wrong.

    Not that anyone here probably cares.


    You only need a premade group for heroic scenarios; normal ones can be done with pugs.

    5 men dungeons require the same resources as raids; so every new dungeon means there will be even less raid bosses. If I remember well, Dragon Soul came with 3 new dungeons, and that meant the raid was boring even for casuals.

    Class balance is not that fast. The hotfixes rarely touch the balance - except if somebody is definitely too powerful. I don't think that a balance patch in every 4-6 months is too fast. But I remember vanilla WoW, when balancing pretty much didn't exist... and there were completely useless classes which simply couldn't be played in any role. It wasn't better, I can guarantee that for you.

    Signatures are boring things.

  • strangiato2112strangiato2112 Member CommonPosts: 1,538
    Originally posted by Dracondis

    [quote]There has been less engagement by casual players.[/quote]  Interesting tidbit.  Seems they know what the problem is, they just don't care.  Grindy-samey content over and over and over and over, and yet they were caught unawares by the drop in subs and the latent unused subs that got canceled but haven't run out.  Hmm...  How about you STOP MAKING DAILIES!  Why don't you put some REAL CONTENT IN THAT ISN'T RAID-RELATED?  End game is all well and good, but a lot of players aren't into raiding.  We dabbled in it back in Wrath when it was fun, but then they shifted it back to hardcore and it just wasn't engaging anymore.  So if raiding isn't interesting, dailies make us want to gouge our eyes out with ice picks, and alt leveling has been shot in the gut and left to be bleed out on the carpet, what is there for the casuals who have had their reasons to play removed one by one?

    As was said back in TBC, there aren't enough raiders to support the game.  Guess Blizzard is going to have to find that out the hard way.

    Oh, and don't bring up the factional quests in Pandaria.  Those are both dailies and a way to gear up for the raiding that we're not interested in.  Yes, the quests are nice, when we're not doing the daily quests, but they're few and far between, and you have to grind dailies until you get tot he next ONE.

    WoW has just become this massive grinding borefest.  The fun is gone.  Wrath was fun.  There were twice to three times as many quests as you needed to level so you could do them instead of dailies between dungeon heroic runs.  But now Heroics are nothing more than a prequel to raiding, instead of something to do in and of themselves.  Why?  More 5-mans.  Scenarios aren't bad either, but I hear you now have to bring your own pair of partners with you.  WTH? 

    And make alt-leveling interesting and/or rewarding.  God, it's just not worth playing more than one character anymore, and what happens when you get bored with Capt. Main?  You quit playing.  Fix alt leveling.

    Hmmm...  One more suggestion:  QUIT BALANCING THE CLASSES SO OFTEN.  As was said in a certain movie once with regards to flogging, "Let the sting of the first strike die down before you strike again.  Otherwise the lashes blur into one and the body blocks out the pain."  You're not seeing the effect of the changes before you go and make another change.  Then you have to change something else to balance that, and it's too soon.  All we see are lists and lists of nerfs, changes, alterations, manipulations, and we're just becoming numb to it.  You're focused on the minutia.  Players don't care about minutia.  Developers do.  Theorycrafters do (but who cares about them?  Not Blizzard).  Balancing isn't something that requires you to make so many changes so often.  Otherwise you're doing it wrong.

    Not that anyone here probably cares.

    While you hit in some good points (especially the number of quests), think about things for a second:

    In WOTLK's peak, you had 12 dungeons.  MoP has 9 dungeons + 10 scenarios.

    Wrath's end game was still heavily daily based though.  Sons of Hodir.  Icecrown.  Dalaran.  there werent as many of them, sure.  But they were there.  There isnt a single daily in MoP thats necessary to gear up though, and they have even now made them not required for most factions.

    I think the bigger problem is for some reason the last two expansion's dungeons havent been as fun.  i also think they should bring back the dungeon specific daily quest, it just seemed to work better instead of one daily random gives you a good reward.

    Alt leveling I feel is far superior 1-60 now, but it does suck once you leave Azeroth.  

     

    The big problem with LFR is that it isnt engaging IMO.  The bosses take forever to die, and without the challenge there is no excitement.  You arent on the edge because one screwup means death.

     

    But mostly i think its more the game's age than anything else.  There are more things to do now overall than there ever were, but people have been playing for so long its boring.

  • ComputerJuiceComputerJuice Member UncommonPosts: 25

    /agree  get rid of GhostCrawler.  The guy is cancer. 

     

    aslo... Bring back spec trees.

     

    if they did those 2 things i'd come back.

  • itgrowlsitgrowls Member Posts: 2,951

    Absolutely agree, get rid of the marine biologist, it would make things so much better for WoW.

    Get some people in there who understand that arrows and bullets DO hurt worse then harry potter fans waving wands at one another. (class favoritism for mages has GOT to go.)

    Get someone in there that understands you don't simply ignore engineers until the last minute (seriously, I spent 3 expansions telling you people that we needed a craftable rocket mount and you wait until NOW to put it in?! How insulting is that?!)

    put a team on separating the code/behaviors/damage between pvp and pve skills so that when you balance pvp you never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever again affect pve.

    get a clue about open world loot, not everyone enjoys running nothing but dungeons all day for everything. quit being stingy.

    listen to your playerbase more often when they put forth reasonable requests THAT SEASON and maybe you'll actually keep players longer.

  • CoolitCoolit Member UncommonPosts: 661

    Not surprised at all.

     

    MoP just isn't epic in the way BC/WTOLK were, it's far too cuddly and I lost interest pretty quickly in it as a result. Although it has been tweaked now the pointless grind, never ending dailies and lack of alt friendliness really put me off continuing to play.

     

    I think the games age is against it with dated graphics and what is now considered near obsolete subscription model it's become a harder sell for new people coming in which is going to be a pretty big issue in the future.

     

    I still have 2 months game time on my sub but I'm considering cancelling and waiting to see if the next expansion has a theme more appropriate to my taste.

     
  • KahPaoKahPao Member UncommonPosts: 18

    I' ve played since BC and MoP just feels awful.  Leveling is not  fun, and endgame is not something I look forward to reaching.    I canceled  2 subs yesterday.  My 16 year old is no longer interested in WoW and he has played since he was 10.

    Sad times, really :-(    Blizz went in the wrong direction, is all.   PvP that was once incredible is now unbalanced and mediocre.

     

  • daltaniousdaltanious Member UncommonPosts: 2,381
    Not sure what is not clear to who? Why wondering subs are down when we know today we have zillion of mmo's out there, free or not free. Once they were only few. 8 milions for me only mean how strong is still wow going. And I hope wow stay there. I'm currently not playing exactly for reason I have also other great games I love to test and play ... but for sure I will be back some day. But truth is they have destroyed casul 5man runs starting with cata. In Wotlk I have been staying for months (after leveling to max all my 10 alts) and playing end game content. But completely lost all my interest after wotlk. Enjoying however a lot swtor as for leveling as for end game. Hope they also do not ruin there something.
  • illutianillutian Member UncommonPosts: 343
    Originally posted by strangiato2112
    Originally posted by jusomdude

    I just cancelled my sub yesterday, pretty bored of the game. I'll probably be back at some point though.

    Anyways... it's dying! image

    yup, at this rate EvE will be the #1 sub MMORPG by 2031

    I hope not. WoW didn't start nerfing the shit out of their game until it was #1....and they wanted more subs.

     

    I adamantly hate the 'new' WoW. But I love it for keeping all the lazies that demand things be easier because "I shouldn't have to try at a video game.".

     

    ....can see it now. EVE Online with 5 million subs. "In this patch we're removing item lose caused by PVP, while in hi-sec." | "We're also expanding what is known as hi-sec from 1.0 to 0.1, as opposed to the original 1.0 to 0.5 security rating."

    Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising everytime we fall.

  • IndigoAKIndigoAK Member Posts: 3
    Originally posted by akiira69

    PAX East 2013

    http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/blizzard-pax-east-announcement-its-not-titan/

    http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122391-Blizzard-Will-Unveil-a-Completely-New-Game-at-PAX-East

    Direct Quote from First paragraph:

    "We've been working on a little something, different from our other games, and we're pleased to invite you to be the first to see it. It's not a sequel, expansion, or that rumored next-gen MMO, but it's something we're excited for you to get your hands on," Blizzard said in an invitation to come and see something new and exciting at this year's PAX East in Boston, which will take place between March 22 and 24.

    This doesn't disprove Titan's existence, it just disproves that it was the game being announced.  However, it also doesn't prove its existence.  His statement is neutral if anything, with an (I'd wager) intentional hint of humor in it (as in, making light of the fact that people get in such a tizzy about Titan).

    The point is that you can't call something a myth unless there's proof it's a myth, which you don't have. 

    That settled, all evidence suggests that Blizzard is in fact working on a next-gen MMO set in a science fiction setting, is first person and is codenamed Titan.

  • Ungwe_LiantiUngwe_Lianti Member UncommonPosts: 9

    "and through continued investment and careful management of our costs, we expect to continue delivering shareholder value over the long term as we have for the last 20 years.”

    $$$ - Machine, he's not even mentioning the players... SHAREHOLDERS!! haha, that alone would keep me away from WoW

     

  • armanth13armanth13 Member UncommonPosts: 36
    well eve online is the only subscription based mmo where the total number of subscriptions goes up every year.
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