Considering Blizzard has been pumping less content into the expansions over the years, it's no wonder they're approaching a more desperate position as it is. People are seeing through their business tactics, and instead moving on to other MMO's or whatever else they fancy. Cataclysm is where i personally dropped off, and it seems like it was a good decision.
Also that whole talk of the "BIGGEST TEAM EVAR" wont show any results for atleast a year or two, thats how development works.
They were brought on almost 2 years ago, getting them trained was one of the excuses for why WoD took so long to put out. So by now they should all be up to speed and chugging along, the whole, "They need to get integrated and familiar!" excuse was already used years ago, it doesn't fly anymore.
As i wrote on one of the previous articles, if they release later than end of this year, they will again back down from an announcement, they said with warlord of draenor we would see yearly expansion release, they will back away from that statement.
They already confirmed it won't release this year, we'll only see beta this year.
they never said it wont release this year... they said... it might release this year or it might release next year... that was basically the official quote on it.
Its been all downhill since Cata. Pandaland was content rich but the setting was a bad joke. WoD has been a massive mis-step by Blizzard, and there must be significant panic at how the numbers are plummeting.
There's still a tiny corner of my frosty heart that loves WoW and the amazing times I had, but they are now gone and ain't coming back. Its a different game now, full of things I don't want to do.
It will take something amazing to get my back for Legion. Cant see it happening.
Its been all downhill since Cata. Pandaland was content rich but the setting was a bad joke. WoD has been a massive mis-step by Blizzard, and there must be significant panic at how the numbers are plummeting.
There's still a tiny corner of my frosty heart that loves WoW and the amazing times I had, but they are now gone and ain't coming back. Its a different game now, full of things I don't want to do.
It will take something amazing to get my back for Legion. Cant see it happening.
"A tiny corner of frosty hearts"?
You are aware they still have more subs then all other western MMORPGS have players right?
If you think when Legion releases they won't hit 8,9 or 10 million again you are out of touch with reality.
If you think when Legion releases they won't hit 8,9 or 10 million again you are out of touch with reality.
Not a chance they'll go that high again. IF sub numbers stay over 3M at November's quarterly earnings reports (and I have doubts about that since even die-hards like me are dropping out), the best surge they'd get is to 7M -- still impressive but they won't retain it unless Legion is something very, very special. Even WoW fans are getting tired.
As everyone with some sanity has pointed out. They need to save info for Blizzcon or there will be a riot. Does it suck for us... sure but it is a fair investment and they need to keep the con going due to the media buzz it creates and in order to do that they need to have a rerason for people to go there/buy digital tickets.
You do not do that by not having any new exclusive info...
As for momentum... They are Blizzard... they are beyond momentum, they have their own gravity.
If you think when Legion releases they won't hit 8,9 or 10 million again you are out of touch with reality.
Not a chance they'll go that high again. IF sub numbers stay over 3M at November's quarterly earnings reports (and I have doubts about that since even die-hards like me are dropping out), the best surge they'd get is to 7M -- still impressive but they won't retain it unless Legion is something very, very special. Even WoW fans are getting tired.
If you don't mind I'm going to copy this and we will revisit it in a year
If you think when Legion releases they won't hit 8,9 or 10 million again you are out of touch with reality.
Not a chance they'll go that high again. IF sub numbers stay over 3M at November's quarterly earnings reports (and I have doubts about that since even die-hards like me are dropping out), the best surge they'd get is to 7M -- still impressive but they won't retain it unless Legion is something very, very special. Even WoW fans are getting tired.
Yeah... That is pretty much how things go. Noone can do the same thing forever and the market is way saturated these days. But i feel they have a chance to get to 10 with Legion... But it will drop off from there very fast down to around 6-7 before they settle in to the usual slow decline back to around 3-4.
Have to say, I have been playing since vanilla and have been thru all the content released since, and have seen a decline within the game that has been the downfall of it. When you have something that was a good as the game was back in BC and you take all that made it good away, people will take notice and will leave. The only changes that have been made since vanilla that I thought needed to happen was having to train with weapons for all classes, and having to train pets with new attacks for hunters. They tried to say that taking away skill trees made it more diversified on builds, bs, all I see is more people with the exact same build now more than ever, at least until I gave up on this game. My sub has expired, and I am not looking back. I loved this game for 5 years and liked it for 4, now I hate what they have done with it, and no amount of new/rehashed content will make it great again. The only way that they can get my money again, is if they started opening servers that featured old content as it was before all the changes, such as a vanilla, a BC and a WotLK server, and LK is stretching it.
You are aware they still have more subs then all other western MMORPGS have players right?
More subscribers than all other western mmos combined as at end_june? Probably but not even Blizzard made that claim; there are a lot of games with subscribers and the numbers will add up. And why just western mmos since Blizzard has "eastern" subscribers. To exclude eastern games like Lineag? For if you say L1 doesn't have "subscribers" then you need to reduce WoW's count as well.
Come November Blizzard may not even be able to say - with certainty - that WoW has the most subs. Same deal; count WoW's "western + eastern subs" then you have to include "eastern games" with their mix of eastern and maybe western subs.
You are aware they still have more subs then all other western MMORPGS have players right?
More subscribers than all other western mmos combined as at end_june? Probably but not even Blizzard made that claim; there are a lot of games with subscribers and the numbers will add up. And why just western mmos since Blizzard has "eastern" subscribers. To exclude eastern games like Lineag? For if you say L1 doesn't have "subscribers" then you need to reduce WoW's count as well.
Come November Blizzard may not even be able to say - with certainty - that WoW has the most subs. Same deal; count WoW's "western + eastern subs" then you have to include "eastern games" with their mix of eastern and maybe western subs.
And in a year they will be above 7,8,9 million approaching 10 million subs. Then those like you will start projecting in a year they will be down to WoD level claiming it's the end of WoW. Then in two years when they release another xpac and their subs climb yet again you guys will start up with in 6 months they will be down to legions level and WoW yet again will be dead.
Its been like this since WoW launched it won't stop until they finally close shop in 5 years. The sad part is those claiming the death of WoW for 15 years will pretend they succeeded in calling it...
You are aware they still have more subs then all other western MMORPGS have players right?
More subscribers than all other western mmos combined as at end_june? Probably but not even Blizzard made that claim; there are a lot of games with subscribers and the numbers will add up. And why just western mmos since Blizzard has "eastern" subscribers. To exclude eastern games like Lineage? For if you say L1 doesn't have "subscribers" then you need to reduce WoW's count as well.
Come November Blizzard may not even be able to say - with certainty - that WoW has the most subs. Same deal; count WoW's "western + eastern subs" then you have to include "eastern games" with their mix of eastern and maybe western subs.
And in a year they will be above 7,8,9 million approaching 10 million subs. Then those like you will start projecting in a year they will be down to WoD level claiming it's the end of WoW. Then in two years when they release another xpac and their subs climb yet again you guys will start up with in 6 months they will be down to legions level and WoW yet again will be dead.
Its been like this since WoW launched it won't stop until they finally close shop in 5 years. The sad part is those claiming the death of WoW for 15 years will pretend they succeeded in calling it...
You won't find a single post of mine claiming "the end of WoW". You are the one making things up, as I said not even Blizzard have claimed that WoW is bigger than all other western mmos combined; just you not Blizzard.
And for your claim about getting back to approaching 10 million Legion will have to gain/recover more players than any previous WoW expansion; possible yes, likely no.
As for what happens beyond Legion - just you speculating.
This thread has not been "bashing WoW" simply commenting on how things were at the end-June and wondering how bad it is today at the end-Sept.
Blizzard are diverting capital and resource from Wow into Overwatch. Developers get faster at what they do over time not slower - its pretty obvious what's going on and how blizzard don't give a crap about their loyal wow player base. Blizzard do what every shitty corp does, they think about their customers as statistics, in this case in sure they delude themeselves that Overwatch is for the wow players by virtue of the fact they play blizzard products.
Oh yes the big bad evil companies...how dare they make money...and any chance you have proof about anything you said besides following the sheep of big bad company haters?
If you think when Legion releases they won't hit 8,9 or 10 million again you are out of touch with reality.
Not a chance they'll go that high again. IF sub numbers stay over 3M at November's quarterly earnings reports (and I have doubts about that since even die-hards like me are dropping out), the best surge they'd get is to 7M -- still impressive but they won't retain it unless Legion is something very, very special. Even WoW fans are getting tired.
Nothing is impossible, but lets agree that it is pretty unlikely.
If Legion is awesome I could see them hitting 10 millions for the first month, but they really need something special then.
If I were Blizzard I would have Wow 2 already in development now, with Kaplan leading it. Wows subs will continue to drop after all, the game is pretty ancient by now and a certain number of expansions tend to make MMOs a worse game, no matter how much content they have.
And this is why they continue to lose subs. They announce an expansion, then release an expansion for full retail price of a base game. People finally got tired of being burned by them, so subs dropped drastically within a quarter of WoD's launch. Legion will be the same old thing, with sparse updates and one major content update. No thanks, there's plenty of other things to do.
An alternative explanation for why subs have dropped is that WoW is over a decade old.
That surely is part of it but keeping 10 mil after 10 years and then losing half of them in 6 months means there is something more going on. I think it have more to do with the fact that WoD sucked.
Legion needs to be very good if they want to still have the largest MMO. There are several games a bit below that want the position.
WoW did not lose half it's subscribers in 6 months.
WoW has been in a slow decline since 2011 since shortly after the release of Cataclysm.
WoW had bumps with the releases of MoP and WoD but any MMO is going to have a bump with the release of an expansion.
A slow decline over the course of years would suggest that WoW is losing subscribers to attrition and not some other reason such as the quality of WoD like you suggest.
That's actually incorrect. WoW lost the largest proportion of subscribers with the release of WoD. Just because there has been a slow bleed does not mean the staggering and steep decline of subs since WoD released doesn't exist.
My account dates all the way back to 2004 and did manage to playfor the first 6 months of WOD, then one day, i woke up, logged into my garrison and was like, wtf is this shit i am playing? Is this an mmorpg? As i recalled what mmorpg used to be...there is crossrealm in this game, that stripped down your legendary name instantly, No main cities where you meet or had guild events, nor are there any world events created by gms, just single player trash with little grouping, 0 risk vs reward, no meaning full items, no purposeful climate, took away the little utility spells the game had, no difficult zones, fuck,,, and i used to play UO and EQ before WoW even Daoc had better pve, and i silently accepted WoW's carebear manifestation over time, letting me get dragged into low quality mmorpg mechanics, and taking away everything that made it a mmorpg in the first place, they try so hard to make a balance that never excist to take out the steampunk of the forum crybabies, who never really experienced, corpse dragging, item loss, or getting blacklisted in a community, where u could matter, and could forge a name for your self ( no crossrealm, name change, server change )
1. Blizzard announced Legion at Gamescom to slow down the bleeding of subs. Which was apparently a bad move, as players will now just unsubscribe for the next 6+ months till Legion launches. Gamescom decision to reveal Legion seems to be backfiring badly for Blizzard and WoW now.
2. People that think Blizzard will reveal anything new at Blizzcon are delusional. Everything that they'll learn is a Beta date and some things more in details. I expect Diablo 3 expansion to be the main talking point of Blizzcon. Besides all that Legion will feature has already been discussed, which is very little I know, but hey that's Blizzard. Seems like WoD didn't teach them anything, and they'll be releasing even less content with Legion. Hell they are even cutting the amount of Zones to 5. And there is a big "IF", if there will be 5 Zones at the launch of Legion.
3. Patch 6.2 helped to stop the bleeding of Subs, however not much. September turned out to be the lowest point of WoW Subs so far, and in Q3 we'll see WoW Subs below 5mil. The biggest problem for Blizzard will be Q4, there will be no reason to stay subscribed and we can expect something between 2-3mil subs. There is a big chance Legion will be postponed due to a massive Sub and revenue drop. If Blizzard rushes Legion they'll make a big mistake, as I don't think WoW would ever recover from that.
4. It's important to know that East makes up 2/3 of WoW subs. WoW Sub number have always been very misleading and they've been using the East mostly for marketing purposes for showing off their "big numbers". So in theory WoW had at best 2mil Subs in the West in the Q2 2015, which is obviously not enough to beat games like ESO or FFXIV, hell not even GW2 or SWTOR. With Legion I expect WoW to rise to about 6-7 million Subs, and drop to 2-3 million Subs only 6 months after.
5. The final thing I'm gonna say is that WoW is not killing itself. For about 5 years WoW had absolutely no competition on the MMORPG market. Then suddenly GW2 launched, and soon after that SWTOR, Aion and Rift too. They've been slowly chopping off WoW Sub numbers over the years. However FFXIV and now mostly ESO (3 very populated platforms) is what has been killing WoW. Blizzard just can't compete against such quality modern MMOs with regular updates. So no WoW isn't going to kill itself, FFXIV and mostly ESO are going to do it for them.
Its been all downhill since Cata. Pandaland was content rich but the setting was a bad joke. WoD has been a massive mis-step by Blizzard, and there must be significant panic at how the numbers are plummeting.
There's still a tiny corner of my frosty heart that loves WoW and the amazing times I had, but they are now gone and ain't coming back. Its a different game now, full of things I don't want to do.
It will take something amazing to get my back for Legion. Cant see it happening.
"A tiny corner of frosty hearts"?
You are aware they still have more subs then all other western MMORPGS have players right?
If you think when Legion releases they won't hit 8,9 or 10 million again you are out of touch with reality.
Them millions of Subscribers is just the momentum of past glories. Something as big as WoW is like a long Train.... will take a while to slow down to a stop even if the Throttle is pulled to off. Other MMOs have lasted longer than most would have predicted, simply because of the Players themselves staying long after it was apparent the Devs no longer cared or got busy with other projects.
That to me is what is happening with WoW. Blizzard is busy with other stuff. That is never good for a MMO. MMOs must be maintained constantly or they lose speed and slow down, even if that takes a long time to happen like WoW.
I play WoW every now and then and am playing lately... and lately the WoW servers feel like I'm playing LotRO or something... so few Players seen it's quite disturbing actually. WoW was the one MMO I knew I could find other Players in... now...
My account dates all the way back to 2004 and did manage to playfor the first 6 months of WOD, then one day, i woke up, logged into my garrison and was like, wtf is this shit i am playing? Is this an mmorpg? As i recalled what mmorpg used to be...there is crossrealm in this game, that stripped down your legendary name instantly, No main cities where you meet or had guild events, nor are there any world events created by gms, just single player trash with little grouping, 0 risk vs reward, no meaning full items, no purposeful climate, took away the little utility spells the game had, no difficult zones, fuck,,, and i used to play UO and EQ before WoW even Daoc had better pve, and i silently accepted WoW's carebear manifestation over time, letting me get dragged into low quality mmorpg mechanics, and taking away everything that made it a mmorpg in the first place, they try so hard to make a balance that never excist to take out the steampunk of the forum crybabies, who never really experienced, corpse dragging, item loss, or getting blacklisted in a community, where u could matter, and could forge a name for your self ( no crossrealm, name change, server change )
Yeah ok whatever you say lol...I'm sure you have been copy/pasting this exact same thing since 2004
But for fun what exactly changed in the mmorpg aspect from MoP to WoD? The truth is nothing but feel free to try and explain.
As a side note I left WoD because I didn't want to do garrison 2.0 (ships). The game itself is still an mmorpg and has every aspect of one.
They better do something. With Wildstar going F2P, GW2 coming out with an expansion, the continuing growth of FFXIV and SWTOR and even ESO, its going to take a lot of players away from WoW before Legion comes out which sounds like is releasing in 2016..
And this is why they continue to lose subs. They announce an expansion, then release an expansion for full retail price of a base game. People finally got tired of being burned by them, so subs dropped drastically within a quarter of WoD's launch. Legion will be the same old thing, with sparse updates and one major content update. No thanks, there's plenty of other things to do.
An alternative explanation for why subs have dropped is that WoW is over a decade old.
That surely is part of it but keeping 10 mil after 10 years and then losing half of them in 6 months means there is something more going on. I think it have more to do with the fact that WoD sucked.
Legion needs to be very good if they want to still have the largest MMO. There are several games a bit below that want the position.
WoW did not lose half it's subscribers in 6 months.
WoW has been in a slow decline since 2011 since shortly after the release of Cataclysm.
WoW had bumps with the releases of MoP and WoD but any MMO is going to have a bump with the release of an expansion.
A slow decline over the course of years would suggest that WoW is losing subscribers to attrition and not some other reason such as the quality of WoD like you suggest.
That's actually incorrect. WoW lost the largest proportion of subscribers with the release of WoD. Just because there has been a slow bleed does not mean the staggering and steep decline of subs since WoD released doesn't exist.
WoW lost the most subscribers during Cataclysm.
Yeah, the WoD drop is steeper but that didn't make the first statement any less false.
Seriously, 2 minutes on Google does wonders when posting.
You hear crickets because the Blizzard big shots are all off on foreign shores counting their money at their off shore bank accounts.
They can afford to leave the base empty,crickets left to defend the fort,they know all you gamer's will buy whatever they come back selling no matter what.Blizzard hands out the collection plate and all the crickets jump in.
it is good entertainment though,i seriously laugh when people try to figure out the ins and outs of Blizzard and it's subscribers.There is no logical answers,they simply have a huge fanbois following that will buy Diablo 4/5/6...999 and they will still be making games with Warcraft heroes in their games in the year 2055.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Comments
You are aware they still have more subs then all other western MMORPGS have players right?
If you think when Legion releases they won't hit 8,9 or 10 million again you are out of touch with reality.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This have been a good conversation
Yeah... That is pretty much how things go. Noone can do the same thing forever and the market is way saturated these days. But i feel they have a chance to get to 10 with Legion... But it will drop off from there very fast down to around 6-7 before they settle in to the usual slow decline back to around 3-4.
The game is after all old... very old.
This have been a good conversation
Come November Blizzard may not even be able to say - with certainty - that WoW has the most subs. Same deal; count WoW's "western + eastern subs" then you have to include "eastern games" with their mix of eastern and maybe western subs.
Its been like this since WoW launched it won't stop until they finally close shop in 5 years. The sad part is those claiming the death of WoW for 15 years will pretend they succeeded in calling it...
And for your claim about getting back to approaching 10 million Legion will have to gain/recover more players than any previous WoW expansion; possible yes, likely no.
As for what happens beyond Legion - just you speculating.
This thread has not been "bashing WoW" simply commenting on how things were at the end-June and wondering how bad it is today at the end-Sept.
If Legion is awesome I could see them hitting 10 millions for the first month, but they really need something special then.
If I were Blizzard I would have Wow 2 already in development now, with Kaplan leading it. Wows subs will continue to drop after all, the game is pretty ancient by now and a certain number of expansions tend to make MMOs a worse game, no matter how much content they have.
2. People that think Blizzard will reveal anything new at Blizzcon are delusional. Everything that they'll learn is a Beta date and some things more in details. I expect Diablo 3 expansion to be the main talking point of Blizzcon. Besides all that Legion will feature has already been discussed, which is very little I know, but hey that's Blizzard. Seems like WoD didn't teach them anything, and they'll be releasing even less content with Legion. Hell they are even cutting the amount of Zones to 5. And there is a big "IF", if there will be 5 Zones at the launch of Legion.
3. Patch 6.2 helped to stop the bleeding of Subs, however not much. September turned out to be the lowest point of WoW Subs so far, and in Q3 we'll see WoW Subs below 5mil. The biggest problem for Blizzard will be Q4, there will be no reason to stay subscribed and we can expect something between 2-3mil subs. There is a big chance Legion will be postponed due to a massive Sub and revenue drop. If Blizzard rushes Legion they'll make a big mistake, as I don't think WoW would ever recover from that.
4. It's important to know that East makes up 2/3 of WoW subs. WoW Sub number have always been very misleading and they've been using the East mostly for marketing purposes for showing off their "big numbers". So in theory WoW had at best 2mil Subs in the West in the Q2 2015, which is obviously not enough to beat games like ESO or FFXIV, hell not even GW2 or SWTOR. With Legion I expect WoW to rise to about 6-7 million Subs, and drop to 2-3 million Subs only 6 months after.
5. The final thing I'm gonna say is that WoW is not killing itself. For about 5 years WoW had absolutely no competition on the MMORPG market. Then suddenly GW2 launched, and soon after that SWTOR, Aion and Rift too. They've been slowly chopping off WoW Sub numbers over the years. However FFXIV and now mostly ESO (3 very populated platforms) is what has been killing WoW. Blizzard just can't compete against such quality modern MMOs with regular updates. So no WoW isn't going to kill itself, FFXIV and mostly ESO are going to do it for them.
That to me is what is happening with WoW. Blizzard is busy with other stuff. That is never good for a MMO. MMOs must be maintained constantly or they lose speed and slow down, even if that takes a long time to happen like WoW.
I play WoW every now and then and am playing lately... and lately the WoW servers feel like I'm playing LotRO or something... so few Players seen it's quite disturbing actually. WoW was the one MMO I knew I could find other Players in... now...
But for fun what exactly changed in the mmorpg aspect from MoP to WoD? The truth is nothing but feel free to try and explain.
As a side note I left WoD because I didn't want to do garrison 2.0 (ships). The game itself is still an mmorpg and has every aspect of one.
Yeah, the WoD drop is steeper but that didn't make the first statement any less false.
Seriously, 2 minutes on Google does wonders when posting.
They can afford to leave the base empty,crickets left to defend the fort,they know all you gamer's will buy whatever they come back selling no matter what.Blizzard hands out the collection plate and all the crickets jump in.
it is good entertainment though,i seriously laugh when people try to figure out the ins and outs of Blizzard and it's subscribers.There is no logical answers,they simply have a huge fanbois following that will buy Diablo 4/5/6...999 and they will still be making games with Warcraft heroes in their games in the year 2055.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.