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It seems that WoW peeked at 11.4 million players and not growing?
Isturi
Member Posts: 1,509
Yes it is true Sources state that "according to Blizzard Co-Found Mike Morhaime, is not really. Morhaime has said in the past that WoW's subscriber base generally hovers around the 11.5 subscriber mark, so 11.4 million seems to be right on track. Morhaime also mentioned that as of March subscribership returned to pre-Cataclysm levels..."
"Morhaime also acknowledged new competitor MMOs stealing World of Warcraft's subscribers, the main one right now being" Rift "and probably" SWTOR " in the future. He said even though new games and competitors are surfacing, Blizzard is used to their players leaving for a time period to try the new games out and then coming back to World of Warcraft, "So far, there is nothing to indicate that this is any different," he said."
To me the key words here are SO FAR.
Should be intreasting to see by the end of this year if that 11.4 drops or not.
Comments
This is super duper interesting. I mean this is the purpose of my life! This gives meaning to my existence. I need to know WoW sub numbers!
WoW subs can't have peaked at 11.4m. WoW hit 12m. This means that WoW peaked at 12m. 11.4m in this case is the average figure in the long run.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Not enough growth already? lol
OP,
I'm glad you provided a link for source because your post made it sound like you were paraphrasing and injecting as you saw fit.
World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role playing game, has become a household name over the last six years. Last October WoW may have hit its peak at over 12 million worldwide subscribers. This is following the successful launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the game's third expansion pack that sold 3.3 million copies worldwide in its first 24 hours. Today during Activision Blizzard's latest financial call, they confirmed that impressive amount of players has gone down to 11.4 million subscribers. A miniscule number, really. Could it be that the MMO behemoth is finally losing steam?
The answer, according to Blizzard Co-Found Mike Morhaime, is not really. Morhaime has said in the past that WoW's subscriber base generally hovers around the 11.5 subscriber mark, so 11.4 million seems to be right on track. Morhaime also mentioned that as of March subscribership returned to pre-Cataclysm levels and that Blizzard plans to continue delivering new content faster than ever before, something that's somewhat of a step away from how the "slow and steady wins the race" developer usually creates content.
Morhaime also acknowledged new competitor MMOs stealing World of Warcraft's subscribers, the main one right now being RIFT and probably Star Wars: The Old Republic in the future. He said even though new games and competitors are surfacing, Blizzard is used to their players leaving for a time period to try the new games out and then coming back to World of Warcraft, "So far, there is nothing to indicate that this is any different," he said.
Morhaime also noted that World of Warcraft: Cataclysm isn't even out yet in China, a region where millions of players currently reside, so when the expansion hits over there it might bring even more gamers back to Azeroth.
In any event, yes WoW might have hit the peak amount of players that are interested in a MMORPG, but that doesn't mean it's losing steam or interest with its core players, all 11 million of them. What do you think? Have you moved on from World of Warcraft, or do you plan on moving on when new MMOs come out like The Old Republic or Guild Wars 2?
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Meh.....could use more cowbell.
Anyway, hopefully this game will die someday and we can move on to progressing the mmo genre and not regressing with every update.
Let us know when the game starts to decline in numbers or they start merging servers. Merging servers will be the big one in this.
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
I love how people just watch WoW's progress just wishing it would one day die, its like sitting at a train platform in the cold waiting for a train you know will come, but feels like its taking years.
Even if 20 new MMO's get released tomorrow, i dont see WoW suffering much, but it would suffer.
The only way i see WoW going into any real decline, is if Blizzard announces a new MMORPG.
As for the OP about WoW peeking in terms of subscibers, its not the first time, Blizzard planned this perfectly, with the new patch featuring vanilla WoW favorite Ragnaros, subscriptions will likey increase again, peek after a month or two then the process starts over again with the next content update.
After washing myself off from hanging around the WoW forums I have seen that the latest posts there are vows to cancel subs because extra premium services are being added which will nickel and dime previously trusting players who assumed their regular subs would cover all the useful game services, especially the newly proposed premium LFD tool that parties you up with friends across different realms.
I predict nerdrage sub cancellation out of protest and the decline Blizzard is experiencing now is but the tip of the iceberg.
I second this thought thank you.
Heh, likewise, but seriously it's happening over there. The player base are threatening war on world of warcraft because of the new Activision friendly philosophy of nickel and diming the players. It would be funny if I wasn't going to cancel, yet again, my sub but I don't think I will be returniing in the future to that game. I'll wait for GW2 and I'm looking at a few others. There are other games out there, after all and I've cancelled for long periods before. Sticking to it won't be a problem now the ActiBlizz nickel and dime agenda isn't being done discreetly anymore.
Having competitors and players not liking a new feature in WoW is nothing new...has always been that way for years. Nor of Blizz/Activision implementing something that many players hated. People will huff n puff and strut around but at the end of the day they will more often than not not follow throuw with their threats or come back after a while and have cooled down.
The only real difference I see is when GW2 and SWTOR releases as they are offering something truely different unlike past labled "WoW Killers" which took a lot of concepts typically found in WoW. While they won't kill WoW, I truely think they'll take a pretty significant chunk of subs. To the point where the EU and US subs might drop tremendously, there are only 4-5 million subs in those regions combined. With the current hype, I think they'll definately be an "oh...shit" moment at Blizz, but not something to jump joops over but more of a moment's thought.
But then GW2 is B2P and SWTOR does seem like the same ol' stuff really when you take a look at the basics of the game. They jsut throw in a storytelling element which I have my doubts on it's longevity of. Course it is being done by Bioware and with their reputation I can very ell be wrong. So what many are claiming to be the end of WoW could very well be wrong.
Do I see WoW declinging? Time will tell, WoW is a dated game now and many are getting tired of the same ol' same ol' however there is nothing else out there really that is different. I do think WoW has had their peaked popularity and they won't reach that again unless they do something outstanding to WoW, which the chances are like having your dream MMO made. Better chance is just waiting on "Titan" to redeem past customers.
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When you look at it like this
Wow 11 Million
Rift 1 Million - if you believe the hype
Lotro 1 million if you believe the hype
Warhammer 200 K
DAOC 50-100k
Get the drift they still outnumber all their competitors by a large margin still. I still say only blizzard can kill wow.
There was so much nerdrage when Blizzard opened the item shop.. and then I logged in and saw half my server riding around on the $25 mounts.
My guess is the new feature just wasn´t that easy to implement.. and to be honest, I have never heard anyone saying they wanted to do dungeon with their friends who are from a different battlegroup. Usually if you have friends and you want to group with them, you roll a character on thier server, or you pay a one time fee and transfer servers. I really don´t see why anyone would pay a reoccuring fee for the ability to do random dungeons with their friends when it is so easy to reroll or do a server transfer.
Again, I think it was just a little requested system that someone decided wasn´t worth the development costs to implement, and then someone suggested making it a premium service.
I quit a few months back, was bored and needed a break. Wasn't my first break. I have no idea if I'll go back.Don't see a reason to at the moment. That being said i'm not sitting around hoping it will die, it really won't make my day any better or worse which sadly doesn't seem to be the case for a lot of people on this site. WoW is not holding back the genre, i'm not sure why folks insist when WoW goes away there will be some huge leap forward. WoW is a game apparently a lot of folks play. Why does that bother so many people? No one's stopping the next great game from coming out.
I quite quite a few months ago. Wrath I was into raiding and gear, in Cata that had no appeal to me and just don't really see the game worth much if your not doing that or more percisely the sub payment is a waste of money imo when I can get better returns in some single player games.
The latest patch does have me wanting to resubb but am resisting the urge as I know it'll just be a gear grind that I just don' have the intrest anymore with. Looking foward to some roots of RPGing in GW2.
Depends on the context, take out the Asian sub numbers and WoW is drastically reduced. Even when you only account for NA and EU you still have like 5 mill roughly last I checked on the numbers. But when SWTOR and GW2 releases I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that the competition on NA and EU will be much more fierce. Asia provides a significant sub source that not a whole lot of MMOs can tap into. But WoW will be in no danger though with the competition. I think WoW will be on a downward cline for a while but still not worry about much.
I seem to recall recently their quarterly figures ? revealed their subscription base had dropped by a little over 5%. Which is actually quite a lot & Blizzard now realise they need to get content updates out faster.
That said I stick to my longtime prediction that WoW will be the last big MMO to make such a huge spash for subscribers with future MMO's moving away from subscription models and WoW's current playerbase being erroded bit by bit as WoW'ers migrate to other games that hold specific appeal.
WoW is also 7 years old. Honestly when you look at the genre as a whole, WoW has an amazing run going. I don't think
"getting content updates out faster" will enter into the Bliz equasion. If you look at their business history, that is not how they run.
The question to your statement "WoW players playerbase is being erroded bit by bit" is erroded to where? Looking at the average MMO player base in most games, I would say IF they are in fact being erroded away (and a 5% drop after 7 years is hardly an errosion) where are they going?
While F2P seems to be the current MMO dev weapon of choice, is to those games? F2P is not new and have in fact been around since WoW has been around. Western devs have been jumping onto the bandwagon over 2 years now.
The genre is being erroded away by social gaming not by other MMOs.
MMOs have not shown the inovation necessary to keep itself alive as a genre. The hazard of everyone repeating the WoW formula over the last 7 years has been a deadly stagnation. 7 years is a huge amount of time in the technology field. Devs re-copying the EQ-WoW formula over the course of a decade has had the same effect as running a sword into your stomach, a long and slow death.
It gave the appearence that WoW was the peak of MMO design. Whether it is or isn't could be debated but if you base it strictly on market success, WoW was it.
So it isn't F2P that is having the impact on WoW and on our genre as a whole, what was it? Social gaming. Many designers saw this coming a few years ago and have commented on it.
The MMO genre is either going to enter a transitional state and evolve or it will die off as it will hold less and less appeal as social gaming is in its infancy and will change from here until it hits its peak design. Then the cycle will begin again with the next step.
This made my day
)
Unless Blizzard does something spectacular with their expansion why would anyone go back ? I think that is alot of wishful thinking on their part.
Well...WoW subs can drop to 5 million but as long as they're still number 1 it doesn't matter, does it?
Well any game must peak sooner or later. Wow have had a great run and is still huge but I have my doubts that they can pass the top subscription mark without either making the game F2P or release an Indian client (hey, they got loads of players for the Chinese client, India is the second largest country in the world so that might actually get them another 5 million players).
Some Wow fans have stated that Wow will allways be the top game even 20 years in the future but the world just doesn't work like that.
Blizzard will however release a Wow 2 sooner or later, Wow is the only game they made in 15 years that have no sequel yet and a Wow 2 might become even larger if they release it with good timing.
A really great expansion could also pull Wows number up again but I think it is still rather unlikely that it will raise them past he old top, we wont see it for another year at least and the game isn't getting any younger.
Also, Blizzard have moved their top people to Titan a few years ago.
Still, Wow have outdone any possible expectations even a madman could have had at launch and made Blizzard one of the richest companies in the world so no reason to complain.
Most games peak like three weeks after release. Who honestly cares if WoW has now reached its peak in subscriber numbers? Unless there's a drastic drop in subscribers, WoW is still destined to be the king of MMOs for a long time to come.
Maybe WOW dev had already redo WOW all over again with a new engine and make it like Archage concept? They just waiting for their subs to drop to 1 - 3 million and BOOM! here is WOW 2. It would only cost them like 2 - 3 mth subs.
Pardon my English as it is not my 1st language
Intreasting thought.
We have seen evidence of the incoming Brazilian client. I would not be surprised if a indian client is in the works as well. Blizzard will announce new sub numbers after the Brazilian client is released I bet.