I disagree with writer's reasons for the subscription dip. My 2 reasons are vastly different, and they played a direct role in why myself, along with 2 other friends, quit WoW 2 months after Draenor release.
1. Garrisons, I don't think people are leaving because of garrisons, people are leaving because they are not doing more with the garrisons. It was disappointing to hear the dev say after Draenor launch, that the garrisons won't carry on to the next expansion. Well, this got a lot of people thinking why the heck should they work hard at building the garrisons if they aren't going to carry over to the next expansion. When I heard this roughly 3 weeks into Draenor, I pretty much stopped doing anything with my garrisons.
Ever since Draenor launch, people had requested more to be done with garrisons, not less. People wanted PvP events that have to do with garrisons. I mean after all, if you want to bring Warcraft into WoW, how could you skip one of the most exciting and fun part of Warcraft RTS...the player vs player aspect?
On top of that, players have asked for more varieties of looks and themes with garrisons. Horde players wanted the Blood Elf theme, or the Draenei theme as options, rather than the boring & dull orc theme. They could've done so much more with garrisons, I've only mentioned 2 of the highly requested ideas. But the devs seem to have taken the easy route. So with the knowledge that Blizzard has no intentions on carrying garrisons to the next expansion, and the lack of PvP and content theme choices, people started to lose interest in garrisons.
2. PvP and class balance have been a mess since the launch of Draenor. PvP is a big part of WoW, and when you mess up the gameplay that a large chunk of your playerbase loves, of course people are going to leave. Ashran was a disaster at launch and it showed you just how much Blizzard devs don't get it. The lack of new PvP content, such as new Battlegrounds, new PvP gameplay ideas, a functional and fun Ashran, etc.. all played in part to why WoW lost so many players 2-3 months after Draenor launch.
These are the main reasons why myself and 2 friends left WoW roughly 2 months after Draenor launch. We had a blast for awhile, it was fun, garrisons got us logging in more often than we had ever did since vanilla WoW. But for the reasons above, we lost interest and have since moved on to other games and RL. Blizzard did some things right with Draenor, they pulled a lot of players back into WoW, myself included. But they played their cards wrong. Garrisons should've been expanded upon and not be treated as a throw away expansion feature. PvP is enjoyed by a very large % of WoW's playerbase and it should never have been messed up the way Draenor messed up PvP. Ashran should've never been opened in the state it was in, and PvP players should've been given new BG's and gameplay features.
Blizzard did some things right with Draenor, but they messed up.
Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW
Originally posted by borghive49 I never understood why WoD had such great initial reviews? This was the worst expansion Blizzard put out for this game to date in my opinion.
I thought the quality of the expansion was excellent, but the amount of content was.....underwhelming to say the least. I've seen more content from GW2's bi-weekly updates. Blizzard should be ashamed.
Agreed on the lack of content!
I thought the quality was pretty medicore. Definately lacking content. For me the biggest issue was how they made it way too casual soloist with hardly and content for small groups. It boiled down to log in for raid nite, and rest was garrison maintenance. I'll prolly go back soon since getting n itch for some MMOing and WoW is the best MMO out there when done in short bursts. Good expac but definately not their greatest.
Loath garrisons but Blizz seems to think that is were the bulk o the content lies.
Patch 6.2 will be adding an entire new zone complete with a new 13 boss raid, Hellfire Citadel. There will also be a new event system in which every weekend will feature one of six new events.
TimeWalking - Players will be able to venture back into The Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King dungeons where there gear will be scaled down to create a Heroic version of specific dungeon. All loot that is acquired will scale back up to that character normal level.
Draenor Dungeons - Take on Draenor dungeons to earn reputation and test your skills at completing the new Mythic difficulty to earn Heroic Hellfire Citadel loot.
Battlegrounds - Participate in a random Battleground over this event weekend to earn triple honor points.
Arena Skirmishes - Earn triple honor points here as well!
Apexis - Earn triple the amount of Apexis crystals from eligible enemies and also earn additional Oil for your garrisons shipyard.
Pet Battles - PvP pet battles will award triple XP and earning five wins will award the Ultimate Battle-Training Stone that will allow you to instantly level one pet to level 25.
Let's not be fooled. Most of this already existed in WoW in some form, but is being brought back. In addition, Tanaan Jungle (which was supposed to be a leveling zone) is only a glorified Timeless Island with Daily Apexis Quests. What they have done here is the utmost minimum required possible without getting more people up in arms (which many are already doing). Even raiders are starting to get burned out, with hardly any guilds partaking in the PTR with the little content they are offering. Some comments about the new raid so far have been "It's like SoO with different bosses". They have left so much content out of this expansion compared to what was reviewed during Blizzcon that it is disgusting, in my opinion. The artwork and 6.0 was brilliant in a lot of ways; they seriously dropped the ball in continued development of the expansion. Not that they typically supported expansions in the past, with them cutting them off half way through and letting the last raid keep people occupied for 12-15 months since WotLK.
The only decent service they are providing is customer service, but they're beginning to get swamped due to unhappy customers.
Due to frequent travel in my youth, English isn't something I consider my primary language (and thus I obtained quirky ways of writing). German and French were always easier for me despite my family being U.S. citizens for over a century. Spanish I learned as a requirement in school, Japanese and Korean I acquired for my youthful desire of anime and gaming (and also work now). I only debate in English to help me work with it (and limit things). In addition, I'm not smart enough to remain fluent in everything and typically need exposure to get in the groove of things again if I haven't heard it in a while. If you understand Mandarin, I know a little, but it has actually been a challenge and could use some help.
Also, I thoroughly enjoy debates and have accounts on over a dozen sites for this. If you wish to engage in such, please put effort in a post and provide sources -- I will then do the same with what I already wrote (if I didn't) as well as with my responses to your own. Expanding my information on a subject makes my stance either change or strengthen the next time I speak of it or write a thesis. Allow me to thank you sincerely for your time.
I know a lot of people hate grinding or farming, whether it be for items, or mats, or rep, however it gives you things to do and look forward to.. This is the reason why I will jump on WoW for a few months, then leave, and go back to games like Rift because I like being able to log on and accomplish things..
I find myself logging on WoW and having to dig DEEP to find things to do now if i'm not doing a raid.
I LOVED WoD, however after you get to about ilevel 630, if you aren't in a guild or jumping into good groups for raid runs, there isn't anything to do. Infact, most of the time I was just logging in to check Garrison missions. Apexis crystals bought you jack (I think I benefitted off of ONE set piece from the apexis crystal set) so if I wasn't running dungeons, I wasn't doing a lot of progressing. Sure there is LFR and heroics however they aren't always rewarding and a lot of times, what they do reward is garbage. IMO, I think there is too much emphasizing on dungeons. I'd rather have more xp from quests.. That way you get a story and it's stretched out.. Rather just que for dungeons and miss a lot content in the game. When I leveled my alts, I didn't realize how much storymode I missed because it's so easy to level just by doing dungeons.
I liked working towards something. Grinding for rep to get this item, having to do dungeons to get marks to get something. It was a lot of work, but that was also the fun part. Everyone boasts about Vanilla WoW and back in the day, that's all there was.
Games cost money to play, even the free ones. I spoke with five mothers in the 20 - 30 age bracket. They said the topic of video games has come up. The growing and possibly dominate opinion, is that paying to play online video games is as bad as smoking and gentlemens clubs. Many young mothers today want their husbands to stop paying and playing online games. Many ask their husbands to hide their game play from the children.
Most families are reconsidering their monthly video game budget. And that is evident in the 2.9 million subscriber loss. Women control the purse strings, and in turn the family budget. Content isn’t going to save P2P online gaming, only a PR campaign targeting mothers will.
For those who think F2P is the answer, these mothers aren’t falling for that. They consider F2P to be the worst of the lot. F2P is the new “F’word”.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
The subs were obviously going to fall off, but a 30-percent drop in 3 or 4 months is hardly trivial. It's the second lowest quarter in nine years, shortly after an expansion that many vehemently insisted had revitalized the game.
And because nobody ever gets tired of getting to say "I told you so," here was my December 26, 2014 comment to MMORPG's one-month review:
Unsubbed for the first time since picking the game back up around SoO. Unlike most WoW fans, I enjoyed my year or so in Pandaria in between playing GW2 and some SWTOR and consider it one of the most underappreciated pieces of MMO real estate. WoD feels like two steps forward, three steps back for me.
I know there's the whole "Vanilla/TBC was the best time in WoW and WoD is like going back" contingent, and I would be among the first to raise my hand and say "It's not just rose-tinted glasses. I had more fun back then than I do today too," but the community and my own expectations are different now. WoD failed to convince me that the game is actually going anywhere. I actually think it feels more like a mobile gaming and month-long GW2-style living story experiment in a space where it conveniently won't wreck the rest of Azeroth than anything like TBC or WotLK.
My gut feeling is that there will be a lot of "WoD is the best expansion evah!, but I need to take a break" in the coming months. That of course is nothing new in the months following an expansion, but I'd certainly love to see a six-month review by the author here. Hopefully Blizzard will stand on principle and never introduce flying at max level ... I enjoy hearing about how much better it makes the game.
Originally posted by killahinstinct hah.... copied from dota 2 invorker... so obvious seriously
Omg are you mentally ok? blizzard make warcraft the dota was a map blizzard have done all the work now they decided put their moba in the market as well with base on the warcraft game so wtf are you saying? next time read something 1st before you talk
I attribute the drop to the short attention span of most players. After an expansion, they rush to make max level, then complain about the lack of content. I actually think they couldn't care less about the socializing that MMOs used to promote.
It's time for them to move out of their parent's basement, get a job and understand how the real world works. I can't spend all my spare time playing computer games - MMOs, MOBAs, etc. - it doesn't matter.
I'm sure some of the payers who left will get back in for the 6.2 content, then leave again.
Blizzard will have to step up their pace to release more/better content more often.
Plus they need to look outside of their box and release other content rather then the "do this, then repeat it every day a zillion times to get a mount" content.
But that has been said a gazillion times and they just can't do that so the above trend 'release a x-pac every 2 years with little content inbetween' will be the strategy for the next 1,5y.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
"As of now we don’t know much about his abilities in Heroes of the Storm other than his two ultimates that were revealed on Twitter."
Heroesnexus.com had Kael'thas data as early as yesterday that I'm aware of, probably goes even farther back. At least do some tiny bit of research, author.
Nice to see an article that I agree with, for a change
There's one more issue as for why players are leaving, it's pretty clear from chat in-game, and it's one of the reasons why also I cancelled:
No flying mounts in Draenor. Sure, there's are flightpaths everywhere, but we've been collecting a lot of mounts, and suddenly we're not allowed to use them. It's an unnecessary restriction, and just got more and more annoying for me. If I was one of those who bought extra mounts for real money, I'd be really pissed.
Btw, I know flyers can be used as ground mounts, but I call them "unuseable" because you cannot use them the intended way in Draenor.
As I stated in another thread of similar topic, the game has been so dumbed down, IMHO it should now be called World of Borecraft.
I just can't stomach sooo many changes that've essentially turned the game into something appealing to 12 year-olds and about as entertaining as watching paint dry.
Wow Tokens. Less people buying subscriptions, more people buying gametime in-game.
No. Someone has to buy the token first. As and when tokens are included I would expect AB to simply treat them like game cards, they count as a sub if activated. If anything tokens will help sub numbers although it's probably small change in the ig picture.
Where you people get your numbers is beyond me, WoW dropped 2.1mil subs in the past few months?? WoW at 7.1 Subs?? Sorry to burst your bubbles, but WoW still holds a solid 10mil+ Subs even to this day, all thanks to TESO, GW2, Wildstar, FF14 being crappy at best. Don't get me wrong, graphics on TESO, GW2, FF14 are amazing, but beyond that? GW2 you can't play 30 minutes without having a full inventory, FF14 you either rage quit at the RNG or go in to a deep depression when you're out of crystals to craft with, and TESO ... anyway, I understand 99% of you are tired of WoW and everybody else that is trying to copy the success of WoW but end up being thrown in the recycle bin after a month or 2 of game play, but don't start throwing numbers around that makes absolutely no sense. Am I a WoW fanboi? Not really, I'm more of a old school RPG fanboi, like FF6, Lufia 2, Secret of Mana, and so on. Just that when I read these kinds of threads, it brings my blood to a boil, but I'm alright now. And don't forget, most of WoW players that "quit", are most likely playing Destiny, so in the end, it's still a win / win for Blizzard and a major loss for every other Dev / Pub out there. Blizzard / Activision are the only saviors of the MMORPG world, and I cannot wait for their next gen MMO, might be another 5+ years, so I'll enjoy the upcoming titles coming out of Blizzard in the coming months / years which are Heroes of the Storm, HearthStone and OverWatch. I've lost all hope in every other Dev team out there to deliver something awesome. A little side note, instead of ya'll going crazy about WoW's numbers, I'd be more concerned of the fact that League of Legends has 25+ million users playing the game on a daily basis, compared to the 1.7mil combined of TESO, WildStar, GW2, FF14 ... just sayin'.
Unlike your numbers the 2.9M+ drop for WoW comes from Activision Blizzard's formal financial quarterly earnings report. As you say however there are still devs like Bungie, makers of Destiny,AB just publish it, who are still making content.
I'd say that this means they must realise that WoD hasn't been a huge success. Probably not quite as bad as some are making out, but it should have brought up numbers above what they were before.
I left WoW because I really did not like the implementation of Garrisons. Like the article states the Garrisons simply demolished what it was to be an MMORPG. You no longer had people hanging out in cities and everyone was segmented into their own individual houses.
I felt that Garrisons should have been guild housing and that the individual buildings within the Guild Garrison should have been the player housing, That way even though you segment the server population you instead create a guild hub, in which, the socialization aspect is still there, but simply scaled down to a much more personable experience amongst friends and closer cohorts(for lack of a better word).
Sad to see but with the money they have made Blizzard definitely should be doing much more "beefy" content updates and definitely on a much tighter time schedule. Sorry but when you are a multi-billion dollar gaming company corner-cutting simply will NOT be tolerated. I agree with some others here that they should just work on WoW 2 and release with DX12 graphics...still support the low end computers by allowing DX9, but really push the envelope again and go for broke. If you watch the 10 year anniversary documentary you wqill see that that is just what they did when originally making WoW in 2004. When you put it all on the line is when your best work surfaces. Whichever game company realizes that and implements that philosophy stands to be the next "WoW 2004" and be the true WoW-killer.
I just can't stomach sooo many changes that've essentially turned the game into something appealing to 12 year-olds and about as entertaining as watching paint dry.
Lol... what?
WoW was ALWAYS appealing to kids, or have you forgotten Barren chat?
Please stop making Vanilla WoW something it never was. It never was as hardcore as some of you seem to think.
Comments
I disagree with writer's reasons for the subscription dip. My 2 reasons are vastly different, and they played a direct role in why myself, along with 2 other friends, quit WoW 2 months after Draenor release.
1. Garrisons, I don't think people are leaving because of garrisons, people are leaving because they are not doing more with the garrisons. It was disappointing to hear the dev say after Draenor launch, that the garrisons won't carry on to the next expansion. Well, this got a lot of people thinking why the heck should they work hard at building the garrisons if they aren't going to carry over to the next expansion. When I heard this roughly 3 weeks into Draenor, I pretty much stopped doing anything with my garrisons.
Ever since Draenor launch, people had requested more to be done with garrisons, not less. People wanted PvP events that have to do with garrisons. I mean after all, if you want to bring Warcraft into WoW, how could you skip one of the most exciting and fun part of Warcraft RTS...the player vs player aspect?
On top of that, players have asked for more varieties of looks and themes with garrisons. Horde players wanted the Blood Elf theme, or the Draenei theme as options, rather than the boring & dull orc theme. They could've done so much more with garrisons, I've only mentioned 2 of the highly requested ideas. But the devs seem to have taken the easy route. So with the knowledge that Blizzard has no intentions on carrying garrisons to the next expansion, and the lack of PvP and content theme choices, people started to lose interest in garrisons.
2. PvP and class balance have been a mess since the launch of Draenor. PvP is a big part of WoW, and when you mess up the gameplay that a large chunk of your playerbase loves, of course people are going to leave. Ashran was a disaster at launch and it showed you just how much Blizzard devs don't get it. The lack of new PvP content, such as new Battlegrounds, new PvP gameplay ideas, a functional and fun Ashran, etc.. all played in part to why WoW lost so many players 2-3 months after Draenor launch.
These are the main reasons why myself and 2 friends left WoW roughly 2 months after Draenor launch. We had a blast for awhile, it was fun, garrisons got us logging in more often than we had ever did since vanilla WoW. But for the reasons above, we lost interest and have since moved on to other games and RL. Blizzard did some things right with Draenor, they pulled a lot of players back into WoW, myself included. But they played their cards wrong. Garrisons should've been expanded upon and not be treated as a throw away expansion feature. PvP is enjoyed by a very large % of WoW's playerbase and it should never have been messed up the way Draenor messed up PvP. Ashran should've never been opened in the state it was in, and PvP players should've been given new BG's and gameplay features.
Blizzard did some things right with Draenor, but they messed up.
Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO
Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW
I thought the quality was pretty medicore. Definately lacking content. For me the biggest issue was how they made it way too casual soloist with hardly and content for small groups. It boiled down to log in for raid nite, and rest was garrison maintenance. I'll prolly go back soon since getting n itch for some MMOing and WoW is the best MMO out there when done in short bursts. Good expac but definately not their greatest.
Patch 6.2 Events
Patch 6.2 will be adding an entire new zone complete with a new 13 boss raid, Hellfire Citadel. There will also be a new event system in which every weekend will feature one of six new events.
Let's not be fooled. Most of this already existed in WoW in some form, but is being brought back. In addition, Tanaan Jungle (which was supposed to be a leveling zone) is only a glorified Timeless Island with Daily Apexis Quests. What they have done here is the utmost minimum required possible without getting more people up in arms (which many are already doing). Even raiders are starting to get burned out, with hardly any guilds partaking in the PTR with the little content they are offering. Some comments about the new raid so far have been "It's like SoO with different bosses". They have left so much content out of this expansion compared to what was reviewed during Blizzcon that it is disgusting, in my opinion. The artwork and 6.0 was brilliant in a lot of ways; they seriously dropped the ball in continued development of the expansion. Not that they typically supported expansions in the past, with them cutting them off half way through and letting the last raid keep people occupied for 12-15 months since WotLK.
The only decent service they are providing is customer service, but they're beginning to get swamped due to unhappy customers.
I know a lot of people hate grinding or farming, whether it be for items, or mats, or rep, however it gives you things to do and look forward to.. This is the reason why I will jump on WoW for a few months, then leave, and go back to games like Rift because I like being able to log on and accomplish things..
I find myself logging on WoW and having to dig DEEP to find things to do now if i'm not doing a raid.
I LOVED WoD, however after you get to about ilevel 630, if you aren't in a guild or jumping into good groups for raid runs, there isn't anything to do. Infact, most of the time I was just logging in to check Garrison missions. Apexis crystals bought you jack (I think I benefitted off of ONE set piece from the apexis crystal set) so if I wasn't running dungeons, I wasn't doing a lot of progressing. Sure there is LFR and heroics however they aren't always rewarding and a lot of times, what they do reward is garbage. IMO, I think there is too much emphasizing on dungeons. I'd rather have more xp from quests.. That way you get a story and it's stretched out.. Rather just que for dungeons and miss a lot content in the game. When I leveled my alts, I didn't realize how much storymode I missed because it's so easy to level just by doing dungeons.
I liked working towards something. Grinding for rep to get this item, having to do dungeons to get marks to get something. It was a lot of work, but that was also the fun part. Everyone boasts about Vanilla WoW and back in the day, that's all there was.
Games cost money to play, even the free ones. I spoke with five mothers in the 20 - 30 age bracket. They said the topic of video games has come up. The growing and possibly dominate opinion, is that paying to play online video games is as bad as smoking and gentlemens clubs. Many young mothers today want their husbands to stop paying and playing online games. Many ask their husbands to hide their game play from the children.
Most families are reconsidering their monthly video game budget. And that is evident in the 2.9 million subscriber loss. Women control the purse strings, and in turn the family budget. Content isn’t going to save P2P online gaming, only a PR campaign targeting mothers will.
For those who think F2P is the answer, these mothers aren’t falling for that. They consider F2P to be the worst of the lot. F2P is the new “F’word”.Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
With all the money Blizzard has made from WOW. They really just need to announce a World of Warcraft II!
Blizzard! GET ON IT!
The subs were obviously going to fall off, but a 30-percent drop in 3 or 4 months is hardly trivial. It's the second lowest quarter in nine years, shortly after an expansion that many vehemently insisted had revitalized the game.
And because nobody ever gets tired of getting to say "I told you so," here was my December 26, 2014 comment to MMORPG's one-month review:
Unsubbed for the first time since picking the game back up around SoO. Unlike most WoW fans, I enjoyed my year or so in Pandaria in between playing GW2 and some SWTOR and consider it one of the most underappreciated pieces of MMO real estate. WoD feels like two steps forward, three steps back for me.
I know there's the whole "Vanilla/TBC was the best time in WoW and WoD is like going back" contingent, and I would be among the first to raise my hand and say "It's not just rose-tinted glasses. I had more fun back then than I do today too," but the community and my own expectations are different now. WoD failed to convince me that the game is actually going anywhere. I actually think it feels more like a mobile gaming and month-long GW2-style living story experiment in a space where it conveniently won't wreck the rest of Azeroth than anything like TBC or WotLK.
My gut feeling is that there will be a lot of "WoD is the best expansion evah!, but I need to take a break" in the coming months. That of course is nothing new in the months following an expansion, but I'd certainly love to see a six-month review by the author here. Hopefully Blizzard will stand on principle and never introduce flying at max level ... I enjoy hearing about how much better it makes the game.
Omg are you mentally ok? blizzard make warcraft the dota was a map blizzard have done all the work now they decided put their moba in the market as well with base on the warcraft game so wtf are you saying? next time read something 1st before you talk
I attribute the drop to the short attention span of most players. After an expansion, they rush to make max level, then complain about the lack of content. I actually think they couldn't care less about the socializing that MMOs used to promote.
It's time for them to move out of their parent's basement, get a job and understand how the real world works. I can't spend all my spare time playing computer games - MMOs, MOBAs, etc. - it doesn't matter.
I'm sure some of the payers who left will get back in for the 6.2 content, then leave again.
Blizzard will have to step up their pace to release more/better content more often.
Plus they need to look outside of their box and release other content rather then the "do this, then repeat it every day a zillion times to get a mount" content.
But that has been said a gazillion times and they just can't do that so the above trend 'release a x-pac every 2 years with little content inbetween' will be the strategy for the next 1,5y.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
"As of now we don’t know much about his abilities in Heroes of the Storm other than his two ultimates that were revealed on Twitter."
Heroesnexus.com had Kael'thas data as early as yesterday that I'm aware of, probably goes even farther back. At least do some tiny bit of research, author.
Nice to see an article that I agree with, for a change
There's one more issue as for why players are leaving, it's pretty clear from chat in-game, and it's one of the reasons why also I cancelled:
No flying mounts in Draenor. Sure, there's are flightpaths everywhere, but we've been collecting a lot of mounts, and suddenly we're not allowed to use them. It's an unnecessary restriction, and just got more and more annoying for me. If I was one of those who bought extra mounts for real money, I'd be really pissed.
Btw, I know flyers can be used as ground mounts, but I call them "unuseable" because you cannot use them the intended way in Draenor.
As I stated in another thread of similar topic, the game has been so dumbed down, IMHO it should now be called World of Borecraft.
I just can't stomach sooo many changes that've essentially turned the game into something appealing to 12 year-olds and about as entertaining as watching paint dry.
WoW numbers dropping after each expansion shouldn't be news, but the subscriber loss since its peak is HUGE.
Executives don't care about peaking after expansion, they only care about this:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/276601/number-of-world-of-warcraft-subscribers-by-quarter/
You can defend WoW all you want, but this is bad.
That's a uncharacteristically sharp drop in subscribers for a quarter, the likes of which Blizzard hadn't seen before.
So this was very news-worthy. Guess we'll have to wait and see what it means.
No. Someone has to buy the token first. As and when tokens are included I would expect AB to simply treat them like game cards, they count as a sub if activated. If anything tokens will help sub numbers although it's probably small change in the ig picture.
Unlike your numbers the 2.9M+ drop for WoW comes from Activision Blizzard's formal financial quarterly earnings report. As you say however there are still devs like Bungie, makers of Destiny,AB just publish it, who are still making content.
Uhh In Dota 1 Envoker used the kael thas model. So it was dota 2 that copied from warcraft
They're pretty much back to the point before the expansion hit, so not surprising.
I guess a whole lot of people came back to view what they did with Draenor, but then left when they couldn't get the old feels back.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I left WoW because I really did not like the implementation of Garrisons. Like the article states the Garrisons simply demolished what it was to be an MMORPG. You no longer had people hanging out in cities and everyone was segmented into their own individual houses.
I felt that Garrisons should have been guild housing and that the individual buildings within the Guild Garrison should have been the player housing, That way even though you segment the server population you instead create a guild hub, in which, the socialization aspect is still there, but simply scaled down to a much more personable experience amongst friends and closer cohorts(for lack of a better word).
Sad to see but with the money they have made Blizzard definitely should be doing much more "beefy" content updates and definitely on a much tighter time schedule. Sorry but when you are a multi-billion dollar gaming company corner-cutting simply will NOT be tolerated. I agree with some others here that they should just work on WoW 2 and release with DX12 graphics...still support the low end computers by allowing DX9, but really push the envelope again and go for broke. If you watch the 10 year anniversary documentary you wqill see that that is just what they did when originally making WoW in 2004. When you put it all on the line is when your best work surfaces. Whichever game company realizes that and implements that philosophy stands to be the next "WoW 2004" and be the true WoW-killer.
Lol... what?
WoW was ALWAYS appealing to kids, or have you forgotten Barren chat?
Please stop making Vanilla WoW something it never was. It never was as hardcore as some of you seem to think.