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Has WoW lost a lot of players?
cheyane
Member LegendaryPosts: 9,100
This was very different from my P99 Everquest experience which I enjoyed far more and in spite of not having the feeling I had in 1999 I was able to enjoy the game far longer than I did with Classic. I thought I was alone in this but apparently not. This article in massively overpowered suggests otherwise.
https://massivelyop.com/2020/02/21/superdata-visions-of-nzoth-boosted-world-of-warcraft-subs-but-its-lost-tons-since-wow-classics-2019-peak/
"Of most interest to MMORPG players, the analytics firm also sheds some new light on how World of Warcraft is doing, especially since Blizzard stopped releasing sub numbers and the recent earnings call made multiple explicit claims from Bobby Kotick and other Activision-Blizzard reps about how the addition of WoW Classic “doubled the size of the active World of Warcraft community in the second half of 2019.” Kotick did not, as we noted at the time, claim that Classic had actually held those numbers through the end of the year. And now we know it definitely didn’t – and that he knew that as he talked it up anyway during the call. Here’s SuperData’s statement:
“The new World of Warcraft update Visions of N’Zoth successfully turned around declining user numbers. Subscriber numbers grew 17% from December to January (not including China). However, they were still down substantially (64%) from August 2019, the month World of Warcraft Classic was released.”
If we’re reading that right, WoW’s sub base spiked way up in August, then plummeted over the course of the fall, then perked back up a bit in January – but Blizzard still lost the majority of subs it had picked up with Classic over the quarter.'
Comments
Although the title of the thread is not what I want to highlight just read the discussion below it.
They talk about how guild members just stopped without even saying they are leaving. How it is becoming difficult to find the necessary numbers for the content. It is an eye opener for me at least because that is exactly how I dropped off too.
One post on the thread
"Another “not struggling because BWL is hard, but because we can’t get a full raid team”-guild here. /wave
We started leaking raiders (badly) already during the holidays and after clearing 3/8 in BWL during the first week with only 32 people, we simply couldn’t get enough signups to give it a proper shot during the second week despite our recruitment officers working their behinds off, which of course left to even more people leaving.
Now the domino-effect is in full swing, and I’m expecting either a disband or a merge within the coming week.
It’s the perfect storm right now basically;
All in all, a lot of guilds are seemingly having troubles filling their rosters right now, and players are ping-pong:ing left and right because they know they’ll get recruited."
It turned out that all those casual moms and dads with jobs and families can became fanatical try hards just to show each other or "somebody out there" who's the BEST at the game now!
The magic has long gone, now it is only numbers and quotas to fill.
I still think Classic has more players than retail though.
And considering that Classic has no future (Aka non new content planned), it’s still an amazing feature.
What if Blizzard announced they will keep investing in Classic?
My guess is that far more people would stick with it.
At the 6.07 point onwards where he discusses WoW.
People are also not happy with the coming "corruption" gear in Shadowlands the coming expansion to retail WoW. It seems it is turning WoW into an ARPG- like game.
for myself i still enjoy classic and play randomly on and off, the thing that keep me not fully invested, is it a game i played for years and know it very well, so the drive too keep going is less but i still enjoy exploring on the side. the tipping point for me was after WOTLK, i did not like how they handle unlocking new things with each new Xpac, with more times gates that before felt like a option to grind and get something now felt forced and drawn out for the sake of padding short content.
I also heard people saying 90% of people who are on free trial of any mmorpg never stayed more than 2 month.
I guess many people are unwilling to commit their time to a game that has no future.
Add to this that many raiding guilds have already exhausted the available content and you get the picture.
Not sure what people expected. Classic did what people thought it would, it brought people back to the game. A lot of the people still playing classic are people who wouldn't be playing retail so they have still have a gain of population.
There was a good community buzz in Classic at first but I found the game play just tedious and it reinforced what I already thought: that there really is no correlation between slow, awkward mechanics and community.
The great communities we all remember from those good ole days were all about the times and the fun of being online with others in those pre social media days. The very slow fights and other crap mechanics were just part of it that we put-up with just because that's all we knew back then, but they sure as hell were not responsible for creating the good vibes.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Yes i log back in, but i was one of the guildies who got to cap quite early (only maybe 6-9 days ) before every one else, so i was happy to help them in BRD etc... then when it came to the guild start raiding i had missed a few weeks due to r/l come back and just couldn't get back into it....
i would love to go back for the gates opening as i missed it when it first happened. but honestly i cannot see this happening, i took a 3 month sub out when it came back, and renewed that last month, but that was more accident than intentional.
I will maybe try and play some next month, but in all honesty cant see it being much more than a day here and there...
To be honest i love it, and loved playing it, but real life was more of a time sink than it used to be, my next hope... and i wonder.. will be the continuation of the WoW storyline, blizz have proven to themselves and the world what they can do with an old game, do we see the next, and most peoples favourite TBC, and maybe evn in a year or 2 WOTLK - after that the game took a dive, but lets be honest anyone who played or plays wow would struggle to name a better expansion then one of them (for me TBC was best....) but i think if TBC came in then i would almost force myself to put more time to thegame, it has more personal feeling for me and just sort of kicked my MMO love in..
This post is all my opinion, but I welcome debate on anything i have put, however, personal slander / name calling belongs in game
where of course you're welcome to call me names im often found lounging about in EvE online.
Use this code for 21days trial in eve online https://secure.eveonline.com/trial/?invc=d385aff2-794a-44a4-96f1-3967ccf6d720&action=buddy
Another reason - and maybe why A-B delayed Classic - is the disruption to the servers pre-Classic. Lots of players - but maybe not all - moving will have disrupted things including guilds. What they were like when anyone thought about returning - may not have been pretty.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Overall it equaled or exceeded what players and company expected.
-16 years old.
-A fixed amount of content.
-full monthly price tag ($15)
Putting aside nostalgia, IT REALLY PROVES second generation mmorpg's work !
The games has on average 8 months worth of content IF THE PLAYER WERE NEW on first play through. 3 months if expert on content.
The game has 3 years of content of re-playable content for playing both factions and other classes.
If released as new (never seen before) exactly as is, Classic would be #1 and break all records.
Where do I get my numbers ?.... read the first line.
Bottom line..... Everyone enjoyed themselves !
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
What's happened to the gaming community is exactly as predicted by a few.
They
got tired of the same old rinse and repeat gaming.
But most still can't quite understand that, and are shifting the cause to anything else because they don't want play anything else.
See the confusion? Don't want "that" anymore, but don't want anything else.
Once upon a time....
Developers knew exactly why things are successful. Problem being we as players don't like the answer........ "They know everyone plays everything". With that they make crap games on-line, 30 days of content and sell it.
The trick worked several times and were on to them now. BUT ITS TOO LATE !
Developers don't have to care they made their millions, it worked.
It was different during vanilla because you had lots of people jumping in at various points and a majority of players experienced their first mmorpg.
My classic experience was far from being rosecolored, partially because of my state of mind back then and I had zero plan of joining classic. I still did, and I had far more fun doing leveling dungeons than I imagined. The reason I enjoyed it was because I spent two months with leveling and 18 months doing endgame back in the days.
I quit after three months because I was out of stuff I wanted to do and found no motivation doing the endless gear hunt to do stuff I did to death already.