Maybe its time to stop catering to the "Care Bears" and make the Game we knew you could and thought you would make. * mill is still a large number, but down from 10 mill it is time to see that WOW will soon be dust in the wind like all the other MMO's
"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
Wow, just wow. This is a financial report! What did you expect? Why would Blizzard justify their financials to their playerbase? These reports are always aimed at shareholders and investors. But I guess you lack basic understanding of how companies operate and interact with their shareholders.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Originally posted by Thanodragon Maybe its time to stop catering to the "Care Bears" and make the Game we knew you could and thought you would make. * mill is still a large number, but down from 10 mill it is time to see that WOW will soon be dust in the wind like all the other MMO's
Carebears or casual players are Blizzards biggest cash cow.
I'm guessing this drop in subscribers is due to the 1 year sub from diablo 3 running out and also people getting tired of Pandaria after resubbing. New expansion and it'll rise again for a few months. It's how these things usually go.
Whatever happens. Blizzard have won. Moan about "care bears", other games. Whatever - Blizzard have won.
The scale of their victory in terms of popularity (8 million is MASSIVELY higher than any other P2P MMO has ever been or ever will be - yet we are talking about it as a failure). It makes more per year than Battlefield and CoD PUT TOGETHER! It's lasted 10 years.
It's won in terms of succeeding to do in spade fulls whatever its mission was during development a decade ago. And it's won by such a huge margin by every metric that those developing it could ever have imagined or wanted that to hear people who don't play it moan on and on about how they don't like it sounds more than a little churlish. If WoW bothers you that much for that long you really need to get out more It's won - give it up and move on.
Sorry man but 8 years later people still going on and on about World of Warcraft numbers. You do know they will keep getting lower and lower yes? Then it will go f2p or shut down.
It is and always will be the best mmo that has ever been. It held numbers no other mmo could hold.
Then you keep reading about it like this and there will always be the few hat think "hey haven't played that in long time I think I will try it again". So any press is good press..as long as you got the name right.. old saying for you kids...
Its funny people bash Blizzard for losing 1 million or so Subs, others say its ok they still have 8 million left...
Does it matter? the golden age of WoW was The Burning Crusade. It was the last content that actually led off from the Vanilla content concerning why the Horde and Alliance were at war.. The Burning Legion.
Wrath, Cata, and Mists are filler content at best for the story line.
As far as Mist being the cause of WoWs loss of subs.. well when one considers that anime, manga, and kung fu flicks never hit mainstream here or in europe its not surprising... Eastern content really doesnt appeal to the mainstream US-EU populations. Disagree all you want the sales numbers for anime and manga sales in the US is quite telling.
I don't know, but I really do hope they start offering free server migrations (locking full servers, empty servers and also servers overpopulated with that faction), That way the empty servers can move and they can close them.
As it is right now, market is dead, players are getting bored, they either pay to move or quit. I have taken timeouts (3 in all) and am already thinking of taking another timeout, however I do know that nigh on most people on my server wont be there if I did that when I did come back (if I did that is). I most certainly am not going to pay £15 per character to move (I have 10) and that does not inc the new monk (yet).
Graphics are ok, but the game is suffering from other points, not too mention it is almost 10yrs of age, that length of time and still holding several million subscribers is good, but it will not last several more yrs. Players need and would like something new, however game's companies have lost the plot and are just trying to rehash successful games instead of using their darn brains and coming up with something new. Also I do not think consoles is the only route (come on) making games and then trying to get them to work on consoles and lowering the specs just to work on them and then reporting an inferior game to the PC that makes PC games look and play terrible and console games look pretty good, when a PC can take a hell of a lot better than what is the standardised industry right now.
The game is fine though not as fun as when it first started. The huge increase of free2play games and the continued market of single purchase games really turned off many.
Also android games and casual games has taken away quite a few casuals.
A 13% drop in their customer base in a single quarter is a huge wakeup call for virtually any business. If you don't think that the suits are scrambling to deal with this, you're flat out crazy. No business anywhere sees a 13% drop and says "Oh well we're still making lots of money so no biggie lol". You can be absolutely certain that EA/Blizzard will react to this, most likely with cost cutting and layoffs.
Originally posted by MajiinX I'm personally hoping the next x-pac is a burning legion themed expansion that leads into WoW 2 which I'm hoping thats what Titan is.
We told them in Cat beta that failure to permit open queuing for rateds would result in server decimation. Did they listen? LOL
We told them in MOP beta that dumbing down character building was a really bad move that would cost them older accounts but did they listen? LOL
So you're presently a fan. You LOVE the game as it is. You'll fanbois up your guts for anyone who will listen. You're NOT one of the at-risk accounts so don't worry your pretty little head about it. Run along and hug your log-in screen.
But when any business fails to listen to the deal breaking concerns of their existing customer base, there will be problems ahead. If they think things are bad now, wait until the 1 year beta commitment expires. Last installment for my account bills this month. I logged off in disgust one afternoon, mid-MOP-beta, and even though I purchased MOP, it sits under the desk unopened. EIGHT years of playing this cat sucker and not even tempted to log back in. It's time for Ghostcrawler to shut up and listen to the customers for a change.
I can't help but wonder if the Western stereotyped image of "Eastern philosophy" that is much of MoP isn't part of what is turning off Eastern players. I mean, I was, and am, turned off by the mush of storytelling that it is myself (I'm American).
The only reason I'm back is because of the Green Fire quest for the Warlock. Something actually challenging for the solo player? Count me in!!
Once I'm geared up for and complete it, I don't know if I'll stick around or not. I think the best thing I can do for the game is quit playing in protest of so much that I don't like in the direction it has taken. It's still fun, but it is more and more made for the player who doesn't care to think about building his character, feels more like each class is melding into the other classes, and those things are antithetical to my gameplay preferences. I want each class to have its own story, and feel like I progress when I level (and, yes, I still will level up a new character. But in MoP, even being the alt-a-holic I am, I just am not interested in making a new class in the new race in MoP. Leveling is that insipid).
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Originally posted by Malcanis A 13% drop in their customer base in a single quarter is a huge wakeup call for virtually any business. If you don't think that the suits are scrambling to deal with this, you're flat out crazy. No business anywhere sees a 13% drop and says "Oh well we're still making lots of money so no biggie lol". You can be absolutely certain that EA/Blizzard will react to this, most likely with cost cutting and layoffs.
EA has nothing to do with Blizzard. No one likes drops in revenue but cost cutting through lay-offs is always a short-term solution. Always. I haven't heard of a company increasing performance in the long-term by downsizing. Increasing revenue always leads to better profit margins than reducing your cost by a similar %.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Also age aint nothing to do with drops in subs to this extend. Lineage 1 still has quite impresse playerbase - released in 1998 give or take.
Eve online has seen increase in players and subs from release and still increasing subs each year. Eve released in 2003.
The thing with wow is that blizzard changed the game for the worse... 1st thing they did was breaking the once epic wow community - today its the most retarded community of any mmo's. Then they implemented that retarded pay per character to transfer....25 euro a char -_- Then they introduced Panda's.... Changing core class mechanics wasnt a wise move either... People rolled and geared their favorite classes for a reason, changing it 180 degrees made people sad and regret rolling that class.
Ghostcrawler did without a doubt massive damage to WoW, when Tigole was still leading wow the game went from 300k subs to 8+-million in TBC before he got recruited for Project Titan. WotLK was not that bad, but it showed far less qaulity then TBC had, from raids to pvp all got worse and worse.
You could have played any class in TBC and say FUCK YEAH IAM OP!!!! While in reality all classes had at least 1 damn epic spec SL/SL Locks Schockadins ! Shadowstep rogues Hammer warriors Restro druids resto shamans disc / shadow priest BM hunters Damn frost mages ! etc etc it felt that each class had 1 spec that could totaly own. I had a blast back then rolling alts and gearign them up in battleground to enter arena with me wife...still managed to get decent ratings with many alts, up to 1750/1860
All that magic disapeared WotLK has easy heroics and enough for my alts to farm in terms of gear. But PvP wasnt the same anymore.....each spec was nerfed or changed. In Cataclysm i quited 2 times....and dint even looked at lol panda bears.
If panda's dint get introduced and Ghostcrawler was fired things might have been so diffrent. WoW might have been still growing as many other mmo's just fall flat on their faces these days.
But it was not ment to be. Blizzards greed got the best of them and ruined a mmo that could have been growing and growing........ today its just a cash cow.
I just cancelled my sub yesterday, pretty bored of the game. I'll probably be back at some point though.
Anyways... it's dying!
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."
Look at it the positive way: all those WOW fans that used to play without any risk entering EVE....
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
I logged in and played the game for a while recently for the first time in a long while.
Mostly I wanted to see how it looked in 3D Vision.
I was amazed how dated it feels now after playing modern games like The Secret World.
Especially the combat mechanics.
I really felt like I didn't have anything to do.
I couldn't move and fight, and everything just seemed kind of boring.
I loved this game for years but time has passed on.
I'm not sure there can be a WOW 2, they need new graphics and play mechanics but it would have to compete with all the other new games, I don't think it would get the fan base just because it's called WOW, unless it offers really new stuff I don't think it can be really big.
It could be that there will never be a MMO that big again.
It was the right game at the right time.
Mike
If you shoot a mime, do you have to use a silencer?
Or maybe after playing for years and thousands of hours many players are just tired of WoW or gaming/MMORPGs in general.
And the newer generations have much more choice (often less expensive and with netter graphics/physics/action combat) without any attachment to WoW, so the veterans that are leaving aren't replaced.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Comments
Wow, just wow. This is a financial report! What did you expect? Why would Blizzard justify their financials to their playerbase? These reports are always aimed at shareholders and investors. But I guess you lack basic understanding of how companies operate and interact with their shareholders.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Carebears or casual players are Blizzards biggest cash cow.
Whatever happens. Blizzard have won. Moan about "care bears", other games. Whatever - Blizzard have won.
The scale of their victory in terms of popularity (8 million is MASSIVELY higher than any other P2P MMO has ever been or ever will be - yet we are talking about it as a failure). It makes more per year than Battlefield and CoD PUT TOGETHER! It's lasted 10 years.
It's won in terms of succeeding to do in spade fulls whatever its mission was during development a decade ago. And it's won by such a huge margin by every metric that those developing it could ever have imagined or wanted that to hear people who don't play it moan on and on about how they don't like it sounds more than a little churlish. If WoW bothers you that much for that long you really need to get out more
It's won - give it up and move on.
I'd encourage you to check out MoP anyway, tons of content.
Played-Everything
Playing-LoL
Sorry man but 8 years later people still going on and on about World of Warcraft numbers. You do know they will keep getting lower and lower yes? Then it will go f2p or shut down.
It is and always will be the best mmo that has ever been. It held numbers no other mmo could hold.
Then you keep reading about it like this and there will always be the few hat think "hey haven't played that in long time I think I will try it again". So any press is good press..as long as you got the name right.. old saying for you kids...
Its funny people bash Blizzard for losing 1 million or so Subs, others say its ok they still have 8 million left...
Does it matter? the golden age of WoW was The Burning Crusade. It was the last content that actually led off from the Vanilla content concerning why the Horde and Alliance were at war.. The Burning Legion.
Wrath, Cata, and Mists are filler content at best for the story line.
As far as Mist being the cause of WoWs loss of subs.. well when one considers that anime, manga, and kung fu flicks never hit mainstream here or in europe its not surprising... Eastern content really doesnt appeal to the mainstream US-EU populations. Disagree all you want the sales numbers for anime and manga sales in the US is quite telling.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
at least they have the #1 spot for most players on 1 server.
Where in WOW everyone's spread out on 1k limited servers. :P
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
I don't know, but I really do hope they start offering free server migrations (locking full servers, empty servers and also servers overpopulated with that faction), That way the empty servers can move and they can close them.
As it is right now, market is dead, players are getting bored, they either pay to move or quit. I have taken timeouts (3 in all) and am already thinking of taking another timeout, however I do know that nigh on most people on my server wont be there if I did that when I did come back (if I did that is). I most certainly am not going to pay £15 per character to move (I have 10) and that does not inc the new monk (yet).
Graphics are ok, but the game is suffering from other points, not too mention it is almost 10yrs of age, that length of time and still holding several million subscribers is good, but it will not last several more yrs. Players need and would like something new, however game's companies have lost the plot and are just trying to rehash successful games instead of using their darn brains and coming up with something new. Also I do not think consoles is the only route (come on) making games and then trying to get them to work on consoles and lowering the specs just to work on them and then reporting an inferior game to the PC that makes PC games look and play terrible and console games look pretty good, when a PC can take a hell of a lot better than what is the standardised industry right now.
The game is fine though not as fun as when it first started. The huge increase of free2play games and the continued market of single purchase games really turned off many.
Also android games and casual games has taken away quite a few casuals.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Happy? Will finnaly sleep better at night?
Titan is a new IP...
We told them in Cat beta that failure to permit open queuing for rateds would result in server decimation. Did they listen? LOL
We told them in MOP beta that dumbing down character building was a really bad move that would cost them older accounts but did they listen? LOL
So you're presently a fan. You LOVE the game as it is. You'll fanbois up your guts for anyone who will listen. You're NOT one of the at-risk accounts so don't worry your pretty little head about it. Run along and hug your log-in screen.
But when any business fails to listen to the deal breaking concerns of their existing customer base, there will be problems ahead. If they think things are bad now, wait until the 1 year beta commitment expires. Last installment for my account bills this month. I logged off in disgust one afternoon, mid-MOP-beta, and even though I purchased MOP, it sits under the desk unopened. EIGHT years of playing this cat sucker and not even tempted to log back in. It's time for Ghostcrawler to shut up and listen to the customers for a change.
I can't help but wonder if the Western stereotyped image of "Eastern philosophy" that is much of MoP isn't part of what is turning off Eastern players. I mean, I was, and am, turned off by the mush of storytelling that it is myself (I'm American).
The only reason I'm back is because of the Green Fire quest for the Warlock. Something actually challenging for the solo player? Count me in!!
Once I'm geared up for and complete it, I don't know if I'll stick around or not. I think the best thing I can do for the game is quit playing in protest of so much that I don't like in the direction it has taken. It's still fun, but it is more and more made for the player who doesn't care to think about building his character, feels more like each class is melding into the other classes, and those things are antithetical to my gameplay preferences. I want each class to have its own story, and feel like I progress when I level (and, yes, I still will level up a new character. But in MoP, even being the alt-a-holic I am, I just am not interested in making a new class in the new race in MoP. Leveling is that insipid).
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
EA has nothing to do with Blizzard. No one likes drops in revenue but cost cutting through lay-offs is always a short-term solution. Always. I haven't heard of a company increasing performance in the long-term by downsizing. Increasing revenue always leads to better profit margins than reducing your cost by a similar %.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Also age aint nothing to do with drops in subs to this extend.
Lineage 1 still has quite impresse playerbase - released in 1998 give or take.
Eve online has seen increase in players and subs from release and still increasing subs each year. Eve released in 2003.
The thing with wow is that blizzard changed the game for the worse...
1st thing they did was breaking the once epic wow community - today its the most retarded community of any mmo's.
Then they implemented that retarded pay per character to transfer....25 euro a char -_-
Then they introduced Panda's....
Changing core class mechanics wasnt a wise move either...
People rolled and geared their favorite classes for a reason, changing it 180 degrees made people sad and regret rolling that class.
Ghostcrawler did without a doubt massive damage to WoW, when Tigole was still leading wow the game went from 300k subs to 8+-million in TBC before he got recruited for Project Titan.
WotLK was not that bad, but it showed far less qaulity then TBC had, from raids to pvp all got worse and worse.
You could have played any class in TBC and say FUCK YEAH IAM OP!!!!
While in reality all classes had at least 1 damn epic spec
SL/SL Locks
Schockadins !
Shadowstep rogues
Hammer warriors
Restro druids
resto shamans
disc / shadow priest
BM hunters
Damn frost mages !
etc etc it felt that each class had 1 spec that could totaly own.
I had a blast back then rolling alts and gearign them up in battleground to enter arena with me wife...still managed to get decent ratings with many alts, up to 1750/1860
All that magic disapeared
WotLK has easy heroics and enough for my alts to farm in terms of gear.
But PvP wasnt the same anymore.....each spec was nerfed or changed.
In Cataclysm i quited 2 times....and dint even looked at lol panda bears.
If panda's dint get introduced and Ghostcrawler was fired things might have been so diffrent.
WoW might have been still growing as many other mmo's just fall flat on their faces these days.
But it was not ment to be.
Blizzards greed got the best of them and ruined a mmo that could have been growing and growing........
today its just a cash cow.
Look at it the positive way: all those WOW fans that used to play without any risk entering EVE....
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
I logged in and played the game for a while recently for the first time in a long while.
Mostly I wanted to see how it looked in 3D Vision.
I was amazed how dated it feels now after playing modern games like The Secret World.
Especially the combat mechanics.
I really felt like I didn't have anything to do.
I couldn't move and fight, and everything just seemed kind of boring.
I loved this game for years but time has passed on.
I'm not sure there can be a WOW 2, they need new graphics and play mechanics but it would have to compete with all the other new games, I don't think it would get the fan base just because it's called WOW, unless it offers really new stuff I don't think it can be really big.
It could be that there will never be a MMO that big again.
It was the right game at the right time.
Mike
If you shoot a mime, do you have to use a silencer?
Or maybe after playing for years and thousands of hours many players are just tired of WoW or gaming/MMORPGs in general.
And the newer generations have much more choice (often less expensive and with netter graphics/physics/action combat) without any attachment to WoW, so the veterans that are leaving aren't replaced.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Pardon my English as it is not my 1st language