No .... actual mmorpg players are splited in so many games
dont forget also with increased migration from mmo players to moba its going happen soon or later
and finaly how many years wow have?
Not surprise at all
Well, it is actually pretty surprising that they lost almost half the players in 3 quarters.
Over 5 million subs is still incredible but if this trend continues things look pretty bleak.
Pretty much this indeed. Though I think the upcoming expansion(s) might win a lot of these player back, I think it's clear that WoW is starting at it's 'end-of-life' cycle.
Originally posted by Shodanas People claiming that 5.6 million subs for a 10 year old game is a big thing are missing the wider picture. The loss of half the subscription base in just 2 quarters indicates a deeper, fundamental problem than just aging. Blizzard's only option is to release the next expansion ASAP. Given the rate of sub decline they simply do not have the luxury to make this a six month to a year project.
Eventually even Blizzard will have to accept WOW is an old game, who says they haven't already? They've made a killing off the title, it would seem rather amateur of them to go full blown panic mode over an inevitable reality. At some point WOW is going to become obsolete. Many titles have seen a surge in popularity (FFXIV, GW2, ESO, etc..), many other types of games are extremely popular (MOBA, lobby MMOS). The greater the exposure for these titles the more they're going to take from the WOW pie. That's simply the way of what is trending....
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by Shodanas People claiming that 5.6 million subs for a 10 year old game is a big thing are missing the wider picture. The loss of half the subscription base in just 2 quarters indicates a deeper, fundamental problem than just aging. Blizzard's only option is to release the next expansion ASAP. Given the rate of sub decline they simply do not have the luxury to make this a six month to a year project.
In her editorial - World of Boredom - SBFord suggested that tokens and people holding on for 6.2 would help the Q2 number but as a result of the overwhelming disappointment felt by players with 6.2 the telling subscription number would be Q3. And I find it hard to disagree.
And anyone who has even looked at the official forums will have seen the waves of anger over 6.2 in particular. And now "RIP" threads; "many" posters saying they are leaving - no way to put it into context of course but there has been no positive vibe for many months now.
Which all adds credence to SBFord's view that the telling sub number will be Q3's. Under 4M must look a real possibility now.
No idea have not played this game for awhile but I think like others pointed out it is the time it took for it to plummet not the plummet itself that is worrisome but that could be attributed to a weary player base or a poor expansion.
No .... actual mmorpg players are splited in so many games
dont forget also with increased migration from mmo players to moba its going happen soon or later
and finaly how many years wow have?
Not surprise at all
Still surprise. I had before launch of WOD as always full set of 22 alts. Now I have barely 4, lost all interest after barely 1 month of gameplay of WOD. Actually, have resubbed 3 weeks ago, but still not sure if will continue. With all previous expansions I have been subbed for at least half year after release, resubbing from time to time for few months. Not anymore as it looks.
Does Blizzard not pay MMORPG.com for advertising or did they have some spat in the past?, they seem to hate WoW so much for some reason.
Plummet? There is no MMO on the market at all that has even 1 million accounts let alone 4-5 million. FFXIV for instance (even though mmorpg wrongly states it has) has never gone above 1 million.
WoW is the undisputed KING of the MMORPG world, nothing even comes slightly close.
Well the other day I decided to give WoW another try but after been harassed by a high level player trolling new players in the starting areas I just said heck no, I dont need this hassle, as a below level 20 free player you cannot report any player that is harassing you.
For months I was reading and hearing that this wow expansion was the great thing was ever made when even with no flying will bring people back, but look how a 180 turn as people now say was the worst expansion ever. lol
I now see why there dropping a new expansion so quick now, but anyhow wow is not dieing there running ideas to keep mass amount of people in 1 place.
No .... actual mmorpg players are splited in so many games
dont forget also with increased migration from mmo players to moba its going happen soon or later
and finaly how many years wow have?
Not surprise at all
Well, it is actually pretty surprising that they lost almost half the players in 3 quarters.
Over 5 million subs is still incredible but if this trend continues things look pretty bleak.
The difference is this time they lost a huge number of players early on because of the Ghostcrawler style decision making they did when they released this last expansion. Things like not fixing the absolute hurrendous mess he made of beloved class specs like Affliction Warlocks or BM Hunters and then add to that fact that in order to see new content you're locked behind a tier 3 Garrison before you can move on in the Arc storyline it's pretty terrible leadership imo. If it continues to drop they are going to be in serious trouble because no they cannot support their empire on 300k members, that's just not going to work at Blizzard. Maybe it's time they dealt with some serious problems in their decision making process for a change instead of just ignoring them?
Does Blizzard not pay MMORPG.com for advertising or did they have some spat in the past?, they seem to hate WoW so much for some reason.
Plummet? There is no MMO on the market at all that has even 1 million accounts let alone 4-5 million. FFXIV for instance (even though mmorpg wrongly states it has) has never gone above 1 million.
WoW is the undisputed KING of the MMORPG world, nothing even comes slightly close.
Accounts isn't true. GW2 had sold 3.5M copies 1 year after launch and the Chinese preorders were 1.5M (those are the latest official numbers sadly), that is 5 million accounts and the game have sold more copies the last 2 years and after the Chinese preorders.
ESO should be somewhere around there as well but I don't have any official numbers for it besides the console version selling "millions".
Now, there is a huge difference between accounts and active players, Wow probably have 30 million accounts or so if you count the inactive as well but I am pretty sure that more than 1 million players logged in to both ESO and GW2 the last 30 days, maybe even twice that.
Neither is close to Wow yet but the question is if promises of a future expansion can stop the numbers from falling and when that expansion comes. I have no doubt that Wow will gain 30% or so players at least temporarily when the expansion comes out.
If the expansion does as badly as WoD did then we can talk who is the biggest MMO 9 months after release, in that case I wouldn't bet on Wow but right now it still reigns.
Do you understand that mmorpgs like ESO and GW2 probably have more players in the West than WoW now? WoW most likely has less than 2 million in the west, people you play with. This is a big deal man. WoW is no longer king of the west.
You've got to be kidding me. "Probably" is not the same as "Have".. This is what I mean when I say people go off assumptions.. neither of those games are close to wow's numbers. If they were they would tell everybody, nobody would hide surpassing WOW.. are you kidding?
GW2 and TESO are b2p.
All we know about TESO is that after the console launch it had "millions" of players - so at least 2.
GW2 - well enough reported copies sold in the west to surpass WoW but unlikely.
The really interesting comparison would be with Destiny. And from what AB have said Destiny may now be bigger than WoW. Tricky comparison so not going to spell it out - you need to read all the financial stuff.
I can confirm that Destiny has more unique monthly players than WoW from my contacts who see the actual monthly player metrics first hand. No I won't go into details obviously so you can treat this information as unsubstantiated rumor.
As far as GW2 and ESO numbers - not even close, again from inside sources - unsubstantiated rumor clause applies.
Oh no, please not this again.
May i politely suggest you leave your top secret sources, inside knowledge and x-files inside the Trion threads?
Does Blizzard not pay MMORPG.com for advertising or did they have some spat in the past?, they seem to hate WoW so much for some reason.
Plummet? There is no MMO on the market at all that has even 1 million accounts let alone 4-5 million. FFXIV for instance (even though mmorpg wrongly states it has) has never gone above 1 million.
WoW is the undisputed KING of the MMORPG world, nothing even comes slightly close.
There have been various titles which surpassed WoW even in terms of subs, but because of their strong asian heritage they remained relatively unknown and uninteresting to the western market.
Does Blizzard not pay MMORPG.com for advertising or did they have some spat in the past?, they seem to hate WoW so much for some reason.
Plummet? There is no MMO on the market at all that has even 1 million accounts let alone 4-5 million. FFXIV for instance (even though mmorpg wrongly states it has) has never gone above 1 million.
WoW is the undisputed KING of the MMORPG world, nothing even comes slightly close.
You're missing the point. It's not about absolute numbers. It's about WoW loosing half of its subs in just 2 quarters and no signs that this trend is about to diminish any time soon.
Sub figures for the next quarter will be bellow 4 million, you can be sure of that. This massive exodus happens not because the game has aged. The problems run much deeper with the most obvious one being patch 6.2 .
Apart from the Hellfire Citadel raid the rest is one big mindless grind-fest and the person or persons in Blizzard who believed that 6.2 could carry the game for a year or so should loose their jobs imho.
Does Blizzard not pay MMORPG.com for advertising or did they have some spat in the past?, they seem to hate WoW so much for some reason.
Plummet? There is no MMO on the market at all that has even 1 million accounts let alone 4-5 million. FFXIV for instance (even though mmorpg wrongly states it has) has never gone above 1 million.
WoW is the undisputed KING of the MMORPG world, nothing even comes slightly close.
You're missing the point. It's not about absolute numbers. It's about WoW loosing half of its subs in just 2 quarters and no signs that this trend is about to diminish any time soon.
Sub figures for the next quarter will be bellow 4 million, you can be sure of that. This massive exodus happens not because the game has aged. The problems run much deeper with the most obvious one being patch 6.2 .
Apart from the Hellfire Citadel raid the rest is one big mindless grind-fest and the person or persons in Blizzard who believed that 6.2 could carry the game for a year or so should loose their jobs imho.
Actually, their revenues rose by over $100 million and their profits doubled from $45 to $93 million, plus digital revenues were up 27% to $600 million or something ridiculous, so it's very much in a good place. They've figured out a way to "make due" with what they have. I remember when they were hiring monetization experts years ago, so it's not like they didn't see this coming.
Additionally, they'll be launching a new expansion, ohhhhhh, tomorrow, so problem solved. Subscriptions get reset to 10 million for the next couple years and then we are right back here again. Oh! Plus they'll have a movie coming out in 2016, so that's simply fodder for new users.
Does Blizzard not pay MMORPG.com for advertising or did they have some spat in the past?, they seem to hate WoW so much for some reason.
Plummet? There is no MMO on the market at all that has even 1 million accounts let alone 4-5 million. FFXIV for instance (even though mmorpg wrongly states it has) has never gone above 1 million.
WoW is the undisputed KING of the MMORPG world, nothing even comes slightly close.
You're missing the point. It's not about absolute numbers. It's about WoW loosing half of its subs in just 2 quarters and no signs that this trend is about to diminish any time soon.
Sub figures for the next quarter will be bellow 4 million, you can be sure of that. This massive exodus happens not because the game has aged. The problems run much deeper with the most obvious one being patch 6.2 .
Apart from the Hellfire Citadel raid the rest is one big mindless grind-fest and the person or persons in Blizzard who believed that 6.2 could carry the game for a year or so should loose their jobs imho.
Actually, their revenues rose by over $100 million and their profits doubled from $45 to $93 million, plus digital revenues were up 27% to $600 million or something ridiculous, so it's very much in a good place. They've figured out a way to "make due" with what they have. I remember when they were hiring monetization experts years ago, so it's not like they didn't see this coming.
Additionally, they'll be launching a new expansion, ohhhhhh, tomorrow, so problem solved. Subscriptions get reset to 10 million for the next couple years and then we are right back here again. Oh! Plus they'll have a movie coming out in 2016, so that's simply fodder for new users.
I doubt this expansion will boost subs up 45%, in fact, I'm pretty sure no expansion ever has done that for WoW. I'm guessing it might be around 8 million at the absolute max. In my opinion, WoD was their last chance, and it's been the most boring, dull and unbalanced expansion I have ever played.
I've been basically subbed every month since I started near the end of Cata. This is the only expansion I've played where I've had 0 interest in resubbing, or playing. I know what I can expect from the game. Broken PvP where brand new players beat veteran players just because of their class/comp. And a boring grinding PvE system with 15 different difficulties (aka timewasters) and linking your ilevel and achievements to raid leaders who don't know the game so once you get into a group, hours later, you wipe for hours and end up nowhere. PvErs are too concerned with the wrong numbers. There's been plenty of times just this expansion where I have to bring friends who are geared, just so I can get into the group, and then I out perform the entire group anyways and they all want to recruit me. What a fun game.
A lot of my friends that I've been playing with since Cata have completely stopped playing, a lot of my Gladiator friends have quit completely, and my hardcore PvE friends raid casually, or don't play at all.
They better really put everything they got into this next expansion, or it's basically over as far as I'm concerned.
When all is said and done, more is always said than done.
Does Blizzard not pay MMORPG.com for advertising or did they have some spat in the past?, they seem to hate WoW so much for some reason.
Plummet? There is no MMO on the market at all that has even 1 million accounts let alone 4-5 million. FFXIV for instance (even though mmorpg wrongly states it has) has never gone above 1 million.
WoW is the undisputed KING of the MMORPG world, nothing even comes slightly close.
You're missing the point. It's not about absolute numbers. It's about WoW loosing half of its subs in just 2 quarters and no signs that this trend is about to diminish any time soon.
Sub figures for the next quarter will be bellow 4 million, you can be sure of that. This massive exodus happens not because the game has aged. The problems run much deeper with the most obvious one being patch 6.2 .
Apart from the Hellfire Citadel raid the rest is one big mindless grind-fest and the person or persons in Blizzard who believed that 6.2 could carry the game for a year or so should loose their jobs imho.
Actually, their revenues rose by over $100 million and their profits doubled from $45 to $93 million, plus digital revenues were up 27% to $600 million or something ridiculous, so it's very much in a good place. They've figured out a way to "make due" with what they have. I remember when they were hiring monetization experts years ago, so it's not like they didn't see this coming.
Additionally, they'll be launching a new expansion, ohhhhhh, tomorrow, so problem solved. Subscriptions get reset to 10 million for the next couple years and then we are right back here again. Oh! Plus they'll have a movie coming out in 2016, so that's simply fodder for new users.
I doubt this expansion will boost subs up 45%, in fact, I'm pretty sure no expansion ever has done that for WoW. I'm guessing it might be around 8 million at the absolute max. In my opinion, WoD was their last chance, and it's been the most boring, dull and unbalanced expansion I have ever played.
I've been basically subbed every month since I started near the end of Cata. This is the only expansion I've played where I've had 0 interest in resubbing, or playing. I know what I can expect from the game. Broken PvP where brand new players beat veteran players just because of their class/comp. And a boring grinding PvE system with 15 different difficulties (aka timewasters) and linking your ilevel and achievements to raid leaders who don't know the game so once you get into a group, hours later, you wipe for hours and end up nowhere. PvErs are too concerned with the wrong numbers. There's been plenty of times just this expansion where I have to bring friends who are geared, just so I can get into the group, and then I out perform the entire group anyways and they all want to recruit me. What a fun game.
A lot of my friends that I've been playing with since Cata have completely stopped playing, a lot of my Gladiator friends have quit completely, and my hardcore PvE friends raid casually, or don't play at all.
They better really put everything they got into this next expansion, or it's basically over as far as I'm concerned.
I totally agree. This expansion has been pretty horrible. I don't play PvP, so idc about that, really, but I've heard it's bad. However, the PvE gear grind seems worse than ever and crafting is so far from viable that I all but gave up on it. So many problems. SO many. WoW IS on a decline, for sure, but not to the extent that we used to (still do sometimes) think. Take a look at this article from 2013. It actually has some pretty interesting data. Where WoD bucked this trend is that it hit a high watermark around 10 million subs, which hasn't been done since Cata launch when the whole decline began. What it shows is that WoW is still a viable IP. What they really need to figure out is their release velocity. 2 years just isn't cutting it anymore. Where is that sweet spot? Not sure, but I think they probably have more numbers on this than I do. Certainly, I'd be willing to be that if there was an annual expansion release, people would play it more consistently and they wouldn't be dropping subs the same way.
Oh! One more thing they could do is not make the game more crappy each release
Does Blizzard not pay MMORPG.com for advertising or did they have some spat in the past?, they seem to hate WoW so much for some reason.
Plummet? There is no MMO on the market at all that has even 1 million accounts let alone 4-5 million. FFXIV for instance (even though mmorpg wrongly states it has) has never gone above 1 million.
WoW is the undisputed KING of the MMORPG world, nothing even comes slightly close.
You're missing the point. It's not about absolute numbers. It's about WoW loosing half of its subs in just 2 quarters and no signs that this trend is about to diminish any time soon.
Sub figures for the next quarter will be bellow 4 million, you can be sure of that. This massive exodus happens not because the game has aged. The problems run much deeper with the most obvious one being patch 6.2 .
Apart from the Hellfire Citadel raid the rest is one big mindless grind-fest and the person or persons in Blizzard who believed that 6.2 could carry the game for a year or so should loose their jobs imho.
Actually, their revenues rose by over $100 million and their profits doubled from $45 to $93 million, plus digital revenues were up 27% to $600 million or something ridiculous, so it's very much in a good place. They've figured out a way to "make due" with what they have. I remember when they were hiring monetization experts years ago, so it's not like they didn't see this coming.
Additionally, they'll be launching a new expansion, ohhhhhh, tomorrow, so problem solved. Subscriptions get reset to 10 million for the next couple years and then we are right back here again. Oh! Plus they'll have a movie coming out in 2016, so that's simply fodder for new users.
WoW's revenue is down every year now.
1+ billion from -> 2009-2013
700 millions -> 2014
Will it even reach 500 millions in 2015? Doubt so.
Actually, their revenues rose by over $100 million and their profits doubled from $45 to $93 million, plus digital revenues were up 27% to $600 million or something ridiculous, so it's very much in a good place. They've figured out a way to "make due" with what they have. I remember when they were hiring monetization experts years ago, so it's not like they didn't see this coming.
To be absolutely clear. Yes AB reported increased profits for their portfolio of games - not WoW. WoW's revenue was down; a lot - 40% or so. And by inference profit will to. And there is a huge chunk of negative deferred revenue reflecting - perhaps - 4M+ months of tokens still to be activated. Either way: even less money.
So - if you ran AB which games would you spend your money on. The dynamic new comers that are propelling profits forward. Or the aging war horse, still going but looking long in the tooth? To me everything that AB reported yesterday suggested that they were preparing investors for - life after WoW is to strong but certainly a WoW-lite future.
What I seen from the WoD boost in subs, were a bunch of people who haven't played in years, coming back and giving it their last shot. And we seen how well that's done for them.
I know people who work for Blizzard, and they seriously think that the game is fine, which is why I'm really not interested in the next expansion. It's kind of like working for Google/Youtube or whatever. When the subscriptions keep dropping in the millions, we will see how fine the game was when they're getting massive layoffs.
Of course, Blizzard is still fine, and even without WoW, will be fine. They have a lot of newer/unreleased games that are doing very well, like Hearthstone.
When all is said and done, more is always said than done.
Going by experince this is actually pretty normal. As long as you look at the curve it self and not the numbers. City of Heroes had pretty much the same curve with a top in to a clear decline of players with a new spike each expansion that in turn lost players faster and faster by each one.
So this is actually very much the norm It only looks worse because they lost half the population of new york (or more relevant.. more players than most games see in a lifetime. ) but the cure is pretty normal, heck it might even be better than average considering the age of the game.. But seeing how few MMO´s that are 10+ years and still active with a sub.. it is hard to say.
Despite all the doom and gloom here the best part is Blizzard is still ridiculously profitable. They're making more than expected off Hearthstone and increased player engagement and more off other titles than expected. There are a metric ton of people playing Destiny, much to my surprise. D3 is up to over 30 million copies sold, etc. HotS has already beaten out Smite. Overwatch is on the way. WoW subs were going to decline sooner or later. Company is still doing great.
Going by experince this is actually pretty normal. As long as you look at the curve it self and not the numbers. City of Heroes had pretty much the same curve with a top in to a clear decline of players with a new spike each expansion that in turn lost players faster and faster by each one.
So this is actually very much the norm It only looks worse because they lost half the population of new york (or more relevant.. more players than most games see in a lifetime. ) but the cure is pretty normal, heck it might even be better than average considering the age of the game.. But seeing how few MMO´s that are 10+ years and still active with a sub.. it is hard to say.
The curve isn't normal at all actually. WoD actually showed their biggest spike in the shortest amount of time. It then showed their biggest dropoff in the shortest amount of time. And directly after this graph, at 5.6 million, it drops off even more. 2015 hasn't been typical for WoW at all.
Originally posted by Nephaerius Despite all the doom and gloom here the best part is Blizzard is still ridiculously profitable. They're making more than expected off Hearthstone and increased player engagement as well as more off other titles than expected. D3 is up to over 30 million copies sold, etc. WoW subs were going to decline sooner or later. Company is still doing great.
Okay, but since I'm not an investor I don't really care too much about how their other games are doing. The board of directors can pat themselves on the back and hand out bonus checks to each other, but what will happen to WoW if the subscribers continue to leave in large numbers? I think that's the concern.
Well you might want to care about those other titles as they may determine the fate of WoW. If they happened to be profitable enough WoW servers could stay online forever. What will happen to WoW is the same thing that happens to any other game that's lived past its time. It's either shutdown or moved into maintenance mode. Things get old and they die. This is the natural order of life. Then we will finally get Warcraft 4 and/or a WoW sequel.
Regardless, 5.6 million subs is nothing to sneeze at ($85 million/month?). Especially considering, despite the claims in this thread, the majority of their sub losses were actually in the Asian market so this is a decrease perhaps due to more accurate reporting of sub numbers over time. WoW's not going any where any time soon.
What I seen from the WoD boost in subs, were a bunch of people who haven't played in years, coming back and giving it their last shot. And we seen how well that's done for them.
I know people who work for Blizzard, and they seriously think that the game is fine, which is why I'm really not interested in the next expansion. It's kind of like working for Google/Youtube or whatever. When the subscriptions keep dropping in the millions, we will see how fine the game was when they're getting massive layoffs.
Of course, Blizzard is still fine, and even without WoW, will be fine. They have a lot of newer/unreleased games that are doing very well, like Hearthstone.
Its engirely likely that people will come back for the expansion, and after a month or two, leave again, its entirely probable that come the next expansion that subscriber figures will be up to 10m+ again, and then a month later, they'll drop off like crazy, and 3+ months afterwards, be back down to the present figure again, what Blizzard need to do, is figure out a way of getting people to stay longer, obviously having their own instanced little 'garrison' wasn't the way to achieve this, but i wouldn't write the game off just yet, Blizzard might actually come up with a solution to that particular problem
Comments
Pretty much this indeed. Though I think the upcoming expansion(s) might win a lot of these player back, I think it's clear that WoW is starting at it's 'end-of-life' cycle.
Eventually even Blizzard will have to accept WOW is an old game, who says they haven't already? They've made a killing off the title, it would seem rather amateur of them to go full blown panic mode over an inevitable reality. At some point WOW is going to become obsolete. Many titles have seen a surge in popularity (FFXIV, GW2, ESO, etc..), many other types of games are extremely popular (MOBA, lobby MMOS). The greater the exposure for these titles the more they're going to take from the WOW pie. That's simply the way of what is trending....
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
In her editorial - World of Boredom - SBFord suggested that tokens and people holding on for 6.2 would help the Q2 number but as a result of the overwhelming disappointment felt by players with 6.2 the telling subscription number would be Q3. And I find it hard to disagree.
And anyone who has even looked at the official forums will have seen the waves of anger over 6.2 in particular. And now "RIP" threads; "many" posters saying they are leaving - no way to put it into context of course but there has been no positive vibe for many months now.
Which all adds credence to SBFord's view that the telling sub number will be Q3's. Under 4M must look a real possibility now.
Still surprise. I had before launch of WOD as always full set of 22 alts. Now I have barely 4, lost all interest after barely 1 month of gameplay of WOD. Actually, have resubbed 3 weeks ago, but still not sure if will continue. With all previous expansions I have been subbed for at least half year after release, resubbing from time to time for few months. Not anymore as it looks.
Does Blizzard not pay MMORPG.com for advertising or did they have some spat in the past?, they seem to hate WoW so much for some reason.
Plummet? There is no MMO on the market at all that has even 1 million accounts let alone 4-5 million. FFXIV for instance (even though mmorpg wrongly states it has) has never gone above 1 million.
WoW is the undisputed KING of the MMORPG world, nothing even comes slightly close.
Can you explain?
want 7 free days of playing? Try this
http://www.swtor.com/r/ZptVnY
For months I was reading and hearing that this wow expansion was the great thing was ever made when even with no flying will bring people back, but look how a 180 turn as people now say was the worst expansion ever. lol
I now see why there dropping a new expansion so quick now, but anyhow wow is not dieing there running ideas to keep mass amount of people in 1 place.
The difference is this time they lost a huge number of players early on because of the Ghostcrawler style decision making they did when they released this last expansion. Things like not fixing the absolute hurrendous mess he made of beloved class specs like Affliction Warlocks or BM Hunters and then add to that fact that in order to see new content you're locked behind a tier 3 Garrison before you can move on in the Arc storyline it's pretty terrible leadership imo. If it continues to drop they are going to be in serious trouble because no they cannot support their empire on 300k members, that's just not going to work at Blizzard. Maybe it's time they dealt with some serious problems in their decision making process for a change instead of just ignoring them?
Accounts isn't true. GW2 had sold 3.5M copies 1 year after launch and the Chinese preorders were 1.5M (those are the latest official numbers sadly), that is 5 million accounts and the game have sold more copies the last 2 years and after the Chinese preorders.
ESO should be somewhere around there as well but I don't have any official numbers for it besides the console version selling "millions".
Now, there is a huge difference between accounts and active players, Wow probably have 30 million accounts or so if you count the inactive as well but I am pretty sure that more than 1 million players logged in to both ESO and GW2 the last 30 days, maybe even twice that.
Neither is close to Wow yet but the question is if promises of a future expansion can stop the numbers from falling and when that expansion comes. I have no doubt that Wow will gain 30% or so players at least temporarily when the expansion comes out.
If the expansion does as badly as WoD did then we can talk who is the biggest MMO 9 months after release, in that case I wouldn't bet on Wow but right now it still reigns.
Oh no, please not this again.
May i politely suggest you leave your top secret sources, inside knowledge and x-files inside the Trion threads?
There have been various titles which surpassed WoW even in terms of subs, but because of their strong asian heritage they remained relatively unknown and uninteresting to the western market.
You're missing the point. It's not about absolute numbers. It's about WoW loosing half of its subs in just 2 quarters and no signs that this trend is about to diminish any time soon.
Sub figures for the next quarter will be bellow 4 million, you can be sure of that. This massive exodus happens not because the game has aged. The problems run much deeper with the most obvious one being patch 6.2 .
Apart from the Hellfire Citadel raid the rest is one big mindless grind-fest and the person or persons in Blizzard who believed that 6.2 could carry the game for a year or so should loose their jobs imho.
Actually, their revenues rose by over $100 million and their profits doubled from $45 to $93 million, plus digital revenues were up 27% to $600 million or something ridiculous, so it's very much in a good place. They've figured out a way to "make due" with what they have. I remember when they were hiring monetization experts years ago, so it's not like they didn't see this coming.
Additionally, they'll be launching a new expansion, ohhhhhh, tomorrow, so problem solved. Subscriptions get reset to 10 million for the next couple years and then we are right back here again. Oh! Plus they'll have a movie coming out in 2016, so that's simply fodder for new users.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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I doubt this expansion will boost subs up 45%, in fact, I'm pretty sure no expansion ever has done that for WoW. I'm guessing it might be around 8 million at the absolute max. In my opinion, WoD was their last chance, and it's been the most boring, dull and unbalanced expansion I have ever played.
I've been basically subbed every month since I started near the end of Cata. This is the only expansion I've played where I've had 0 interest in resubbing, or playing. I know what I can expect from the game. Broken PvP where brand new players beat veteran players just because of their class/comp. And a boring grinding PvE system with 15 different difficulties (aka timewasters) and linking your ilevel and achievements to raid leaders who don't know the game so once you get into a group, hours later, you wipe for hours and end up nowhere. PvErs are too concerned with the wrong numbers. There's been plenty of times just this expansion where I have to bring friends who are geared, just so I can get into the group, and then I out perform the entire group anyways and they all want to recruit me. What a fun game.
A lot of my friends that I've been playing with since Cata have completely stopped playing, a lot of my Gladiator friends have quit completely, and my hardcore PvE friends raid casually, or don't play at all.
They better really put everything they got into this next expansion, or it's basically over as far as I'm concerned.
I totally agree. This expansion has been pretty horrible. I don't play PvP, so idc about that, really, but I've heard it's bad. However, the PvE gear grind seems worse than ever and crafting is so far from viable that I all but gave up on it. So many problems. SO many. WoW IS on a decline, for sure, but not to the extent that we used to (still do sometimes) think. Take a look at this article from 2013. It actually has some pretty interesting data. Where WoD bucked this trend is that it hit a high watermark around 10 million subs, which hasn't been done since Cata launch when the whole decline began. What it shows is that WoW is still a viable IP. What they really need to figure out is their release velocity. 2 years just isn't cutting it anymore. Where is that sweet spot? Not sure, but I think they probably have more numbers on this than I do. Certainly, I'd be willing to be that if there was an annual expansion release, people would play it more consistently and they wouldn't be dropping subs the same way.
Oh! One more thing they could do is not make the game more crappy each release
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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WoW's revenue is down every year now.
1+ billion from -> 2009-2013
700 millions -> 2014
Will it even reach 500 millions in 2015? Doubt so.
To be absolutely clear. Yes AB reported increased profits for their portfolio of games - not WoW. WoW's revenue was down; a lot - 40% or so. And by inference profit will to. And there is a huge chunk of negative deferred revenue reflecting - perhaps - 4M+ months of tokens still to be activated. Either way: even less money.
So - if you ran AB which games would you spend your money on. The dynamic new comers that are propelling profits forward. Or the aging war horse, still going but looking long in the tooth? To me everything that AB reported yesterday suggested that they were preparing investors for - life after WoW is to strong but certainly a WoW-lite future.
What I seen from the WoD boost in subs, were a bunch of people who haven't played in years, coming back and giving it their last shot. And we seen how well that's done for them.
I know people who work for Blizzard, and they seriously think that the game is fine, which is why I'm really not interested in the next expansion. It's kind of like working for Google/Youtube or whatever. When the subscriptions keep dropping in the millions, we will see how fine the game was when they're getting massive layoffs.
Of course, Blizzard is still fine, and even without WoW, will be fine. They have a lot of newer/unreleased games that are doing very well, like Hearthstone.
Going by experince this is actually pretty normal. As long as you look at the curve it self and not the numbers. City of Heroes had pretty much the same curve with a top in to a clear decline of players with a new spike each expansion that in turn lost players faster and faster by each one.
So this is actually very much the norm It only looks worse because they lost half the population of new york (or more relevant.. more players than most games see in a lifetime. ) but the cure is pretty normal, heck it might even be better than average considering the age of the game.. But seeing how few MMO´s that are 10+ years and still active with a sub.. it is hard to say.
This have been a good conversation
Steam: Neph
The curve isn't normal at all actually. WoD actually showed their biggest spike in the shortest amount of time. It then showed their biggest dropoff in the shortest amount of time. And directly after this graph, at 5.6 million, it drops off even more. 2015 hasn't been typical for WoW at all.
Well you might want to care about those other titles as they may determine the fate of WoW. If they happened to be profitable enough WoW servers could stay online forever. What will happen to WoW is the same thing that happens to any other game that's lived past its time. It's either shutdown or moved into maintenance mode. Things get old and they die. This is the natural order of life. Then we will finally get Warcraft 4 and/or a WoW sequel.
Regardless, 5.6 million subs is nothing to sneeze at ($85 million/month?). Especially considering, despite the claims in this thread, the majority of their sub losses were actually in the Asian market so this is a decrease perhaps due to more accurate reporting of sub numbers over time. WoW's not going any where any time soon.
Edit: changed 850 to 85
Steam: Neph
Its engirely likely that people will come back for the expansion, and after a month or two, leave again, its entirely probable that come the next expansion that subscriber figures will be up to 10m+ again, and then a month later, they'll drop off like crazy, and 3+ months afterwards, be back down to the present figure again, what Blizzard need to do, is figure out a way of getting people to stay longer, obviously having their own instanced little 'garrison' wasn't the way to achieve this, but i wouldn't write the game off just yet, Blizzard might actually come up with a solution to that particular problem