World of Warcraft down to 7.7M subscribers (600K decline in 3 months)

M

maniac-kun

Member
For the quarter, Activision Blizzard was the #1 independent publisher in North America and Europe combined, including accessory packs and figures, with the #1 and #2 best-selling titles year-to-date– Skylanders Giants™ and Call of Duty: Black Ops II.¹ Additionally, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft® remained the world's #1 subscription-based MMORPG, ending the quarter with approximately 7.7 million subscribers.

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Subscriber Definition: World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.
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http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/07/26/world-of-warcraft-down-to-7-7m-subscribers/

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World of Warcraft is officially down to less subscribers than it had at the end of Vanilla, but before the Burning Crusade
 
This'll be why a lot of servers have become ghost towns and people are huddling together on the busier servers. Needs some serious merging soon to fix this.
 
It is truly incredible they have kept it going for nearly 10 years. The worrying thing is that there is nothing new in the horizon.
 
Robin64 said:
This'll be why a lot of servers have become ghost towns and people are huddling together on the busier servers. Needs some serious merging soon to fix this.
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Virtual realms are coming with the next patch. It's almost like merging: you can see, trade with, play with, raid with and even guild with players from other realms.
 
Robin64 said:
This'll be why a lot of servers have become ghost towns and people are huddling together on the busier servers. Needs some serious merging soon to fix this.
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They're doing that cross realm zone thing for multiple realms. Basically server merges without actually merging servers.
 
_woLf said:
.

Every other developer could only dream of having 7.7 million people paying 15 dollars a month for that kind of content. This isn't a big deal at all.
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Yes! But it could of been 10 million. Those yachts will have to forgo their usual gold guilding.
 
_woLf said:
.

Every other developer could only dream of having 7.7 million people paying 15 dollars a month for that kind of content. This isn't a big deal at all.
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In China it is under $5/month, and they have to share that revenue with NetEase (I think I heard it's a 50/50 revenue split?).
 
That's still a freaking lot, especially for a genre where F2P is becoming the norm.
I would never be able to get in to the game again though, I had my fun in Beta->TBC->WotLK but the game is way too outdated nowdays.

WoW used to have some of the best MMO PvP and talent trees. That was before arenas, resillience and the big talent make.
 
With the real money vanity item store going in-game, and with actual progression-related items going for sale on that store as well as a bevy of new items, it's probably going to go for a Guild Wars 2 only-pay-for-the-box model pretty time soon.
 
Still a lot of subscribers compared to any other MMO, but that's still a pretty major drop and the trend shows little sign of reversing (though I guess a new xpac will bump numbers up temporarily).
 
Makes sense why they are selling those hats for such large sums of money, they are trying to make up for lost subscribers moolah.

I found Mists of Pandaria to be a decent expansion, far better than the shit that was Cataclysm. But the game no longer has a pull over people, what was once called "World of WarCrack" is now that game you log into, jump a few times around Orgrimmar and log out, because you do not really want to play it anymore.

The game will still go on, so fans who still play do not have to worry, i can easily see 3 more expansions
 
Truly fascinating how many still play this game, despite decreasing in subscribers monthly. The decrease really has nothing to do with MoP, the expansion itself, but rather the fact that this game is nearly 10 years old - and people are noticing it now. If this was during 4.3 Cataclysm, WoW would've probably been down to 5 mil subs.
 
Bliz should do something insanely jaw dropping to keep people playing for the next 10 years ..... Like World of Warcraft 2.
 
MoP was a decent expansion. Better than Cataclysm, but they really made it hard as hell for alts. It's like they can't get that balance right. The most I ever played WoW was during Wrath. Say what you want about that expansion, but there was a lot of crap to do on a regular basis. On top of that, I did a lot of PUG raiding. It was just a lot of fun.

Hopefully they'll get the balance right in the next expansion. That said, I still play WoW and I'm about to log in a play a bit now. Heh, heh.
 
EDarkness said:
MoP was a decent expansion. Better than Cataclysm, but they really made it hard as hell for alts. It's like they can't get that balance right. The most I ever played WoW was during Wrath. Say what you want about that expansion, but there was a lot of crap to do on a regular basis. On top of that, I did a lot of PUG raiding. It was just a lot of fun.

Hopefully they'll get the balance right in the next expansion. That said, I still play WoW and I'm about to log in a play a bit now. Heh, heh.
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Wrath was the peak of WoW, even if did make a lot things easier at the same time.

I've been playing since Vanilla and I had the must fun during Wrath, although BC is a very close second. Vanilla was fun too, but that's more because of nostalgia reasons than anything.
 
It is absolutely insane to think about this in the scale of years....2006 levels? 2006 january was when I started playing WoW. SEVEN YEARS AGO! A whole console generation has passed, and WoW changed so much, so many times in that timeframe that it feels like an eternity.

I still remember nodding in appreciation of all the small things that were modified for convenience's sake (like not needing to click on all the flight paths between point A and B, but simply choosing the end point :D), and somewhere along the line, the freshness, the feeling of "oh, this world kinda has some mystery to it, still" slowly started to evaporate.

And it is amazing to think that that sense of mystery was summoned back to WoW many times. Ulduar, some of the WotlK content, Mists quests/zones/rare stuff....*sigh*

/respect

Edit: Do we remember it all? Taming elite mobs? Arrows, quiver slots, relics, WEAPON SKILL? No teleports outside of mages? Going to Scarlet Monastery on foot starting from Arathi Highlands? Farming 0,1% dragonlings? Or the 0,1% per 1% in bag Oozes? Puke-inducing gankfest all around the world from STV to Arathi? Gathering CLOTH equipment for my moonkin and getting discriminated for choosing that spec? :P
 
Yoshichan said:
Truly fascinating how many still play this game, despite decreasing in subscribers monthly. The decrease really has nothing to do with MoP, the expansion itself, but rather the fact that this game is nearly 10 years old - and people are noticing it now. If this was during 4.3 Cataclysm, WoW would've probably been down to 5 mil subs.
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I'm really worried about how Blizzard will handle the whole Siege of Orgrimmar -> next XPack period. If we get almost a year with zero meaningfull content (like we had with ICC and DS), subscribers will drop like flies, and we'll be below 5 millions by the time the next expansion is released.
 
V_Arnold said:
It is absolutely insane to think about this in the scale of years....2006 levels? 2006 january was when I started playing WoW. SEVEN YEARS AGO! A whole console generation has passed, and WoW changed so much, so many times in that timeframe that it feels like an eternity.

I still remember nodding in appreciation of all the small things that were modified for convenience's sake (like not needing to click on all the flight paths between point A and B, but simply choosing the end point :D), and somewhere along the line, the freshness, the feeling of "oh, this world kinda has some mystery to it, still" slowly started to evaporate.

And it is amazing to think that that sense of mystery was summoned back to WoW many times. Ulduar, some of the WotlK content, Mists quests/zones/rare stuff....*sigh*

/respect
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The internet slowly destroyed the mystery WoW had. Back in Vanilla, you had things very few players knew. The world was pretty much a mystery. Veteran players used to tell their experience to newer players etc

Nowadays, everything is leaked even before the newest patch goes live. You can lookup anything with wowhead. You can track anything.

The mystery is gone.
 
WoW wore out its welcome around 4 or 5 years ago for me. Mists of Pandaria was good but the formula really can't hold my attention anymore once I hit the level cap and see all of the zones. I've been sitting back and watching the MMO genre for awhile now, waiting for something new and fresh to come along. I've got my fingers crossed for EQN but SOE doesn't have the best track record.
 
Chittagong said:
Exactly. Development was rebooted a month ago. So essentially they have nothing else in the next few years than another expansion pack for WoW, which is worrying, there is no reason to believe the expansion pack would substantially reverse the decline at this point.
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Yeah that is very worrying. I'd say there were a lot of pissed of employees when they decided to start from scratch
 
Peak of Vanilla: Logging in every 30 minutes with my undead warrior, hiding in bushes, ganking the alliance by activating mf-ing recklessness.

Peak of TBC: AFK-honor-farming in the AV battlegrounds. I had like 40 of those Wolf PvP mounts.

Peak of Wrath: Wrath? LOL (played this expansion the most, but all my brain can remember was that it was all about badges of this, badges of that).

Peak of Cataclysm: Flying around Azeroth, seeing how my most beloved video-game world had turned into this disaster.

Peak of Mists of Pandaria: Setting the alarm with the label "DO NOT FORGET TO PUT SEEDS AND WATER THEM!". Also, Galleon... 48+ hours of no sleep, camping this asshole. Multiple times a month.
V_Arnold said:
I
Edit: Do we remember it all? Taming elite mobs? Arrows, quiver slots, relics, WEAPON SKILL? No teleports outside of mages? Going to Scarlet Monastery on foot starting from Arathi Highlands? Farming 0,1% dragonlings? Or the 0,1% per 1% in bag Oozes? Puke-inducing gankfest all around the world from STV to Arathi? Gathering CLOTH equipment for my moonkin and getting discriminated for choosing that spec? :P
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I remember it all.
 
Closing in on 9 years and it still has millions of subscribers. Well done.

Just wish we could've gotten some Titan news at this year's BlizzCon. Oh well.
 
Pandaria is so good that I wonder what this could've been at if they didn't fuck up cata so bad.

But still, this many people for that long is fucking phenomenal.
 
Vanilla WoW was the best WoW.

Yeah you didn't get things done as fast, there was more grinding and things could take long for certain quest....but you had world PVP, you had a lot more social interaction. You had a sense of community and you had a sense of wonder. You explored, you wanted to know what was over that next hill. Get your first mount? That was an achievement in itself! Get an epic mount? Holy crap you were the hot shit.

If you were a MC raider, you had cred.
 
liezryou said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Blizzard_Entertainment_project)
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On May 28, 2013, it was reported that development on the project had been essentially rebooted, with seventy percent of the team moving to other Blizzard projects and the release date delayed until at least 2016. Blizzard spokesperson Shon Damron confirmed the development status, stating that the remaining core developers would be working to accommodate new technology into the game.[1] Blizzard themselves have not actually announced any dates.
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Holy fuck. Sounds like they have another Diablo 3 on their hands.
 
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