Earnings Report: Hell on the Rise, Azeroth in Decline

[nodlimax]

WoWs subs took quite a beating this quarter. In addition Diablo 3 may have sold well, but a VERY high percentage have stopped playing the game already (I'd say way over 80% - check xfire stats for july for example).

Blizzard lost quite a bite of good reputation with Cataclysm and Diablo 3 and I highly doubt that the WoW subs will go back up to it's original numbrs with MoP. Maybe they'll go back to 10m for a short while, but they'll go down even further afterwards. Trust me, WoW is finally slowly dieing.

Blizzard destroyed its own Community in WoW with all that casual crap they pulled out of their a****.

This stuff started at the end of Burning Crusade with the LFG tool and went on with dumbing down the game mechanics, providing more and more content for solo players and finally basically sealing WoWs fate with the LFR tool.

Today it's not even necessary anymore to communicate with anyone in WoW. You can do anything "solo" (pvp, instance, raids, questing). Other players are only seen as opponents that could roll on "your" gear. WoW has become a game for "loners" and selfcentered a-holes.

The veteran players have mostly left the game and for the most part they wont return. It's mostly casual players that are still playing WoW (or real die hard WoW fanboys/-girls) and if they're bored with the game they'll leave quickly.

In the past the players that left the game were quickly replaced by new ones. This time is over. WoW has reached it's peak long ago and the numbers of leaving players is far higher than the number of returning or newly beginning players.

 

[Danial]

...And in 2 months or sooner watch the number shoot back up (not to 12million, the days of that are over) when mists comes out, all the people who are bored of D3 come back for new content after being stuck with one 8 boss raid for 7 months. WoW is still amazingly, not dead, the phase "only 9 million people" is so bad it honestly confuses me, ONLY 9 million people pay £9 a month? Wow, poor Blizzard, Name one other MMO that would not cut off its own foot for that kind of money incoming, not counting the 10million copies of another game you sell, or all of the £15 race/sex/Faction changes you sell a month, or the pets/Mounts that sell in the millions when you can be arsed to code one.

WoW is still fine, is this the decline? yes, it will never get to 12 million again, and will probably go down hill slowly for the next few years, Is it the Death? No, Don't be stupid. All even at its lowest in some years, its still well above everyone else in its Field and worst comes to worst, It goes fremium and wins all over again, or Titan.


*Edited for anger, The MMO champ which i was reading for...some reason forums make me hate humanity

Now, after a deep breath. As someone who is part of that 1.1Million who quit, i get annoyed when its considered its dead over one report. My guild is currently down from 140 Active member's too 40, yet a recent poll on the forums found that all par 5 are coming back, some as soon as the 5.0 Prelauch patch. Its impossible to judge WoW this late in the expansion as for the first time in a long time, Nothing has been added to keep people from the last Major raid too the next expansion happy or content. No quests, events, raids nothing. 4.3 came out. Nothing else. Then Diablo came out, its a not a problem or a sign of death when you're biggest rival is a game you yourself made.

 

[saruman31]

Some time after MoP launches WoW will go f2p. Blizz wants to release a new mmo anyway.

 

[Pearwood]

Diablo 3 defies all logic on so many different levels. No one in their right mind should have bought this game. Those who did were treated to exactly what they were warned of. Only problem is that by the time they realized it, the damage had already been done and they made entirely more money than a game built around making a profit for having its players play it should have never been rewarded.

I've heard stuff like this a lot. What am I supposed to be pissed off about in Diablo 3? It's a dungeon crawler, it's quite a lot more challenging than I was expecting (in fact the farthest I got was the start of act 2, just killed the boss in act 1 then promptly died to 2 uniques that spawned a bit too close to one another. Was only my second character though), it looks pretty, new auction house and shared stash means I'm not starting over completely when a character dies which is nice.

 

[Morganan]

Psst, not to let facts get in the way of a story but lets do some math here. If WoW had 9.1 million subscribers minimum during the last quarter at $15.00 each, the quarterly revenue for that period would be $409.5M alone. If you use $14.00 as the base subscription price to account for currency values and longer term subscription discounts it comes out to $382.2M the only question left to ask is did CoD3 DLC lose them $66M or $39M in revenue? If you assume CoD3 DLC brought in $100M, and assume a $14.00 price as the average monthly fee, that gives you just shy of 6M subscribers. Still an impressive number mind you, but that means the publicly released numbers are being inflated by over a third and nobody is calling them on it.

"Subscribers" in this context are accounts that incur a monthly, quarterly or yearly fee, stop counting accounts that don't fall into that definition, such as China's customers who don't use a "subscription model" to play WoW.

Want this stuff to be considered "news"? Start using real numbers and not the BS numbers they feed the idiots to dumb to do 10 minutes of research.

 

[viranimus]

Snip for space

Hell just look at the impossibility of server populations vs server numbers. The numbers are made out of air and defy any sort of logic or reason. Heres an example At its height of supposed 12 million subs, how many servers were there? 500? Every estimate I have seen suggests closer to 250, but we will go ahead and assume 500 for the sake of this example. So that comes to what? An average of twenty four thousand concurrent active subscribers per server. Eve Online puts one active server for roughly 50k... and thats pretty much raw text. Now imagine doing that on a server that must also house an infinitely deeper package of assets. No other MMO has even remotely tried to claim anything near that figure, with the average MMO even back in the days of EQ coming in at around 5000 per server. Even with modern Architecture some have claimed to have pushed upwards of 7000, but 24000 is absolutely absurd. Looking at populations all you have to do is comparative exploration. Look at the number of people you see running around at any given time in densely populated areas such as Hubs. Averages still come in at 200-400 people, If wow actually had anywhere near the figure it claims, the hubs would be packed with closer to 2-4K people you would not be able to step 4 feet without tripping over someone else, Lag would be unbearable and render the game completely unplayable. and that is still with comparing to other highly instanced games.

Simple logic and deductive reasoning.

You suggest Blizzard cant afford to lie? Im pretty sure when your raking in billions per quarter you can pretty much afford to do whatever you damned well please. Actually that is illustrated by the existence of diablo 3.


As for your argument on LOL.. I wouldnt care if your right. Not really interested in what is actually popular. However by the definitions of your reasoning, your argument is flawed. LOL has subscribers. Every individual user is a subscriber entered into a license agreement. http://na.leagueoflegends.com/legal/termsofuse

Just because its free doesnt mean it isnt a subscription. You can subscribe to all sorts of free things such as newsletters. In the case of LOL you subscribe to a free, Limited use license. So im afraid this falls flat.

Others may have said it before, but it does not make it less true. The end of Wow has begun. Blizzard will not be able to reach some new untapped market that they have yet to failed to exploit. They will not resurrect their subscription losses. From here on in it will be a slow downward spiral of subscriptions. There is no viable way to fully revitalize the game. It falls prey to the same problem EVERY old MMO has fallen to. Its anchored to a fixed point in time. The base code was written, and it has been repeatedly modified to accommodate new changes. However that base code dictates what changes can be made. Thats why you have only seen modest graphical improvements over the years in WOW. To keep the game fully vibrant and relevant it would require constant complete overhaul, and if a company is going to do that (which Blizzard attempted and failed pretty miserably, at least from a sales/sub standpoint. Code its fairly solid.) they are just as likely to start over from scratch with a fresh code base that bypasses the need for half assed work arounds. Thats why EQ2, Lineage 2, FFXIV, Champions Online (thought not exactly a sequel) and really even PROJECT TITAN exist.

The game will never be any "better" than it has already been. All that is left now is for the vultures that are up and coming MMOs to pick Wows carcass clean, Including PROJECT TITAN.

So sorry.. you can claim tin foil hat, or specious reasoning, but really do you have any actual substantiation to support this chart other than "Blizzard said so"? Given they still to this day dont release server numbers, does that not at least cast the shadow of doubt?

 

[Jaeke]

Blizzard destroyed its own Community in WoW with all that casual crap they pulled out of their a****.

This stuff started at the end of Burning Crusade with theLFG tool and went on with dumbing down the game mechanics, providing more and more content for solo players and finally basically sealing WoWs fate with the LFR tool.

Today it's not even necessary anymore to communicate with anyone in WoW. You can do anything "solo" (pvp, instance, raids, questing). Other players are only seen as opponents that could roll on "your" gear. WoW has become a game for "loners" and selfcentered a-holes.

The veteran players have mostly left the game and for the most part they wont return.

As a WoW veteran of 5 1/2 years (stopped playing seriously about 2 years ago, officially stopped altogether a year ago), this pretty much sums up my entire problem with the game.

 

[Vhite]

and the gaming industry crash of 2012 continues to escalate.

Im sorry, but really WoW is not even a competitor any more. They are on the decline and basically everyone who might have had interest in playing WoW has already tried it. While there will be no giant killer, the kill shot has been lobbed and it was Blizzard that lobbed it with the aptly name Cataclysm. Im sorry, but Wow will only continue to dwindle from here on out. Friendship and nostalgia can only hold people so long before they get tired of the same antiquated game mechanics and graphics. As "friends" leave, so too will more people leave because their friends left. The giant is dead... all we see now is the death throws and reflex reaction.

Yeah, not buying that chart. Sorry. We know Blizzard has always fudged their sub numbers. However there is no way that the ratio of east vs west on WoW is anywhere near as small as 1 million. Only way that is plausible is if the true figure of Blizzards sub numbers is closer to 5 million, which actually is pretty likely.

It's alright, you're forgiven. There's no need to keep apologizing.

NOOOO !!! Im not apologizing. Im calling myself miserable and pathetic!

I wanted to tell you how wrong you are and how strongly I disagree but now I would just feel bad.

 

[viranimus]

Yes, youve clearly established you must have "facts" provided to you... does not matter what those "facts" state, or the fact that Blizzard has always been evasive regarding server numbers Specifically for the hype generation effect that helped propel them to the top.

Many years ago learned people all agreed the earth was the center of the universe and had their own evidence to support those claims.

Youve got to look with your own eyes and utilize critical thinking. Believe none of what your told and only half of what you see.

So, dont believe me. Im telling you not to. Because I am dealing with reasoned information here. Your dealing with information that you have simply accepted as the truth with no evidence to back it up either, other than "we say so" which the company had clear vested interest in making the game look more popular than it was. In doing so they generated self fulfilling prophecy.

I never suggested 24000 was concurrent users. But you do fully realize server structures and data on a server is still data on a server regardless of if it is active or not right? Yes... non logged in accounts can generate lag too because it is a larger pool of caramel for the data to work its way through to get from point A to point B.

The burden of proof is for you to find out for yourself. You provided no more evidence or less specious reasoning than I. So go find the answers to those questions yourself.

So go ahead, find the answers to those questions on your own. Figure out why the largest Non WoW MMOs also support 200-400 players in hub zones just like WoW. Figure out why with roughly equal size worlds you dont see any more players at any locale in WoW than any other comparatively large MMO. Figure out why most MMOs have Server databases from 5-8k yet wows individual server databases would be roughly 5 times larger than that without any sort of technological advancement to explain the disparity. If there is a rational explaination for it, all the better, youve proven me wrong. However Blizzard purposely hides that info and your not going to obtain that answer through direct means.

You have been told an answer, and you just accept that answer as fact. Thats why there still seems to be a struggle with the whole LOL thing.

Ill make that clearer.

Subscription:Noun; assent, agreement, or approval expressed verbally or by signing one's name. Money nor mode of subscription are relevant but it is an access license subscription. It is an agreed upon arrangements of terms and conditions to create the account that grants the access. Its a free subscription (though there are 3rd party paid subscription elements in the terms and conditions of the subscription) but a subscription none the less. A free magazine subscription is still a magazine subscription. So too is an account created for the purpose of accessing a licensed subscription still a subscription.

But you know, Im really wasting my breath here. Ive said what I intended. Youve clearly indicated your not going to sway from the viewpoint you have regardless of what information is presented, so at this point the only thing we can do is agree to disagree and respect each others opinion on the matter because thats all they are.

Edit: One caveat. I never said Blizzard was going to die. I said WoW WILL die. Most of your other conditions around that statement were accurate enough to simply accept. However that was a pretty glaring one that needed to be touched on.

Edit: Sorry.. Butchered this post with edits. Its getting late, im calling it a night. Maybe ill get up and realize that I was an amazing nozzle talking out his ass. However given this is a long standing argument I think its more of being in a fatigued state and lacking the skill or elloquence to properly convey what I am trying to get across. Either or, .

 

[Hisshiss]

It's a cheap comparison, LoL is a free to play game, which means it already has a HUGE lead over WoW in term of accounts and activity simply because you don't have to pony up any actual money to play it.

But nobody seems to admit that part, cus it's just not cool to stand up for big bad WoW and all of its success.

If you want to bring in technicalities then you should state that WoW is also free for the first 20 levels. So it's not quite so cut and dry.

The first 20 levels of wow isn't a freemium experience though, that's really just a demo. And more importantly nobody keeps track of how many people are playing WoW's free trial, just the subscriptions, and thats the number that LoL beat. It would only be a fair fight if they did count all those accounts.

But just like LoL, that would be stupid, cus people who never put in any money aren't really proper measurements of a products success, you don't have to sell free.

Now if they came up with a list of people who have active LoL accounts and have actually spent some money on stuff in game, well that's a much more honest number, but I bet you it wouldn't be quite high enough for them to brag about.

Edit: In the spirit of taking a shot at another bit of news people on this site love to throw around like its true, WoW never went FTP. that 1 to 20 is a demo, by that reasoning any game ever that released a demo would be considered FTP, since it gives you a tiny piece for free then wants you to pay for the rest. saying its the same thing as the game itself being FTP just suggests a person doesn't really understand what a FTP MMO is.