World of Warcraft Suffers Biggest Subscriber Drop in History

[scw55]

I think one reason is that Blizzard now offers different experiences that are not subscription reliant.
You can get "better value for money" playing Hearth Stone/Heroes of the Stone/Diablo/Starcraft than World of Warcraft if you have no or limited income.

The expression of "Blizzard is the only thing that can kill WoW" seems quite true. Blizzard are spreading their player-bases because people only have a finite amount of time to spend playing.

*This assumes that people are Blizzard loyalists (they produce polished games after-all).

I don't think WoW will die. Too much nostalgia wrapped up in it. But I hope Blizzard can move the game into a good direction due to the exceptions of MMOs are changing. People are less satisfied with subscription models. Why pay to play a sub fee for a game when there's hundreds of F2P options. Once you've done all the fun content in an MMO, what is there to keep you subscribed?

 

[Charli]

Plllluuuus the people playing off WoW tokens don't actually count as 'active subscriptions' in the regard this is read any-more. And that's like half my guild, so...I dunno if that put a couple of hundred thousand dents into that figure, but it might have. Maybe the stats here do account for that or if it's running off the old report/reader.

It wouldn't have even if your entire server did it. The graph doesn't count the data for the period the tokens went into effect according to posters above and mmo-champ where its from. Even so I'd imagine they still count as active subs since... well... they -are- active after all.

Actually no...they're not. Active SUBSCRIPTION. Means you are currently paying through card, for the sub. People paying with Timecards were revealed a long while back to not be technically active either.
And the Asian territories had a similar pay method that rendered them inert from being 'active subs'. As well. So it's not as big a shot in the dark as you'd believe.

And ah I didn't know where the cut off was for sub numbers. Still I really expected this. The money has been made for all the advertising and hype they built up, leaving the people who stuck around once again.

 

[Pr0]

I did a thread predicting this on Reddit about a month ago and was largely voted out of the community by extremely vehement MMO fans.

This genre is more or less done. And the reason I say that is if Blizzard cannot seem to figure out how to make a world that keeps people coming back for more, then its likely no one else has the money to even bother trying to figure it out and that means largely all the games in this genre or are coming up in the near future all suffer from the same problem.

The worlds can't and don't evolve in any way other than through expansionary content, and expansionary content cannot be made fast enough to deal with player demand and consumption rates.

I am not a fan of EVE Online, in fact I don't even play but you have to give them a little bit of credit, that game is basically a 3D interactive spreadsheet simulator but people consistently keep coming back to it or play it for years at a stretch because the game makes itself.

The theme park MMO has had its time, the only way this genre can even come close to staying relevant at this point is for strong, dynamic game worlds that are alive and shift and change around what the players decide to do, a sandbox with some theme park in it, but a theme park where the rides and attractions change based on what the players are doing, worlds that give players a feeling like they're living a life of consequence, rather than simply filling an inconsequential role that 9 million others have already done and is likely to never need them to do it at all.

MMO's don't really make you feel heroic, because the game world never reflects any knowledge that you've even been there...the few that do attempt to do this in some what only really reference your prior actions via quest text acknowledgement...but the world keeps on going on just like it was when you passed through.

This genre is a fun genre, but its reached a rather boring and stale ceiling that I don't think anyone is ever going to innovate their way past. But thats okay, according to most MMO fans, the genre is great because all an MMO needs to be successful is about 200,000 players and it doesn't matter if content rich giants like WoW are bleeding subscribers because the games didn't need those people anyways.

So as someone in the thread said....it doesn't matter that Blizzard has had a huge sub drop because Blizzard didn't need any of those millions of people anyways.

 

[Mangod]

Hmm, revenue remained consistent, price going up while actual players goes down? Sounds like they're heading the wrong way on the Price vs Demand curve. It's an egregious way to do business when the supply is effectively infinite. I hope they continue and ride that curve straight into the ground, WoW has been a black hole in gaming for a decade, effecting even single player games.

Ah, the Games Workshop approach. Eventually you either find something else to sell, or you cannibalize your own corporate infrastructure.

 

[AgedGrunt]

There is a reason I quit too with this expansion. WoW is riding the nostalgia train super hard right now; had any other MMO had 3 expansions in a row as badly received as Cata, MoP and WoD have been they would've been dead by now.

That the game is still as strong (in population) as it was during vanilla season, which is still crazy popular. I'm not sure whether it's nostalgia, or that this community, which I respect, seems to get into the game and it completely changes their attitudes on MMOs.

Sure, they could play something else, but it will be missing things they love about WoW. A game gets things how they want it, well, then why not just play WoW instead?

 

[themilo504]

I?ve recently started playing wow again and so far I have enjoyed this expansion, but a part of me does wonder or they should have quit after wrath and just made wow 2, the game Is getting very VERY old and people are simply getting sick of it and theme park mmo?s in general.

 

[ffs-dontcare]

I'm not surprised at all. Yes, I'll add that to the chorus.

My satisfaction with WoW at the moment is just as low as it was during Cata. This is why:

- Blizzard had the right idea with ability pruning but instead of using a scalpel like they should've done in the first place, they used a wrecking ball mounted on a crane. Their execution was shit. See the druid travel form changes as an example. There was no reason whatsoever to merge the ground travel, swimming and flight forms into one button. And the devs are being incredibly arrogant about it as well, given the way they're insisting that the one it is now is the right way and is how they would've done it in the past. "That's not fun." Fuck off.
- Going onto glyphs, Blizzard seems to think that arbitrary exclusivity allows for "fun, compelling gameplay choices". How? We have three minor glyph slots and three major glyph slots. That's enough of a limitation. Thanks to some glyphs being exclusive with one another, I no longer get the choice of using two or all three of my minor glyph slots to alter one ability at the cost of being able to to alter any other abilities. Where's that option? Slapping limitations on things doesn't automatically make them "fun". Glyphs were meant for customization, but that's now been cut in half.
- The devs say they want players to do unexpected things, experience emergent gameplay and basically "break the game". Then the unnecessary nerfs happen. Notice how I said "nerfs", not "bug fixes".
- Expansions are supposed to add content, not delete it. Blizzard likes deleting things.
- If you have an ability and it takes longer to describe what you CAN'T do with it, it's a bad design.
- Professions feel like those "free to wait" games now. They're time-gated.
- WASTED POTENTIAL. I'm really annoyed with how much wasted potential there was here for a good story. Thrall and Orgrim could've met or even gotten a glimpse of each other, and Orgrim could've been puzzled as to why Thrall was wearing pieces of his own armor and wielding his own weapon. But he can't now, because they've already killed him off. Durotan and Draka won't find out who Thrall is. Yrel will probably be discarded or become completely irrelevant, and won't even get to meet Velen Prime, which is a situation that has some amazing potential story-wise. This is an alternate universe expansion and they're not even taking advantage of what kind of stories it has to offer!

All changes, even little ones, add up.

I don't care about the whole Twitter thing. I rather like the garrisons. I just don't like how a lot of stuff was implemented this expansion, and I'm waiting for the next one.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

It's not all doom and gloom for Blizzard, however, as their earnings report also announced that Heroes of the Storm [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/hearthstone] beta.

Seriously, I think Activision's done this song and dance long enough. Just let it end gracefully already.

 

[babinro]

Can we please associate this with an MMO competitor that came out late last year or early this year?

I miss the days of every new MMO being touted a WoW-killer. Now that WOW subs have truly dropped we need to elevate a new MMO as the one true WoW-killer.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Big drop after one of the largest increases? Why is anyone surprised?

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Now that WOW subs have truly dropped we need to elevate a new MMO as the one true WoW-killer.

If I may offer my humble fanboy opinion, I think GW2 is fulfilling that role. ESPECIALLY with this new expansion, Heart of Thorns coming up. which is offering a whole bunch of features and things GW fans have been asking for since day one.

 

[LetalisK]

If WoW cut its subscriptions in half tomorrow it would still be the Grand Daddy Overlord of all MMOs. Getting anxious or excited about this makes about as much sense as getting anxious or excited that Michael Jordan scored 30 points this game instead of the 40 he did last game.

The end is nigh! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

So, according to this graph ... as long as Blizzard deliver a new expansion pack every 6 months, they'll mantain numbers as they did peak vanilla cycle? Just looking at the differential between the end of the Pandoria cycle, and the release of Warlords....

Doesn't seem to be doing too badly imo. They really need to wait a good year or so to properly see what effect Dreanor will have.

But the way I see it is this .... barrier to new entry is very high. All that content, then patches and so forth? Yeah, it's a bit of a nightmare. Not only that but WoW managed to do what other MMOs haven't in the West, go mainstream. You have high profile people like Ozzy, Mr. T, etc doing prime time TV commercials about WoW. Naturally, those who weren't really into games will be fickle in terms of long term investors in the project.

(Edit) Actually, now looking at the time when Blizzard did all those celebrity promos of their game (roughly 2007 - late 2008 ish), that seems to be when the game hit it's peak and rode that growing wave of awareness .... the fact that the game seems to be returning to a mid-vanilla-ish entry mark seems normal, and yet seems remarkable given the game's longevity.

It tells me the core demographics are likely still intact and likely will be for many more years.

The majority of the 'new attendants', the subsequent losses, with Warlords is likely returning 'old gamers' ... set to explore the new content. Which is why their number mirror that of Mists at the start of it's cycle.

 

[Colt47]

I think a lot of people are sort of bouncing back in and out of WoW and using it as filler between other games. Unlike FFXIV (which is a great MMO experience, btw) WoW doesn't involve as much plodding at end game to catch up with the community at large so it's fairly easy to get rolling into the good stuff. Starting in FFXIV you basically got to go through all the story stuff, then hit the new content they keep adding from the ground up (and that pillar keeps rising, btw), then finally you get to this point at end game where you are in maintenance mode until more content to consume comes out, resulting in the pillar of content to catch up on to grow for new players. That isn't even going into the knowledge and skill gap issues.

 

[Lawnmooer]

I'm really not surprised about the decline in subscribers...

WoD is severely lacking in actual content...

I mean, so far, we've had 2 raids - Sure, they've been larger than some of the previous ones (I mean ToES was tiny for example) but still... That's a long time to be on the first raiding tier of an expansion.

We've had no content other than that, Garrison crap is not content. It's mind numbingly boring, it's gutted Crafting (So you don't have that to do in-game anymore... Only thing that isn't auto-generated in your Garrisons is Cloth and Leather, so you have to tediously capture Elite mobs to fill your barn), its mission system is so dull (It's essentially just matching pictures together to get 100% win rate, come back after a couple of hours and get loot), buildings don't take that long to get to level 3 and then become finished (No longer need to work on them, no more new quests since they only give 1 quest per level)... It's basically just a worse version than the stupid farm from Pandaria, because at least the farm didn't take up so much of Blizzards development time.

There's nothing really to do in the open world, not to mention with the still no flying, it's still tedious to travel the world (Also, all the treasures you can get are incredibly underwhelming. Not worth the time and effort it takes to get them all without flying... For a lot of them I cheesed it using the Feather item that launches you in the air)

With no Justice or Valor points there's no reason to do Dungeons at all (Once you hit the level needed to go LFR, dungeons become literally pointless - With crafted gear, you can just buy a bunch on the AH and leave it in your bags boosting item level, get some loot from LFR of which the first wing of HM is the most faceroll thing ever and naturally increase your item level then sell the crafted stuff again)

Ashran PvP is a bit meh... Not so easy to find an active time, then hard to get in (You'll see huge queues of people waiting to get in)

All in all, it's been a sucky expansion. Only reason I still play is because of having friends in-game that I really only get to talk to in the game (Due to them living in other countries and what not)

 

[StorkV]

Good! Hope they lose more! They baited us with crappy content and 6.1 was a joke! Blizzard became a joke!

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Good! Hope they lose more! They baited us with crappy content and 6.1 was a joke! Blizzard became a joke!

I honestly blame Activision for all of this. I mean, Is it really a coincidence that ever since Bungie also signed up with them, they've been doing the same crap? I mean, c'mon. Marty O' Donnell MYSTERIOUSLY gets fired? The lead writer just ups and leaves in the middle of development?

WTF?

 

[MikeSee]

I'm not sure I'd call the Garrison a facebook game, but it's pretty damn close. Log on for a few minutes, complete daily Garrison chores, log back out.

maybe I am just being paranoid but I feel like this was intentional. They are activley trying to kill off the image of the hardcore WOW player by forcing tasks that dont lure you into the game for a whole day, and creating a kinda situation where the, "play 8 hours of wow 5 days a week" only exists in memories and war stories.

 

[Tanklover]

I'm surprised anyone was foolish enough to believe the game will ever be good again with this expansion, I quit around the time Cata came out and they nerfed all the content because of the whining from noobs who didn't want to learn how to play. I was super excited about the game, the dungeons were fun and challenging, same for the first tier of raids but they did what they been doing since Wrath, dumbing down the game to attract more players who want free epics and easy raids so they can fool themselves into thinking they beat the content.

By now I'm honestly shocked they aren't down to 3 mill subs, that's a lot of stay at home moms playing the game since all the kids are playing LoL and Dota these days.