1 million lost in 3 months?

[Ctuchik]

WoW literally has nothing to worry about because come the next expansion those inactive subs will go active again for 6 months to a year.

Actually, most people that resubbed for cataclysm couldn't even muster 2 months before they dropped out again.

Infact, that's where they lost the initial ~600.000 subs on top of that.

Yes, WoW is still doing really really well, but a million lost subs is still a shitload of money that stops coming, even for blizzard.

I'm not gonna claim that WoW is dying, but i do believe that it will drop in popularity.

I also don't hate WoW because it's popular to do so, i hate Blizzard because 1, they don't seem to know where the fuck they are going with the game and 2, as posted above, they HAVE somewhat ruined the MMO industry because no matter what, people ALWAYS compare new games to WoW as if it were the first ever MMO in the world.

Ok the last one isn't as much Blizzards fault as the numbnuts that keeps comparing it with new games and yell "WoW clone!" without grasping that probably ~90% of WoW is cloned/stolen/ripped/copy&pasted from other games.

 

[Aada]

Ofc it will drop in popularity that is what time does, but it will be some years yet before you see the WoW is closing down headline.

 

[Sar]

Aye, I'd give it probably another 5/6 years at the very least tbh.

The most recent patch has returned the game to more of the style of Wrath, with easier 5 man dungeons, and the first half of the new raid tier being exceptionally easy.

My guild cleared up to 7/8 on normal mode the first week, and we're not a hardcore guild, far from it. The initial 4 bosses are all easy mode, whilst the latter 4 present a decent enough challenge, but still not huge.

Hard modes seem to be where the meat will lie for the remaining 6 months or so of the expansion, but given that we've nearly cleared normal mode inside of 6 days I think we could probably see a mini-raid similar to Halion in about 4 months or so.

 

[Raven]

More pointless, recycled, easy mode bosses. They need to fire their encounter design team.

 

[Sar]

Aye, Cata has been a big let down from a raiding and dungeons PoV. Wrath had 52-ish raid bosses across the expansion, Cata had 29. :\

Two raid tiers with only 7-8 bosses each? Pfft. Very disappointing, especially as they appear to have wildly undertuned normal mode for Tier 13, give that LFR exists for those that can't/don't want to raid properly or at least at normal level.

 

[Bahumat]

Unless the pvp has a purpose i.e. realm points and keeps, they can only keep increasing the level cap to introduce more fluff

 

[Ctuchik]

Unless the pvp has a purpose i.e. realm points and keeps, they can only keep increasing the level cap to introduce more fluff

Realm points for what purpose? Realm abilities type stuff? We already have 4- 5 bars of class abilities to keep track of, you want another 1 - 2 full of added shit on top of that?

We don't need more abilities, we need a lot less, or at least a lot less situational abilities...

I mean, i can't remember to use half of the ones on my warlock because they are so extremely rarely needed outside raid boss encounters.

 

[Bahumat]

No you could have passive abilities like crit chance, health, regen etc.

 

[Raven]

I don't know what its like on other servers but at the moment on Bloodhoof (medium population) it seems that a lot of people are not playing any more, lots of guilds are struggling to get raid teams together, even 10 mans. We are the last 25 man Horde guild left on the server. We usually scrape 25 people together but it is not an optimal team for that night, often people having to offspec etc. 3-4 months ago we would have 30ish sign ups for each raid!

Seeing lots of 10 man raid teams collapse because of lack of people. All other 25 man guilds either collapsed or switched to 10 man months ago.

No way of knowing actual numbers and whether people are still running their subs but it doesn't look good. I only play on raid nights now, there is just nothing worthwhile to do when not raiding. Pugging is dreadful due to smack talking Xboxers, which Blizzard refuse to do anything about.

Most of my guild hang out in SWTOR when not raiding at the moment. How many of them eventually cancel the WoW sub I don't know. I have thought about it most months recently.

 

[Soazak]

No you could have passive abilities like crit chance, health, regen etc.

The thing is though, the RP grind in daoc is no different to the gear grind in WoW/other games. It's all the same PvP progression which makes your character stronger against other players. Same BS, different title imo. PvP is primerily about enjoyment, if the design of it is fun, the grind just gives a bonus

 

[Ctuchik]

People can't do pvp for the fun any more. At least not when it comes to MMO's.

If there is nothing to gain from pvp they won't do it.

I even dare say that DAoC's rvr would be abandoned by most people if RA's and RP's weren't there.

And i know for certain that pretty much NO ONE would play WoW's battlegrounds or SWTOR's warzones if there were no gear to get from it...

 

[Krazeh]

Well according to today's earning call WoW lost 100,000 subscribers last quarter which is a considerable drop from the number lost in the quarter previous to that. Also according to the call WoW now has 10.2 million active subscribers.

 

[rynnor]

People can't do pvp for the fun any more. At least not when it comes to MMO's.

If there is nothing to gain from pvp they won't do it.

Yes - tis sad. Much of the modern mmo 'pvp' is just another gear ladder.

I can still remember fighting in daoc before RA's came in and even the early days of WoW were fun (I was on a PvP server) - killing each other in open world pvp or just zerg v zerg at Tarren mill - there was no ingame rewards at all yet we used to regularly kill the server from the hundreds gathering just because it was fun

 

[Ctuchik]

Seeing lots of 10 man raid teams collapse because of lack of people. All other 25 man guilds either collapsed or switched to 10 man months ago.

Funny thing is though that instead of trying to do something about it they just sit there and let it happen.

How many former 25 man guilds on your server have merged with other former 25 man guilds to try and keep going?

On the server i played on i don't think a single one did..

 

[Raven]

A few merged but then went 10 man anyway. We are the last 25 man Horde guild on Bloodhoof. As far as I know there are a two 25 man guilds on Alliance.

 

[Gahn]

Funny thing i resubbed with 5 friends and rolled chars on new server from scratch.
Having fun cause of less traffic = less morons = more fun!

 

[DavidH]

Gonna be interesting to see how Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World will turn out. I'm interested in both just because of the three realms. No game has ever worked as well as DAoC ever since it "died". So I'm guessing three competing realms is a good start. At least the PvP was a whole other world compared to the shit we're served with in WoW, SWTOR etc etc etc

 

[Gray]

While the numbers where lost it seems that Blizzard are trying hard as hell to get people to come back now, especially with the perks the new Scroll of Resurrection brings.

But seems they where pretty honest about how Cataclysm turned out in a recent interview saying there was so much which was wrong.

Personally i haven't had the urge for playing Warcraft in about 3 weeks now, i think i burned myself out doing the LFR too much, as i was doing it on 3 different characters every week, alongside making sure i was valor capped from random dungeons. The variety of doing 4 instances 3 times a week brought tears to my eyes. I didn't even log in for the past fortnight, and the only reason i came back was due to the Darkmoon Faire event.

I'm pretty happy though, all my feelings have come at the best time - March. It's expected that the beta for Pandaria will start either this month or next, which means i might feel as if i have something to do now.

 

[Ormorof]

what i think DAoC did well, which i have yet to see in any other MMO, is the idea of taking land or buildings and getting to keep them

the incessant "congrats you took the mill!" only for it to reset 15 minutes later with a new mission "take the mill!" is kinda annoying

some of the most absurd fun i had in DAoC was in keep sieges

but enough rose tinted nostalgia...

the reason i cant be arsed with WoW anymore is - a) the lack of community, i just dont care that much about others on my server because i rarely interact with them and b) because it is so absurdly easy it has become dull

 

[BloodOmen]

Another 1.1million lost, subs are down to 9.1million now

 

[old.Tohtori]

Not surprised, so many games, the summer, nothing much to do in WoW(if i raided i might log in twice a week). Needs more rapidfire content these days.

 

[Ctuchik]

Needs more rapidfire content these days.

Nah, WoW just need content that doesn't take a few days to clear.

And not something like firelands with nothing but retarded dailies, but firelands as a raid only zone but three times as big and 5 times as hard.

Imagine a normal pve zone turned in to a raid only persistent zone with a proper storyline, that would be awsome...

 

[old.Tohtori]

Either or works, larger content or more often. More often would keep more people hooked though.

 

[Ctuchik]

Probably yes, but it would also force Blizzard to release new content once or twice a month.

And we don't need that, we need to go back to the way MMO's were originally. Things should take a long time, it should be fucking hard and it should be fun. WoW doesn't really provide any of that at the moment... It's just to easy and uninspired..

 

[Raven]

There is a new expansion in less than 2 months. Those numbers will shoot right back up again.

 

[BloodOmen]

The best part about all this is not the number drops no, the best part of it all is Activision/Blizzard is ONLY being supported by a single game, not CoD, not Diablo III and not any other big titles they've pushed out

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontev...wars-2-and-vivendi-activisions-achilles-heel/

TLDR; if WoW dies so does Activision/Blizzard so they can't afford to let WoW die

 

[old.Tohtori]

Well they won't die per say, the WoW team is also one of their largets moneysinks(customer support alone around 160mil/year). If wow were to fail, it would mean massive layoffs, but not the end for the companies.

CoD and other blizzard products still sell a sh*t-ton.

It wouldn't be a supercomany for sure, but still i think it'd do just fine.

I'm not too agreeable with this though;

"The bottom line here is that gamers like to start on level playing fields. Gamers love to save money. Gamers are always in a frantic rush to play superior games."

Gamers like to start at superior level, gamers pay for what they feel earn it and gamers don't care for superior games, just those that do right things right.

 

[Ctuchik]

There is a new expansion in less than 2 months. Those numbers will shoot right back up again.

Sure but for how long?

From what i've seen MoP isn't doing anything that much different from the previous expansions other then having a new class and race. It's still mostly the same WoW from 10 years ago, and people are starting to get a little bit bored now...

MoP is probably going to be quite an important expansion for Blizzard. It won't be a "make or break" expansion but it might be what gets the dam leaking for real...

 

[old.Tohtori]

Then again, it might be time for WoW to die already. Hell of a run in any case.

 

[Soazak]

Yea but a dead wow in maintenance mode will probably still carry more subscribers than most other MMO games