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It's 11.1 million subs now?
Turdinator
Member Posts: 210
Was Cataclysm really that bad? I don't think so. Not enough to warrant a loss of 900k subs.
Comments
Cataclysm wasn't enough of a game-changer. WoW stuck so closely to the themepark style of play, people get tired of the same rides in different colors.
It's more of the age of the game than anything I imagine. You can only play the same game for so long before you get bored. WoW seems to be on the downslope now, it's only taken it 6.5 years to do so :P
Regardless, the population is still high, and perhaps Blizzard might actually do something interesting and different.
Cataclysm wasn't horrible, it just wasn't great. Both BC and Wotlk added more in lore and other things to do. They tried to hard to satisfy everyone and didn't satisfy anyone. They designed the leveling for people that don't like leveling (super easy, super streamlined), they designed dungeons for those who don't enjoy it (super easy, super streamlined), they added very small amount of lore compared to other expansions, not satisfying story lovers. They didn't add something fun and new for non-combat lovers, like a good profession or some type of new minigame. They didn't change up the holidays at all during early cata, and hardly later, not satisfying holiday people. All this combined didn't satisfy me, and likely a lot of people.
They did try to fix the above later (firelands), but it was too little too late.
For people that will say "leveling was never hard" it wasn't braindead easy too, I actually noticed they tried to make it a little harder, in early cataclysm no early mobs had potions or heals or anything, but when I came back using the free trial about a month ago, several of the early mobs were using these...however, how many people know that? Also, before if you explored you were rewarded with hidden quest and stuff, nowadays if you explore, you are sort of punished. The only thing good with the cataclysm remake was that it had better story telling, however...it isn't enough to do again.
"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security." -Norman Vincent Peale
Don't you think if Cata was that bad they should have lost a lot more subs? when game is as huge as WOW, it is hard to understand that rise and fall in subs. 11 million is still a lot.
Losing 7.5% of subs in the center of an expansion's life seems pretty understandable.
I don't think it is about CATA... Wow is getting a bit old now and old games have a harder time recruiting new players.
Most older people that like fantasy games have already tried Wow and the new generation see a game that is half as old as them, that is ancient for a 15 year old kid.
Some people will always tire of any game and until a year ago had Wow still more new players trying it out than old player getting bored of it. Numbers like that just can't last forever.
What you do if you are Blizzard now is trying to keep as many players as possible while making the noob expereince as fun as they can. But if I know Blizzard are already a small team working on a World of Warcraft 2 as well.
Wow is 7 years, you can't expect the game to be as large as it is forever. Adding good expansions helps keeping the old players and even might win back some old ones but they can at best slow the invitable. All games will loose players until they eventually close down (of course Wow wont close down on this side of 2020).
CATA might have worked out a little better and slowed down the decline but it was not a bad expansion and blaming shrinking subscriptions of a 7 year old game on a single expansion isn't fair.
It is my belief that Blizzard will announce Wow 2 in 2014 or so.
This has been discussed numerous times, it's the number of accounts being paid for, although the number is somewhat inflated due to how China's pricing model is, but the numbers are accurate enough to say WoW peaked around 12 million active accounts.
true enough, if they included free trials the number would probably be much higher...
You will never get anywhere as a game developer thinking like that. If you say "oh well we just lost 900k subs," thats the wrong attitude to have. With that mentality, WoW will die very soon.
I'd be curious to see actualy demographic numbers, how many subs in NA, EU and Asia and what numbers have been lost. Keep in mind more then 3/4ths of their subscriber base according to an old figure that said there were only 2-3 mil in NA don't have Cata yet (China just got wrath.)
I don't think you can point to any one factor, or any one expansion. The game is starting to show its age, there are contenders gaining traction (Rift, LoTRO, Eq2) an economic downturn, and new prospects on the horizon (SWtOR and GW2).
If we could ever get actual believable numbers..then it'd be worth paying attention to, but 9 million in an Asian market is pittance if numbers floating around for other asian based games are to be believed.
Don't forget though - that even though it's a pittance to us - the cost of WoW to Chinese players is real. The majority of the really 'big' games over there are all FTP with heavy cash shop use - and no verifiable way to guage their actual sub numbers since the companies don't need to report anything to the public.
Wow is definately showing it's age - but still...11.1 million subs, and a 34% revenue increase year over year? No investor is going to be harping on them for that
!
"In the center of an expension's life?" No, not even close. Cata is less than a year old, how is that in any way the "center" of its life? If anything, one or one and a haslf years in would be the center of Cata's life, and rthe fact Cata lost so many subs before ever reaching a year old tells me that WoW probably hit its peak already and is now on the downslope.
Well I quit due to Cata, I found the whole experience boring at best and the lore behind Cata is just horrible. I enjoyed Vanilla, BC, and WoTLK. But Cata left alot to be desired, I don't care about a big dragon on a freaking ego trip. The lore in vanilla, BC, and LK was so much better.
Quit long ago but the writting has been on the wall back then. Since Activi$ion took over the quality/customer support and and some of the deeper stuff in an already not very deep game has gone downhill, an it showed with first stagnations altough they released the game in the east...follopwed by declines.
The game is not Blizzards priority number one any longer and it shows in a decline. Blizzard is working on too many things at the same time (forced by Kotick). Anyway 11 millions is still a lot and the game will continue being the 800 pound gorilla for a long time.
Also wow players should welcome the decline cause it means Blizz has to get back to what they've been some (pre Activision) years ago, a damn good gamers frist company.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
If WOW continues to lose 300k subscribers every quarter.. it will be at 1 million subs in about 9 years. One million subs is more than most games have.
To be honest.. One of the reasons I think WOW is faltering is just because they have become too predictable with the ´math´and are failing to break the sense of disbelieft that is necessary in a RPG. I know in 3 months or so, another expansion will be released that adds 1 or 2 new 5-man dungones, those dungeons will drop ilvl 378 gear. I will have to grind valor points to buy ilvl 391 gear. If you gave me 5 mins, I could tell you what item slots will come from drops and what will come from VP.
I also know that no matter what I do, or how original I try to be with my gems, talents and rotation, I will be within 5% of the dps of every other spec. I know that no matter how I equip my bear tank, that there will be a boss that requires me to pop survival instincts at exactly the right time...
WOW has become a very predictable spreadsheet. Boss encounters are cool.. the first 5 times you do them... but again, I know that I will be running the LCT, BRC and GB for the next 6-10 months... yeah, the gear I get will make it slightly faster every patch.. but it is still the exact same dungeons that I will have to run for VP, which I can use to by an item every 2.5 weeks.
They need to throw some of their spreadsheet away.. stop micro-balancing every little detail and make the game an adventure again.
I still play, but after getting 10 characters to 85.. I have no desire to gear them any more. I will just sit on 4000 JP, wait until it buys the óld VP gear´.. because.. I know that is goign to happen soon...
I think you should check your facts. Activision has always been in charge of WOW. Activision came before WOW.
The merger with Activision did not happen till 2008.
BOOYAKA!
Cata is 9 months old. The time between expansions is about 18 months. We have already had 4.1 and 4.2 patches... most people expect 4.4 to be the last patch. So yeah.. pretty close to half no matter how you look at it.
RIFT!!!!! IT ROCKS
playing eq2 and two worlds
WoW is just too old now.
Let's give them credit though for almost 6 years they've done nothing but gain more and more subs.
Only with the release of Cata and quality games like Rift have they just started losing subs.
It will get worse as time goes on but we all knew this would come.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
and SW;TOR is actually made by EA.. nothing to do with Bioware....
not a good example perhaps as when Blizzard developed WoW etc, Activision didnt own it..
and yes, Bioware own SW;TOR, as Blizzard owns WoW.. should EA and Activision etc. go their seperate ways, that would still remain the same..
Its more Cata than anything.
Rift started out strong, had around a million subs and at the three month mark had 2 million accounts but i would bet anything that they only have around 400-500k subs (which is what we all said the game would do before the hype lol).
So imo Rift really didnt take many active wow players away.
Its all been Blizzard missteps and people just getting bored of an old game.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
To clarify; Blizzard Entertainment never merged with anyone.
Activision Blizzard is the holding company for Blizzard Entertainment and Activision and is the result of a merger between Vivendi Games and Activision.