World of Warcraft Subscriptions Continue To Decline

[Tonuss]

They still at 11.1 million subs is anything even remotly close?

Nope. And that's what makes WoW difficult to analyze and/or compare to other MMOs.

I'm sure that there's a whole lot of reasons for the drop in subs. The game is more than six years old, and people will come and go. Right now, more are going. These numbers are just before the release of Cataclysm in China and WoW in Brazil (not sure about the second). So the numbers may see a huge rebound for Q3. And hey, it's an MMORPG; there isn't much you can do in terms of variety, and I think Blizzard has done about as much as they can. I think Cata hasn't worked out as well as they'd hoped, and people seem to have grown bored with the expansion pretty quickly.

But as I have said before, WoW is an aberration. I think that people believe that some other MMO will come along someday and pull in 5 million+ subs and hang on to them for a few years and replace WoW as the king of the MMORPG hill. But I don't believe that will happen. I think that even Blizzard's next MMORPG will draw in two or three million and then settle in with 1.5 million or so, maybe less. At first it seemed as if WoW tapped into this new audience for MMOs and that from now on you had to have 5 million+ subs to be considered a success. But more and more I think that WoW is an outlier, and that we won't see anything like it for a very long time, if ever.

In the meantime, they lost almost a million subscribers and are still over eleven million, which would have been unthinkable when WoW launched. And they're even more profitable than they were when they had those 900,000 extra subscribers. And they're expecting to have a better Q3. Even if D3 doesn't ship in that quarter. I wouldn't shed any tears for Blizzard just yet.

[Catamer]

I think Blizzard spent way too much time trying to make the game boxer unfriendly. I'm not talking about just collection quests in general, I'm talking about quests that require you to use something in your bag to interact with the target. This was the stupidest move on Blizzards part, even a non-boxer hates to look in the back for the specific device. The game was 10x more fun when you just killed stuff than when you went out picking flowers or using a wand to kill something. 0-60 and event to 0-70 used to be so much fun. I quit because although it has the name "WoW" it's not the "WoW" that made me fall in love it with.

[Bigfish]

WoW got boring. What else can be said? Cataclysm really didn't bring anything totally awesome to the mix. Well, the new starting areas were pretty bitching, but outside of that, nah. Same old stuff we've seen before.

I blame the fact that they didn't want to invent a new way to grind. Grind dungeons, grind raids, grind pvp, been there, done that.

[Fat Tire]

I think if they continue to lose customers or go under the 11 million mark leading up to the next expansion. I firmly believe the game will go f2p. When I looked at the earnings statement for wow and compared subscription earning to non-gaap digital services I was startled.

Yea...if 4.3 dont bring an uptick in subs for Q3, I could easily see a f2p announced at blizzcon along with the new expansion title or announced going into blizzcon.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

The other complication is that when Blizzard releases sub numbers, they don't break that down for the public by the age of the sub (i.e.: First month only, 2-6 months, 7-12 months, >12 months). Without that breakdown, we really can't tell which segment of people are leaving.

My suspicion is that it's the long-term casuals that are leaving. New subs continue to inflate numbers as it is still a popular game PR-wise.

[Zub]

thing is, it wow goes Free 2 play, i'll probably start playing again and upgrade 3 of my existing accounts to cata.
At the moment, they are getting nothing from me

[zenga]

I guess I'm one of the very few that enjoys ...

... 2 new awesome battleground maps
... interesting new dps rotations for the classes I play in pve
... the fact I don't have to do heroic dungeons every day, I can cap out from raids or do them all at once
... the shared 10/25m raid id, don't have to do some extra pug run (on alt) just for a couple of pieces
... the relatively challenging hc dungeons to gear up at cata launch
... balance among dps specs, there is only a very small difference between the best and the worst dps specs, bar a few exceptions
... very challenging heroic T11 raid content
... challenging T12 content with some awesome new boss mechanics
... the brand new leveling experience for alts 1-60
... the fact that I can fly ... this includes the many quality of life changes, including less cumbersome talent trees

I can go on for a while about what I liked compared to wrath (started playing about 2y ago). But if you get bored with the game, I guess that has more to do with yourself than with the game. I don't see myself playing the same game for 6y to be honest. The loss of subscribers doesn't really affect me, and I see it as a natural evolution that something that got so popular loses attention over time.

Recently I re watched 24 (jack bauer) season 6, back in the day i was bored, same old shit, now I could really appreciate the quality of that season.

[Tonuss]

I can't imagine them going F2P until WoW is all but dead. There's no way they can go F2P and maintain the level of support that they do now (yes, I know people don't think much of the level of support in WoW, but it's far ahead of where other MMORPGs used to be and perhaps still are). They also have a pretty big infrastructure to support. I think that it will be a while before they reach the point where non-subscription revenue would cover the game's costs.

Really, eleven million players is a heck of a lot. One third of that would be a heck of a lot.

[Fat Tire]

I can't imagine them going F2P until WoW is all but dead. There's no way they can go F2P and maintain the level of support that they do now (yes, I know people don't think much of the level of support in WoW, but it's far ahead of where other MMORPGs used to be and perhaps still are). They also have a pretty big infrastructure to support. I think that it will be a while before they reach the point where non-subscription revenue would cover the game's costs.

Really, eleven million players is a heck of a lot. One third of that would be a heck of a lot.

When they(atvi-blizzard) are getting 60% of quarterly revenue Q2 thru digital services, that says something. Like it or not, that is the revenue stream. Making the game f2p is really the only option to increase revenue. I am sure their stakeholders are wanting to see increased revenue and with f2p the amount of digital or premium services are endless. It also removes that initial pay wall and gets people into the store basically. I think f2p up to lvl 20 was only a start and slowly eases the player base into the inevitable.

[Apps]

I guess I'm one of the very few that enjoys ...

... 2 new awesome battleground maps
... interesting new dps rotations for the classes I play in pve
... the fact I don't have to do heroic dungeons every day, I can cap out from raids or do them all at once
... the shared 10/25m raid id, don't have to do some extra pug run (on alt) just for a couple of pieces
... the relatively challenging hc dungeons to gear up at cata launch
... balance among dps specs, there is only a very small difference between the best and the worst dps specs, bar a few exceptions
... very challenging heroic T11 raid content
... challenging T12 content with some awesome new boss mechanics
... the brand new leveling experience for alts 1-60
... the fact that I can fly ... this includes the many quality of life changes, including less cumbersome talent trees

I can go on for a while about what I liked compared to wrath (started playing about 2y ago). But if you get bored with the game, I guess that has more to do with yourself than with the game. I don't see myself playing the same game for 6y to be honest. The loss of subscribers doesn't really affect me, and I see it as a natural evolution that something that got so popular loses attention over time.

Recently I re watched 24 (jack bauer) season 6, back in the day i was bored, same old shit, now I could really appreciate the quality of that season.

A few perhaps, but youre not alone Zenga. Id dare to say nearly all of the people who has ever played in Vanilla and played off and on or straight through, will tell you Wrath is precieved as the worst expansion to the game, and those same players like the "return to our roots" style of play.
Personally, I try to stay neutral with most all topics about wow, as some people can be a bit manic about some stuff... this is the only topic I have a firm opinion on... Sure not ALL "wrathers" are terrible players, there have been some decent players... but my personal experiences with wrathers is terrible, whiney, super ego, lack of drive to learn most game mechanics, blah blah blah. I'd get on a soapbox if I keep this up.

Youre not alone. I like cata not for the new content, (although I do like it), but I like cata mainly fo the return of cc's, strategy, and having to learn and work for an accomplishment.... not the "open the mail, and GRATS! you're the best player ever achievement!!" bs.

/rant