Warcraft loses 1.3 million subscribers over the last 3 months.

[pinotnoir]

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged...233637952.html

I wonder how much the follow removal had to do with this rapid loss of subscriptions. I know 5 of those 1.3m were because of the removal. Oh well. I am happy because it finally got me playing Eve Online.

[JohnGabriel]

I sortof feel the follow fiasco was only indirectly responsible. Its been out for so long, people are just getting bored with it and moving on. Boxers have just spent more money on the game so its harder to leave, but we're moving on.

[Toonarmy]

Blizzard will need to double that number if Sam ever leaves.

Toonarmy

[Ualaa]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...n-subscribers/

[pinotnoir]

1.3 Million is a lot to lose in 3 months. I think there is more to it than people getting tired of the game. When over 10% bail in such a short time it should indicate something. Especially when this coincides with the stealth follow patch. I can only hope the majority of them were boxers. I know I am dreaming but that would be cool. Even if they added follow back I would stay away. Eve Online is becoming really addictive and if setup I can pay with plex for my characters.

[Palee]

HELL YEAH!!! I'm so happy they lost so much. I hope they all die in a fire. That's what they deserve for screwing loyal customers.

[EaTCarbS]

HELL YEAH!!! I'm so happy they lost so much. I hope they all die in a fire. That's what they deserve for screwing loyal customers.

/snicker

Are people still mad about /follow being removed?

[Ualaa]

I'm not really angry about it.
They removed something I considered essential for my enjoyment of the game.
I quit their game as a result.

Pretty simple cause and effect.

Even if they were to bring it back, I won't be playing in Blizzard MMOs, directly because of how they have treated the boxing community.



That said, with Blizzard at 8.3 million subscribers... they're still the giant, in terms of subscriber base.
More than 18x ahead of the next biggest North American/European based game, in terms of subscription base.

I don't see Warcraft or Blizzard dying off anytime soon.

[Lyonheart]

I think the /follow thing put a nice big dent in the subs..

/snicker

Are people still mad about /follow being removed?

Your joking right? Of course they are still upset. If you do not care for PvP, or BGs to be more specific, then the /follow thing is not a big deal. Just think of it this way, how would you feel if they took /follow away from whatever game your playing? Now you might say somthing defensive like " I would just stop giving them my money, i wouldn't cry about it" But for anyone who LOVEs multiboxing, taking /follow away is very painful. So be a bit more sensitive to people who invested their hard earned money, time and emotions into a style of play ( boxing BGs in WoW ) they loved.

People will be upset about that nerf for years to come..even as the pain subsides and they have long since moved on. It was the biggest kick in the nuts, stab in the heart nerf Bliz has ever done that "effects" multiboxers. ( after publicly supporting the play style for years )

[zenga]

Something that I read nowhere, but that has a massive influence on that number tmho is the amount of banned accounts. If you head over to ban section of the big bot forum you will noticed that on a daily bases there are tons of threads that report bans. If you dig deeper you will find out that blizzard has implemented server side pattern recognizing technology that (can) detect(s) pretty much every bot.

Now if you think back how many players in every random bg would be botting, it's fairly safe to assume that a substantial amount of the playerbase was botting. The number of bots in random bg's has decreased massively. If you watch prices of farmed mats (herbs/ore) over the past 2 months, they have increased as well due to farm bots getting banned over and over.

There was a massive parallel business going on with unmerged accounts as well. Hacked accounts from years back were sold for cheap by dodgy sellers. A lot of those are getting banned as well.
The exploit where the same dodgy sellers would sell gametime for gold by abusing RAF got fixed as well (or at least they are very active with removing it).

Blizzard cleaning the house + the effect of marketing actions ending (Scroll of res that grants you a free lvl 80, ... etc) and being midway in the expansion, I think they are doing still fairly good.