Support NeoGAF

[Sketchbag]

Meh. WoW has been very stale and their update schedule isn't something to be desired. The game hasn't changed at all since the start. All they've done is tweak the system they already had.

Fatigue.

Flying, LFR, LFD, etc. are nice additions to keep the carrot going but they undermine the purpose of a MMO: socialization. Bonds are held by a single string now, the amount of people you meet and befriend lessens drastically each day.

I think people would move on but the alternatives are WoW clones like Wildstar, SWTOR, ESO, etc. so why play those when you can play the superior version? Or this was their first MMO and they have a special bond with it.

The Blizzard name isn't going to carry their titles forever. Blizzard needs to think about lowering the expectations on their games because Starcraft and Diablo aren't performing to what they want. I doubt Titan will be a behemoth either unless they monotize it right IE good free-to-play.

 

[Magnus]

Maybe they will and you get the new expansion for free?

That would be...devious. It's exactly what they should do.

I'd be miffed since I want the physical CE though. That should then come with a few months of game time to compensate.

 

[VicDaMoan03]

I'm not an MMO guy so i may not understand, but why is there never talk about a sequel?

 

[CornDogg]

What's next? WoW 2 f2p?

God, I'm screwed if they ever go F2P. I quit playing to save some money at one point and the subscription (along with some changes implemented in Cataclysm) deterred me from wanting to resub once I had the spare funds again.

Quitting did have its perks, though. Freed my time up for other games that I had missed or forgotten about. I do miss it sometimes, though...

 

[LX_Theo]

It is only a matter of time.

 

[Syf]

Not surprising given the content drought. It'll be more interesting to see how much WoD affects the number of subs.

 

[RdN]

It's good that it's finally dying out.. Will push Blizzard out of it's comfort zone and actually make a new MMO.

 

[Woo-Fu]

So how fewer cars is that on the money train?

 

[RPGCrazied]

I know I will be sad when the game does die. The amount of time played and money spent on this game throughout the years is astronomical.

 

[todd360]

Oh god only 6.8 million people paying $12-15 a month. Truly a dead game.

It's deader than the wii u. We need a new can we agree thread in response to this.

 

[Panthers]

Its still a fun game. I love my Warlock and being able to solo old content is fun if you like to catch up on the lore, and get transmog gear.

I personally like SWTOR better but that game has some serious issues, for me its mainly all of the loading screens. I cant wait for the next WoW expansion.

 

[Messerschmidt]

Cataclysm and the changes to WoW thereafter really hurt the game.

This, for the most part, hits the nail on the head. I was practically a lifer ever since closed beta of WoW 1.0 and Cataclysm ruined it for me. I can't nail any one factor down above the rest, but 90% of my time in cataclysm just felt like such a fucking chore. I'd have over an hour of dailies each day just to keep raid-ready and it just felt like everything was so fucking expensive.

I finally realized that I was wasting time being frustrated in Cataclysm and not having fun in other non-mmo games that were very gratifying for the time spent.

I avoided MoP at first because Cataclysm was just so awful, but once I tried it, I loved it. I thought Blizzard had learned their lesson, but I think Cataclysm couldn't have been a better title for that expansion because you could definitely see the... Cataclysmic effect that expac had on the series as a whole. Massively popular servers were literally ghost towns where PVP was impossible, economies sucked, forcing you to have to pay an additional huge fucking chunk of change to transfer server/faction, just reminding you of how much of a bad idea it was to re-sub.

With that said, MoP was still a beautiful expansion and probably my favorite of them all. It's just too bad that it couldn't have been nearly as good as it could have if they had all the customers that Cataclysm pushed away.

GET RID OF THE FUCKING DAILIES/REP GRINDS. There has to be a better way.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

That would be...devious. It's exactly what they should do.

I'd be miffed since I want the physical CE though. That should then come with a few months of game time to compensate.

They did that with people who purchased the Diablo III Collector's Edition, so I'd imagine they'd do the same in this case.

 

[Novocaine]

Well.. If they went f2p.. they would add me as a player!

Its nearly 2015. No one has time for sub fees for MMO's!

No offense, but they don't care about you dude. They have almost 7 million paying players, and a lot of them also dump extra money into various character services and vanity items.

This, for the most part, hits the nail on the head. I was practically a lifer ever since closed beta of WoW 1.0 and Cataclysm ruined it for me. I can't nail any one factor down above the rest, but 90% of my time in cataclysm just felt like such a fucking chore. I'd have over an hour of dailies each day just to keep raid-ready and it just felt like everything was so fucking expensive.

I finally realized that I was wasting time being frustrated in Cataclysm and not having fun in other non-mmo games that were very gratifying for the time spent.

I avoided MoP at first because Cataclysm was just so awful, but once I tried it, I loved it. I thought Blizzard had learned their lesson, but I think Cataclysm couldn't have been a better title for that expansion because you could definitely see the... Cataclysmic effect that expac had on the series as a whole. Massively popular servers were literally ghost towns where PVP was impossible, economies sucked, forcing you to have to pay an additional huge fucking chunk of change to transfer server/faction, just reminding you of how much of a bad idea it was to re-sub.

With that said, MoP was still a beautiful expansion and probably my favorite of them all. It's just too bad that it couldn't have been nearly as good as it could have if they had all the customers that Cataclysm pushed away.

GET RID OF THE FUCKING DAILIES/REP GRINDS. There has to be a better way.

Hang on. You didn't like Cataclysm because it had daily grinds but liked MoP? Are you sure you aren't getting them mixed up?

I didn't have to do a single daily quest or rep grind in Cataclysm outside of the initial gearing for tier 11 content. None of the daily rep grinds aside from some shoulder enchants really offered anything that was worth going for once you reached that point, and those were easily done with tabards while you geared up in 5 man dungeons. MoP on the other hand required multiple hours of grinding dailies per day, tabard rep gains were removed and the overall reputation gains were slow and tedious, and some were gated behind other rep grinds. Also that dumb farm management bullshit.

I loved Cataclysm, it allowed me to play the game casually (9 hour raid week plus maybe an hour per week for prep) without losing out on anything. MoP required farming and grinding almost akin to TBC, or maybe worse. MoP fucking sucks. It was what made me finally decide to unsub the game and never go back after playing since release.

 

[JLeack]

Maybe they should stop talking about how they need to stop having giant year-long content gaps, and then doing it anyways.

Exactly.

As much as it looks like it's in freefall, so many people including myself are going back for WoD. It just needs new content.

 

[Renzoku]

Every expansion has kept me around less and less.

They've run train on the lore since Wrath, have been trying their best to build upon an ancient foundation that can no longer keep up with other titles in the space, and they've lumped more chores on top of chores.

I subbed originally back in 2005 (that's terrifying) and I didn't lapse on my subscription until sometime towards the very end of Burning Crusade.

Then, after that, I was with Wrath for most of it, but took breaks for months at a time between major patches.

Cataclysm lasted all of like three months.

Pandaria lasted one month.

The steam had to run out at some point, and even though those numbers are still nothing to scoff at, it's obviously clear that WoW has been past its prime for years now. I expect F2P features and announcements in another year or so, which will give it a boost and keep generating plenty of revenue, but the game itself will continue to decline in importance for ActiBlizz.

I only hope this means we're closer than ever to WarCraft IV in RTS form.

 

[adamantypants]

Wait for the stealth GiantBomb promotion to hit -> 50 million new subscribers

LOL first thing I thought of.

Spoiler

dibs on cerebralbottom

 

[Perfect Cha0s]

Oh god only 6.8 million people paying $12-15 a month. Truly a dead game.

Only 6.8? Time to wrap it up.

10 Years and still the King of the Field.

Blizzard must be realy sad

Lol "down to". Other MMOs dream of being "down to" almost seven million subs.

The game continually trending downward is something ActiBlizz is very interested in stopping, regardless of how you might want to say it's no big deal.

 

[Velcro Fly]

WoW isn't the kind of game many people just start playing at this point. It's a game trying to keep the people who have been playing forever still playing. I come back once a year, see my friends list and guild tab are full of people who haven't logged on in at least a year and sometimes more, and just forget about it completely.

 

[Ape]

WoW should introduce a hub where you battle each other MOBA style. Just patch in the MOBA gameplay and have it go from there. I'm sure they could do it better than most of these other companies.

 

[Nekofrog]

are they scaling back the hundreds of thousands of HP and damage?

those huge numbers were always really stupid

 

[Dunkley]

Not really that terrifying, given that it's been a while since MoP dropped. You really don't have that much to do after the Legendary Cloak questline and you can experience Siege of Orgrimmar's story through Raid Finder easy, which effectively wraps up MoP's story.

And unless people really are into grinding for gear that'll become irrelevant in a few months, I can understand why people would stop playing right now.

Warlords of Draenor will come soon. I am confident it'll go way over 7 million again then.

 

[Sophia]

I am shocked that World of Warcraft's subscription numbers have dropped in the period before an expansion where Blizzard doesn't update the game at all.

 

[Into]

are they scaling back the hundreds of thousands of HP and damage?

those huge numbers were always really stupid

Oh yeah, they are fixing that for Warlords of Draenor

 

[ferrasvansen]

To be expected, must admit this gap in content is just plain silly. I've barely logged in during the last 4 months, bored lifeless. I hope Warlords drops soon or I'm out and I may not return.

 

[shiftplusone]

That would be...devious. It's exactly what they should do.

I'd be miffed since I want the physical CE though. That should then come with a few months of game time to compensate.

I bought the annual pass, got free diablo, and bought the diablo CE.

Got like 2-3 months for free or something, so that's exactly what they'd do here, presumably.

 

[Einbroch]

A 43% drop since it's peak is nothing to scoff at. It's not dead or any hyperbole like that, but if your subscription game lost 43% of it's population you'd try to correct it.

 

[Stormhammer]

WoW should introduce a hub where you battle each other MOBA style. Just patch in the MOBA gameplay and have it go from there. I'm sure they could do it better than most of these other companies.

Well they've got Heroes of the Storm coming so..

 

[SoulPlaya]

Lol "down to". Other MMOs dream of being "down to" almost seven million subs.

No one cares about that. To investors, WoW isn't compared to other MMO's, it's compared to its past success.

 

[Wray]

People do realize this is the end of an expansion right? Even more so, a Tier that has lasted 11 months now.

Things will jump back up some once WoD hits.

 

[playXray]

I find it amazing that so many people are still playing. I absolutely adore WoW, but I've not played in nearly a year and I don't think I'll ever get back to it. There's only so long I can play a game like this before it starts to feel stale, and ten years is long enough lol.

Good for Blizzard that they've still got so many paying fans though.

Unless they're all just people who've forgotten about their subscription alongside their David Lloyd membership.

 

[Suzushiiro]

Not surprising, considering that we're in the middle of a long drought of no new content.

Also LOL@ the graph in the OP trying to say that the sub decline is all GC's fault.

 

[Final Verdict]

Probably a stupid question, but I wonder if Destiny could achieve these sort of numbers (active player base) over time?
Over 4.5M people participated in the Beta alone which was only open for about a week....
If Bungie can continue to support it with new content & major expansions, I wonder if they could achieve a similarly large player base over the coarse of their 10yr. plan?

Of coarse it would be a different matter as there is no sub. fee for destiny, but in a lot of ways it is still very similar to a MMORPG, and even has end game Raids that will literally take several hours to complete (if you do complete it).

Also curious to hear some news on how well ESO and Wildstar have been doing. I guess if they had huge numbers, then we would have heard something already right?

 

[SuperAndroid17]

A whole another year of SoO with 0 new content. They deserve less subs.

 

[Einbroch]

Also LOL@ the graph in the OP trying to say that the sub decline is all GC's fault.

While I believe it's total coincidence, I am almost willing to guarantee that League of Legends will decline in popularity in the coming years. Guess who was just hired by Riot?

 

[JetSetRadio]

Wow is still a thing? woow

 

[Netherscourge]

This, for the most part, hits the nail on the head. I was practically a lifer ever since closed beta of WoW 1.0 and Cataclysm ruined it for me. I can't nail any one factor down above the rest, but 90% of my time in cataclysm just felt like such a fucking chore. I'd have over an hour of dailies each day just to keep raid-ready and it just felt like everything was so fucking expensive.

I finally realized that I was wasting time being frustrated in Cataclysm and not having fun in other non-mmo games that were very gratifying for the time spent.

I avoided MoP at first because Cataclysm was just so awful, but once I tried it, I loved it. I thought Blizzard had learned their lesson, but I think Cataclysm couldn't have been a better title for that expansion because you could definitely see the... Cataclysmic effect that expac had on the series as a whole. Massively popular servers were literally ghost towns where PVP was impossible, economies sucked, forcing you to have to pay an additional huge fucking chunk of change to transfer server/faction, just reminding you of how much of a bad idea it was to re-sub.

With that said, MoP was still a beautiful expansion and probably my favorite of them all. It's just too bad that it couldn't have been nearly as good as it could have if they had all the customers that Cataclysm pushed away.

GET RID OF THE FUCKING DAILIES/REP GRINDS. There has to be a better way.

Yea, I think that whole rep grinding/rep gear/dailiy rep quests really bored the game down. And not just WoW, but all the other MMO's that followed the same formula.

When I look at destiny, I have the same fear - rep grinding as a gateway to new content.

Yuck. What happened to skill and coodination?

 

[Piggus]

Honestly surprised it's not lower. Anecdotal, but I don't know a single person who plays it anymore. And it's been that way for at least a year.

 

[Dezben]

Look at all the apologists crowding this thread.

FFXIV will build an empire out of WoW's bones. The true god franchise of RPGs has finally returned to guide the faithful into a new era.

 

[Sophia]

People do realize this is the end of an expansion right? Even more so, a Tier that has lasted 11 months now.

Things will jump back up some once WoD hits.

I don't even think the age of the game has much to do with the massive subscriber drop. Sure, they're going to gradually lose people over time from the peak. But we're in an era where their biggest competitors update every three months to every two weeks. So it's no surprise they're having a drop in subscribers when they've gone over ten months without a proper content update.

 

[Authority]

And it will keep on losing. Competition is picking up somewhat. 2015 will be a realgamebreaker for this game and its subs.

 

[Ramocalypse]

Think we'll ever see a WoW2?

 

[-MD-]

I played from 2007-2011. If they ever make a sequel I'll probably play it.

Everyone I used to play WoW with has moved on, if I jump into another mmo it'd need to be fresh. A new expansion won't cut it.

 

[TheGreyHulk]

This is pretty damn amazing given how old the game is. I wonder what's next for the franchise.

 

[Ravijn]

Well.. If they went f2p.. they would add me as a player!

Its nearly 2015. No one has time for sub fees for MMO's!

That 50 cents a day is rough to come by these days.

 

[kirblar]

I'm not an MMO guy so i may not understand, but why is there never talk about a sequel?

The MMO market won't support one. The genre's been on the decline.

 

[dimb]

I don't even think the age of the game has much to do with the massive subscriber drop. Sure, they're going to gradually lose people over time from the peak. But we're in an era where their biggest competitors update every three months to every two weeks. So it's no surprise they're having a drop in subscribers when they've gone over ten months without a proper content update.

WoW has gone through long stretches of light content before without experiencing drops this severe. The takeaway here is that Pandaria is a failure of an expansion that failed to retain its audience.

 

[Bacon_Boss]

6.8 milllion consistent user base is still huge, come xpac i epect the 900k that wandered off to wander back plus any older players who like the idea of Orcs Ogres and Demons 2.0 and didn't like pandas. The game's still very healthy, It's just losing it's super powers.

According to their statement, there was a similar drop just before the MoP release. WoD's release date will be announced shortly, on Aug 14, and i imagine the 1.5 mil pre purchase number will increase as a result. WoW honestly needs a tighter end of xpac plan from here on out. The last massive raid is always accompanied by close to a year of nothing else. I'm still subscribed and honestly, having tackled the majority of my preferred content (Large scale PvE Content) i'm about ready to re subscribe to FFXIV to fill my time.

While this expansion has evidence of being pushed back, i still feel there should have been post raid content added to keep folks busy. I say it was obviously pushed back because we had an additional arena season tacked on to the end, and instead of the usual new art assets that accompany a new pvp season, they just had the alliance and horde trade colors and call it a day. So while they may have intended to have launched WoD by now, that still would have left something like 7 months with no new content at all.

The solution is non-raid content being periodically added until the next expansion. Every 3 months we could have recieved some new 5 man content, a new questing hub in an underused location,or even just a new reputation vendor that encouraged us to do old things for neat rewards. 11 month of nothing i just unacceptable, regardless of whether the expansion is worth the wait.

 

[Into]

Not surprising, considering that we're in the middle of a long drought of no new content.

Also LOL@ the graph in the OP trying to say that the sub decline is all GC's fault.

I only used it because it was the nicest looking one i could find, i personally do not blame Greg Street.

Also i updated a more up do date chart:

 

[SteveWinwood]

While I believe it's total coincidence, I am almost willing to guarantee that League of Legends will decline in popularity in the coming years. Guess who was just hired by Riot?

duh duh DUHHHHH