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World of Warcraft is down to 6.8 million subs; Blizzard on the verge of sleet

Drake

Member
Every time I read a WoW thread it makes me want to go back, get a Character to max level and solo all the old raid content I never got to see. One of these days....
 
Why not just go play Wildstar and GW2, I have played both of those games and I don't really enjoy the combat. Choices are good, they don't need to try and do those other things.

It was just an example of what a sequel could do. The core gameplay of WoW hasn't really changed since launch. They've greatly expanded on it but it's still the same.

Then again a sequel wouldn't really work in the current market anyway.
 

Sophia

Member
I honestly doubt Wildstar could get those numbers especially given the quality of the game. guild wars 2 certainly isn't going to be that high either.

Wouldn't Guild Wars 2 be insanely close to current WoW numbers now that it's available in China? Didn't it sell like... 3.8 million or something?

Final Fantasy XIV already has over two million and is set to launch in China later this year too. I expect that'll drive up numbers pretty high.
 

Thoraxes

Member
The long ass time for WoD and blowing their last patch load a year and a half before the release of their next expansion is doing them no favors.

I'm surprised it's not lower.
 

JCizzle

Member
Speaks to the quality of mop that they retained so many even without updates for so long. However, I'm very concerned that WOD is going to ruin the momentum and fall into the same traps that Cata did. Time will tell.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
They'll get at least another month out of me with the model updates in the next expansion.

Having that many subs is still absurdly high in the history of the genre.
 

arhra

Member
I stopped playing when Siege of Orgrimmar had just released, and it shocks me that it's still the last big content almost a year later. I can see why the numbers would be dropping as the fatigue must be setting in, but I'm sure there will be a decent increase once Warlords of Draenor hits.

Hopefully they're a bit quicker with content updates in that expansion.

The content patches for most of MoP were nicely paced and plenty quick.

They just completely fucked up their estimations of when they were going to get the next expansion out, again, leaving them with yet another year with the final raid and nothing else to do.

You'd think that after promising that they'll be quicker to get the next expansion out this time for nearly a decade now (and failing every time), they'd realize that they should probably plan for a 2yr cycle just in case anyway.
 

HowZatOZ

Banned
I'll be coming back soon enough as I have missed the qualities of WoW. I left shortly after Cataclysm because it just wasn't what I wanted, but very briefly came into MoP and enjoyed what I experienced.

I feel like now I could quite easily juggle a subscription to WoW and playing ArcheAge, whereas before I felt like I had to dedicate myself to one sole game.
 

Into

Member
Some mod changed the thread title lol
Angry_Smiley_Gif_by_Dagamster.gif


Bet it was you Y2Kev, its always you
 
I actually just cancelled my sub for the time being. Pre-school is costing a hell of a lot more than I thought. Ill come back sometime soon after WoD launches. The year waiting for new content is kind of absurd though.
 

Dysun

Member
Mists of Pandaria is the worst expansion yet, not surprised to see it reflect with subs. Not pushing any content for a year is also a killer
 

Iadien

Guarantee I'm going to screw up this post? Yeah.
With how infrequent major patches are in WoW, it's amazing that Blizzard can still manage to retain millions of subscribers. The last major update was September 2013, that's just silly. Especially when considering the amount of free mmos that are out there.
 

syko de4d

Member
WoW did not had any content updates for over a year for real? Why the hell people still pay money 2-3months after an expansion launch? Between 2 addons they pay around 12$/Months for 12-18months for zero new content, thats around 140-210$? And the new Addon is more expansive too, compared to previous addons.
 

BearPawB

Banned
You can revamp the gameplay, less themepark moving from hub to hub and collecting exclamation mark to kill 10 rats nearby.

Maybe move on from tab targeting, add a more action oriented combat system a la Wildstar/GW2

I don't know .. .evolve the game to beyond grinding quests, rep, heroics, raids with the same mechanics you've seen in the last several years.

So you want WoW 2 to be nothing like WoW 1?

If they wanted to make another MMO, and revamp the whole formula. They would call it something else (Titan, if it even exists anymore).
 

Armaros

Member
With how infrequent major patches are in WoW, it's amazing that Blizzard can still manage to retain millions of subscribers. The last major update was September 2013, that's just silly. Especially when considering the amount of free mmos that are out there.

You can tell they took a long break to promote hearthstone, heroes of the storm and diablo expansion (and console version)
 
So you want WoW 2 to be nothing like WoW 1?
.

Not nothing like it just update and evolve the gameplay formula. Look what other games released since are doing or (ideally) come up with something new(kind of like Blizzard did with WoW).

They could call it Titan but you've got millions already familiar with the WoW setting.

Maybe I'm in the minority but a lot of WoW's design just feels dated now. At some Blizzard needs to come up with the next innovation in the MMO genre. If not then someone else.

Obviously they have no incentive to create a sequel and cannibalize their own market.
 

Arment

Member
The last content drought (cata) drove me away from the game and it looks like that choice was a sound one. Actually, sometimes I think about the thousand hours plus I spent playing that game and wonder why, but fun times were had so it doesn't bother me too much.

But yeah, sucks to hear they let players down again.
 

Couleurs

Member
Every time I read a WoW thread it makes me want to go back, get a Character to max level and solo all the old raid content I never got to see. One of these days....

If you haven't played in a while then it's worth it since there have been so many QOL changes and so much to do; plus the current content drought (almost a year since the last content patch) wouldn't affect you.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Horrible thread name.
 

Magnus

Member
I'm curious, does anyone know why WoD is $50 while every previous expansion has been $40?

Everyone who's going to buy it will probably still buy it at $50. $10 isn't even remotely a deterrent to those players, I imagine. And for all those players who are salty about those extra $10, rolling in a free boosted 90 is a solid value proposition.
 
Don't remember where i read this but aren't WoW subs profitable even if they stayed in about 500k ?

Bioware went on record stating 500k subs would be enough for SWTOR to remain profitable, around the time the game launched. Maybe you're thinking of that.

Certainly no need to worry. Every other MMO has wet dreams about reaching half of WoW's current subs.
 
I'd love to get into WoW but the pvp is just so old and outdated. It needs an open scale warfare mode like Guild Wars 2's world verse world. It's hard playing any other modern MMO's pvp after spending a good chunk of time in there.
 
How much is a subscription a month? Multiply the yearly sub price by millions upon millions per year and they're still going bankrupt? Where the hell is that money going?

Nevermind, it seems I walked in on a joke title change.
 
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.

Yes, it was called Burning Crusade. But alas, we are in the era of the smartphone, mmmmmmmmmmobas, and gamer bribery, so it can hardly be a solution to this sickness.
 

antonz

Member
Numbers wise it really isn't that terrible. The numbers continue to drop in China where they have a very different account system in place. Seems like holding steady in where the vast majority of their money comes from which means they remain quite healthy.
 
Not exactly surprised at their current subscriber numbers. Almost going on a full year without a single content patch. For once I'd like to see them release a steady stream of content without a huge drought in between. Not even sure if that's possible even with a bigger team working on it in the meantime since we're seeing some cuts just to get the expansion out in time.

They're still raking in cash but I'll be curious to see what the subscriber number looks like after Warlords is launched.
 
Eh, it'll be back up to 9 mil come the expansion.

Doubtful. While they are likely to see an increase again, the last expansion did not get them up to pre-decline numbers, and another expansion is very likely to do the same (a temporary bump in subscriptions but not a lasting recovery).

WoW has seen it's day apparently, and it is just a slow coast down hill now that they likely at best can only slow, not stop.
 

TraBuch

Banned
I kinda wanna resub just to try and finish the Brawler's Guild. When it first came out, I got up to Battletron before I hit a DPS wall. I'm assuming higher level gear than what I had when I quit is ridiculously easy to get now.
 
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