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World of Warcraft at 5.5 million subscribers, will no longer share numbers

ExVicis

Member
Number of WoW players probably outnumbers the players of all other current MMO combined.
But just having a higher number than other MMOs shouldn't be what Blizzard is thinking. They should be thinking about why they're game is doing so poorly compared to one year ago. What they should be thinking is why they're hemorrhaging so many subscribers and how can.

If Blizzard had the mindset of some people in here then they would think "well at least we're doing better than those guys!' and never bother fixing what seems to be obvious shortcomings with recent expansions. The fact that they're at numbers so low they haven't been seen in almost a decade should be an alarm not a time to get a pat on the back.
 

frequency

Member
Oh so they were not even on a yearly bases? that's even worse than I though than because clearly a company of that size should be able to have that sort of output.


The contents updates we get on FFXIV are not as huge as a WoW Expansion but at least Square-Enix's 3-4 month schedule keeps FFXIV from becoming stale in my opinion and it gives me new content to look forward to that's not over 6 months away and yeah the raiders here might be very vocal about not getting enough end game raids with these updates but I'm satisfied with my experience.

You seem to think WoW content only comes during expansions. That is incorrect.

Mists of Pandaria
2013:
Aug 28: Pre-expansion patch
Sept 17: World Event - Attack on Theramore
Sept 25: MoP release
Nov 29: Patch 5.1
Mar 5: Patch 5.2
May 20: Patch 5.3
Sept 9: Patch 5.4

WoD was Nov 13, 2014.

It's just during the pre-expansion period that stuff slows down. And people unsubscribe in response. During the actual expansion release schedule, they do significant content patches 3-4 months apart.
 

Teletraan1

Banned
I skipped WoD, the first time I have ever skipped an expansion. I used to line up for midnight launches until they started offering the digital versions. I almost got sucked in by the early hype for WoD on this site but I figured I would hold off and I am glad I did. Now it seems like that expansion is the second coming of satan.

The time between the final content of an expansion and the next expansion release date was always too long. It became a glorified chat room with a subscription while I was doing chores in a game. I always wished they would just rebalance old raids for those times at the end of the expansion to give people something to do. Whenever they did reintroduce old content they would totally change the layout/art etc and it was always too much work for them and usually robbed the place of any charm the original had. Any nostalgia feels were gone. If they just scaled the mobs level and rebalanced boss abilities to whatever level you were and made the drops scale it would have been an easy stopgap when they had no other content. Or even adding hard modes to old fights would have gone a long way to curb that content drought. I subbed 365 up until WotLK. After that I started unsubbing during the dry spells and then subbing less and less. Now I have zero desire to even play this game again.
 

lazygecko

Member
The time between the final content of an expansion and the next expansion release date was always too long. It became a glorified chat room with a subscription while I was doing chores in a game. I always wished they would just rebalance old raids for those times at the end of the expansion to give people something to do. Whenever they did reintroduce old content they would totally change the layout/art etc and it was always too much work for them and usually robbed the place of any charm the original had. Any nostalgia feels were gone. If they just scaled the mobs level and rebalanced boss abilities to whatever level you were and made the drops scale it would have been an easy stopgap when they had no other content. Or even adding hard modes to old fights would have gone a long way to curb that content drought. I subbed 365 up until WotLK. After that I started unsubbing during the dry spells and then subbing less and less. Now I have zero desire to even play this game again.

Agree completely about the dungeon revamps. Scholomance was especially tragic by turning it into yet another completely linear rollercoaster scriptfest instead of keeping it as an actual place in the world that people lived in.

They did introduce the timewalking feature this expansion, which enables scaling (by scaling your character down to the appropriate level) on BC/WotLK/Cata dungeons on a bi-weekly event rotation (similar to battleground bonus days). They've said they would like to expand this to work on raids as well.
 

imjust1n

Banned
It will keep dropping. Phases die, WoW was a phase I think they will drop to like 2.5 Mil subs by end of next year.
 

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
Yeah, 2.5mil next year is about as likely as 20 million.
 

Arkeband

Banned
Fair enough, but it's kind of irrelevant what you in particular want. What I said likely applies to the majority of people demanding Vanilla servers, hence why it is pointless to do them from an economic standpoint.

What these players are actually asking for whether they realize it or not, isn't 2005 WoW gameplay in 2015, but rather the feelings they got playing this revolutionary MMO when it was new and fresh. Which obviously won't happen, they'd just be playing an outdated and now clunky version of the game.

My view of it anyway.

I'd play WoW indefinitely if it was just reskinned Ulduar after Ulduar into perpetuity.

Unfortunately it was all downhill from there.

I mean, can you seriously ever top this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0e1cD7DJ54
 
A lot, and I mean a lot, of people have seen all there is to see in WoW. I would say at least half of those subs are people nursing the addiction rather than actually engaged players. The game is old as fuck. It will always have a player base, but I know this holds true for me, I just can't keep playing the same game. It has no new tricks. It's too much of the same over and over. I can't see newer generations of players getting into WoW because the shiny new sheen of the MMORPG is gone. Those players are going to stuff like Destiny or Minecraft, DOTA, LoL, CSGO, whatever.
 
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Looking at it like that it would appear cataclysm fucked it for them. Subscription numbers were steady until then.
 

Arkeband

Banned
Looking at it like that it would appear cataclysm fucked it for them. Subscription numbers were steady until then.

Cata's raids sucked out of the gate. Everyone was at level cap and there were like five annoying zones you could quest in, the rest of the changes were aimed at revamping leveling zones, which didn't necessarily matter to new players because they can't appreciate the difference, and didn't appeal to veterans unless they wanted to level a new character. The dungeons weren't that great either.

Cata needed something extra and it didn't deliver. WotLK introduced new vehicle systems and UI to accompany, and added the achievement system with an overwhelming number of them to tackle. Everyone was stoked.

Lich King was also seeing WC3's entire story arc to completion, so "good job but actually this whole time there was a big metal dragon that could end the world but will only occasionally inconvenience zones while you're leveling" was a stupid direction to take the plot.
 

Doosi

Banned
Cata's raids sucked out of the gate. Everyone was at level cap and there were like five annoying zones you could quest in, the rest of the changes were aimed at revamping leveling zones, which didn't necessarily matter to new players because they can't appreciate the difference, and didn't appeal to veterans unless they wanted to level a new character. The dungeons weren't that great either.

Cata needed something extra and it didn't deliver. WotLK introduced new vehicle systems and UI to accompany, and added the achievement system with an overwhelming number of them to tackle. Everyone was stoked.

Lich King was also seeing WC3's entire story arc to completion, so "good job but actually this whole time there was a big metal dragon that could end the world but will only occasionally inconvenience zones while you're leveling" was a stupid direction to take the plot.

Agreed

Cataclysm was a retarded direction to take
 

Berordn

Member
Thing is... where else do you go when all of your most iconic villains are dead and buried?

You start digging into the lore you've been trying to establish for WoW and then get people who miss the point of the expansion entirely despite actually furthering the story (MoP), or you bring them back from the dead with stupid time travel shenanigans (WoD).

They've tried both, neither seems to make anyone happy.
 

ApharmdX

Banned
Number of WoW players probably outnumbers the players of all other current MMO combined.

All other current P2P MMOs, possibly. Counting F2P MMOs, or B2P like Guild Wars 2 and ESO? Absolutely not, not even close.

I stopped playing WoW at the end of WotlK because community interaction in game was dead, even if the player count was at its highest. They kept putting in more and more antisocial systems so players can grind dailies/dungeons instead of finding ways of getting more players to interact at once on a server. Looks like they never learned their mistake.

You're right, of course. I started in Vanilla and yes, some of the forced social interaction was inconvenient, but it's a damn MMO! If you want to play alone all of the time, then play a singleplayer game.

I went back to WoW last summer pre-WOD and it felt absolutely dead, shockingly so. That was on the fourth-most populous NA server. Things are really quite dire for Blizzard.
 

Arkeband

Banned
Thing is... where else do you go when all of your most iconic villains are dead and buried?

They jumped the gun on killing certain characters early. Anub'arak was Arthas's right hand man and was a tie-in to an ancient race of subterranean beetle/spider people. They were essential units in WC3 and they could have used Anub'arak as a plot device to introduce another Old God, or have an Old God possess him or some shit.

And that's just one character, you have SO MANY characters from WC3 that they could have used to progress the plot, but they thought inventing new ones would be more compelling. They were wrong.
 
All other current P2P MMOs, possibly. Counting F2P MMOs, or B2P like Guild Wars 2 and ESO? Absolutely not, not even close.



You're right, of course. I started in Vanilla and yes, some of the forced social interaction was inconvenient, but it's a damn MMO! If you want to play alone all of the time, then play a singleplayer game.

I went back to WoW last summer pre-WOD and it felt absolutely dead, shockingly so. That was on the fourth-most populous NA server. Things are really quite dire for Blizzard.

I play on and off but it never feels dead to me. I always see people running around. I play on stormrage BTW.
 
With the rumors about key heroes dying (which is why you get to use their weapons in legion) I am in the camp that wishes legion was it before they did something like WoW 2 (or warcraft 4 damnit).

It would make the expansion so impactful if key characters did die and didn't come back, we lost despite winning for years, and then BOOM: you get a ff14 like realm reborn refresh of Warcraft.

I have been playing the game since it launched, still have a sub, but with how silly WoD was, I want legion to set the stage for another solid decade of warcraft, no matter if it means another xpac, or a whole new game entirely.
 
Thing is... where else do you go when all of your most iconic villains are dead and buried?

Make up new ones like Lei Shen

Alternatively, go back and kill old ones like the Warlords or Archimonde (who we already went back to kill once)

Or just keep hanging on to Azshara and the other Old Gods
 
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