They brute force/spam mail accounts.

Use a long, convoluted email for your account name. I think it can be up to like 256 characters long (afaik)

I.e

BaconPantsBurrito8675309_666_Hail_Stan@gmail.com

Its amazing really, Blizzard state their player numbers and people go to all sorts of extremes to try and indicate that the game is failing and that players are leaving etc. And then you get games where their very cagey about the numbers, and when their called out on it, people get upset and defensive.. must be an underdog thing, but, end of the day, WoW is still top dog in the MMO department.. 10.2 million subs, no matter how much negative spin people try to put on that, its is still 10.2 MILLION SUBS..  

Originally posted by Phry

Its amazing really, Blizzard state their player numbers and people go to all sorts of extremes to try and indicate that the game is failing and that players are leaving etc. And then you get games where their very cagey about the numbers, and when their called out on it, people get upset and defensive.. must be an underdog thing, but, end of the day, WoW is still top dog in the MMO department.. 10.2 million subs, no matter how much negative spin people try to put on that, its is still 10.2 MILLION SUBS..  

I couldn't have said that better. Completely agree with you. I infact feel sorry for all the haters who try so hard to show that WOW is failing and sub numbers are a lie...they have been going on for almost 5 years now. Some people just never learn.

Originally posted by Badaboom
The number of subs means nothing unless your an investor. All that matters about the game is if you are having fun while playing it. I did for awhile, but no longer.

Agreed. What matter to the players are server population, not how many total subs a game have.

Wow should merge down their servers, only reason they havn't yet is because Blizz were stating that merging servers are a sign of a dying game when certain other games merged their servers. It is really not so cut the crap and merge the servers.

I don't see Wow going F2P soon unless 9 of those million players live in China and pay by the minute their on instead of monthly fees. Maybe 2 years from now or so if things continue as they do now.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Badaboom
The number of subs means nothing unless your an investor. All that matters about the game is if you are having fun while playing it. I did for awhile, but no longer.

Agreed. What matter to the players are server population, not how many total subs a game have.

Wow should merge down their servers, only reason they havn't yet is because Blizz were stating that merging servers are a sign of a dying game when certain other games merged their servers. It is really not so cut the crap and merge the servers.

I don't see Wow going F2P soon unless 9 of those million players live in China and pay by the minute their on instead of monthly fees. Maybe 2 years from now or so if things continue as they do now.

If they merged servers the major cities would be laggy feats, they alreayd are.. wow servers do not need a merge there are more than enough on each just most hang out in their factions main city and are in dungeons/raids rather than out in the world.  The new cross realm zones should help make the world feel more populated by merging the population of low pop zones together on the fly.

hehe its an interesting one isnt it, WOW hasnt lost subs, and yet SWTOR hasnt lost subs - someone is telling fibs :)

[Mod Edit]

Let us say you are 100% correct. With that assumption, let us follow the logical consequences of that:

RIght now, there are people who believe it when Blizzard says there are 10.2 million subscribers to World of Warcraft. However, when they log in to play, they don't care how many subscribers there really are because they're having fun. When they tell their friends about WoW, their friends don't say, "Wait, you say it's fun, but how many subscribers are there? I mean, that's really the lynchpin for me. I don't care how fun it is, if there aren't 10.2 million people playing like Blizzard says, then I don't want to play." 

This is the first recorded instance in human history of a lie; therefore, WoW supporters who believe it will be remembered as extraordinarily stupid. Everyone remembers the first milestones of mankind, and the people that fell for this, the first of lies, shall be immortalized in stone. After the dust settles and World War 3 has ended with the Siege of Irvine, a memorial shall be erected upon the site of Blizzard's HQ. Upon this monument it will say, "Here fought the last of the first liars. Here is a list of the suckers that believed Blizzard's lies."

That's right: World War 3 will be fought because Blizzard told a lie on a quarterly report about the number of people that are playing and enjoying an internet game completely fabricated out of make believe. If we continue to believe this lie, countless millions of innocent lives will be lost. Continue to play WoW and enjoy it if you wish, but be reasonable; make it known to all that you recognize the truth. Simply say, "Yes, I enjoy playing WoW, but I do not advocate the quarterly report of April 2012 where Blizzard claims to have 10.2 million subscribers."

Top 5 reasons WW3 starts:

5. Lack of natural resources. 

4. Economic collapse by Wall Street meddling in the derivatives market.

3. Cooperative survey between Rasmussen and X-Fire about what the best pizza topping is.

2. People posting funny pictures of full grown cats on the internet and calling them kittens. No. Kittens are baby cats; get it right.

1. Blizzard puts spin on a quarterly report in 2012, citing 10.2 million subscribers to World of Warcraft, when the number is actually lower.

Originally posted by Requiem6

Originally posted by ActionMMORPG

Many came back for Scroll of Ressurection.  The instant 80, free cata upgrade, free transfer, free gear upgrade, and free flyer for the inviter was quite a bargain for the cost of a month's $15.00 subscription.

 

The question is, how long will they stay.

A pretty long time with MoP coming up.

If anything MoP will make even more people come back and number will grow.

lol MoP is driving people away. MoP is the same old game over again. No game changer or inovation, just goofy pandas LOL.

As soon as GW2 is released and word gets around, people will start asking themselves why the hell they're paying Blizzard a monthly fee for a game that's not as good.

Some hopefulls will buy MoP and then quit again after being let down. But Blizzard will already have their money, sadly.

Originally posted by SteamRanger

I don't know about the Chinese, but I do know that a lot of people agreed to pay for a year so they could get that exclusive flying mount and Diablo III for free. That will be padding any sub numbers until October. Wonder what kind of gimmick Activision will come up with once they enact the changes coming with Mists of Pandaria.

I think they said that 1.2M took the annual pass for free D3. That left 9M actively subscribing without any D3 incentive.

WoW is still pretty much the top dog in the gaming community. You can see this in many other ways besides subscriber numbers, like just go to Twitch.tv and tell me which MMO has the most livestreams, it's WoW.

I don't think GW2 will take over the hardcore players from WoW, for the simple reason that there is no raid content in GW2 and many, many MMO players out there still like to raid. From what I've been hearing, many will use WoW for raiding and GW2 for world pvp. It works out since GW2 doesn't have a subscription.

Originally posted by AegisSaga

WoW is still pretty much the top dog in the gaming community. You can see this in many other ways besides subscriber numbers, like just go to Twitch.tv and tell me which MMO has the most livestreams, it's WoW.

I don't think GW2 will take over the hardcore players from WoW, for the simple reason that there is no raid content in GW2 and many, many MMO players out there still like to raid. From what I've been hearing, many will use WoW for raiding and GW2 for world pvp. It works out since GW2 doesn't have a subscription.

Nah, most raisers will either stay in Wow or move into a upcomming game with raids.

The PvP crowd on the other hand might move.

I don´t think GW2 will be the next Wow, I in fact think there wont be any new Wows at all to PC MMOs, I think the market will be shared between a few large games of about equal size instead.

Console MMOs will get their own Wow though (just like Halo were consoles "Doom"). My bet in on Class 4.

Originally posted by Xiaoki

According to the latest financial report from Activision Blizzard WoW has "approximately 10.2 million subscribers as of 3/31/2012".

http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=672062

Don't think they will be going free to play any time soon.

Now commence with the "90% are Chinese gold farmers" responses.

It's not 90% chinese gold farmers however Blizzards deal with China does put them in a unique situation where every Chinese account ever created is counted as active and can never go inactive. Last time someone tallied it the total Chinese accounts tallied around 5 million, and my guess is it has increased. Now don't get me wrong 10million is impressive, but when you take that into account there are other games that are similiar to WoW in numbers for specific areas of the world. Though possibly not overall.

Originally posted by Requiem6

Originally posted by ActionMMORPG

Many came back for Scroll of Ressurection.  The instant 80, free cata upgrade, free transfer, free gear upgrade, and free flyer for the inviter was quite a bargain for the cost of a month's $15.00 subscription.

 

The question is, how long will they stay.

A pretty long time with MoP coming up.

If anything MoP will make even more people come back and number will grow.

Personally MoP is why I will not be coming back, I can not justify having to buy expansions anymore on top of my subscription, that and MoP looks to have nothing interesting, same old boring faceroll mobs and I really dislike the race as a whole. Animations for the pandas suck as well.

I'm quite the supporter of Blizzard and WoW, having played since day 1 of EU Vanilla to nowaday (with few months in between of breaks). I think WoW is an awesome game and have said so many times on these forums.

But I must say that the current downward trend does not seem stopped yet. Yes, the subscription are stable (albeit, as a previous user pointed out, the Western subsriptions lowered slightly... this could mean 1, or many. prolly something like 5-10%) but this is just aftter a literally flurry of offers from Blizzard to keep subscribers.

Offers that, judging by what data we have, have been incredibly succesfull (1.2 millions Annual pass, can't make a precise number for scrolls, but checking the sheer number of threads here asking for them, they must be quite popular).

So if with incredibly successful offers, subscriptions have just remained stable. This means there WAS a continued downturn that was just stopped with these. The offers, however, are just a stopgap. They won't last forever, so Blizzard's hope must truly lay with MoP to revitalize the sales and subscriptions.

Now you may think that it is not such a big deal... I mean 10.2 millions is still leaps and bound over its competition and yes, you are of course right, but you must also understand business.

Blizzard has always been left alone (allegedly) to do as they please in the creative department. This independence is implicitly linked with them doing well. Look at what happened with EA and Mythic. There were vows left and right that EA would not interfere with Mythic creative process and maybe they did not.... until Warhammer bombed. Then... Mythic was quickly dissolved and incorporated in EA - Bioware (it used to be called EA - Mythic).

Bioware may suffer something on a smaller scale, but similar, if SW:ToR loss of subscriptions continue and so will Blizzard.

I hate to think what will happen if Activision and Bobby "The Devil" Kotick will take a more active role in Blizzard's management. You may think the current item shop is bad... but at least Blizzard has never had any On-disk DLCs, Day1 DLCs or DLCs in general. You can be sure this will end the day that Blizzard profits start to slip too much.

You may not like Blizzard's current games and yes, people have come and gone from Blizzard, but the core of Blizz is still there and the name you hear are for the most part the veterans of the company.,.. People that started to make games when it was an unpopular little side hobby... in a nutshell: they are very much gamers true and through. Bobby Kotick is not a gamer, he is a suit. He thinks like a suit and prolly does not even know too much about games... So, all you haters.. think: THAT is Blizzard's fate should it slip and fall. Do you REALLY want that for our industry?

TL;DR Blizzard's will become Bobby Kotick's little toy if WoW (and other Blizz property) becomes less profitable. So another company will go from having gamers management to suits management, do you really want that? No? then you are free to dislike's Blizzard products all you like, but stop the hating.

Originally posted by Dinasty

Originally posted by Requiem6

Originally posted by ActionMMORPG

Many came back for Scroll of Ressurection.  The instant 80, free cata upgrade, free transfer, free gear upgrade, and free flyer for the inviter was quite a bargain for the cost of a month's $15.00 subscription.

 

The question is, how long will they stay.

A pretty long time with MoP coming up.

If anything MoP will make even more people come back and number will grow.

lol MoP is driving people away. MoP is the same old game over again. No game changer or inovation, just goofy pandas LOL.

As soon as GW2 is released and word gets around, people will start asking themselves why the hell they're paying Blizzard a monthly fee for a game that's not as good.

Some hopefulls will buy MoP and then quit again after being let down. But Blizzard will already have their money, sadly.

I think GW2 will do really, really well (as GW1 has done), but I don't think people who like WoW will necessrily flock to it. I pre-ordered, and played the Beta weekend. It was gorgeous, and entertaining, but I'm still looking forward to MoP.

Originally posted by namelessbob

Originally posted by Xiaoki

According to the latest financial report from Activision Blizzard WoW has "approximately 10.2 million subscribers as of 3/31/2012".

http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=672062

Don't think they will be going free to play any time soon.

Now commence with the "90% are Chinese gold farmers" responses.

It's not 90% chinese gold farmers however Blizzards deal with China does put them in a unique situation where every Chinese account ever created is counted as active and can never go inactive. Last time someone tallied it the total Chinese accounts tallied around 5 million, and my guess is it has increased. Now don't get me wrong 10million is impressive, but when you take that into account there are other games that are similiar to WoW in numbers for specific areas of the world. Though possibly not overall.

And again, not true.   Accounts from china are not counted unless Blizzard has collected money on that account in the last 30 days.

But again, lets go back to the other ´proof´.    Cata sold 3.3M copies IN THE FIRST DAY ONLY IN THE WEST.   I don´t see how someone can claim WOW has like 3M subscribers in the west, when more than that bought the last expansion in the very first day.

The next proof is just the large number of servers they have and the populations on those servers.  200ish servers in NA and log into any of them and you will see people everywhere (well, in the higher level zones and cities).

Will mop be a big seller?  who knows.. it will probably do about the same as Cata.  But I do think the devs learned a lesson with Cata.  They are focusing on content to do at endgame in Mop.  More dailys and reps. scenerios, pvp objectives and just more focus on keeping players entertained once they hit 90.  One of the biggest failures of Cata was that once you hit 85, there wasn´t much to do besides heroics and raids.  It took almost a year for the fireland hub to come into the game.  I believe the devs are fixing that with MOP.. there will be more firelands type things to do.

But it is funny.. WOW keeps going on strong quarter after quarter, all the wow-killers come and die.. and still people think they are lying.

I am one of the subscribers atm bcs my friends pay me the account to play with them.
I dont like the game, i dont quest, i dont grind thru the game, the only reason i play is i want to help them touring thru the instances.

The difficulty is laughable, the art style is beyond bad taste, the lore a patchwork mess, the game at all is a broken promise and i hate every minute i play!

Sometimes in the next 6 to 12 months my friends get their mind back and we go play real mmos again...then its 5 accounts less for WoW :)

PS: But i fear the ages have done bad to some of my friends - they even like Diablo 3 and say its better than D1 and D2 which makes me chuckle and feel sorry the same time.

WoW is 8 years old, it should be slowly losing subs. The only way WoW would go F2P is if its sub rate goes below 1 million or so which wont happen any time soon. I think it's funny how every few years a new game is coming out that supposably is going to kill wow, the first GW wasn't at all like a traditional MMO so I really don't see the sequal competing all that well.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by AegisSaga

WoW is still pretty much the top dog in the gaming community. You can see this in many other ways besides subscriber numbers, like just go to Twitch.tv and tell me which MMO has the most livestreams, it's WoW.

I don't think GW2 will take over the hardcore players from WoW, for the simple reason that there is no raid content in GW2 and many, many MMO players out there still like to raid. From what I've been hearing, many will use WoW for raiding and GW2 for world pvp. It works out since GW2 doesn't have a subscription.

Nah, most raisers will either stay in Wow or move into a upcomming game with raids.

The PvP crowd on the other hand might move.

I don´t think GW2 will be the next Wow, I in fact think there wont be any new Wows at all to PC MMOs, I think the market will be shared between a few large games of about equal size instead.

Console MMOs will get their own Wow though (just like Halo were consoles "Doom"). My bet in on Class 4.

I agree with you here for the most part, but I do think that the MMO market will fluctuate between whatever MMO is the most popular at the time, I dont think WoW really has any specific formula that made it a one off, it was just a decent MMO at the right place and right time to catch everyones attention. As a matter of fact most of the WoW development that makes up the game today and it really caught on as a popular MMO came much after release.

This game will age pretty well, but I can definetely see another MMO being the move on for these people, most of the WoW playerbase werent MMO players when they started playing the game, but now they are, once WoW starts slowing down, and I can only see this happening a couple of years down the line, something being a blizzard product or not that offers a fun experience to lots of people and with the same level of polish will catch a lot of this player base, and it will become the new big thing.

For now in my opinion I think we are probably gonna see the same sort of  steady "decline" that happened after UO/EQ back in the day, whereby investment will be fairly scarce for a few years with a few MMOs in the pipeline for a long time, and maybe then there will be an opportunity much like Blizzard had when they released WoW for another company to come along and take a real look at an empty market and try and make something that is gonna catch everyones attention.