It's so depressing that a game that is 8 years old still completely dominates the market with no decent opposition. The same company will dominate the market till we all die from crazy robot dudes 30 years from now.

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Originally posted by Enigmatus
Sooooooooo...

Anyone wanna start off a list of why WoW is losing subs throughout Cataclysm's tenure, or should I do that?

Of course I could just do that in my WoW review, but eh...

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Diablo 3 - which sold 10 million copies including Annual Pass but because of Annual Pass Blizzard gave away a game for people to quit WoW to play

End of Expansion Blues - the lull between the final update of the current expansion and the release of the next expansion will always be a low point

Originally posted by Rednecksith

Uh-oh, that's only about $130 million per month in subscription revenue. Whatsoever shall they do?! Quick, throw more sparkle ponies into the cash shop!

Joking aside, 9.1 million is still a number most CEOs would trade their left testicle for. That's probably more subs than every current subscription-based MMO would have if combined.

 

But they don't get 130 mil. You can't just multiply sub number X $15. For starters in the west, some people are paying less than that due to multi-month discounts. Then you got your pre-paid cards, the retailer has to take a cut so they don't get full amount of that either. And then in the East, people are NOT paying $15 per month to play WoW.

 

Having said that they still probably get quite a nice revenue from paid services such as server transfters and the cash shop.

 

Originally posted by QuicklyScott
It's so depressing that a game that is 8 years old still completely dominates the market with no decent opposition. The same company will dominate the market till we all die from crazy robot dudes 30 years from now.

The most depressing thing is that no other dev wants to make games good enough to take anything away from WoW, they're all just generic clones of the same formula that WoW is following, which makes it hard to justify a purchase. Why spend 50 dollars+sub when I already have a game that plays exactly the same AND I know people in it, AND I have a bunch of characters with cool stuff?

 

If a dev would grow the balls to make a GOOD game that doesn't follow the formula, I think they'll make a bundle.

inb4 gw2..

Partially on topic, but there is one thing that always bugs me:

At the end of Wrath, there was a massive drought of content, yet the subscriptions there barely dropped at all. What makes Cataclysm so different?

Originally posted by Enigmatus

Partially on topic, but there is one thing that always bugs me:

At the end of Wrath, there was a massive drought of content, yet the subscriptions there barely dropped at all. What makes Cataclysm so different?

So simplified and streamlined. Almost bad player proof.

ya and probably 5 million in that 9.1 are from china and in china they dont have (SUBS)

WoW China only requires you to pay for the time you spend logged in. A one-time use card which gives you 4000 minutes of playing time costs 30 RMB (4.66 USD), or about 0.45 RMB (7 cents US) per hour.

Originally posted by Enigmatus

Partially on topic, but there is one thing that always bugs me:

At the end of Wrath, there was a massive drought of content, yet the subscriptions there barely dropped at all. What makes Cataclysm so different?

If you look at the financial numbers there was a drop actually.

However, Acti-Blizz's Asia side picked up the fall on the Western side so the subscription numbers seemed relatively 'stable'.

The revenue showed the real story rather than just the '10M subs!'.

We knew WoW was declining already at the start of the year.

The fact they managed, through great promotional deals, to stop the bleeding for a quarter does not change the fact the decline is still there.

The speed of the decline, however, is the concern here. It will be interesting to see where it stops.

Now it is absolutely true that we are finally seeing quality titles coming out (TSW and GW2 above all) that shakes the formula.

TSW is Funcom's best game so far and while it has bugs, problems and stuff like that, it is quite new! new setting, skill based advancement and so on. It also has good enough quality values that it appeal to many.

However, I do not see TSW lasting very long. It has very little replayability value, very punishing dungeons even at low level and an end game seemingly focused on the same stuff WoW did. I think it will get a fan base of loyal followers, but won't threaten WoW for dominance in some time (if ever). TSW also does not offer the whole package as strongly as WoW does, for example. Crafting is quite limited in TSW, PvP offerings are also limited and the world is way smaller than WoW's.

GW2, however, is a completely different story. the 3 BWE showed a game with less bugs and much more server stability than TSW had at launch. More importantly, GW2 hits all the buttons WoW does, but with enough innovation in all parts to call it the next step in Mainstream Theme park Fantasy MMORPGs.

Finally, all reports always carry that tag "most subsctions lost came from the East". Why do you think the eastern market is getting over WoW? It is much fresher there, especially in China, as it was released later and each expansion also got released much later than here. Is there some new super popular Chinese MMO we do not know anything about?

Whatever the reason, I wonder what MoP's impact will be. On paper, it seems the best expansion WoW ever had, adding more of the same while also giving new ways to level up and new things to do at end game, it also re-introduce some of the fan favorites from older expansions like world bosses and no flying until level cap. It also sports the most gorgeous graphics WoW ever had and a new NON-HEROIC class. Oh yes also one of the most wanted and popular Warcraft race, the Pandaren.

So WoW might still come out on top, for now, for some time. Time will tell. My money is on GW2.

most of wows subs i think are leaving is because they havent released a content patch since march with hour of twilight. On top of that it wasnt like when cata released where you had three raids to work on for months , they added in firelands and then dragon soul way later on so even the most casual raider has probably hit 400 by now gearscore. I know it took me all of two weeks to do dragon soul and hour of twilight and bring a naked DK to 389 GS in both frost sets and blood.

People will go back to wow for MOP, the norm for the last few years has been release ridiculous clones of wow over and over again . Rift SWTOR Allods , the many many asian clones of it , wow players go and try these games out and just return to wow because why leave something your the big dog in when you just join a game that is exactly more of the same thing as wow? I dispise the direction wow is going in as its a dumbed down cartoon crap game now but people do not change willingly unless they are truely disgusted by the game. Plus the secret world is the only game to release lately that is actually different then wow. Guild wars 2 soon but for now its just TSW...

I hope and prey the days of the wow clones are long gone but what do people seriously expect if you are signing your dev studio away with the devil aka the publisher. People do not lend large amounts of money on radical idiology , so you cant really get mad at the poor slobs not playing games and only reading known sales figures for wanting on wow clones more worried about their 401ks invested in a publisher etc.

World of Warcraft will climb back up but I think with guild wars 2 having different pvp options to appeal to the old schoolers and new schoolers a like, i really think those two games will put some dents in wows numbers in the longer term. When MOP releases though, do not count many people leaving it until they finish up the content in it.

want to know how  many  subs wow has  look at how many boxes of MOP they sell in the first 2-3 weeks   and thats probably a 90% of the subscription base

 

very few people dont play in the very latest expansion

The sub numbers aren't worth alot when there are 8mil Chinese paying 15 cents an hour.

 

Its funny when people claim that WoW lost subs just because of the content gap, but what explains the 900k million sub drop the year before this quarter? =P Oh and the 900k more the two quarters before that one...

As people have stated previously, the game is not necessarily losing subs soley due to the competition or content gaps, it's just old and dated. At the rate they are losing subs I would be shocked if we don't see a bigger drop starting in Q1 2013. The annual pass also held on to 1.2 million subs in the huge loss they had in the year period I mentioned (2 million in a year from Q2 2011 to Q2 2012)  

If you look at each of these quarters, they lost 600K subs the quarter right after an expansion hit, another 300k in the quarter of 2 content patches (Rift could have impacted this), another 800k inbetween those content patches and dragon soul, another 100k during dragon soul (SWTOR + gained some back for dragon soul), they did not lose any the following quarter (gained subs back from swtor outweighed losses), and then they lost 1.1 million.

So RIGHT AFTER an expansion they lost 600k subs, shook off some of the pain due to annual pass + fighting deathwing appeal, and now here we are. I would not be totally suprised to see a bigger loss in Q1 2013 then we did in Q12011 especially since it will have been longer since the expansion came out + heavy competition coming out during the expansion quarter.

Previous Subscription Losses

• Q1 2011 - 600,000 subscribers lost
• Q2 2011 - 300,000 subscribers lost
• Q3 2011 - 800,000 subscribers lost
• Q4 2011 - 100,000 subscribers lost.
• Q1 2012 - 0 subscribers lost.
• Q2 2012 - 1,100,000 subscribers lost.

Originally posted by Rednecksith

Uh-oh, that's only about $130 million per month in subscription revenue. Whatsoever shall they do?! Quick, throw more sparkle ponies into the cash shop!

Joking aside, 9.1 million is still a number most CEOs would trade their left testicle for. That's probably more subs than every current subscription-based MMO would have if combined.

Try 63 Million per month in subscription, boxsales, paid massservertransfers to flee growing number of dead EU & US server, cashshop P2W ponies, royalties and licensing revenues from publishing partner of  WoW AND Call of Duty Elite memeberships.

You know. The hype about the inflated "active accounts" Blizzard calls subscriber is only  a small PR cookies to fool clueless people and to get attention of the press. A side dish to the actual financial reports where they report exactly those revenues black on white. No need for overly optimistics fanboy "numbercrunching".

4 quarterly reports.

4 times hitting a new RECORD LOW in their whole report history.

Less  than they earned before WotLK, likely less than even before BC.

And before brushing this new relevation to you off with standard respones, calling it "still super dooper awsome", the overhyped and overpraised WoW globally just earned only 4 times more than Aion did the previous quarter, (even without respect of purchasing powers in East and West and ignoring CoDs part of them), a competing MMORPG countless of WoW fanbois repetively, claim and call to be dead, a failure, a flop and other ignorant smearing attempts for the past three years, even when they never touched it in their life. And dont even bother to blame it on lack of contentupdates/expansions as Aion was waiting for one exactly like WoW for months either.

 

Most WoW fanbois have no ******* clue about the MMORPG genre and have the wildest delusions about the" immense dominance and impact" they strongly believe their favorite gametitle has in the genre. While in reality Blizzard isnt even the biggest MMO publisher anymore by several ten millions dollar margin per year difference, leave alone overshadowing the rest. Yet only few have the decency to shut up about it. Rather the opposite, they are the most active spread and proactively promote factually false and most inaccurate myths to hype and praise their favorite game far beyond what it deserves.

But dont worry! Overhyped Panda expansion will save the day! Just like the same people foretold it about Cataclysm, the revolution of the evolution of WoW, which only lead to even more susbcriber losses after the hype brickled off and the people actually played the garbage they paid for upfront.

Wow, 1.1 million players down from may to late june?

While Wow still have impressive numbers that have to be their worst drop ever with the possible exception of the time when the Chinese goverment closed down the game in the entire country a few years back.

Here is another article about it: http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/08/02/world-of-warcraft-down-by-a-million-players/

I'm playing WoW at the moment simply because I'm away from home and Rift and GW2 wont play on my laptop . The feedback by word of mouth about gw2 in game chat/ guild chat  seems to be possative when they are disgussing GW2 . There was some negativity about times it was taking to get in but generally the WoW population seem to be taking to GW2 fast pace . I'm sure many will play both games but they way things appear to be going I would think a vast amount of WoWs players will also play GW2 sometime over the next year . How devestating this will prove to be for WoW is anyones guess . I'll be conservative in mine and say a million at least more loses but I suspect it will much higher than that by this time next year .  

This loss came from estern market, western MMOs can't survive in east, it's surprising that WoW could have done well there, but I don't think that WoW can recover these subs again with MoP in east, even with pay-per-hour system.

WOW will become the new EQ1 and Ultima Online - low population but a few that stay nomatter what and always will until WW3 wipes out humanity.

 

Originally posted by Cinatrot

WOW will become the new EQ1 and Ultima Online - low population but a few that stay nomatter what and always will until WW3 wipes out humanity.

Any game that reaches a sizeable sub base follows that pattern, yes.  Probably even (horrors!) SWTOR, maybe.

I've got too much Stuff I'm invested in.  Now that almost everyone is gone, I can dominate this market, etc.