with all the hacking, security issues, gold farming issues.  they have im surprised there are still people playing it at all.

Originally posted by Dredphyre

Being the WoW hipsters that they are, I believe they're all ironically playing SWTOR .

Thought the WoW haters were the hipsters?

Blizzard's mistake was listening to the minority crying on the forums.

Now they have scared of a massive chunk of the majority, they are unlikely to get those players back either, even in their next MMO as people won't trust them not to ruin it the same way.

Their EU/US subscriptions is only a few million and when the numbers start to drop (as they are now) it's very noticable.  Most of their claimed 12 million (probably more like 8 by now) are in Asia.

I made an assumption back in Novemeber that WoW could stop the bleeding with the one year deal with Diablo and release of the newly opened Brazilian servers.  But now late in January there may be a chance they still end up with a net result of loss players despite those two points I brought up.  If, and that is a big if, that is true, that would be a huge problem for the WoW team.  Why?

1. Their major patch was released more than a month ago, and January is the slowest month of the year for a lot of business, including the entertainment industry.  As a result, when business starts to pick up in Spring what will they have in store to retain existing players?  At this point they should be more concerned with retaining existing players than trying to lure back players that left.

2.  MoP beta by earliest estimates will be open late spring/early summer.  Which reinforces point 1 that there is a huge gap until then to maintain player enthusiasm for this quarter.  

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Originally posted by Hoplites
I made an assumption back in Novemeber that WoW could stop the bleeding with the one year deal with Diablo and release of the newly opened Brazilian servers.  But now late in January there may be a chance they still end up with a net result of loss players despite those two points I brought up.  If, and that is a big if, that is true, that would be a huge problem for the WoW team.  Why?
1. Their major patch was released more than a month ago, and January is the slowest month of the year for a lot of business, including the entertainment industry.  As a result, when business starts to pick up in Spring what will they have in store to retain existing players?  At this point they should be more concerned with retaining existing players than trying to lure back players that left.
2.  MoP beta by earliest estimates will be open late spring/early summer.  Which reinforces point 1 that there is a huge gap until then to maintain player enthusiasm for this quarter.  
 

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I honestly believe they've NO idea what they're doing, it wasn't a clever ruse all along to shift the market or gameplay expectations one way or another and they're just floundering around, akin to throwing darts at a dartboard while blind-folded.

D3 being the embodiment of isometric-Craft was the final icing on the cake for me, at least, and I can no longer give Blizzavision money with a clear conscience.

Originally posted by Hoplites

I made an assumption back in Novemeber that WoW could stop the bleeding with the one year deal with Diablo and release of the newly opened Brazilian servers.  But now late in January there may be a chance they still end up with a net result of loss players despite those two points I brought up.  If, and that is a big if, that is true, that would be a huge problem for the WoW team.  Why?

1. Their major patch was released more than a month ago, and January is the slowest month of the year for a lot of business, including the entertainment industry.  As a result, when business starts to pick up in Spring what will they have in store to retain existing players?  At this point they should be more concerned with retaining existing players than trying to lure back players that left.

2.  MoP beta by earliest estimates will be open late spring/early summer.  Which reinforces point 1 that there is a huge gap until then to maintain player enthusiasm for this quarter.  

 

For me it is painfully obvious that 2012 will end up with huge net player loss. Well unless all new titles will bomb big time.

Then player drop will be small. 

Snow ball started to roll and there is no stopping now, it is just question : how fast?

@NasherUK

WoW playerbase is 10 million officially by Blizzard.

12 mil is old value.

I still play WoW for Rateds and arenas, but I've noticed the populations on my servers dwindling a bit.

Problem with making content faceroll like it is, is the players eat it up way too fast and become bored too soon.  So catering to the "just give me mah loot now" crowd has helped step all over the game.

Originally posted by waynejr2

Punks on this site need to understand that things don't have to be perfect before they have meaning.   If you have a better tool for the numbers that we can't access prove it.  Otherwise, this might be the best information out there.  Sampling is good enough AND IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT.

There are sites like xfire where you get a sample of the population.  Its not necessarily representive of the whole because xfire users are a subset of MMO users rather than a cross section and its users will tend to be younger than the average MMO player.  Chances are good that trends will apply to the whole population, but you dont know for certain and to what degree.  Marginally useful.

There are sites like Riftstatus and ToRstatus that could e more useful, but we dont know how much flux the population caps of the two games have to be 100% accurate.  Also medium -> medium shows up equal, but it culd be a large fluctuation

The warcraftrealms is 100% WORTHLESS.   Why?  For example one realm is listed as having 4,500 ally toons and 0 Horde toons. The data is nowhere near complete for it.

Originally posted by Hoplites

 

2.  MoP beta by earliest estimates will be open late spring/early summer.  Which reinforces point 1 that there is a huge gap until then to maintain player enthusiasm for this quarter.  

 

where are these estimates from?  Blizzard hasnt said a word as far as I know

I love WoW and i still say that up to this day is the best online game experience i ever had. I stoped playing it 2 months after Cataclysm launch but i should had stop playing it right after TBC. It was a great game, a great world, made alot of friends, but with the systematic dumbing down of this game and the design made to appeal to an increase in player base subscription by atracting "younger" players and slap veterans on the face, it just got lost along the way.

I would rather see it shutdown, but it is the same for me as i will never buy another Blizzard game again. And i wanted to play Diablo 3, but when i get played for my money and time, i have learned not to forigve.

I miss my Pally, and i miss Azeroth, but it got destroyed long time ago.

Originally posted by dreamsofwar

Originally posted by oubers

Originally posted by Fendel84M

Who cares? Everyone takes this stuff so personally. Unless you own stock in Blizzard or Bioware or anything other MMO company, why do you care? If you wanna play it, play it, if you dont, dont. Why does anyone care who else plays it?

^^this^^

 

This, and if everybody did what you suggested there would be no mmorpg.com, these forums thrive on the indulgence of complaining and dictating what people should and shouldn't play.

isn't that, in essence, what a forum is?

I guess we will find out soon enough.  It looks like the Q4 conference call will be on Feb 9th.  I am sure they lost subscribers for that quarter as the game is getting old, but I doubt it is as drastic as the original poster said.  That conference call however really won't have TOR taken into account as it came out right at the end.  Guess we will have to wait until the Q1 for 2012 to really know, but then at that point they will loose subs from all the new games that will also be out at the end of Q1.

  My server is the same as it's always been...low/med population.  There has been no drastic loss of people.

Not seeing it.  GF and I resubbed for a bit.  The server we're on (PVE) is med / high 24/7.  AH is jammed with stuff (25+ minute auctioneer scan).

Quest areas are dead.  Everyone seems to run random dungeons over and over, which is what I'm doing now too.

Not on the servers I play on proudmoore and whisperwind. Everyday I play do my dailies and raid/wow dungeon finder and people are always around doing something.

Originally posted by marinrider

I would have believed you until you said 50% sub loss.  In no way to I believe they have lost that many.  I could almost believe 30% at most but 50% is a bit high.

I knew 12-13 guys from my hood that were playing wow from 2004. Today none of them is playing it . All of them quited wow. Thats more than 50% right?   :]

Originally posted by GameOvr

According to data on WarcraftRealms, MMOData and using the Internet Archive...

7 months ago there were 4 US servers with less than 1000 characters observed by wow census in 30 days, now there are over 40 of these servers, EU is worse, with 60 of them. This is a tremendous downward momentum.

Servers support 25,000 accounts each, there are over 100 servers with less than 4% capacity (based on no characters are alts).

The high water mark of subscriptions, which includes cataclysm release was 12 million, 6 in NA/EU and 6 in Asia.

Total player population observed by wow census now  is 1.9 million characters in the US, the last time wow census saw those numbers was Aug 2005 (1.7 mil, next archive is next year with 2.3 mil), and there were 3 million NA/EU subs back then. It looks like wow has lost 50% of subs in one year and one expansion.

 

 

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php?sort=Total

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/WoW.png

http://www.archive.org/

 

There is a blizzard/activision investors conference call at the start of feb where actual sub numbers will be announced. Untill then, all posts trying to clain subscriber numbers are half azzed speculation at best.

Originally posted by Jonnas13

Originally posted by Clerigo

Originally posted by Arkinia

Originally posted by dreamsofwar

Originally posted by oubers

Originally posted by Fendel84M

Who cares? Everyone takes this stuff so personally. Unless you own stock in Blizzard or Bioware or anything other MMO company, why do you care? If you wanna play it, play it, if you dont, dont. Why does anyone care who else plays it?

^^this^^

 

This, and if everybody did what you suggested there would be no mmorpg.com, these forums thrive on the indulgence of complaining and dictating what people should and shouldn't play.

isn't that, in essence, what a forum is?

What a croc of "#$%...if you dont care about who else is playing it, why the heck you aim to play a massive multiplayer online game???

And for me i am glad sites like mmorpg.com exists. I know that this site and others alike are far from being perfect, but information flows here, like it or not, its  a matter of personal taste, but nonetheless very very needed. What the heck are you doing here if your judgement on this site is so weak?? Trolling?

Edited: i agree with Arkinia.

{mod edit}

I know i am not English native so my written English is far from perfect, but could you point out where i called someone a troll, or weakly alluded them to be so???

I asked what that user was doing here if he thinks so low on this website, and i gave an option to this question. if that option doesnt fit his/her profile the user just needs to say so. Why you would make such a remark on my comment is just something for me to smile at. So here is the smile

Well all I know is my server still has queues and there seems to be a big influx of fresh 85s recently.

SWTOR refugees I guess? 

Originally posted by Teh_Axi

Well all I know is my server still has queues and there seems to be a big influx of fresh 85s recently.

SWTOR refugees I guess? 

Re-rolls from other servers.

On Emerald Dream most of the people that are new are from other servers, and well they want to see what world PVP looks like too. :P