Blizzard Loses 600k Subscribers in 2 Months

[Nikachelle]

I was curious to find out what the numbers are like for subs to WoW and happened upon the lastest news saying the subs have actually dropped quite a bit lately. Not sure how this compares to previous summers, but here's the link: http://www.gamefront.com/blizzard-loses ... -2-months/

Pasted for those at work with issues:

Despite being insanely profitable, World of Warcraft’s subscriber numbers continue to dwindle as time goes on.

Just this past May, the game saw the loss of 1.3 million subscribers, to 8.3 million, down from 9.6 million. Today’s latest figures reveal a further decline for the massively multiplayer online RPG with figures dipping down to 7.7 million. That’s a loss of 600,000 players over a period of 2 months.

It’s not surprising that an MMO this long running has people leaving it, especially in the wake of new games on the market making attempts to claim World of Warcraft’s space in the industry. Not many people are going to play an MMO for 10 years. In spite of the dip in numbers, not many games can claim to have 7.7 million subscribers. It’s doubtful that anyone at Blizzard is sweating over the loss in subscription numbers.

It’ll be interesting to see what Blizzard does in its attempt to retain existing players or build its numbers back up. Perhaps an expansion or two may be in order, especially with Project Titan delayed to at least 2016.

[benebarba]

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

In short, it's not until 1Q 2009 that wow sees a drop in sub numbers period. It drops from 12 to 11.5 Million by 3Q 2009, goes back to 12 in 3Q 2010, then declines to the end of the chart at the end of 4Q 2011 (If I follow the graph right).

[benebarba]

even better one, with more up to date data. Doesn't break down by region though:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/2081 ... -warcraft/

[Worldie]

It's still asians. WoW is not good enough for Asia, hence why they making several shifts there.
Too much F2p competition seeing WoW is payed on hours there.

WoW is still extremely strong in western world.

[Sagara]

Not doubting you for a second here Worldie, but I'd be really interesting in reading more about that line of thought - have you got any links or things you could share?

[Worldie]

The fact that most of the loss is Asian is well known, they said it everytime at the last 2 million subs loss.

I can't find you a link stating it's the F2p competition as I don't remember where I read it, but seembs also quite obvious to me.

[Sagara]

Yeah, it's mostly curiosity, and some FUCKING way to shut "conspiracy theory" types up.

[Thels]

So there's still way more subscribers than during Classic. And I think during Classic they were pretty happy, or they wouldn't have come out with all those expansions.

[Worldie]

Tbh seeing there's some MMOs out there which keep going with subscribers in the 6 digits order, I don't see why Blizzard shout stop developing wow with "only" almost 8 millions subscribers (which is more than all other MMOs combined)

[Paxen]

While there's been some doom and gloom about WoW hemorraging subscribers and blizzard resetting work on Titan, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick just bought out Vivendi, paying $100 million for Activision Blizzard stock. Management, at least, are pretty confident about the future.

[Worldie]

I'd be quite confident myself.

[benebarba]

Yeah, it's mostly curiosity, and some FUCKING way to shut "conspiracy theory" types up.

good luck with that. Any attempt to silence a conspiracy theorist simply fuels the fire. It's easy to be 'right' when you can simply deny all evidence to the contrary.

[benebarba]

So there's still way more subscribers than during Classic. And I think during Classic they were pretty happy, or they wouldn't have come out with all those expansions.

Yep - though as has been mentioned with other games in other threads here (how hundreds of thousands of sales can still be a failure), it's possible the targets have changed. But I'd be willing to bet they know exactly what number they need to hit before they'll have to be concerned about sustainability. Though I'll also bet that they don't go 'meh' to people leaving... if they did, I don't think we'd have seen some of the game changes they've made.

On a side note, I did find it interesting that it seemed like the two data sets I found were rather different, despite saying they were the same thing. Somehow, I think the second one I posted did some serious rounding before plotting (and I didn't see if there was a way to get the raw data).

[Worldie]

People who quit will always come back at the next expansion...

[Nikachelle]

People who quit will always come back at the next expansion...

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.