A Bar That Won’t Lead You Astray: The Stray Sheep
D(LC)elightful Treats 05-20-12: Pinball, Supervillains, & Robots
Mother 3 on Consumerism, Art, and Death: “Strange. Funny. Heartrending.”
Kusoge Club – Deadliest Warrior Legends
Hard Corner: BERSERK special
Posted By Nobunaga about 3 months, 1 week ago
I can just imagine the "Haters Gonna Hate" they were pulling…
While the Investor’s Call for Activision Blizzard is still going over the next hour, it would seem one gem has already emerged from the public call… World of Warcraft subscriber numbers seem to have stabilized in the wake of even other MMO releases. I’ll attempt to keep this post updated throughout the evening as more facts and figures are dredged up from the depths, but the big news of the moment… World of Warcraft’s subscriber numbers aren’t tanking anymore.
"Problem?"
Over the last 365 days it’s been calculated by Investor’s Calls and convention statements that World of Warcraft’s numbers have lost a total of 1.8 million subscribers, however with the number of accounts in decline suddenly taking a sharp upturn in it’s dive, it would seem World of Warcraft isn’t on it’s deathbed after all. It does still have over 10.2 Million active and paying subscribers. A far cry from dead or dying.
In the last quarter World of Warcraft lost only 100,000 subscribers, this includes the release of games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic which launched last December, a release which I had thought was going to hurt Activision Blizzard’s subscription numbers immensely… but as it turns out, was barely a speed bump for them.
What else will be revealed in the next hour? Stay tuned!
Update 1: Some screenshots from the Investor’s Call…
Truly a testament to how underwhelming SWTOR is.
or…. Some (like me) that play both
-Some use WoW as a social outlet to guild members
-Annual pass +diablo 3, and a bunch of vanity junk
Promise of MoP being released earlier then the last pack
not to mention that it could easily be less (or more) if you want to bring SW into this since the game was released 11 days prior to the end of the quarter (I am sure everyones time expires around that time am I right? I am also sure that all 2+ million people that bought star wars came from WoW too, not something like Star wars galaxies, or something.
That kinda supports my statement that SWTOR underwhelmed because people weren’t ready to totally drop WoW for SWTOR.
I’m sorry, maybe I’m not following what points, but, what could be less or more? WoW’s numbers or SWTOR’s? How does it being the quarter have any bearing on numbers? Subs expire when they expire, they aren’t based on any real schedule except when people subbed up initially.
And.. okay, the 2million who went to SWTOR from WoW.. (Down to ~1.7million, since we want to go to significant digits). Are you saying that they did quit WoW for SWTOR.. or that they’re playing both like you are? Don’t get me wrong, 1.7mil is still a great number for an MMO, certainly puts them in 2nd place to WoW in the english-speaking regions at least. But if only 100k of that 1.7 mil is people who said “Woo SWTORs out, fuck off WoW!” that’s certainly not a significant gain for them or loss for Wow.
First I never said f off WoW as I mentioned I still play it, and think that having 2 major MMOs would be great as a whole for everyone.
I think the big misconception of what you are saying is that the 2 million people came from WoW when there are many other mmos around still such as Rift, DCUO, DDO, LOTRO, etc.. Let us also not forget that there was a total of 1.8 million people for the year that quit WoW.
It also did not hurt WoW that near the end of November with the hype of Diablo 3, and the Dragon Soul patch on its way was to package D3 with a full year sub to WoW. (Annual passes are up over 1 million). It will be interesting to see when they will actually release MoP (my bet is closer to November when the year is about to expire)
Do I think SW will take over WoW.. Too early to say, I am having a lot of fun with it, they seem to be adding major updates on a much faster pace then WoW is right now (around the same speed as vanilla start). I wouldn’t say its underwhelming though having 1.7+ million subscribers at the same time as WoW had 10.2. On Dec 31st
I would say calling a brand new mmo game underwhelming to be a rather narrow view considering the difficulty in breaking into that particular genre when the main competitor has its roots fully embedded after literally years of building a fan base.
But fair enough you are entitled to an opinion
In regards to the article I am amazed that Blizzard keeps going strong with World Of Warcraft considering how radically the game has changed over the years, some things for better, others for worse.
For me the radical drop in difficulty and the ability to gain epic gear by simply hitting the level cap was a huge hit to the appeal of the game and once I was able to get all classes to level 85 in 2 weeks (while admittedly having 3 max already and casually playing) boredom soon set in and that was the end for me.
Now, despite being plagued with release bugs on launch and the rest that replaced the ones being fixed I have found my overall experience in SWTOR for the most part so far quite enjoyable. Again I must admit I am playing casually focusing on both PvE and PvP and only have one class at max level so far but I think the content is fairly solid and well designed overall.
Sure there are those who play for 10 hours a day grinding their tits off bitching about there being no content for them but really when you play a game that much and hit it so hard and fast what do you expect? Devs are not going to be banging out content every month to appease the hardcore gamers who get easily bored when they clear the latest raid or hit battlemaster in pvp So I would say to anyone who is basing an entire game on its first few months come back later when its more grounded or just don’t play at all.
After all MMO’s are constantly being patched and you can only go so fast when working with the amount of code the game has.
Either way Diablo III had best be out soon….
I don’t think the total amount of subscribers even went below the 7m mark anyways..proberbly wrong on that but still;astonishing that they (Blizz) actually GAINED or regained past subscribers.
I’m still not returning to WOW though.