WoW Lost 600k Subscribers, down to 11.4M

[Treig]

According to an article over on MMO-Champion:

WoW Lost 600k Subscribers, down to 11.4M
Activision Blizzard's earning call was today and we learned, among other things, that the WoW playerbase is down to 11.4M players. That's 5% less than before the expansion and it seems that players went through the Cataclysm content faster than expected.

Blizzard also promised faster release of new content and expansions during the call.

From Curse.com
During today's Activision Blizzard earnings call, World of Warcraft and its expansion Cataclysm were two very hot topics. Listeners asked a number of questions related to the game, more than any other title or franchise in the publisher's stable.

Of note, World of Warcraft's subscriber base has reached pre-Cataclysm levels, according to Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment. He then later stated an actual number, with subscriptions at the end of March clocking in at right around 11.4 million.

That's down by about 5% from the announced 12 million mark late last year. Interestingly enough, that was right before Cataclysm released. In fact, it's actually lower than the milestone reached in 2008 with the release of Wrath of the Lich King.

But one important thing to point out, and Mr. Morhaime touched on this as well, is that World of Warcraft's subscriber base does not change linearly. It fluctuates based on content consumption, which players seem to be doing a whole lot of -- at a more rapid pace -- with Cataclysm. "Subscriber levels have decreased faster than previous expansions," he said.

Surprising? Not really. We have to remember that when these numbers were pulled, Cataclysm was in a bit of a lull. The expansion had been out for close to four months, and most of its content had been consumed by a large percentage of the player base -- aside from heroic raids.

I won't say 600k players came directly over to RIFT, but I will say some of those did, myself included.

[Rottweiler-STi]

6 year old game losing subs news at 11

[Whytwulf]

11.4?

How ever will they survive with such a low population?

[Healer Stark]

I keep checking in with WoW to see if they're doing anything worthwhile to bring me back but recycling Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman certainly isn't it. I wasn't all that crazy about those instances the first time out.

[wOlfLinG]

11.4?

How ever will they survive with such a low population?

By giving me a free week of play :P.

I got an email yesterday about a free week of WoW time, so switched from Rift over to WoW for this week. Didn't even have to resub, it still says cancelled on my Bnet account xD.

[daropedia]

6 year old game loses 0.05% of it's population in 3 months time...

My god at that speed they'll have no one left in 250 years.

[Calelith]

Meh, they are running out of new stuff for the playerbase.

As good as WoW is, you can only play the same game for so long without getting bored. They need to add something dramaticly different to the game to draw people in.

[Nehaxak]

Blizzard are plumping up their figures with including accounts from Asia, which as far as I know, is free to play.

Only regions that count are the USA and EU, both of which it's well known and accepted that the playerbase has more or less quit the game en-masse. That's not to dismiss the Asian markets but you could probably deduct around 7M from the 11.4M figure because of it.

Sure they get new players for both all the time to make up the numbers but they'll never recover now, they've made too many mistakes and pee'd off too many long time players.

Wow is so easy and worthless these days that even my 8 year old son gave up playing just 2 months after getting his mage to 85, he got bored because he got sick of raiding as it's boring, the pvp sucks because of all the botters and he'd over 100k gold and nothing to spend it on - and he was casual, only playing a few hours after school and whatever I allowed him at the weekends.

He's now levelling up a mage in Rift and enjoying it a lot, finds it a lot harder and involved.

I only wish Trion would open a GM/CS service in Ireland so I wouldn't feel so bad about people losing their jobs with Blizzard here.

Hey Trion, contact me and I'll get you a direct line with our country's government to sort you out with nifty tax breaks and amazing incentives if you do decide to set up an EU HQ here, hell, I'll get them to travel over and meet you personally to sort it out ;)

[Dablade]

this thread should have been locked. And what all those people go from a easy mmo to a easier mmo? Really find your server growing in leaps and bounds? I am not hearing, reading this anywhere.

All kidding aside..yes just playing. There are things going on around this blue ball that could effect millions. I think this may be one of the big reasons alot of mmos see people leaving. Hard times on all of us.. God Help us..

[Treig]

I really just saw it as amusing that the Blizzard model of Expansion release keeps subs for roughly 2 to 4 months.

Once initial stabilization of base population hits RIFT, and as Trion transitions fully into post-launch content development and support it'll be interesting to see if WoW continues to lose market share.

Losing 5% of your paying revenue (keep in mind they don't report loss of non-paying subs like Asia) is fairly sizeable.

Given the last set of semi-accepted numbers there were 5.4 million paying subs between NA & EU. With the same 600k equating to approximately 11% of their subscribers using the 'subscription' (paying) model.

[schu]

Blizzard are plumping up their figures with including accounts from Asia, which as far as I know, is free to play.

Why is it free to play in Asia? just wondered...

[Kelvenaru]

6 year old game loses 0.05% of it's population in 3 months time...

My god at that speed they'll have no one left in 250 years.

I think your maths percentages are slightly off there......also a lot seem to take off the Asia subs and just consider the "Western" subs, as the asian market pays differently, in they don't have Cataclysm yet for a start. It is believed its mainly in the western (NA/EU) servers that the population has dropped also.

Many things could be taken into account...and I am sure Activision is currently initiating in house witch hunts to burn the perpitrator at the stake hehe ( Ghostcrawler might be sweating slightly atm, especially over the attrocious 4.1/4,2 rehashed stuff that turned lots off even more than they were ). Loosing 5% of your playerbase in 3 months is quite bad. The content wasn't good enough, considering they had 12 million at the end of a really dry content year...to release fresh stuff and have the population drop....something wrong with the direction they went it seems.

Ignore the people calling some "Casual", "Carebears" and "Bads", but what the people that play 12 hours a day and another 3 or 4 on the forums fail to see is that it is these players that subscribe to the game that are leaving it more and more. When games stop been fun and start been like work, that's when it tun people off.

Now where am I going...well I hope Trion take note. The daily quest and rep grind can only go so far. They need to see that changing this to a more fun model is tghe way to go. With crafting I hope that these new crafting rifts will be a better way to get recipies, plaques and marks for a start hehe. Yes the daily is ok...as a backstop, but only if you don't have the time to do a rift...in the game called Rift. Also hopefully they will get away from the rep grinding model and ingtroduce RC recipies for all the rep runes asap and various ones for the rep recipies for other professions.

Sorry for rambling, funny what seeing a bit of incorrect maths will do to you. And before anyone says anything about it also, not really to fussed either way what happens to WoW anymore, I just pray that Trion and Rift get better all the time and continue to bring out the releases and innovative content we are enjoying now in game.

[Kelvenaru]

Why is it free to play in Asia? just wondered...

It is not free to play, the payment model they use is on a useage basis I believe, so they could in fact say anyone that has ever played WoW is a subscriber I would suppose, but they probably use the "Within the last 28 days they have logged on" bit to be honest.

[Treig]

Well said sir...

I think your maths percentages are slightly off there......also a lot seem to take off the Asia subs and just consider the "Western" subs, as the asian market pays differently, in they don't have Cataclysm yet for a start. It is believed its mainly in the western (NA/EU) servers that the population has dropped also.

Many things could be taken into account...and I am sure Activision is currently initiating in house witch hunts to burn the perpitrator at the stake hehe ( Ghostcrawler might be sweating slightly atm, especially over the attrocious 4.1/4,2 rehashed stuff that turned lots off even more than they were ). Loosing 5% of your playerbase in 3 months is quite bad. The content wasn't good enough, considering they had 12 million at the end of a really dry content year...to release fresh stuff and have the population drop....something wrong with the direction they went it seems.

Ignore the people calling some "Casual", "Carebears" and "Bads", but what the people that play 12 hours a day and another 3 or 4 on the forums fail to see is that it is these players that subscribe to the game that are leaving it more and more. When games stop been fun and start been like work, that's when it tun people off.

Now where am I going...well I hope Trion take note. The daily quest and rep grind can only go so far. They need to see that changing this to a more fun model is tghe way to go. With crafting I hope that these new crafting rifts will be a better way to get recipies, plaques and marks for a start hehe. Yes the daily is ok...as a backstop, but only if you don't have the time to do a rift...in the game called Rift. Also hopefully they will get away from the rep grinding model and ingtroduce RC recipies for all the rep runes asap and various ones for the rep recipies for other professions.

Sorry for rambling, funny what seeing a bit of incorrect maths will do to you. And before anyone says anything about it also, not really to fussed either way what happens to WoW anymore, I just pray that Trion and Rift get better all the time and continue to bring out the releases and innovative content we are enjoying now in game.

[Treig]

Why is it free to play in Asia? just wondered...

I believe it's an 'Internet Cafe' model of pay for 'Minutes in world' or something like that. I presume they still have a single (or even multiple) WoW Accounts per player, but they don't pay $12.99 to $15.99 a month, it's more like 10-cents a minute or something...an hour cost $5 or $6 bucks (or so I've heard...don't take that as official by any means).