World of Warcraft lost over a million subscribers in the first quarter

[Shawn Knight]

Activision Blizzard recently revealed that cash cow World of Warcraft lost 1.3 million subscribers during the first quarter of 2013. It’s a significant drop as the subscription-based MMORPG played host to more than 12 million back in 2010. The good news for the publisher, however, is that WoW is still the world’s largest game of its kind with 8.3 million players in the fray. They’ve even got a Guinness World Record to prove it.

Subscriber decline isn’t anything new for World of Warcraft as gamers have slowly but steadily been moving away from the game for a few years. The title received a boost late last year when Mists of Pandaria was released but the new subscribers weren’t sustained.

The company noted that drop-offs were mostly seen in the East although there were declines in the West as well. But what does the future hold for Activision Blizzard’s hit title?

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said he believes further declines are likely and they expect to have fewer subscribers in a year than they do now. That said, the executive revealed plans to release more content for the game on a more regular basis. What’s more, the team wants to make it easier for lapsed players to pick the game back up after taking a break all while keeping existing gamers engaged.

Kotick concluded that they believe in the long-term value of the franchise and will continue to commit substantial resources to the game.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/52527-world-of-warcraft-lost-over-a-million-subscribers-in-the-first-quarter.html

 

[Burty117]

So no plans on a WoW 2? Thats a shame, a new game engine and mechanics would probably bring people back to the franchise, (or at least, it would if it was me).

 

[Shaun2312]

"What?s more, the team wants to make it easier for lapsed players to pick the game back up after taking a break all while keeping existing gamers engaged."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zNdw4DaUM8

 

[VitalyT]

Their focus shifted more towards StarCraft II as a type of game that's known to live much longer. I don't know if there is much monetization in the after-sale though, but its game camps are impressively big, as are public events and competitions.

 

[Guest]

So they still don't get it, they should have planned WoW2 long time back. There is no way this game can survive much longer unless they release a sequel.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

I wonder if this is because of the game going south, or the rest of the gaming world catching up. (I doubt fewer people are playing video games). Free to play has become a popular model, even though, I don't understand how they pay their developers. Blizz also has had Diablo 3 and Starcraft II (with a new recent expansion) that have sold really well. Those games are probably eating into WoW subs too.

WoW's latest content was well-received with many people saying it was some of the best content they've ever put out, so I don't think that's the issue. Perhaps it's their player vs player (PVP) area of the game that is a victim of the game being so old. Every expansion Blizzard adds new abilities for the classes, and now that the game has been around so long people have a ton of what's called Crowd Control, which are abilities that stun or otherwise incapacitate your opponent. When two people team up on one, that one person can be controlled until they die. That experience doesn't drive people to sign up for another month.

They've constantly put in new tools to help new players, but I think they need to simplify the actual playing of the game.

Updating the graphics engine would probably help too, but that would probably be terrible expensive.... and every so often this rumor of a new MMO comes up called Titan.

 

[Sniped_Ash]

I liked Mists way more than Cataclysm, but while I deliberately played Mists more casually and avoided raiding so I wouldn't get burned out like I did in Cataclysm, I quit after roughly the same amount of time in both expansions. Ultimately it just came down to doing the exact same thing every day and feeling the need to do X every day it was available to do. It's kind of hard to justify that when there are so many other, different PC games now that can be experienced with the kind of money it takes to play WoW for a year.

 

[TS-56336]

Guild Wars 2 has a lot to do with it. WoW is outdated and not free to play.

 

[Guest]

What?s more, the team wants to make it easier for lapsed players to pick the game back up after taking a break all while keeping existing gamers engaged.

They already tried that when they released Cataclysm. It broke the skill required to play the game. Everyone I know stopped playing as soon as that expansion released. I myself got to lvl 85 and got sick of it instantly. The game is a now shadow of what it once was. It had a good run though.

 

[charris1980]

Season has a lot to do with it too. Spring/Summer you lose a lot of subscribers (this happens every year). When Fall/Winter comes back it will spike again (especially if new expansion).

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

Season has a lot to do with it too. Spring/Summer you lose a lot of subscribers (this happens every year). When Fall/Winter comes back it will spike again (especially if new expansion).

You're right, but they lost the subs from Jan 1 through March 31st. For anyone living where it snows, march 31st is barely spring. Here in Wisconsin the first day of spring is march 21st, but the first spring day was like April 25th.

 

[Kibaruk]

I think the best method to keep players on the game, is to release FREE expansions, every time they release a new expansion a whole lot of players move AWAY from the game.

 

[amstech]

They need to lower thier monthly rates.

 

[Blakey]

Bring back old Severs, thats all they need, alot of people would kill to play vanilla and Tbc again.

 

[Tygerstrike]

WoW suffers from what every MMORPG suffers from. You push and push and grind and grind and when you finally get that super cool uber gear, youre burnt out. When you get past the burn out, youre happy you have that uber weapon, then something else comes out and you have to do the grind all over again. This really cuts into your life. I have known many ppl who wont go out and socialize because they have a raid to do.

 

[Burty117]

Bring back old Severs, thats all they need, alot of people would kill to play vanilla and Tbc again.

What the flipin hell you doin on here

 

[Tekkaraiden]

Still 8 million almost 10 years later, that's not bad. I wonder if Titan will do as well when it gets released.

 

[NTAPRO]

Their focus shifted more towards StarCraft II as a type of game that's known to live much longer. I don't know if there is much monetization in the after-sale though, but its game camps are impressively big, as are public events and competitions.

Especially in Korea lol

 

[Jad Chaar]

A panda on the front cover = skip it!

 

[Mortalife]

I left because I felt I was going through the same life cycle every time a new expansion comes out, level up, grind whatever 'badges/points' you need, get the gear to raid, raid through the content for better gear until you run out of time because a new expansion comes out when all the effort becomes moot. It just all became some trivial to me.

 

[Guest]

They're not hiding anything, they're just not talking about it yet.
Years ago... About 4-5 years if I remeber correctly, they started publicly hiring lead developers for the "next generation MMORPG"

They're making a WoW2, World of Starcraft, World of Diablo, or some all new MMORPG... They're just not ready show their hand yet.

 

[Heihachi1337]

What?s more, the team wants to make it easier for lapsed players to pick the game back up after taking a break all while keeping existing gamers engaged.

They already tried that when they released Cataclysm. It broke the skill required to play the game. Everyone I know stopped playing as soon as that expansion released. I myself got to lvl 85 and got sick of it instantly. The game is a now shadow of what it once was. It had a good run though.

Broke the skill required to play the game? Please explain how they managed to do that. Yet another person that has no clue what they are talking about. You ever play a mage back in Vanilla Warcraft? How about in TBC? One button spamming does not require skill. MoP requires far more skill than any of the previous expansions, in terms of playing your class and knowing boss mechanics.

 

[Burty117]

As far as the whiners wanting vanilla and TBC back, suck it. Sorry but you folks need to take off your rose-tinted glasses and really look at the game back then. You were very limited in talent choices, you were very lucky if you had 500g on a character, and you really did have to be a basement virgin to make it to top tier raiding back then. I've ranted several times before but you morons still exist and still cry that Vanilla and TBC were the "best expansions ever".
To those that want a WoW2, explain what that would entail that couldn't be done in current WoW. Updated graphics? If you had a decent video card, you would notice the improvements Blizzard has made to the graphics. It is MEANT to be cartooney, deal with it. How would you go about making a "sequal" to an ongoing, ever evolving story? It kills me that none of you morons put any thought into what you are actually saying.

Wow, just wow, I do wonder what planet your on.

We'll start on the first bit about vanilla wow, it was much harder, you said it yourself in the same paragraph, did it ever occur to you that difficulty is what makes something addictive? And at the same time, more rewarding.

And in regards to wow2, this is more of a "something new" like the rumoured Titan mmo they're supposedly working on, but if they did make a wow2 graphics would be a start, even maxed out currently its starting to look old, the water affects are pretty cool now though, physic effects pretty much don't exist, it's all scripted animation, lighting effects have improved over the years but still need work and textures need to be much higher res with much more detail and depth, currently, everything looks a bit flat and smudged.

Plus with a wow2 they could introduce new story lines, characters, races, basically replace everything, and since it would be a brand new mmo they could have a different server setup and have difficulty ratings, if you go onto a normal server with a difficulty of high then stuff will cost more but it will be harder to earn money, rare armour being hard to get, and npc's harder to kill, but the benefit of being on a harder server could be that regular players would have more fun and a bigger challenge and make a better community of players. If your new to the game, why not start on a normal server with a difficulty of low?

Since it'll be designed to run on higher spec pc's they could also make the view distance further and increase world size over current wow over time.

I don't actually play much wow, I have one character that's level 80 and a few other characters but that's about it.

Calling me a ***** though because I felt the game wasn't as challenging as before and because I feel they need to start a fresh (wow2) is just plain laughable.

 

[Guest]

Lower monthly fees might bring some back.
Maybe even changing holiday events, year after year they were always the same, Kill headless horsemen at Halloween comes to the top of my head, could they not put 10 mins of thought into something new ? Nope they already had my monthly payment.
Been almost 2 years since ive played it, I had my fun with it when I did play but got very boring, not to mention all the ignorant trolls that play the game. Not worth my time or money.

 

[Jbucko]

They could easily make a sequal. Guild wars did it and it is stealling a lot of WOWs subscribers.

People are just gettting wise. y pay a monthly fee when you can play a just as good or better game for free.

Watch neverwinter take another chunk of WoWs subscribers.