World Of Warcraft Loses 600,000 Players In 6 Months

[Dynasty]

We all know the current king of MMOs is World of Warcraft. For sheer number of subscribed players alone, no game can even come close.

Is the king in trouble? In Activision’s recent financial call, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said that as of March of this year, World of Warcraft had reverted to “pre-Cataclysm levels in the West," which is a nice way of saying they lost a significant number of subscribers.

In October last year, Blizzard reported that World of Warcraft had exceeded 12 million subscribers. In yesterday’s financial call, Morhaime gave a figure of 11.4 million players – that’s 600,000 subscribers lost. The more surprising thing is that this happened within six months of expansion Cataclysm’s release.

Does this mean the game’s dead or dying? Highly unlikely, but this might be a sign that WoW players are “graduating” from the game and looking for the next big MMO.

http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/...loses-more-than-500000-players-in-six-months/

Either WoW is finally dying as players realise the lack of variety, and the job-like feel of the game these days (so I hear)...or Blizzard have failed to spot the HUGE and, frankly obvious, reason why people are leaving;

If you're still paying out every month for WoW in financial times like these, you're crazy. People cant afford it.

Interest rates are laughable these days, inflation is rising, fuel is going up worldwide. If you're not cramming every spare cent of your earnings into savings and paying off debts...*shakes head*.

 

[CptStern]

lol you cant say that's the case for all 600,000 players. most of those could afford $15 month as they spend more on that on coffee every month. the game came out in 2004. eventually people get tired of the same thing

 

[StardogChampion]

I got tired after about 5 days of the beta.

 

[Letters]

Not being able to afford it is probably the one of the rarest reasons for unsubscribing... oh no, 15 ****ing dollars! That's 1/4 of a gas tank fill-up for a SUV driver.

This isn't surprising given how few people are actually able to do the raid content in Cataclysm and the continued poor PvP balance. The other reason I left a few months ago aside from balance was just getting tired of always waiting in a queue for everything. There's really nothing enjoyable to do while you wait besides dueling in front of Orgrimmar, which doesn't really do anything to advance your character. Even the five-man dungeons were relatively punishing (and pointless after you get your items)... shoulda just put in some 40-man zerg raids with no lock-outs that would guarantee at least a little something loot-wise for everyone. Oh and the two sets of gear thing, one PvP, one PvE, is really ****ing annoying.

 

[arch5]

I hope this game dies down. Even if the subscriber base only goes down a small amount in the future, I still would like to see more people playing other games.

 

[Warped]

I cancelled my subscription just a week ago. I haven't played much since around February

 

[Bad^Hat]

This isn't surprising given how few people are actually able to do the raid content in Cataclysm and the continued poor PvP balance. The other reason I left a few months ago aside from balance was just getting tired of always waiting in a queue for everything. There's really nothing enjoyable to do while you wait besides dueling in front of Orgrimmar, which doesn't really do anything to advance your character. Even the five-man dungeons were relatively punishing (and pointless after you get your items)... shoulda just put in some 40-man zerg raids with no lock-outs that would guarantee at least a little something loot-wise for everyone. Oh and the two sets of gear thing, one PvP, one PvE, is really ****ing annoying.

Pretty much this.

Cataclysm had potential, but it was too frustrating to stick with for a myriad of reasons. Add to that my raid gradually disbanding from lack of interest and I couldn't justify the cost any more. Figures aren't too surprising, and Blizz's attitude of "welp better churn out expacs faster" really isn't going to help.

 

[morgs]

Yeah I can't be bothered with the end game, I mean I'd be happy to play with a whole bunch of people I know well but the game just seems empty when you're not. Too many jerk off elitists end-game.

 

[Krynn72]

Hopefully this means the era of wow clones is over, with people being bored of this game model now.

 

[15357]

I haven't played much either. I'm logged on right now, for the first time in 2 weeks. I've changed my subscription from the 3-month unlimited to the 30-hour deal, and still have over 25 hours remaining.

 

[Acepilotf14]

I haven't played much either. I'm logged on right now, for the first time in 2 weeks. I've changed my subscription from the 3-month unlimited to the 30-hour deal, and still have over 25 hours remaining.

Crazy Korean subscription methods.

 

[15357]

Yeah, Blizzard really knows how to suck us dry. I mean, they have a $5 subscription of 1 day for SC2.

 

[StarBob]

I kind of figured this was the case... I was just talking to my friend about this the other day because I got an e-mail for a free seven days to come back. In the six or whatever years of my on and off playing I never once received such an offer. Really they made the game too fast and casual friendly so if you play even marginally close to what one would closer to launch, you flash through the content in weeks. All that remains is high end raiding. They erased the middle ground of moderate play content. You're either a super raider, a soulless twitch PVPer, or a casual that plays once or twice a week. If you're in any other category you have very very little to do. Blizzard's really just milked the formula without trying new things. Just refining it because it sold. In the past I've always felt like I should come back to experience new content... now I just... don't really care.

 

[Mogi67]

WoW's gameplay has always been pretty vapid IMO, I played in Open Beta and then quit the game 5 days after launch. There were always more interesting MMO's available, even if some were a bit dated by the time WoW was released...UO, Asheron's Call, and DAoC... those were the days.

 

[morgs]

I had seven days free a few years back when I stopped playing, It might be automatic after so many months.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Raids are overtuned, casuals left. That simple. casuals were their main playerbase. Numbers will continue to drop unless treadmill raids return.

 

[Acepilotf14]

Raids are overtuned, casuals left. That simple. casuals were their main playerbase. Numbers will continue to drop unless treadmill raids return.

There is one flaw in your testimony, Mr. BHC..

EVERYONE WHO PLAYS WOW IS A CASUAL!

 

[knut]

If you're still paying out every month for WoW in financial times like these, you're crazy. People cant afford it.

Interest rates are laughable these days, inflation is rising, fuel is going up worldwide. If you're not cramming every spare cent of your earnings into savings and paying off debts...*shakes head*.

HIRE THIS MAN AND HIS BUSINESS IDEAS. he knows the audience, all six hundred thousand of them, too well!

 

[JUL3]

Has Starcraft II played a part in this? I know a guy who had 4 separate level-70 (or is it 80? I don't play WoW) profiles... he's barely touched it since SCII.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

There is one flaw in your testimony, Mr. BHC..

EVERYONE WHO PLAYS WOW IS A CASUAL!

Heroic mode raiding is fairly hard, they've actually amp'd it up so you need actual gaming skill to take down bosses.

 

[Bad^Hat]

He's using a different definition of casual. You know, that wrong one.

Honestly I liked the raid difficulty in Lich King. Dungeons were tuned way too low to the point of boredom, but raids were about right for a semi-serious group to get through without any issue, and then you had heroic modes for groups who found the regular encounters too easy. It worked, it kept me hooked, it was fun. Cata raids, save for a few easymode bosses, really had you hit the ground running. That, combined with everything else, wasn't really great for the raid ethic in my guild. We had a bunch of regular groups in WotLK, right up to heroic Arthas, even maintaining a couple 25s at one point. After Cataclysm they steadily dropped away, silly bickering and guild politics took over, and of course no one bothered with 25s because of how they retooled the loot system.

I think it just comes down to the decisions they made for this expac and how they panned out. Simplified skills/talents made things more accessible but pigeonholed people into cookie cutter builds more than ever. Harder dungeons were nice initially, but burnt people out when combined with the dearth of tanks or healers in the LFG system. This wasn't exactly helped by how much harder they made it to be a tank or healer. Archeology was um... literal busywork. The most thinly veiled waste of time ever. Also many other things I'm leaving out or have forgotten.

Oh, and the most egregious example of Blizz's struggle with PvP balance you're likely to find - Tol Barad. A zone where both factions battle for control every couple of hours by capturing objectives domination style... only it was practically impossible to win on the offense for a while unless the defense were ****ing asleep. This led to one side consistently holding the zone and reaping the bonus honor for days on end. Blizz's solution? Boost the honor for winning on offense to a ridiculous amount in order to encourage win trading. It worked. :|

 

[morgs]

I agree, the raiding in Wotlk was alright, as long as it's challenging enough to make me feel satisfied as I progress through it I'll be happy. That way, the gear is just a nice bonus. Heroics were ridiculously boring though, and if you had a member of the group who wasn't so used to rushing through while badge farming he was always abused and/or kicked for it which was incredibly stupid. Gear score is another thing that really brought raiding down though. It got to the point where you needed a gear score that was simply unobtainable without doing the raid you were looking to do. Granted that wasn't up to Blizzard, but the game shouldn't have needed it to begin with.

 

[Absinthe]

Gearscore has basically been replaced by ilevel averages, with only a few people still requesting GS numbers on my server. They still want you to link achievements for raids, though...

I was actually quite impressed with Cataclysm when I resubscribed. I have my grievances with the talent tree changes and other stuff, but going 80-85 was fun and slick in the new zones. The problem is that it went by too quickly and then you got slammed into a really uncompelling endgame. As soon as I hit the level cap it was back to the same old daily quest grinds and the same boring rotation of heroics. 25-man raids are pointless and their most recent content patch is rehash of vanilla instances. All of WoW's expacs inevitably run into problems, but my love affair with Cata dried up a lot quicker than it did with BC or WotLK. I'm still subbed, but I haven't logged on in weeks, and my play time was dwindling in Azeroth before my hiatus. I probably won't renew.

Maybe it's nostalgia, but despite all the improvements they've made to the game, I felt like I had more to do in the vanilla game, partly because it didn't feel like your gameplay options were so obviously spelled out in front of me. You had to travel the word, farm/craft up some gear for your guild, get on foot and do some dirty work. Now everybody just qeues up in a major city and only leaves for A) A raid, or B) Killing time with dailies or skilling up abysmal professions like Archaeology.

Also, lore peeve: The Horde's new warchief is a fat sack of dumbass and trolls are stupider than ever. Seriously, I'd rather run off and help the Zandalari take over the world than grind heroics with the current losers I roll with.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Gearscore has basically been replaced by ilevel averages, with only a few people still requesting GS numbers on my server. They still want you to link achievements for raids, though...

It was hilarious to see people recruiting for raids a couple of weeks in and asking people for their achievement. Like, how ****ing picky can you get.