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This thread has a lot of really good graphical analyses of the trend. In particular, I enjoy his very last graph:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1091607-WoW-Subscriber-Data-Complete-Breakdown?p=15765897
The chart showing 3x the burn rate during the summer months is also a trend to be expected. WoW becomes more of a "chore" (for lack of a better term) that you fit into a standardized lifestyle + job as compared to a spontaneous recreational activity. As well, I'd wager at least 40% is college-, thus summer is a whimsical exploratory time. As well, the fact that last year at this time the last patch had been out for a year (akin to this year) is probably a big factor.
Their success is pretty damn crazy for a subscription based game irregardless (and always has been). I'm excited for MoP because of the revised systems that can hopefully better fit my impending change in lifestyle (headin' off to law school).
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On August 02 2012 20:38 kafkaesque wrote:
How are the hardware-requirements going to be affected?
My computer played classic just fine but with any Addon, performance went down to the point I can barely play Cataclysm.
Kafkaesque, WoWWiki has the system requirements:
http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft:_Mists_of_Pandaria
Towards the bottom.
I find it interesting how they're finally going into 64-bit.
The differences are...
Minimum:
Intel Pentium D / AMD Athlon 64 X2
2 GB RAM
Video Card Upgrade
Recommended:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 Ghz
Nvidia GeForce 8800GT (512 MB)
4 GB Ram
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On August 03 2012 18:09 Pandemona wrote:
Going down from 12million peak in October '11 to 9.1million (pre expansion) August '12 is not a major problem imo. The new expansion will see a minimun of 1million players back, the summer months of WoW are known for the most of the player base (uni students/college students/school kids) take time off the game to go enjoy the summer and then get back into WoW when the school term/semesters start up again.
And anyway even if WoW doesn't get much past 9.1 million subscribers ever again, thats still £80,600,000(@£8.99 a month) $136,409,000 (@$14.99 a month) Euro118,209,000 (@12.99Euro a month)
So im sure if you cant make a profit from that much a month you have a buisness problem >.<
They say most of the loss subs are 'from the east' (as they always do) but is worth noting these accounts are not nearly as lucrative as the Western Subs due to different Sub models.
On August 03 2012 11:53 Wildmoon wrote:
MoP, the xpac that everyone went "WTF is this?" when it was announced looks really promising in beta now.. Its art,pet battle,raid mechanic,faction system are awesome and there are more. It's quite unexpected.
I was not to excited at the Wrath previews and was Very meh towards the Cataclysm previews... but my god MoP is shaping up and looks like its fantastic. It is also adding huge amount to do for 'casuals' and 'raiders' compared the others. Bet Battle, 300 daily quests, Scenarios, Normalized Timed Dungeons, 3 Raids in Raid Finder (14 bosses when I last checked).
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On August 03 2012 18:09 Pandemona wrote:
And anyway even if WoW doesn't get much past 9.1 million subscribers ever again, thats still £80,600,000(@£8.99 a month) $136,409,000 (@$14.99 a month) Euro118,209,000 (@12.99Euro a month)
I think you have a problem with your assumptions. Of those 9 millions I would be surprised if over 3 million pay the standard monthly fee. The rest being on various other payment solutions or deals.
In the graph on last page, was the west/east the different payment methods?
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There are less than 2m players in NA and about the same in EU. So, at most there are only 4m players paying $15/mo.
Out of the other 5m subs most of those are paid for by the hour for pennies (China) or are essentially given away for free with other games (South Korea).
I don't know if the numbers have ever been released since Blizzard doesn't run WoW in China but it's probably safe to assume that one NA/EU sub is worth at least a hundred Chinese subs in terms of revenue. Between the very low payment options over there and the fact that they've contracted out another company to handle the game I don't think Blizzard makes much of anything over there.
So really it's only about $60m/mo in revenue and it's very likely that at least 2/3 of that goes into operating costs.
As far as MoP goes... the subs won't increase. 1.2m Annual Pass players are about to expire and it's likely a large portion of those won't resub. This will probably counteract any increase MoP sees and ultimately break even in subs. After all, the Annual Pass was meant to cushion any loss of subs resulting from Cata and we see how well that worked out.
Also, to all the people going "it's ok it's just the end of the expansion/summer", you're incorrect. These are Q2 results and are from April, May, and June. Not only are these not summer months but this was only 3-4 months after Dragon Soul was released. For comparison ICC was out for twice as long and lost a fraction of the subs.
Most importantly of all is the fact that losing 1.1m in Q2 is a huge red flag because Q3 will lose even more since it is the summer quarter and will add another three months to content stagnation. It's safe to expect at least another million will be lost before MoP, so that's a total of four million lost subs from Cata in total. This doesn't even count Annual Pass holders which will likely be another 500k or higher.
Best case scenario is that MoP counteracts the Q3 losses and breaks even - launching at around 9m subs. After that it will decline a bit in Q4 from Annual Passes running out. From there it could go either way depending on how the expansion shapes up but I don't think there's any chance of breaking 10m subs again, even if the expansion is good.
I'm also not factoring in Guild Wars 2 at all which, in all likelihood, will take another million or more subs from WoW in the Q3 report (which means MoP will actually launch with closer to 8m subs) and depending on how solid GW2 ends up being it could hurt WoW far, far worse if it convinces the casual crowd to hop over (which is a strong possibility due to the free to play model).
Of course it's all speculation as to how sub numbers will turn out but I mostly wanted to point out that
1) Blizzard isn't making anywhere close to $15 x 9,100,000 / mo as most people in this thread seem to think
2) 1,100,000 subs were lost during the Spring quarter of this year; the summer losses aren't reflected in this and will most likely be even higher
3) Annual Pass, Mists of Pandaria, and Guild Wars 2 will all be counted in the Q3 report
a) If MoP brings in more subs than AP + GW2 remove, it will be a gain
b) If MoP brings in less subs than AP + GW2 remove, it will be a loss
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On August 03 2012 11:53 Wildmoon wrote:
MoP, the xpac that everyone went "WTF is this?" when it was announced looks really promising in beta now.. Its art,pet battle,raid mechanic,faction system are awesome and there are more. It's quite unexpected.
Can you elaborate, especially the raid mechanics and faction systems? When the officers in my guild decided to quit/go casual, we stopped raiding. After almost 8 years in the same guild, I couldn't be assed to find a new one so I'm about to let my subscription expire. I'm curious about all these changes, though.
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http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6246995624
Attributing the decline in WoW subs because the game is too easy is completely absurd. The first time a sub loss was announced was Q1 2011, after the release of Cata, where the game was brutally hard. Both heroics and raids were totally unforgiving, and most people on the forums were complaining that the heroic dungeons were too hard, where any mistake will kill you.
In fact, it's more likely that many casuals quit at the start because the game was too hard, then players with slightly above average skill quit when the nerfs came, and then more people quit when they ran out of things to do apart from heroics and dungeons.
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On August 04 2012 15:20 paralleluniverse wrote:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6246995624Attributing the decline in WoW subs because the game is too easy is completely absurd. The first time a sub loss was announced was Q1 2011, after the release of Cata, where the game was brutally hard. Both heroics and raids were totally unforgiving, and most people on the forums were complaining that the heroic dungeons were too hard, where any mistake will kill you. In fact, it's more likely that many casuals quit at the start because the game was too hard, then players with slightly above average skill quit when the nerfs came, and then more people quit when they ran out of things to do apart from heroics and dungeons.
Well...a lot of us left the game because it became too casual, too easy to get epic gear (epic gear doesnt mean shit anymore as it did pre-wrath), too easy to get raid groups (dont even need a guild) and stuff like that.
Call it was you want, but I like the word easy for this scenario.
I know raid finder doesnt have the same gear but you can still do the raid. In the past, if you even TRIED Black Temple, you needed ~T5 gear, so trying/doing the raid was an achievement in itself. Its not anymore.
Also I feel like the game is less rewarding with the more time you put in it compared to pre-wrath where if you had a lot of time to invest into the game, you were gonna get paid off.
edit: Also the fucking numbers now are wayyyy too big, I might be the only one that thinks this but they should reduce the numbers lol, because seeing 5 numbers crits is too big.
Vanilla/TBC had 0-15k, and that was perfect.
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On August 04 2012 15:35 Samp wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 15:20 paralleluniverse wrote:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6246995624Attributing the decline in WoW subs because the game is too easy is completely absurd. The first time a sub loss was announced was Q1 2011, after the release of Cata, where the game was brutally hard. Both heroics and raids were totally unforgiving, and most people on the forums were complaining that the heroic dungeons were too hard, where any mistake will kill you. In fact, it's more likely that many casuals quit at the start because the game was too hard, then players with slightly above average skill quit when the nerfs came, and then more people quit when they ran out of things to do apart from heroics and dungeons. Well...a lot of us left the game because it became too casual, too easy to get epic gear (epic gear doesnt mean shit anymore as it did pre-wrath), too easy to get raid groups (dont even need a guild) and stuff like that. Call it was you want, but I like the word easy for this scenario. I know raid finder doesnt have the same gear but you can still do the raid. In the past, if you even TRIED Black Temple, you needed ~T5 gear, so trying/doing the raid was an achievement in itself. Its not anymore. Also I feel like the game is less rewarding with the more time you put in it compared to pre-wrath where if you had a lot of time to invest into the game, you were gonna get paid off.
Epics have been worthless since TBC, where everyone ever since Kara has been in full epics.
The idea that the game is too easy has been debunked and discussed to death on this forum:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=277847¤tpage=26#515
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=277847¤tpage=23#446
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=277847¤tpage=19#373
It's more likely that at this point of the game, heroic dungeons and LFR are so easy that it's a joke. Meanwhile because people have beaten content on this joke mode, they don't feel motivated to find a guild and do heroic raids which are still very hard despite the nerfs. And that's why you quit, you've beaten joke mode, and so you consider the game finished.
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Forbes just ran an article on Vivendi / Activision which gives us insight into the profit margin.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2012/08/02/world-of-warcraft-guild-wars-2-and-vivendi-activisions-achilles-heel/
World of Warcraft (WoW) has helped ATVI maintain its stock price, with this one single game providing roughly 30% of the revenue for the entire company via its expansion packs and monthly payments. Subscription revenue alone totaled $1.2 billion both in 2008 and 2009, and an additional $1.36 billion in 2010. Corresponding costs (the overhead cost of maintaining WoW’s virtual world) totaled a mere $404 million in the first two years mentioned, and $241 million in 2010. This means that WoW subscriptions have generated gross margins over 80% consistently. Since WoW has very high operating leverage any decline in revenue will have dramatic effects on the bottom line.
Edit: After reading the rest of the article, the guys nothing but a money hawk speculator who probably knows shit about the video game industry.
But I digress. The numbers are still valid.
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On August 04 2012 15:46 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 15:35 Samp wrote:On August 04 2012 15:20 paralleluniverse wrote:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6246995624Attributing the decline in WoW subs because the game is too easy is completely absurd. The first time a sub loss was announced was Q1 2011, after the release of Cata, where the game was brutally hard. Both heroics and raids were totally unforgiving, and most people on the forums were complaining that the heroic dungeons were too hard, where any mistake will kill you. In fact, it's more likely that many casuals quit at the start because the game was too hard, then players with slightly above average skill quit when the nerfs came, and then more people quit when they ran out of things to do apart from heroics and dungeons. Well...a lot of us left the game because it became too casual, too easy to get epic gear (epic gear doesnt mean shit anymore as it did pre-wrath), too easy to get raid groups (dont even need a guild) and stuff like that. Call it was you want, but I like the word easy for this scenario. I know raid finder doesnt have the same gear but you can still do the raid. In the past, if you even TRIED Black Temple, you needed ~T5 gear, so trying/doing the raid was an achievement in itself. Its not anymore. Also I feel like the game is less rewarding with the more time you put in it compared to pre-wrath where if you had a lot of time to invest into the game, you were gonna get paid off. Epics have been worthless since TBC, where everyone ever since Kara has been in full epics. The idea that the game is too easy has been debunked and discussed to death on this forum: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=277847¤tpage=26#515http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=277847¤tpage=23#446http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=277847¤tpage=19#373It's more likely that at this point of the game, heroic dungeons and LFR are so easy that it's a joke. Meanwhile because people have beaten content on this joke mode, they don't feel motivated to find a guild and do heroic raids which are still very hard despite the nerfs. And that's why you quit, you've beaten joke mode, and so you consider the game finished.
Dear god. Mate, you making a few posts isn't debunking shit. It's you giving your opinion the same as everyone else. Get over yourself.
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On August 04 2012 17:10 Brett wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 15:46 paralleluniverse wrote:On August 04 2012 15:35 Samp wrote:On August 04 2012 15:20 paralleluniverse wrote:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6246995624Attributing the decline in WoW subs because the game is too easy is completely absurd. The first time a sub loss was announced was Q1 2011, after the release of Cata, where the game was brutally hard. Both heroics and raids were totally unforgiving, and most people on the forums were complaining that the heroic dungeons were too hard, where any mistake will kill you. In fact, it's more likely that many casuals quit at the start because the game was too hard, then players with slightly above average skill quit when the nerfs came, and then more people quit when they ran out of things to do apart from heroics and dungeons. Well...a lot of us left the game because it became too casual, too easy to get epic gear (epic gear doesnt mean shit anymore as it did pre-wrath), too easy to get raid groups (dont even need a guild) and stuff like that. Call it was you want, but I like the word easy for this scenario. I know raid finder doesnt have the same gear but you can still do the raid. In the past, if you even TRIED Black Temple, you needed ~T5 gear, so trying/doing the raid was an achievement in itself. Its not anymore. Also I feel like the game is less rewarding with the more time you put in it compared to pre-wrath where if you had a lot of time to invest into the game, you were gonna get paid off. Epics have been worthless since TBC, where everyone ever since Kara has been in full epics. The idea that the game is too easy has been debunked and discussed to death on this forum: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=277847¤tpage=26#515http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=277847¤tpage=23#446http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=277847¤tpage=19#373It's more likely that at this point of the game, heroic dungeons and LFR are so easy that it's a joke. Meanwhile because people have beaten content on this joke mode, they don't feel motivated to find a guild and do heroic raids which are still very hard despite the nerfs. And that's why you quit, you've beaten joke mode, and so you consider the game finished. Dear god. Mate, you making a few posts isn't debunking shit. It's you giving your opinion the same as everyone else. Get over yourself.
Your opinions aren't supported by facts about world first kill dates, wowprogress stats, and the statements from world first raiding guilds. Mine are.
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Your*
And you're missing the entire point. Hint: people aren't arguing that Cata's raid content didn't have hard encounters. But keep making yourself look like a dick.
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On August 04 2012 17:52 Brett wrote:
Your*
And you're missing the entire point. Hint: people aren't arguing that Cata's raid content didn't have hard encounters. But keep making yourself look like a dick.
Please, go on.
Keep talking about how easy and casual this game is while continually failing to complete these "hard encounters" along with the majority of the hypocritical, whining playerbase.
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On August 04 2012 18:03 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 17:52 Brett wrote:
Your*
And you're missing the entire point. Hint: people aren't arguing that Cata's raid content didn't have hard encounters. But keep making yourself look like a dick. Please, go on. Keep talking about how easy and casual this game is while continually failing to complete these "hard encounters" along with the majority of the hypocritical, whining playerbase.
Hahaha, way off base friend.
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On August 04 2012 18:31 Brett wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 18:03 paralleluniverse wrote:On August 04 2012 17:52 Brett wrote:
Your*
And you're missing the entire point. Hint: people aren't arguing that Cata's raid content didn't have hard encounters. But keep making yourself look like a dick. Please, go on. Keep talking about how easy and casual this game is while continually failing to complete these "hard encounters" along with the majority of the hypocritical, whining playerbase. Hahaha, way off base friend.
Way off base?
First people argue that WoW is too easy. Then when it's shown that world first guilds take as long to beat these encounters as they have in the previous expansions, the argument suddenly changes to the fact that there's massive nerfs to all encounters. Then when it's shown that a very very large majority of players still can't beat many heroic encounters, the argument suddenly shifts to LFR and and a lack of server community. Then when it's shown that this isn't related to how hard raid content is, and that people use trade chat to PUG normals, and that there's no LFG for challenge modes in MoP, the argument suddenly goes back to WoW being too easy and we start all over again.
There is no coherent argument from whiners like yourself.
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On August 04 2012 01:13 andrewlt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2012 11:53 Wildmoon wrote:
MoP, the xpac that everyone went "WTF is this?" when it was announced looks really promising in beta now.. Its art,pet battle,raid mechanic,faction system are awesome and there are more. It's quite unexpected. Can you elaborate, especially the raid mechanics and faction systems? When the officers in my guild decided to quit/go casual, we stopped raiding. After almost 8 years in the same guild, I couldn't be assed to find a new one so I'm about to let my subscription expire. I'm curious about all these changes, though.
The factions in MoP are much more interesting than old factions such as the one that let you make you grow your own plant or the one that tell you secret lore. The overall bosses's mechanic is really good too. You can watch youtube. Oh and raids look gorgeous...
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When people talk about WoW being too easy they generally mean everything outside of heroic raids. You cannot deny there is not a single challenge in the entirety of WoW besides heroic raids. Couple that with the majority of people not doing heroic modes and you have yourself complaints of WoW being too easy.
You can't just say "Go do heroic modes!" because firstly, that isn't really new content (it's the same content with one or two abilities added here and there) and secondly, there is a reason those people aren't already doing heroic raids; they don't have time, don't want to commit to a schedule, etc.
WoW really is too easy in general. Heroic raids are indeed very hard and require fantastic teamwork and skills but they are a very small part of the game. I could go on and on about this but I'm not in the mood to write an essay.
What I will say about this issue is that MoP looks very, very promising. It almost looks as if it will revive WoW to it's TBC glory (but that could just be me being overly optimistic as always). Challenge modes will finally provide a challenge outside of heroic raids (and PvP obviously) again and the raids look absolutely gorgeous instead of the rehashed crap that Dragon Soul is. It seems Blizzard has really listened to the playerbase this time and tried to bring out a product that will please everyone. The amount of new content that can be done outside of the PvE endgame is astonishing as well. Should give people plenty to do unlike the god damn absolute shit patch that 4.3 has been.
Hell, you even need to complete the previous raids (and have the required ilvl) in order to progress to the next ones in LFR! We'll see how it plays out but it looks good on paper.
And finally, the reason why WoW has lost so many subs is because the absolute horror that 4.3 is simply couldn't hold people in. It's already nine months of this boring horrible crap! Never has a shittier raid been released (and this has also been the worst time Blizzard could've picked for releasing LFR, no wonder all those subs are lost when half the playerbase finally got to see a raid but what they saw was absolute shit), not even ToC was this bad and that was just a filler raid and not the final raid of an expansion!
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On August 04 2012 19:26 Thorakh wrote:
When people talk about WoW being too easy they generally mean everything outside of heroic raids. You cannot deny there is not a single challenge in the entirety of WoW besides heroic raids. Couple that with the majority of people not doing heroic modes and you have yourself complaints of WoW being too easy.
You can't just say "Go do heroic modes!" because firstly, that isn't really new content (it's the same content with one or two abilities added here and there) and secondly, there is a reason those people aren't already doing heroic raids; they don't have time, don't want to commit to a schedule, etc.
WoW really is too easy in general. Heroic raids are indeed very hard and require fantastic teamwork and skills but they are a very small part of the game. I could go on and on about this but I'm not in the mood to write an essay.
What I will say about this issue is that MoP looks very, very promising. It almost looks as if it will revive WoW to it's TBC glory (but that could just be me being overly optimistic as always). Challenge modes will finally provide a challenge outside of heroic raids (and PvP obviously) again and the raids look absolutely gorgeous instead of the rehashed crap that Dragon Soul is. It seems Blizzard has really listened to the playerbase this time and tried to bring out a product that will please everyone. The amount of new content that can be done outside of the PvE endgame is astonishing as well. Should give people plenty to do unlike the god damn absolute shit patch that 4.3 has been.
Hell, you even need to complete the previous raids (and have the required ilvl) in order to progress to the next ones in LFR! We'll see how it plays out but it looks good on paper.
And finally, the reason why WoW has lost so many subs is because the absolute horror that 4.3 is simply couldn't hold people in. It's already nine months of this boring horrible crap! Never has a shittier raid been released (and this has also been the worst time Blizzard could've picked for releasing LFR, no wonder all those subs are lost when half the playerbase finally got to see a raid but what they saw was absolute shit), not even ToC was this bad and that was just a filler raid and not the final raid of an expansion!
Subs started dropping in Q1 2011, and heroic dungeons were the hardest they've ever been in 4.0.
The QQ was rampant.
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EPT
