Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWorld of Warcraft dips to a mere 11.4 million subscribers
by Alex Ziebart 
May 9th 2011 at 7:00PM
During the call, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment Mike Morhaime pointed out that World of Warcraft had fallen again to pre-Cataclysm subscriber levels -- 11.4 million subscribers at the end of March, down from its peak of 12 million. Subscriber levels do not decline linearly, he pointed out, stating that they fluctuate based on how quickly players consume and complete content. Players are consuming Cataclysm's content faster than any expansion before it, so subscriber levels started to drop off more quickly than they have previously.
11.4 million subscribers still puts World of Warcraft quite far above and beyond any of its competition, and it should be noted that the numbers stated in the call came during a slow point in the expansion -- Cataclysm launched in early December, putting the end of March a good four months out. You can only expect players to consume the same content for so long, and four months is a pretty long time. If this were a single-player game and not an MMO, no developer could reasonably expect a player to consume the same content for four months. That's one-third of a year with no additions to the game, and we've only just received a content patch at the end of April. It's actually surprising to me personally that four months is faster than previous expansions.
The month of March may also have just been a bad month to poll, as competition such as RIFT launched that month. Even if the majority of the players that left World of Warcraft for RIFT eventually find their way back, the damage has been done for the month of March.
Though subscribers numbers have fallen back down to 11.4 million, overall profit has risen so far this year -- the details of which you can find in the official press release.
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 12 of 12)
noel mcleod May 10th 2011 1:58PM
That's exactly my point. I LIKE to tank, I have TWO tanks (Prot Pally and Blood DK) and I don't tank because I never have a big enough block of time (need to allow two hours). I used to love HVH because it was timed (if you didn't wipe, if I wiped I would abandon).
ScrubRogue May 10th 2011 2:12PM
The decline is due to the asshattery of players, anyone new or away for any length of time without intimate knowledge of all fights is instantly kicked over and over again from very lengthy queues. (speaking as a dps, which let's face it a new player would probably be)
So rather than sucking in new players they get rejected in a mean way, I've talked to a bunch of players who tried to come back for Cata and while they loved the changes and "quality of life" stuff added to the game, they felt that the playerbase were elitist asshats that made them want to play *any* other game.
I think there should be a kick limit for players, its really out of control.
Guttsu May 10th 2011 2:32PM
So I’ve read through the many comments here and I think everyone has a pretty good idea of why there has been a decline in numbers. Obviously there wasn’t enough end game content at Cata’s release.
I would have liked to see the content included in 4.1 and 4.2 all included with the release of Cataclysm. I think it would have been neat if Blizzard had released this expansion with more than 1 tier of content in the first place, to make starting heroics and raids a lot easier than they are now. Give us a better curve or path to getting ourselves geared that would last longer as opposed to the painful 3 hour wipe fests that have been pugs up until now. I decided early on in Cata to simply wait a few content patches before I really tried running Dungeons or Raiding because it was simply too frustrating and time consuming.
But what I think this expansion has been missing is some new forms of endgame content that’s not focused solely on heroic dungeons and raids and that can be completed without a group. I would like to see tons of timed daily group quests similar to The Battle of Undercity or Retaking the Echo Isles. Big epic REPEATABLE events that you don’t need a group for at all. I remember running the echo isles on a Druid a few weeks after its release completely by myself. It was awesome. Some examples:
Once a week Garosh will call his forces to Zoram’Gar Outpost in Ashenvale. You’ll follow a phased event where you board a fleet of ships and attack a phased enemy capital city in order to rescue POW’s. (Allies could have a similar quest starting in Theramore)
I’d like to see Thrall and Nobundo call for us once or twice a week to protect them at the Maelstrom against an attack of black and twilight dragons. We could be asked to mount Red and Green drakes and battle in the skies above the Maelstrom.
These are just some idea to be thrown around, but I assume you get the point. If Blizzard would implement more of these events the possibilities would be endless.
I think each day there could be a large scale World PVP battle to be fought at one of the many new “fronts” where Horde and Alliance forces are clashing. Southern Barrens, Ashenvale, Twilight Highlands. Make it so you accept the quest and the whole area becomes phased for PVP until the battle is over.
On top of phased huge group quests, I think we simply needed an additional post 85 endgame questing zone or two at release. I think Firelands should fill this gap, but it probably should have been there at release. I would love some completely optional areas that aren’t whole zones, similar to Netherwing Ledge in Outlands.
We all know that Blizz makes cash like its nobodies business, and I think after the success of Wrath they should have doubled their development staff and should be pumping out content with no end in sight. Blizz needs to start looking at the MMO market and trying out some of the new innovations those games have been bringing to the table. Because for me Dungeons and Raids are simply becoming less and less interesting.
ScrubRogue May 10th 2011 2:45PM
I'd be interested in seeing the numbers of people who get to level 85, then quit? Queue times and nasty PUGgers (why no nasty btw, I see abhor-able behaviour in dungeons) really discourage new 85s
AlexCala7 May 11th 2011 5:22PM
Personally, I'd say part of the issue is recycled content. The new Deadmines are fun, but in the end. It's the same instance. Ditto for SFK, and then Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman. I loved the instances, but I'd rather have had something new, rather than rehashed old. Which seems to be the theme of Cata thus far to a degree. In addition, as others pointed out, the content as well. I'm all for a challenge myself, I like challenges, and while I didn't mind doing the new Heroics, even if they took a while, the HOUR long queues for DPS was horrendous. Especially with the drop rate. Tanks and healers had it easy. If DPS were in a group and your tank and healer dropped, you had another hour long queue. So an hour long instance, ended up taking three hours. Or more.
AltMaster May 10th 2011 4:25PM
With me, and for that very reason, I get to level 85 and then roll a new alt. I maybe work on professions and reputations, but I abhor dungeons in the current atmosphere.
eel5pe May 10th 2011 5:01PM
Can I just quickly insert here with a slightly off-topic injunction? I want to say this every time there's a contentious issue at WoWInsider:
STOP DOWNRATING POSTS SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU DISAGREE WITH THEM.
Remember that downvoting works a bit different from upvoting. Upvoting a response makes it more visible which is fine- superior (or funny) posts should be made available for easy browsing. But keep in mind that when you downrate something you are essentially silencing a person by making their post less visible, and eventually, invisible. This is not a simple "dislike" mechanic, you are literally casting your vote saying that the person's opinion is not worth seeing.
One of the reasons I love reading the comment section here is to see the viewpoints of a diverse playerbase whose experiences differ from mine, and I hope the other readers out there have a similar motivation, rather than to high-five people who think like you. So yeah I get it- the majority of vocal players on this fansite dislike the current cataclysm playstyle and think that's directly to blame for the dip in WoW's subscription numbers. But keep in mind that's your opinion. It may be the dominant opinion, but it's still just your opinion. You have at best anecdotal evidence. So think long and hard before you decide someone else's view is no good and not worth being expressed.
I don't think that most people are downvoting posts out of a malicious intent to see a contrarian viewpoint silenced, but rather because they didn't think through the implications of downvoting. My hope is that they'll start to consider what it means to bury a post. But those of you who are actually trying to bury opposing views I'd like to loosely quote ASoIAF: When you silence someone you don't prove them wrong, you just show that you are afraid of what they have to say.
Spinster May 10th 2011 5:45PM
At my house we have been discussing dropping our subscriptions. Cataclysm had some nice moments but it just didn't do much for us, somehow. We are casual players. And I freely admit we don't do difficult dungeons or PVP . . .we are the cooperative, questing type of players. I didn't feel like there was a lot of rewards for my kind of player in Cataclysm. For us it seems like there is simply no reason to work more toons up . . .is a Goblin shaman really much different than any other shaman after you leave the Goblin starting area? And there is little reason to get toons to 85 if you aren't hardcore . . .I can honestly say that I HATED leveling my second toon from 80 to 85 as it was just incredibly boring.
It's very sad, as we have had so much fun with WOW.
QQinsider May 10th 2011 9:15PM
"Players are consuming Cataclysm's content faster than any expansion before it"
No they aren't, there's just less of it. That, plus the disastrous effects on the community of LFD + harder instances, is why subscriber numbers are down.
I'm surprised it's taken this long for any figures to emerge tbh, it was obvious that people were quitting in droves even back in February when my own subscription ended. The end of March was 6 weeks ago, I wonder how much worse the numbers were for the end of April.
Well I hope the Cata design team got a good kicking, they deserve it. Worse expansion ever, and a lot will have to change before I'm tempted to renew again.
Ranthie May 11th 2011 2:45AM
From reading alot of peoples comments, content seems to be the largest reason people are quiting. Now it's a small decline yes, but if the trend sets in warcraft will slowly lose a lot of players but I highly doubt it will die. I'm saying 5mill will always be it's lowest, and i'm also accounting that number around titan comes out.
Inc wall of text. tl;dr down the bottom.
Now a lot of people, lore driven people, whom desire the pve endgame storyline are getting half assed lore. We are now required to read books, comics, use money or other means and time reading up on the changes in the warcraft lore as some quest lines are now leaving us with no answers.
I redid my loremaster, and cataclysm for some was great in questing but others were just out of the blue lore and no actual epic lead up to dungeons. Correct me if i'm wrong but I remember a very somewhat terrible quest lead up to the first raid.
We were told a tiny story but it seemed so rushed, to be honest, and i'm going to get flamed for this, but Burning Crusade, Shadow Moon Valley was the best quest hub area and Karazan was the best raid, because OMG it told a wonderful story and even the quests were very involving and leading up to more raids.
Seriously killing illidan was epic and for some of us even more legendary after playing warcraft III and it seems blizzard cannot emulate that massive storyline that for us that played warcraft III did. We now have characters from games that we don't relate to.
We all knew Illidans Story, We all knew The lich King's story we knew everything pre WoW and thats was kept drawing us in. We just played or continued to play WC3 and remember the stories infact for some people that was their first blizzard game.
Now the content we are getting is old, rehashed with a new story lumped on top, To me thats what it looks like from the outside looking in in the lastest stuff because I haven't renewed my subscription since I completed the first raid.
Theres no epic story attached and if there is it's rushed or bits are missing because blizzard wants you to read a book or comic or spend hours of reading up on lore bits they write on their website. But not many people know this and just play the game. It's like watching the movie without reading the book except this movie isn't so forgiving because you never took the time to research the lore on your part.
Then you got the playbase and I do miss the actual social group we all formed, now ripped apart by antisocial behaviour in the game. And if it's people like that when all my friends quit I tried to re-establish new friends in the game and they are younger then I and more immature.
Most of us started playing at ages 15-20, 6 years later the player base has grown up and moved on and we are left with new people in a different generation and we don't associate with them well. This causes problems and for us we just leave because we don't have time for that, we just want to play but it's hard with so many newbies not being showed how to do stuff and guilds with vanilla + players don't accept these newbies.
Thats is also blizzards fault, yes they kept them in with new world content, but endgame is unforgiving especially for new people who don't know how to not stand in the fire or stay away form anything that says I WILL KILL YOU SO STAY AWAY. The transition form levelling to endgame is steep because blizzard tired to cater to both hardcore and casual. It never works, no one in the gaming industry can cater for both and to say blizzard has is clearly wearing rose coloured glasses.
Theres so much more wrong with blizzards new expansion but a lot of good stuff as well. But to be honest I believe these are the main reasons. Lore we need to spend time researching whereas the last two expansion made perfect sense because it was Warcraft 3 that introduced a lot of us to the blizzard world. And Blizzard is trying to cater for both hardcore and causals, with an ageing playerbase they should of been catering for them the most while keeping new players more in a lore loop and gradually making each new levels more challenging and slowly introducing what we experience at endgame during levelling, instead of it making it some race to the end like it is now.
Dissect this as you want this is what I believe is leading to a slow decline but I have a feeling it is going to continue, it wont be fast. It will be slow and it wont die it will remain steady at half it's population as it stands now.
Solantha-Uther May 11th 2011 6:42PM
I wonder how many of Blizzard's "subscribers" are like me? I removed my credit card information under Account Management in March but have continue to see charges against that account. Anyone else seeing this?
nizaak99 May 14th 2011 9:02AM
This guy explains exactly what is wrong with the game:
http://www.amazon.com/review/RQVR6TKNVWF9D/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B002I0HKIU&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=
I'm interested in the Q2 and Q3 reports, then it will be clear how badly Blizzard destroyed this game with all the extended subscriptions ending. I know, I know warcraftrealms is by no means accurate, but given the trend of declining players seen in the game, the situation is far worse than 600k subs:
Date # Players
7-Mar-11 5424257
8-Mar-11 5380468
9-Mar-11 5315268
10-Mar-11 5287973
11-Mar-11 5279132
12-Mar-11 5217029
13-Mar-11 5197170
14-Mar-11 5128460
15-Mar-11 5053612
16-Mar-11 5047429
17-Mar-11 4987571
18-Mar-11 4984289
19-Mar-11 4957339
20-Mar-11 4970106
21-Mar-11 4918402
22-Mar-11 4858742
23-Mar-11 4806158
24-Mar-11 4773382
25-Mar-11 4794427
26-Mar-11 4796285
27-Mar-11 4826413
28-Mar-11 4768595
29-Mar-11 4656051
30-Mar-11 4638350
31-Mar-11 4635856
1-Apr-11 4646173
2-Apr-11 4638011
3-Apr-11 4687198
4-Apr-11 4655948
5-Apr-11 4608907
6-Apr-11 4580428
7-Apr-11 4550300
8-Apr-11 4570503
9-Apr-11 4548634
10-Apr-11 4554857
11-Apr-11 4518840
12-Apr-11 4443806
13-Apr-11 4410020
14-Apr-11 4433711
18-Apr-11 4463863
19-Apr-11 4468354
20-Apr-11 4410405
21-Apr-11 4376697
22-Apr-11 4401093
23-Apr-11 4431800
24-Apr-11 4435853
25-Apr-11 4472796
26-Apr-11 4401185 (Patch 4.1)
27-Apr-11 4422497
28-Apr-11 4408410
29-Apr-11 4369853
30-Apr-11 4353494
01-May-11 4360097
03-May-11 4314765
05-May-11 4263246
08-May-11 4257880
09-May-11 4232726
14-May-11 4169908
jimtarvin Jul 9th 2011 11:30AM
even if they lost 50% of thier subscriptions they would still be making money hand over fist.
i just canceled my subscription because of the unbalance of classes in pvp. the inability to get better pvp gear without doing arena, the long que and dungeon times for pvp and the contunious assaults on my ability to make gold because of things they do to the professions.
they have serious issues.