Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWorld of Warcraft subscriber numbers dip 100,000 to 10.2 million
by Adam Holisky 
Feb 9th 2012 at 4:33PM
World of Warcraft's subscriber numbers peaked around 12 million back in late 2010 and early 2011 and have been in decline since. The game slipped to 11.4 million subscribers in May 2011, then down to 10.3 million in September of 2011. While subscriber numbers continue to fall, the rate of lost subscriptions has slowed significantly.
In further clarification of the game's subscriber numbers, Blizzard President and Cofounder Mike Morhaime said that Blizzard has seen no significant change and that "December was a good month for us." This past quarter was, according to Morhaime, the "most competitive quarter ever." World of Warcraft's competition primarily came from Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Blizzard believes that the success of patch 4.3, community engagement, and the Annual Pass contributed to the subscriber retention it's seen.
Filed under: Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
Pious Feb 9th 2012 7:06PM
*In the voice of Bruce from Family Guy*
"Oh Noooo !!"
Arrohon Feb 9th 2012 4:56PM
aaaaaaaanndd it had begun to stabilize. Exponential decay at its finest.
Lagnar Feb 9th 2012 4:57PM
So nearing the end of the expansion the subs are dipping a bit? Amazing. What would be truly amazing is if the subs went up at the beginning of the new expansion. But that's just crazy talk I'm sure.
Reservoir Feb 9th 2012 4:58PM
These are numbers prior to ToR launch, would be curious to see how big the hit was after that.
emberdione Feb 9th 2012 4:59PM
Those numbers are *during* SWTOR's launch. December 20th. Those numbers are through the 31st of December.
Cricket Feb 10th 2012 8:36AM
@emberdione
But are people going to leave an MMO they've played for years for an unknown entity? That's like people leaving their spouses *before* they actually start an affair. It happens, but the larger part are two-timin' at least for a while. I think the effect of SWTOR will shake out over the next few months.
Anecdotally, a good 50% of my guild is currently playing both games, but they're not on WoW most of the time. It's actually a little depressing as we couldn't get a new ID DS raid started just after reset last week, not even with PUGs. That was the moment when I thought SWTOR is having an effect because I knew exactly where the missing people were. It's not proving anything, of course, but it does illustrate why some people might be inclined to say that SWTOR is killing WoW - it's killing *their* WoW.
Paul Feb 9th 2012 5:00PM
I'm still more interested in seeing a ratio that compares total sales of the Cataclysm expansion to current subs with what Wrath had prior to Cataclysm's release. Seems like a far more important statistic that just 'current subs' over a quarter.
If Wrath sold 20 million units, but never got above 12 million subs, yet Cata only sold 15 units and has just about dipped to 10 million subs, then Wrath failed at subscription retention.
I know what they're reporting is important to the shareholders, but does it really lend itself to a review of the success of the product?
Snuzzle Feb 9th 2012 8:16PM
That's a fair point, but if you hadn't brought it up, it would never have occurred to me. I suppose one could figure it out in a roundabout way by getting the number of subs just before Cata released and to-date, as well as the number of subs just before Wrath, and the number of units of Wrath and Cata sold.
PodPeople Feb 9th 2012 5:06PM
The reason behind lower subs isn't rocket surgery, the economy has been in the crapper for at least 3yrs. While WoW is "cheap" entertainment, $180/yr is now maybe something people can't or are unwilling to afford anymore. People have been losing their jobs, homes, and savings. I think Blizz should be, and probably is, very happy that they still have over 10mil accounts active.
Bossy Feb 9th 2012 5:12PM
I agree !
The subscription based market has a hard time with the economics AND the free to play garbage out there.
Both EVE and WOW had 15% (or more) losses in 2011 (you can see it on the activity website of EVE) because of those dreadful "free to PAY stuff".
We will all see its impact in the futeure even more.
Glad WOW stayed at 10.2 M this time. Another 5 months and the MOP expansion will secure this 10M point with ease.
Paul Feb 9th 2012 5:19PM
There is no 'one reason' behind it all.
People have quit because;
-It's too easy
-It's too hard
-Not enough to do
-Not enough time
-Not good value for money
-Can't afford it anymore
-Starting a family
-Starting a new career
-Became unemployed
-Burntout
-Too much reused assets
-Too long between content
-Not fond of story direction
-Not fond of PvP imbalance
-Not getting enough out of the raid system
-Raiding takes too much time
-Friends stopped playing
-Got hacked
And plenty plenty more.
Anyone declaring that only one reason was behind each drop, like claiming that the loss in Q1 was ONLY because Heroic dungeons took too long/were too hard, in Q2 because of "lazy development" because of ZA and ZG, in Q3 because of the severe nerf in FL or in Q4 because of LFR, or any other agenda an individual has with Blizzard at this time are quite frankly not worth listening to. They often don't even understand how the sub numbers reflect the success of the game.
Here's a hint, if most of the subs from Wrath were only active for one month, but in Cata they were active for two, then Cata made more month. Without real numbers that actually matter, the numbers that are issued during these calls mean nothing to us.
glen Feb 9th 2012 7:42PM
There's no ONE single reason WoW has been losing subscriptions. But burnout, real-life interference, economy woes, and the like have existed in every expansion. A 15% drop in one year is a pretty clear indication that people didn't like Cata in general. That manifested itself in specific gripes, sure - but when taken as a whole, the overall direction of Cata was poorly received.
It's pretty telling that the subscriber loss lessened after the last patch, a patch which reversed most of the game design decisions of Cata. It's also interesting that there were more subscribers at the end of Wrath after a year of nothing but ICC than there are right now after a brand new content patch. I'm glad that Blizz is on the right track again, but let's not pretend they were never on the wrong track.
Paul Feb 10th 2012 12:45PM
@ Glen,
Here's the problem that I have. In regards to reviewing the quality of the expansion, the number of unique subscribers over a three month period is not a good means to measure. Hell, I'm still trying to work out how it's even relevant to shareholders and the information, given as it has been over the last 7 years, doesn't really show any relation to subscriber numbers and profit.
For example, as we know, Wrath had 12 million subs for the majority of it's time. Nice number, however, that's 12 million unique subscribers over a 3 month period. How many of those were subscribed for all three months? How many for 2? How many for 1?
I mentioned it earlier, and on previous Investor Calls, but I'll say it again here too. Even though we are seeing a decline in active subs over a 3 month period, and continually for the course of the year so far, that doesn't mean WoW has lost 1.9 million subs over the course of the expansion. It has actually lost far more than that, but what's really an interesting stat, that no one outside of Blizzard even knows, is how many subs Wrath lost. If you say "none" because it had 10 million when it was released, then sadly, you don't understand what a subsriber loss really is.
Total units sold - current subscribers = real loss.
Subscribers on release - Subscribers now = inaccurate loss.
Why is it inaccurate? Because it doesn't tell you how many people bought Cataclysm during that time.
For example, Cata has a subscriber difference between now and release of Cata of about -1.9 million, however, if Cata sold 15 million units since release, then it has actually failed to retain 4.9 million subscribers.
Now let's look at a hyphthetical Wrath scenario. Let's say over the two years of Wrath (from release to the last FULL quarter before Cata), let's say 20million units sold, but at that last quarter there was only 12 million active subs, then Wrath failed to retain 8 million subs.
Bear in mind that I am pulling the sales numbers out of my arse. My point here isn't to argue about whether Wrath or Cata was a better expansion, it's just to point out that the difference between Current and Initial expansion active subs really doesn't mean much. And considering that an even MORE important statistic, which is how long each sub was active for during a quarter is also not announced, NO ONE outside of Blizzard knows the real score here, so citing these numbers as proof of a demise or lack of quality is meaningless.
Bossy Feb 9th 2012 5:08PM
Actually SW TOR had very LITTLE impact on ACTIVE WOW players.
Most of those TRYING to enjoy SW TOR already left WOW months if not years ago.
You can see it in their SW forums: ALL whining and complaining.
it sure was a great sign to see the "new" WOW forums lately.
Hardly any complaining. Most constructive. My guess is that those WOW players are the staying bunch...
The whiners are now over at SW ... a PITY they will all come back in the next expansion.
:((((
midnight08 Feb 9th 2012 5:11PM
Or they're people like me who have active wow AND swtor accounts...
Kunikenwad! Feb 9th 2012 5:41PM
There's a lot of generalizations in your post. Why can't both games succeed and be financially healthy? Why must it be black or white?
I played WoW. I now play TOR. I wish success for both dev teams because they are both fantastic games.
Omegan01 Feb 9th 2012 5:10PM
WoW's hemorrhaging of subscriptions has slowed, but not stopped entirely. This, though, is pretty much the final damnation of the Cataclysm xpac. Unless the numbers spike between January and April, Cataclysm will ultimately have done nothing but lose players all throughout its life. 4.3 will have failed in its goal of bringing players back.
And honestly, as a Blizzard fan...it's not that surprising. Cataclysm has been an utter mess from day one. A story that alternated between utterly banal and annoyingly obtuse, an introductory raid tier that was ferociously unfriendly to newcomers, broken promises of "less content per patch but more patches overall" a rated BG system left gasping for breath like a fish out of water until same-faction BGs had to be introduced...
I could go on like this for awhile, but it's all minutae. Cataclysm might have been incredibly ambitious, but frankly it turned out to be one of the biggest disasters Blizzard's ever produced as a company. I'm not sure anything they've ever released has bombed so badly as Cataclysm did.
As I sit here, looking forward to Mists of Pandaria, I'm looking forward to the chance at starting over on a fresh new page, with the hope that the sheer volume of baggage Cataclysm introduced can be overcome. Blizzard's already taken a few steps towards doing so, but they're going to need to take a whole lot more to get there.
Bossy Feb 9th 2012 5:15PM
It had VERY LITTLE to do with CATA. As EVE also lost a lot of player activity (see their tracking tools) in 2011;
Very little to do with the quality of CATA, but everything to do with the changing "free to play" markets and of course COD ...: fast and furious fun ...
emberdione Feb 9th 2012 5:17PM
I get your point. I really do. But I disagree with your rhetoric. "Bomb" is not the correct term to use at all, in any measure of the word. It sold *millions* of copies in it's first month. Even in December of 2011, it was STILL in the top 10 list of best selling games for the month. (To be fair, so was WoW... but still.)
It's not as awesome by comparison to other Blizzard games. But I assure you, *any* and *every* other game publisher and/or developer would *love love love* to have a game ship 4 million in it's first month and then continue to sell at LAUNCH PRICE up to a year later and still make the charts. That's astonishing and wondrous.
Omegan01 Feb 9th 2012 5:43PM
@emberdione
I understand your thinking, and you have a point: initial sales figures for Cataclysm were spectacular. But paid MMOs (and MMO expansions) aren't just trying to sell you on the 40-60 bucks you paid for the box. They're trying to sell you on a subscription, and Cataclysm's retention numbers are utterly through the basement, the kind of die-off that would have utterly killed a new MMO.
Let's be honest with ourselves here: Cataclysm's initial sales didn't happen in a vacuum. The expansion rode the wave of BC and Wrath to get so many copies sold. The true measure of Cataclysm came when subscriptions began to drop -immediately- afterwards. That was a damning indictment: people were incredibly eager for Cataclysm, but once they got a chance to try it out, they left. In droves.