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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 5 of 5)
Amaxe Feb 9th 2012 6:24PM
When you consider their top of 12 million, 10.2 million is 85% of that. So you could say, "WoW drops 15% in one year!"
So this article and the claims of naysayers are both spinning the news the way they want to spin it.
While I don't believe WoW will die out (and wouldn't want it to), I do think Blizz should be curious about what the drops mean and what they need to do to correct it.
If this drop is related to the disappointment over Cata for example, they had be damn sure people will like MoP or there could be a larger drop (how many people are sticking around waiting for MoP?)
Not a claim of what will happen, but while this isn't as bad as the naysayers claim, it isn't as good as the spin given in its favor either.
Snuzzle Feb 9th 2012 6:44PM
15% in one year is still a pretty significant drop. I'm not a "wow is dying!" paranoid, but after a steady growth for six years, that's a decent drop. And you're right, Blizzard would do well to figure out why and what they can do to fix it.
DarkWalker Feb 9th 2012 8:34PM
@Snuzzle
To nit-pick, 4 years of growth, 2 of stagnation, and one of player loss. WoW almost didn't grow during WotLK - it went from 11M to 11.5M players during those 2 years.
And Blizzard is doing a lot to try to get old players back, and get some new players, with MoP. Easier Heroics, fast PvE scenarios, and LFR for casual PvErs; Challenge Modes for hardcore PvErs; Pandas and Poke - I mean, Pet Battles for younger players (and grown ups that are still young at heart); new PvP arenas with quite varied rules; Battle Tags to make friendship work cross-realm.
Blizzard also says they want to bring back World PvP, but I will only believe this specific one when I see it; World PvP simply does not work well while factions are imbalanced, and Blizzard has a terrible track record with fixing faction balance.
Lupos Feb 9th 2012 6:27PM
Being happy that you didn't lose as much as you thought is not the best outlook but at least the hemorrhage has slowed considerabl
Rob Feb 9th 2012 6:41PM
I also quit a while back. I play TOR now. Anyway these numbers are actually pretty good, and blizzard has done an amazing job leveraging their products to penetrate new markets and boost the bottom line in the face of mediocre content and a lack of anything compelling on the horizon (for much of the player base). Given that their biggest competition ever was launched during this quarter, this is pretty amazing.
Now for why we care whose numbers are what. I don't, not really. I like blizzard and I want them to succeed. I'll be picking up D3 when it releases. I also want Bioware to succeed.
smdrpepper Feb 9th 2012 7:10PM
I am tempted lately to close out my account. There are all these free to play games out there now and I rarely even play WoW anymore. Been burnt out for a while. Even tried setting up on a new server with new toons, but the boredom comes back.
shirtntie Feb 9th 2012 7:12PM
Was anyone honestly surprised that MoP and D3 were going to be released this year? Especially MoP. Of course they are, to me that's old news.
Now what would be some really juicy news would be to hear when exactly are they going to go into beta and have their release dates. As far as i know we have Tera releasing in May, GW2 starting OBT in summer for a release date near fall/winter. Then we have other MMOs like Firefall on the horizon. So when exactly is a Blizzard OBT/release going to happen?
Ooooo so many new games out this year, so exciting!
Kar On E Feb 9th 2012 7:34PM
Those of you who are saying that these numbers don't show SW:TOR's true effect on WoW, why not? The hype for SW:TOR was going strong for quite some time before it's true release date. Personally, I know several people who quit well before it came out in preparation for it. And let's not forget that almost everyone that got the game had early access to it, and plenty of others were in the beta.
It hadn't been out for a full month, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that it didn't have time to make it's impact felt.
That being said, I don't ever see WoW returning to it's former glory. It should stay strong for a while, unless the devs do something awful. Something like the NGE in SW: Galaxies.
Mike Cullen Feb 9th 2012 7:48PM
I'd say 10.2 mil is surprisingly good. They haven't released an xpac in over a year, and some pretty popular games have been released between September 2011 and now.
If you had asked me a week ago, I would have predicted a number like 9.5 mil.
Bossy Feb 9th 2012 8:11PM
Morhaime said today at the conference that WOW had its most competitive quarter ever and it held out great.
The hype of the EA game came already in the summer of 2011, with FREE to play Beta for anyone wanting to give an email address (and still some keys were not taken) by mid November, then they had a 1M pre release play as soon as Dec 13 (in fact free to play for 5 Euro as a pre order) and then a launch of Dec 20th.
And ... since the start of January we see WOW taking more and more ratio against SW. Up to a factor of 3 to 1 on (western) Xfire these days.
What does that mean: Active CURRENT WOW players are PLAYING this game and stay subscribed. The bored and whiners already left my game a year ago or 6 months ago and now are whining in the new "flavor of the month"... as always has been the case in the last 5 years.
The fact 1 M western players signed for a year long contract shows that the present hardcore western WOW players are into the multi million range.
And MOP is just around the corner with new WORLD bosses, new WORLD PvP and new scenarios and Pet battles.
... this 800 lbs beast is not going anywhere soon whether you like that or not.
DBriggs304 Feb 9th 2012 8:02PM
It's official WoW is DEAD!!!!!
At least...that is what everyone was saying when we were supposed to be drowned by the fluffy Pandas and that other game coming out.
The bigger statement here is...This is what Blizzard does. Adapts and Survives.
Amaxe Feb 9th 2012 8:31PM
Really people, the "TOR IS DYING!" comments are just as uninformed and annoying as the "WOW IS DYING" comments.
If you want to compare Apples to Apples and not to Oranges, what needs to be asked is:
1) How many people played WoW 2 months after release?
2) What is the Population of SWTOR in 1 year? 2 Years? 5 Years? etc.
3) What other factions might be present to show the decline in either game.
When you make an Assumption, You make an ASS out of U and...Mption!
/duck
Amaxe Feb 9th 2012 8:34PM
**factors, not factions. WTB edit button
Japith Feb 9th 2012 8:50PM
Um, I was one of those 100,000 but I re-subbed. So, they need to adjust it.
teejmorrison Feb 10th 2012 2:40AM
WAY too early to be making any sort of comments like "nice try, SWTOR." The battle has just begun and we're going to see both sides fighting feverishly to push appealing content onto us for our sub fees.
It's a great time to be a gamer
chaosdefined Feb 10th 2012 5:01AM
I'm not really surprised, the game is in a lull at the moment, mostly due to the current expansion. The problem was so many resources were spent revamping the old content and so not enough was put into actually making an expansion.
Cataclysm has felt very patchwork, made up of vague plot points and encounters and headed up by a villain we barely saw doing anything (other than randomly flying around flaming things out of boredom.)
With the loss of subscriptions and negativity we've seen lately towards the idea of Pandaren, it's really up to Blizzard to pull out some incredible gameplay and story for MoP.
frankie78227 Feb 10th 2012 4:58PM
So Wow is only $8 a month in Brazil? Sounds like a good deal. Why not here in the USA?
Andrew Feb 17th 2012 10:42AM
I'm happy to see the numbers declining, frankly. The "peak" was apparently at Cataclysm's release.
Honestly, a lot of the "new" features they've added are trivial. They've streamlined the game, but a lot of this stuff I'm seeing - barbershops, race/realm/faction changes, and now "transmogrification" - it all seems like grasping at straws to try and keep a moneymaking machine afloat. Granted, that IS what big business generally entails, but I wish it weren't so obvious.
It reminds me of the Simpsons, great for the first few seasons, then gradually declining into cheap antics. The work for the employees is to keep trying their best to disguise the fact that the basic framework of the game has gone stale. Maybe I'll play the next expansion, but something tells me this one will be the last.
Note to everybody: as soon as it becomes about money, it's probably time to move on.
And if you still enjoy it, good for you. This is not an insult to you, but from an old friend (Warcraft I onward) of Blizzard's, to Blizzard: if you can't revamp, then rebuild.