Posts with tag world-of-warcraft-subscribers

The lovely Panser returns once again with the WoW Insider Weekly Recap! This week, she's been very busy with a project and apologises profusely for the tardiness of the recap! But there's a few stories that have piqued Panser's interest, starting with Doubleagent, the pandaren shaman flower-picker, who leveled to the level cap just by herbing! Check out the links to the original stories here at WoW Insider:

• Level 60 factionless panda
• Patch 5.4's BOA epics
• Connected realms
• Vanity items on Timeless Isle
• In-game store on PTR
• In-game story video preview

If you enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe to TradeChat, leave a comment, and come back next week for the next episode!

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In addition to the news that Titan may not be subscription-based, today's Activision investor call also shed some light on WoW's most recent round of subscriber losses. Blizzard says that the subscriber loss was more or less evenly split between Eastern and Western markets, which is to say that they've lost subscribers in North America, Europe, and Asia. However, patch 5.2 and 5.3 both had a positive impact on subscriber numbers and Blizzard is working on making returning to the game easier for players who have left.

While there's been a lot of panic over the subscriber losses, Blizzard isn't throwing in the towel yet: in this call they assured everyone that they're committed to the World of Warcraft playerbase (that's us!) in spite of the subscriber downturn and other projects like Titan on the horizon.

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TradeChat's Panser returns with this week's WoW Insider news recap, where we look back at the hottest news from the past week and whatever other kickin' rad things may have come our way. This week's topics include:

• World of Warcraft down to 7.7 million subscribers
• Activision-Blizzard separates from Vivendi for $8.2 billion
• Ghostcrawler drops hints of new class
• Things Ghostcrawler did and did not confirm at ChinaJoy

If you enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe to TradeChat, leave a comment, and come back next week for the next episode!

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During this afternoon's Activision Blizzard investor call, it was announced that WoW's subscribers numbers dropped another 100,000 players from September 2011 to 10.2 million at the end of December 2011.

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.

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The latest Activision Blizzard earnings call took place earlier this afternoon, and it presented some interesting information about the current state of Blizzard and World of Warcraft. You can read the press release for yourself, but it doesn't include details of the call itself.

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.